ANOTHER STORY FROM CHUCK,
The Alpha Biker, Preacher Chuck D.
It all starts with a planned trip down to the Outer Banks Bike Week to hook-up with my buds from Outkasst Cycles outta Richmond. I leave New England mid-afternoon on a Wednesday… hook up with my buddy Tony in NYC… and wait “patiently” as he packs his shit… so we can knock out a couple 100 miles so we have a light ride into Nags Head the following day.
Well, I am hanging out in his garage while he collects his stuff inside. Now, the header wrap on my pipes disintegrated on the way back from Daytona this year and I was debating on wrapping them again, painting them, or maybe just polishing the headers a bit (they looked like hell once the wrap fell off). I spy a box of S.O.S. pads on a shelf in his garage… this is a very important point. My bike is all the way at the end of his driveway… at least 20 feet away. I think… hey… I’ll grab a couple of these S.O.S. pads and hand them to the girls at the bikini bike wash to see what they can do with the pipes. I don’t want to walk all the way down to my bike… so I pop open one of the hard bags on Tony’s Road King and toss a couple of pads in. Again, this is a key element of the story.
He emerges from his house and loads up his bike. It is now 10pm… our plan now is to hit Atlantic City around midnight… leave half of our wallets… sleep a few hours… and make it to the ferry at the south tip of New Jersey in the morning… be transported to Delaware… and hit the Outer Banks early the next evening.
On the way down he tells me… “Alright dude… let me lead on the Garden State Parkway. My lights work better than yours… and we will see a lot of deer”. Right… got it… lots of f&*kin’ dear in New Jersey… whatever… are we gonna f*&k around all night… or are we gonna ride?
Welllllllllll… I lost track at 15… yes 15+ herds… yes… f*&kin’ herds… of deer. Not in the woods on the side of the road… but grazing in the f*&kin’ breakdown lane… yes.. I said… f*&kin’ breakdown lane. Now… when Tony rolls up on them… they don’t pay too much attention… but when I roll out of the throttle (running 10.5:1 compression with Bassani Pro-Streets sans baffles)… these f&*kers spook baaaaaad. Tony and I “discuss” my choice of performance products upon arriving in Atlantic City.
Now we secure a room for $17.50 a piece… whattadeal!… and head off to the casinos. I’m not much of a gambler… so I follow Tony to the craps table as he instructs me on the “finer” points of the game. We are not there five minutes when all of a sudden we here a loud crack off to our left. Some dude had hit the deck and smashed his head on the edge of one of the black jack tables. He is f&*kin’ laid ouuuuuttttttt. One of the pit bosses makes a call… and then everyone returns back to the games at hand. Not a single person moves to check on this dude. He is bleeding from the head… and for all we know he has had a heart attack… and may be dead. I gather up Tony’s chips for him as he heads over to see what’s up. We keep the dude company ’til 10 minutes later security and paramedics show up. I swear… nobody else moved or even looked our way. Wow. It turns out, this guys was hammered and just “lost his balance”… doh! Anyway… the paramedics take him away and we wish him luck. Unfortunately… none of these actions helped our karma… and the casino proceeded to “give us a bath”.
We get back to the hotel around 5am… sleep for an hour… shower… and head off to the ferry. By the time we get to the ferry… we are a little punchy. We pull to the front of the line… and wait to be told when to load up. While we are waiting… Tony decides to look through his saddlebags for something. That’s when I here… “WHAT THE F*&CK IS ALL OF THIS F*&CKIN’ BLUE SHIT ALL OVER THE INSIDE OF MY BAG… WHY IS THERE A F*&CKIN’ S.O.S. PAD IN MY F*&CKIN’ SADDLEBAG!”… that’s when the realization hits me… you see… S.O.S. pads are impregnated with a dry soap that foams up when they get wet… or falls off as powder when rattling around loose in a saddlebag for 200 miles. I am bent over laughing so hard at this point that I am crying. Tony is way pissed… and is about to administer an S.O.S. enema to yours truly. As all of this unfolds… up rolls behind us some dude on a VTX… enter Pete.
Pete dismounts… looks over at us… says hey… and heads off to the restrooms shaking his head obviously wondering… who are these f*&kin’ jackasses.
We finally get to roll onto the ferry. Tony is still pissed about the shear audacity his riding buddy has to A) touch his f*&kin’ bike… and B) f*&k up his shit. He finds a bench and tries to garner another hour of sleep. I head up to the top deck outdoors to enjoy the scenery… because if I stop movin’… I’m going to stop movin’. I bump into Pete. We shoot the shit for a bit and I explain to him what he witnessed back on the dock. This guy is a helluva interesting dude. He just started riding a couple of years ago at the young age of 65. He figured that a VTX 1800 would be a good way to learn… LOL… I’m not going to mention the assortment of “reattached parts” on this bike… oh wait… I just did… sorry Pete! LOL! Anyway, this guy rides year round and visits his family in the North East regularly on the bike. Which wouldn’t be that big a deal… if he didn’t live in f*&kin’ Florida!
Pete was on his way back to Florida. I suggest Vertigo Tattoo and the Outer Banks Bike Week as a viable stop on his way south. He agrees and rides and hangs with us the whole weekend. While a new rider, Pete does well in a group… thankfully… because Tony would have kicked my ass for inviting him if he didn’t!
It is great to meet people who can draw upon similar life experiences… share them with other like-minded lost souls… over a gas stop… 400 miles into the ride… or a draft beer at a bike event near closing time. For some reason those thoughts and interactions just simply take on more meaning in these settings. While I am not going to go through all of the “poorly thought out life decisions” that lead to those conversations… let’s just say… I am glad to have them.
Pete knocked out the 500 miles in a day a couple of weeks later to meet us in Myrtle and is now “pot committed” as they say in Texas Holdem’. Glad to have you around Pete!
