Chapter 16

Sunday, May 2, 1999

It seemed strange to Vicky to not have Jason around this weekend. They'd been together a lot in the last few months, working on knives and just hanging out, of course, but three different weekends they'd hauled some tables of knives to shows, and sales had gone very well. To make it even better, she'd gotten some nice compliments on some of the work she'd done -- and Jason gave her a cut on the take.

So, it had been a little hard to accept Jason and Duane taking off on a long trip -- well, long in miles, but it would be a quick trip for Jason in terms of days. There was a part of her that knew she'd like to be going along -- but she didn't even raise the question. She could sense this trip was going to be as much for some final father-son bonding as it was going to be for dropping Duane off at the trailhead. She knew she didn't want to get in the middle of that.

Still, it was a nice day, and that made it a little boring -- but she had something to do on Saturday afternoon, and she did it -- she went out to the garage, rolled out the Street Hawk, fired it up, and took off.

Not far; in the last couple weeks she'd finished up the motorcycle safety course at the community college up in Bolivar. It had involved at least a little bike riding, not on the Street Hawk, but some small 250-cc jobs. It had given her the basics. Over the last couple weeks, she'd been out with the Street Hawk several times, mostly just riding around town, getting used to riding it, starting from a dead stop without stalling, as well as turning and stopping. Sometimes Jason had ridden alongside her on the '91 Harley Sportster he'd gotten back in the middle of the month, and sometimes Emily joined her, too. It was building up confidence, and today she thought she'd build up a little more.

Before she got on the bike, she popped the gas cap; it looked low -- it had been several days since she'd topped it off, mostly just cruising around town, but under the circumstances it seemed like a good time to take a run over to the Spee-D-Mart and top off. The Street Hawk started right up; though an older bike, it was in good shape, and Jason had a guy from a shop go through it from one end to the other to make sure it was all right. By now, she was getting good enough and confident enough in her riding to not even stall it once getting going and going through the two stop signs and one stop light on the way to the Spee-D-Mart.

Not to her surprise, Emily's minivan wasn't sitting outside the store -- but her Sportster was. Ever since the weather had broken, the minivan had spent a lot of time sitting, and Emily had been riding the Sportster every chance she could. Vicky hadn't quite gotten to the point where she felt she could ride the Street Hawk into the parking lot at Macy Controls, but she looked forward to that day coming just for the sake of hearing what some of the people around the office would say.

The gas tank didn't take a lot of filling -- it was easy on gas in a way a car never could be, and she hadn't been doing much fast riding, anyway. It was so nice to be able to walk up to the register with the prospect of getting change out of a five-dollar bill after a fill-up that her eye was drawn to the rack of candy bars for an instant. No, better not, she thought. That's a lot of points, and weigh-in this morning had been pretty good, although she still wasn't losing like she wanted to.

"Going out riding, huh?" Emily asked from behind the register.

"I thought I'd head out in the country a little," she replied. "Get used to going a little faster. Maybe ride over toward Amherst, or something."

"Sure would be nice to get out today," Emily sighed. "Janine called in sick, so guess who gets to fill in for her? But no, as soon as we knock off, we're going over to Kevin's folks for dinner. Maybe I can squeeze in riding home the long way."

"Maybe we could go riding tomorrow," Vicky suggested. "Maybe even go somewhere. I know two thousand miles in four days with a mountain climb thrown in isn't going to be a total pleasure trip for Jason, but at least it's somewhere outside Bradford."

"You're still not ready for a long trip," Emily noted. "Oh, we could go someplace an hour or two away, I suppose. I know Kevin wants to curl up in front of the tube watching NASCAR tomorrow. I could probably stick him with the kids and we could go someplace, just the two of us."

"Talked me into it," Vicky smiled. "Any idea of where we could go?"

"Oh, there ought to be something. Maybe ride up US-12 a ways; that's a nice trip on a bike, good road without being real busy until you get a ways east. We could probably find a restaurant somewhere. As far as that goes, maybe we could ride up to Kalamazoo, and see Shelly or something."

"I'm not sure I'm quite ready for a city that big yet," Vicky said dubiously. "But yeah, it would be nice to visit someone."

"Want to show off that you've become a biker babe?" Emily grinned. "Well, me, too." She thought for a moment, and continued, "OK, how about this? I could call up and see if we could drop in on Scott and Sonja or Aaron and Amber. That's an hour and a half, maybe two hours on the side roads, and neither Okemos nor Mason is all that big. If you do real well and the traffic doesn't look heavy, we might even want to try coming back on the four-lane."

Thus it was that about ten on Sunday morning she rode the Street Hawk over to Emily's, to find her already in her leathers, sitting in the shade alongside the house, the Sportster all backed out and ready to go. She pulled in, shut the Honda down, and said, "Gorgeous day! Even better than yesterday! I'm glad we waited!"

"Yeah, me too," Emily smiled, getting up from the lawn chair and heading over to her Harley as Kevin came outside, a little bleary-eyed and unshaven.

"Well, have a good time, you two," he said. "Now I know how Emily used to feel when she had to watch me ride off with my biker buddies and leave her at home with the kids."

"Serves you right," Emily grinned as she pulled on her helmet. "I'll be a while catching up, too."

"You take it easy and have a good time," he grinned. "Emily, make sure you give Vicky a chance to stop and chill out a little now and then, and don't try to outrun her. Vicky, I know you've been told before, but it's not like driving a car that distance, you have to pay more attention to what you're doing."

"I know," she smiled. "This seems like such a big adventure."

"You get some time on that thing and we may have to talk about some real trips," Kevin smiled. "Maybe even the four of us sometime, now that Jason has a bike that'll run more than ten miles without a hundred-dollar repair bill."

"Looking forward to it," she grinned. "Probably not this year for a big trip; I won't be able to get the time off."

"Maybe a weekend sometime," he said as Emily swung onto her bike, threw some switches, then reared up to kick down on the starter. It took a couple strokes before the Sportster started up with its V-twin grumble; Vicky started the Street Hawk up and the two headed down the driveway onto the street.

It wasn't the first time that Vicky had ridden with Emily, and she realized that the Sportster was a lot more bike, big enough to be a little challenging for her friend -- but that was what she had wanted. They turned onto Maple Grove and rumbled out of town to Curtis Road, with the Harley doing most of the rumbling since the Honda had a pretty decent muffler. Once out in the country, Vicky speeded up a little to where she could ride alongside Emily as they sped down the pavement on this gorgeous spring day. While Vicky knew the Harley was a considerably more powerful bike and could out-accelerate her seven ways from Sunday, fifty-five was fifty-five and that was about as fast as either wanted to go on a nice day like this. After the training course, Vicky realized while the Street Hawk was not as powerful as the Harley, it was more than adequate to run alongside it just cruising; a smaller bike might not have been.