Not for Sleeping; Hotel in Name Only (Chpt 4; Post 3)

Maybe I should have suspected that the Inn wasn’t best suited for a solid nap when the woman at the front desk, snarling through her tooth, asked me how many hours I would need the room.

“You mean how long?  Just one night.”  I replied.  Confused.

Squinting over cracked and yellowed spectacles like I was the dumbest thing going, “No.  Hours.  I said hours.  How many hours do you want the room tonight?”

This came out as: “N’Arz. Isay arz. Hahmny arz fah tanite.”  Said as statement of fact.  Not a question. 

Behind me, just outside the screen door to the lobby, if a toiletless bathroom with a hole in the wall can be a lobby, intruded the pop-pop-roar of short-piped Harley Davidson motorcycles.  The few bikes parked outside the bar, had been joined by a baker’s dozen of bored out, ape-hangered, shotgun-toting hogs, all bearing one-percenters in the saddle with a few Old Ladies and other fender-fodder clinging to their biker’s backside.

For the uninitiated, and just about everyone else, a one-percenter is the outlaw biker of urban lore.  These are not the bankers and lawyers and teachers who buy a chromed-out Harley Davidson from their local Harley store and then buy enough leather to re-outfit a herd of cows. 

These guys wear black and have their wallet attached to their self with a chain, and may even refuse to shave the fledgling facial scruff on occasion, but they look more like a wayward member of the Village People and are more likely to take their bike to Hooters for Bike Night than rob a 7-11, steal your teenage daughter, and sell heroin and Oxycodone in large quantities to your son.

The scruffy man on the motorcycle who does sell heroin is a one-percenter.  You might know the one-percenters as the Hell's Angels, Outlaws, or one of the other crime-syndicates-on-two-wheels.  It doesn't matter.  The most important thing is that these guys are serious.  They are serious about their motorcylces, their livlihood, and their gang.  It is best not to mess with them.

And now it appeared that they were having a boys night out at the Inn.
 

Sleeping in the Saddle (Chpt 4; Post 2)

At-speed, a motorcycle will stay upright and run a straight line.  It’s called ghost riding. A rider is kicked off for doing something dumb, or knocked off by an even dumber driver of a car, and the bike resettles itself and continues on its merry way.  At least until it slows from lack of rider keeping the throttle open and falls over.   

A bike will also stay straight with an inattentive rider in its saddle, so long as the rider stays off the handlebars.  This is very important when riding central Florida’s long, flat, straight roads, constant drone of the engine, with far from enough caffeine in the system.  Yep, sleeping in the saddle with my eyes open. 

Jimmy may have had me on a tight schedule, but all the coffee in Seattle wasn’t going to keep me properly fueled for the entire ride from the Florida Keys to Waynesboro, Virginia.  Even the most direct route is more than 1,100 miles and would require 18-hours of hard riding. 

Cruising in a car is like sitting on your sofa at home, all cozy and comfortable, running Formula 1 races on your Xbox, with munchies and soda for sustenance.  A motorcycle, on the other hand, exposes you to the sound and fury of the elements, both the natural sort and those with 18-wheels.  You can’t check-out, unless you’re in the south Florida interior.  There is no relaxing when crouched up in fetal position, tucked over the tank and legs jammed up under you.  And if there was a way to drink coffee and smoke a cigarette with a full face-mask helmet, I would have long ago figured it out.  It certainly hasn’t been for lack of trying.

And at Jimmy’s strongly delivered “suggestion,” I wasn’t taking I-95.  I would be taking the back roads and Smokey Mountain passes.  A much slower, albeit more fun, route to travel.  But if you’re running the twisties, you’re shifting you’re weight, standing on the pegs, and paying very close attention to where you’re going and what is one the road before you.  Nothing like taking a blind curve, hitting a patch of wet leaves, and ending up on the pavement following your bike into the ditch.  Good times.

I was going to have to stop for a cat nap.  The base of the Smokey’s seemed like a good time to pull over.  And when I saw the neon lights for the Spokes Inn and, more importantly than a place to rest my head, the Iron Saddle Pub, I knew I’d found the establishment. 

Compasses and Brown Paper Bags (Chpt 4; Post 1)

Normally navigating south Florida is easy.  Find A1A, Turnpike, or I-95 and either point yourself north or south.  If you somehow manage to screw it up, you will find yourself fending off gators in the Everglades or swimming with the sharks off the Atlantic in short order.  

Preferably the sharks.  Then I know I'm in the ocean. The only bit of land navigation that ever stuck with me is the coastline rule.  So long as you know which coast you are on, you know which direction is north and south.  For example, if you wake up on a beach along the American eastern seaboard and the ocean is on your right, then you are facing north.

Of course, knowing which coast you’re on is not necessarily guaranteed.  Try this trick on an island.  After you've had a quick and unexpected exit from a plane that you hadn’t known you were on until you woke up, engulfed by acrid electrical shortage smoke, and, upon quick exploration, had just discovered that the pilot had been relieved of the need to breath via bullet in the brain.  

I must have hiked the shoreline on that heap of sand for two days before finally noticing that the footprints I’d begun following were my own.  It took me years to live that one down at the Agency.

