Chapter 12

"Max, do you realize when the sun goes down today we will be in California. Tomorrow or the next day, the trip will be over."

"Well, Marty, it has already been 33 days with rain and the breakdown, just a little more than you planned, but not bad at all."

"No, not bad at all," he agreed. "I am going to hate to see it end. Maybe we should pack everything up and just head for Europe."

"You have noticed that the mornings are getting chilly. The weather is going to turn to crap soon."

"Then we will have to go to Australia next," he said seriously.

"Then we will have to hire a production crew and make a TV series. Marty and Max screw their way across whatever," I said.

"You know that is a good idea. We could get a pretty young thing to play you," Marty said, with a laugh.

"Yeah, one with boobs, so the men will watch," I agreed. "Now pay for the breakfast and let's get the last day in the real world started. Next stop, never, never land."

The bikes started on the first try, just as they had every other morning. The tanks were full and the tires were as well, so we headed for California. First, we had several hours of the Arizona hills to climb. I was pretty sure that I was working off some of that excess weight I had been having trouble getting off. Too much of my day back home was spent in a chair or behind the wheel of my minivan. The trip had been a really good experience for my body.

The bikes would run like hell downhill, and even do up to thirty on the flat, but climbing any hill more than a block long started to bleed power from the engine. A long rocky mountain foothill ended with me pedaling like hell to keep the bike from stalling. That isn't true either, the pedaling was slow, but had to be steady for up to a mile. I had ended the last couple of days with sore calves. I still felt great at the end of every day. I had since the first week. My worst day on the bike out in the open was better than my best day in the minivan.

That morning, Marty and I were just outside Kingman, Arizona, and headed west. The geography was just as it had been the two days before, mostly flat, but with some long uphill grades. Not steep climbs really, but requiring me to pedal now and then. I didn't even mind. There were some great landscapes to take a look at during the gentle climbs.

I took my eyes off the road only long enough to see the scenery to the right. It wasn't more than a second, if that. When I looked back, there was an animal that looked like a forty pound dog right in front of me. I knew I was going to take a spill if I hit him, so I tried like hell to avoid him.

Instead of hitting the dog like creature, I ran off the hard surface into the soft sand. That change in surface was all it took to throw the bike off balance. I guess I wasn't good enough to recover, because the bike went down like a dead body with a concrete block in the local water supply.

When it went down, I flew off it and then back into the road. Marty was way ahead of me and had no idea that I was down. The motor was screaming and there was the smell of exhaust and raw gas. The small gas tank was leaking. I could only hope it wasn't headed for the hot exhaust. The trailer was on its side and even more gas was very close to the bike. If it caught fire, there could be a loud noise.

My first job was to get to the kill switch on the bike's handle bars. I realized that I was bleeding, but that it was minor. I also realized that my chest hurt when I moved, that might not be so minor. If I had a broken rib, I could puncture a lung. The pain was real and severe, but I didn't think it was enough to be a broken rib. Either way it didn't matter. I was for sure going to have to move out of the road and get that bike shut down.

I fought my way in a painful crawl to the bike. I flipped the switch and nothing happened. I looked down to see wires dangling. Wonderful, I thought. I couldn't wait for it to run out of gas I had to kill that motor. I tried to remember all the ways Marty had told me that the motor could be killed. I wished at that moment I had paid more attention, when he gave me the tour of the new motor.

I crawled back to the screaming motor. I crawled through a puddle of gasoline on the way. I could just see me as barbecue if that gas on the ground caught. When I reached the motor, I flipped the choke to full. I did that because I had seen Marty do it once on the Honda. I could only hope that it would work on the Greyhound. I was never so happy to hear silence in my life.

I removed the holster from my belt and stashed it in the trailer before I curled into the fetal position. I lay there while I tried to assess the damages. I knew Marty would be back, when he realized I was AWOL. I was pretty sure the rib wasn't broken, but something was sure as hell sprained. The flesh on my arm was scrapped in a large area. That injury was bleeding a bit. The knee of my jeans was ripped, and there was pain behind it. I was pretty sure that I had at least a scrape there as well. All in all, I felt damn lucky. It could have been a lot worse. I worked the lightweight motorcycle helmet off and found it scratched deeply in at least one spot. That could have really left a scar, I thought.

I needed to cover that scrape on my arm even though the oozing blood wasn't a huge deal, it looked bad. Right there in front of God and anyone else looking, I removed the blue work shirt, then the white tee shirt. I was topless while I wrapped the tee shirt around my forearm. I replaced the bloody work shirt just to avoid sunburn. At the moment my small exposed boobs were of no concern to me. That would have been obvious to anyone who saw me. I had only buttoned one of the work shirt's five buttons. Actually, I wore it with the top button done gang style. I hadn't meant it that way; it is just what I did in my fog of shock.

The fact that there was no shade was going to be a problem, if Marty took too long to come back or if someone didn't happen along. I got my ass painfully back to the trailer and the water bottle. I propped against the overturned trailer and drank the water.