On Saturday while riding out to spend a day fishing with my father, something that I should not be surprised about occurred. My 1980 dented motorcycle, a beacon of engineering marvel, puttered out on me. I was able to get about a mile or so after the sputtering began by simultaneously turning my turn signals on and off. It only angered the drivers behind me enough to glare as they drove by, so I found a place to turn off without the threat of getting winged by a passenger door. Apparently my alternator is going out. My mother had to come and pick me up in the truck and I felt like a schoolboy again - but in the embarrassed sort of way.
After catching my limit on weeds and sunstroke my father/son outing was over and we dragged my father's boat home through the canyon with his grey Buick (he would not let me turn the AC on, though my legs were burning like the fingernails of Hades). Upon reaching Petersboro and after charging my battery (because my alternator was still going out) I shot a bb-gun at a fat starling and missed. Having that under my belt I jumped on the motorcycle and took off down the road feeling the wind rush over my spammy knees. Upon reaching literally the same spot in the road where I was compelled to stop that morning, my bike gave up and sputtered off. Surprisingly I did not make any attempt at swearing or kicking the gravel as I usually would because I realized what the real problem was: the road is haunted by a vindictive biker spirit.
I concluded that the road was haunted when I recalled an incident of several years ago. Since the road runs directly through the valley's central system of bog, there appears vast quantities of fog when conditions are ripe (about six straight months out of the year). On one particularly foggy occasion I was driving my Pontiac Grand Prix (which mysteriously erupted into flames at a USU football game shortly thereafter - not even joshing) and listening to a Russian band of pre-teen girls when I passed a large man wearing a long dark duster and black hat. I passed but then thought the gentleman might need a ride since he was walking towards Petersboro and there is nothing in Petersboro to walk to. I turned around and scanned the side of the road with my window down while tendrils of fog violated the disco-like environment of my car. After a minute or so of looking I concluded that the man must have stepped away from the road to pee or something and I turned back around to look closer (but not for THAT reason). I probably gasped when I saw that there was nowhere to pee along that side of the road because it dropped directly into the bog but for a few feet of gravel. Unless the man went for a swim in the hideous swamp he was a phantasm.
It was within a quarter mile from the visitation that I broke down twice in the same day on my motorcycle. The man must still be there waiting. The sheer number of times I have driven my car through that corridor of doom without any problems whatsoever prove that the man was a biker from Minnesota, or maybe Hell, who lost his family in the bog while they all rode with him - a highly dangerous activity on such a small bike on such a narrow and foggy road.
So as I waited for my father to come and bring me some gas (I had run out of gas, but that wasn't the REAL reason behind me breaking down, as I am sure you are now convinced) I shivered, even as my sunburn reeled against the setting sun.
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