The Last Time
August, 1997
I'M STANDING BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD with my feet spread and my hands on top of my head. There's a cop on either side of me and a particularly zealous one shining the beam from a flashlight into my eyes, his muscular arms popping from the short sleeves of his shirt.
"You carrying any weapons," he asks brusquely. "A gun or a knife?"
"No, sir," I reply, having learned over the years that officers of the law like to be called "sir." Even though I'm twice this guy's age.
I'm not having a bad time, not yet, just a little uncomfortable in this position, watching hundreds of motorcycles cruise by, their riders rubbernecking to see who the unlucky stiff is, assuming the position.
Then the pat-down begins. Flashlight in face, I'm nearly blind as one of the other cops begins a full body rub, from my boots, up my calves and thighs, over the pockets on the back of my jeans, a little pat on my ass, and up and across my chest where his hand stops.
"What's that?" he asks.
"What's what?"
"You've got something in the pocket of your jacket," he announces. "What are you carrying?"
"I don't know," I answer, and at that moment, I actually don't. Its been a long, long day, beginning at seven o'clock with a broken ignition wire followed by a ride into Sturgis, a trip to the tattoo studio, a drink at Big Bertha's with a bikini-clad lady wearing an eight-foot python for a necklace, a few margaritas at a Mexican restaurant in Spearfish, followed by a book signing session at the Armory, followed by a ride to Deadwood. Now we've got to get home.
"Don't move," a voice says from somewhere beyond the glare.
The mood of the evening shifts from lukewarm to ice-cold as I hear the snap of holsters opening. Suddenly I'm having a very bad time. I know I don't have a gun on me but carrying anything that can be construed as (drug) paraphernalia can get you fined or locked up. Does a Bic lighter count?
* * *
My own bike is parked a few yards away from me, missing a taillight, which is the reason we were stopped in the first place. It's also sporting a rather unusual license plate. It is orange and black with the letters JGJ. It's a British plate but the bike's about as American as it gets, an '89 Harley Springer. I never thought I'd see this particular bike again. I left it in London in 1995, along with an eighteen-year marriage.
While I departed the country the Springer stayed at Warrs' Harley-Davidson, England's oldest bike dealers and my good friends--in my mid-life biking career I must have dropped enough money there to build them a new showroom, a shrine in polished wood and custom chrome. I put a price tag on the bike of $35,000.00 and figured it would be gone before I'd touched down in New York. A few months later I got a call from John Warr. "Richard, we've got a shipment of new bikes coming in and no room for them on the floor. Besides, it's taking a full team to keep yours polished. What do you want me to do with it?"
A biking friend, Jess, came to my rescue, volunteering his garage. Warrs took care of the transport and the Springer was banished to a lock-up in Surrey, near Brighton by the Sea.
I tried like hell to sell that Springer to Jess. It wasn't that I didn't love it. I did. The damn thing was even mentioned in my divorce case, as the other woman, but England has different rules about bikes than New York State, and the Springer, bare to the bones, didn't have turn signals, mirrors, or a baffled exhaust system. I loved it too much to change a thing, not to mention the money it would cost to get it over here and do the work, so I kissed it good-bye.
That was my first big lesson in the sale of custom bikes. Not everybody is as hog wild, pardon the pun, about your ideas as you are. What you see as a bold statement, like a saddle the size of a postage stamp and the thickness of a slice of bread, the next man, or woman, may see as a very sore ass. In any case Jess had his own ideas about the bike he intended to build and several drastic drops in price could not convince him otherwise.
* * *
The officer with the probing hands opens my pocket cautiously, as if I may be wired to explode, and slips his thumb and index finger inside. Out comes the Bic. I don't hear the sounds of hammers being cocked and no one is reading me my Miranda rights, so I assume I'm still legal. Then he takes another dip into the denim and out comes the real culprit, a chrome object about the size and weight of a pocket cigar holder.
"What's this?" he asks, with a voice that hints towards a suspicion of heavy drugs.
"A chrome case," I reply. I could tell him what's in it but I'm starting to become a bit righteous myself. This guy is treating me like a class-A felon. On top of that it's starting to rain. On top of that we've still got to get home.
"Don't get smart with me," he retorts.
Suitably chastened, I remain silent as he pops the lid, looks inside with his flashlight, then still not convinced that I'm not carrying a syringe and several bags of smack, tips the contents into his free hand.
I smile victoriously as my tortoise shell reading glasses hit his palm.
"I needed them to read the wine list at the saloon," I say, thinking that my ordeal has just ended and I might as well leave 'em laughing.
He stares at me stone faced.
"Have you been drinking?" he asks.
Oh, shit, I've done it now, I think. "One at dinner," I answer.
"Stay where you are," he orders.
My stomach sinks.
I move my eyes a bit to my left and see the reason I am here now, in this rather unfortunate circumstance, with biceps headed to his patrol car to get the roadside breathalyzer. The reason's name is Tom, but I have tagged him the Colonel. He's got a face that a mutual friend once described as a relief map of the Rockies, a drooping Wild Bill Hickok mustache, and a Camel hanging from his lips. He looks very relaxed, but then again, he's not about to be breathalyzed. He's also got a camera aimed at me. Anything for a little bit of publicity.
"No pictures," the muscular cop barks as he returns from his vehicle.
