Last month I deleted my old myspace page, when I was getting ready to do that I archived some of my old blogs. I reread this one and figured you would get a kick out of it….
Every neighborhood has its bad boy, and of course when I moved in with my birth mother I became friends with the one from that neighborhood. He always had bikes and motors, and go carts and all kind of cool toys. And of course we would all hang out and take turns riding them. One of the best ones was a Yamaha Riva scooter; 180cc |
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of rat bike scooter. This thing was a rolling traffic violation No plates, no inspection, no headlight, no signals; hell, no registration. Of course most of that didn’t matter; none of us had a license to drive it legally anyway. I remember the first time I rode it. The excitement, the wind, doing a whopping 45mph down the street. Coming up on the S curve down our street and learning I was not prepared to make the left turn part of it. Riding through someone’s yard as I tried to regain control. I was hooked for months we cruised the neighborhood, even going so far as to take this little scooter off road at the local park to ride the hills that were usually jumped on our bikes.
That abruptly came to a halt one night. I had been riding the scooter and had been out at the hills. I chose to take the long way home through the neighborhood. And as luck would have it about 4 blocks my friend’s house I passed a cop on his way home. As I mentioned before the rolling traffic violation that I was riding was missing a lot of basic safety equipment, and I was missing a helmet and a license. So, when I saw this officer in his car pass me I turned around and saw his brake lights come on.
Fear took over, without thought I instantly dumped full throttle on, and headed for the house. I have no idea how fast the scooter would go; I know we had previously had it up to at least 60mph through the neighborhood. Today I was finding out the top end speed. I raced down one street and approached the street I lived on. As the ninety degree right turn approach I was completely in autopilot mode. I stomped the rear brake in an effort to scrub speed for the turn and succeeded in locking the rear brake up. At whatever speed I was traveling the locked wheel decided to try and pass the front wheel and ended up putting me into a sideways slide down the road. Further succumbing to panic I released the rear brake completely causing the rear end of the scooter to snap back in place and head me (still at a fairly high rate of speed) through the yard on the opposite side of the intersection and directly at an extremely large oak tree. In the slow motion time frame one enters during this type of adventure I remember hearing the Police car lock his tires as he started to slide around the corner. Fear, adrenalin, and blind panic took over and I snapped the steering column to the side and managed to avoid the oak tree by a margin that could only have been a couple inches. And suddenly I was tearing through 3 yards on my way back to the street with lights flashing, sirens wailing, and tires screeching behind me. The trip to my friend’s house could not have been more than a quarter mile, and I have no idea how fast I made that trip, but as I neared his house I bailed off the scooter at the curb and somehow managed to not get tangled and it slid through the yard. I hit the ground running headed straight through the front door of my friends house yelling “it wasn’t me” I ran straight to the garage and hid there hoping my escape was complete. I heard the Officer pull up to my friends house and my friend go out to meet him. I heard the officer ask where I was and my friend play dumb. I heard the officer start to take my friend in and my friend warn me and try to slowly open the garage. Yet some how I was stuck, as the garage door opened all I could do was walk toward the officer and hold my hands out for the cuffs.
Of the 40+ moving violations I could have been charged with I received citations for Evading arrest and no motorcycle license. Needless to say my mother was not too pleased when she had to come pick me up from jail. And any hope of a motorcycle was quickly and soundly squashed. It was yet another reason that motorcycles were dangerous in my mothers eyes, especially since the Officer told her he was doing over 80mph trying to catch me, and exactly how close I had come to eating that oak tree.
A few court appearances later my legal troubles were taken care of, but I was forbidden to ride a motorcycle. My hopes and dreams of the freedom I imagined on two wheels had once again slipped away.
-goon73 |