The Colonel is responsible for everything, or maybe he's not. It was me, after all, who wrote the book in 1992, a chronicle of my biking adventures, after a rocky reentrance into the world of V-Twins at the age of forty. Titled Hog Fever, and based primarily on spending a fortune to turn the Springer into a custom Hog, it found a small but loyal audience in Europe and America. The Colonel was, perhaps, the book's greatest fan--I think he bought six thousand copies--and after tracking me down via my mother, whose address appears on a reprinted letter, written by a Southern lawyer to my family, assuring them that he would keep me out of jail following a bike-related arrest in Georgia in 1965, the Colonel assured me that Hog Fever would "have 'em laughin' from coast to coast."
"Just a matter of promotion," promised the P. T. Barnum of biker anthologies.
Well, he sold me.
Six weeks later I paid to have the Springer shipped to his garage in Indianapolis.
"Gotta have the bike to promote the book," he reasoned.
A few months after that, on July 27, he rolled my chromed money pit up a ramp and into the back of a Wells Fargo trailer and hauled it west, to Sturgis, South Dakota. The rest is history, or at least up to this point.
* * *
I did have a drink, a margarita, or two, about half an hour ago. I complained that they were light on the tequila. Now I'm praying I was right.
The rain has escalated and we're still about fifty miles from Rapid City, South Dakota, which during The Sturgis Rally and Races, or "bike week," was about as close to a room as we could get to Sturgis. We are riding from Deadwood, another satellite town that has been totally taken over by the half-million bikers that roar into the Black Hills every year, and we've just had dinner with Billy Kidd, former Olympic gold medal ski champion. He's visiting with his girlfriend and he loves my bike, or so he said about five hours ago in Sturgis, so we rode over to have dinner with them and let him take it around the block.
It's amazing who's in Sturgis. From pro wrestlers and film icons to world class rock 'n' roll bands, playing at the Hells' Angels' owned Buffalo Chip campground, plus a busload of young ladies who arrived from Iowa a few hours ago, all of whom are accomplished lap dancers, and prepared to take over from the last crew who have worn out their G-strings during the first three days of this seven-day marathon.
* * *
Lap dancing is essentially the art of the wet dream. You pay a cover charge, which gives you a table and drink, sit there as the music kicks in and watch as the girls take the stage, in varying degrees of nudity, usually a G-string and high heels, although cowboy boots or bare feet are also favorite accessories. After a few more ten dollar beers, and a suitable period of ogling the goods, the customer more or less signals the babe of his choice, which means enticing her to the table with a couple of twenties slipped down the side of her G-string.
After that, let the good times roll.
She sits in his lap and rubs up against him while he settles back and pretends that there's not a hundred other armchair stallions in the same sweaty bar room with the same sweaty thoughts on their minds. Trying like hell to keep all hands on deck--don't touch the goods--it's sort of Zen and the art of mental masturbation.
During my one and only visit to Shotgun Willy's--which was to rescue a friend in the throes of divorce who'd mysteriously veered off during a group ride--I arrived in time to witness a guy, who looked like a middle-aged preppie out for a walk on the wild side in his Docksiders, get a bit carried away as he proceeded to unzip his fly in an attempt to reveal his enthusiasm. At which point the siliconed blonde whose G-string he had padded with crisp twenty dollar bills, belted him in the head with a solid right hand, then shouted for assistance. Moments later, the flaccid offender, jeans neatly creased and fly at half-mast, was hoisted from his chair and tossed from the bar, very unceremoniously, by a couple of oversized gentlemen with beards.
* * *
"Would you please blow into this, sir," the muscular cop requests.
The last time I was breathalyzed I was living in London, riding down the Embankment on the west side of the River Thames at eleven o'clock on Christmas Eve. I failed the breath test, got hauled to jail, used my one phone call to phone my now ex-wife, explained my situation, and she hung up on me. Merry Christmas.
This time I attempt a few quick breath exercises. A actor friend once tipped me to the fact that you can sometimes beat a breathalyzer by inhaling and exhaling vigorously just before taking the test. I sound like a locomotive by the time the officer shoves the thing under my nose and says, "blow."
This has lost any semblance of a little roadside adventure. If I fail the breath test my bike is gone and so am I, straight off for a night in the lockup, to be followed by a day in court and a serious fine. During bike week the Sturgis Police Department has absolutely zero tolerance for any alcohol or drug abuse. There's a hundred dollar fine for even carrying a roach clip, minus the grass. And here I am blowing my way to a custody arrest.
"Again," he says after my first effort, which would have hardly inflated a condom.
I blow again, giving it the last of one full lung.
Another incredibly tense moment as he checks his gauges. Even the Colonel looks worried, as evidenced by the inch-long ash hanging from the tip of his Camel Light.
"Okay."
Okay what? I wonder.
He eyes me and nods his head. "You passed."
Now, suddenly, the cops feel like my closest friends. I stop myself just before offering a few signed copies of my book, which I know the Colonel has stashed in his saddle bags.
"I'm giving you a warning on that taillight, though," he says as he hands me a pink slip of paper with something scrawled on it.
I take it as if I'm receiving a citation for valor in the line of duty.
After that, it's back on the bikes without even exchanging glances, starting them up and heading into the rainy night at about twenty-five miles an hour. One of the police cars follows us for a few minutes, then trails off as we proceed, trembling with cold and fatigue towards our destination, a good hour away.
Sturgis, there's nothing like it....
Copyright © 2002 by Richard La Plante