Jimmy had expressly instructed me to stay off the major freeways; cameras, wide open spaces for airborne tracking, and eye witnesses at the few tolls with actual, live people, make for tough going when attempting to travel unannounced.  

In Florida, all highways are toll roads, not just the turnpike.  Service routes, side roads, exit and entrance ramps; if you breath the air above the pavement, be ready to fork over some cash.   I never have cash and I can't use the EZ-Pass.  Wouldn't make much sense to live off-grid and then advertise my whereabouts anytime I wandered to the mainland.  

If you're moving just fast enough and stay to the side of the lane, the cameras usually miss.  And if they don't?  Since I borrow my license plates for jaunts north of Key Large, someone else is recieving my ticket in the mail. 

All that toll money is supposed to fund road construction.  Except there isn't any construction.  The Florida Department of Transportation sets up a bunch of orange barrels, and scatters a handful of "Men Working" signs among them.  This creates a whole lot of traffic, and allows the Highway Patrol to write inflated speeding-in-a-construction-zone tickets for a bit of extra cash.

Around the time drivers are ready to go all vigilante over the constant bottle-necking (Florida drivers have selective blindness when it comes to "merge" signs) the FLDOT pronounces a completion to the construction.  Drivers are so grateful that the construction is finished they never notice that the road conditions have inexplicably failed to improve.  

As for the barrels, they are transported a few miles down the stretch, and the whole scam starts all over again.  Not sure where all that toll money goes if its not fixing Florida's roadways.  But there sure are a number of county commissioners with rather large boats and second homes.  

I've found that the barrels make for decent boat bumpers and dive site markers.  And it takes Ebenezer somewhat longer to chew through them than the average plastic barrier. Works great when I forget to brake when I get to the garage after a night out, too.

The Florida transportation authorities had also begun a campaign to place traffic cameras on every major intersection.    Even if I had the patience to sit through the traffic on the main north-south roads, I couldn’t roll three feet before having my picture by the automated paparazzi like I was the second coming of a Kardashian.

I would be heading west, then north through the state’s interior.  Nothing there but flat, straight road, sugar cane, and a few pick-up trucks, until you get to the Mouse’s empire in Orlando. 

Off like a Prom Dress. (Chpt 3; Post 5)

My little bungalow, hidden away in the keys, was nearly off the grid.  Useful.  And the way I liked it.   

But a good northern girl never gets over the wonders of seasonal change.  I could be in Florida another two decades (perish the thought!) and I would still miss the smell of fall leaves wafting along the crisp autumn wind on a football Sunday, snow, and the joy of seeing the spring’s first crocus. 

The garage was a steamy, muggy mess.  Typical, for a September morning in Florida.  Even near the ocean, south Florida weather could be brutal on anything capable of sucking in moisture, molding, warping, or rusting.  

 I used to attempt battling moisture with dehumidifiers.  I lost two to rust and rot.  I think Ebenezer had his way with the third.  Luckily, the Honda was chrome free.  And I do a decent job of hosing it down to wash away corrosive salt and then drying it off to mostly prevent rot from the Florida humidity.  The Glock and clips tucked in the tail were impervious to the elements. 

The stack of maps, left exposed to the elements on the shelf otherwise reserved for helmets and boots, however, had long since disintegrated into a soggy, unintelligible, mulch.

Poking the mass with a screwdriver, I decided it had yet to become an independent, and hostile, life form.  It was little consolation though when I attempted to separate pages only to be left with blotted chunks of sopping confetti.  Uh oh.

Hours of land navigation, compass training, and futile attempts to follow the North Star had done nothing to improve my sense of direction.   

Or rather, total lack thereof.  An ex-boyfriend once declared that I couldn’t find my way out of a paper bag, even if I had a compass, flashlight, and one end of the bag was left open.  I thought about getting mad, but he was right.  You could put me on a perfect grid, and after two right turns, I wouldn’t be able to find my original position.  

 I once walked out of the wrong door of a two-sided gas station at a turnpike rest stop and was convinced for some 20-minutes that someone had stolen my ride.

Navigation; my nemesis, my kryptonite.

And so, despite all the quality time spent in Virginia between missions.  Despite several runs through the Smoky Mountains.  Despite the fact that all I really needed to do was point the front tire north and ride with it.  I had no idea how to get to where I was going.  

My maps were a wet heap of papier-mâché.  I stubbornly refused to hook a GPS up to a motorcycle.  And I was too cranky to wait for my phone to snatch weak signal from the air and provide me with mapquest, because I had already pulled on my armored, poorly vented, leather jacket and riding boots and was slowly sweltering to death.  

If I didn’t keel over from heat exhaustion, my reward for survival would be a Jimmy phone call, yelling at me to move my sorry ass a bit faster.  Late as usual.

I glanced at my watch, strapped to the outside of my jacket arm.  Damn.  No shower, no clean undies or socks, no maps.  This was getting better and better.

Cramming a powerbar into my mouth and a kit kat into my pocket, I pulled the helmet over my head, grabbed the gloves and started up the Honda.  Have to love the sound of a full system Akropovic exhaust.

And with a pop, roar, and short wheelie, I was off like a dress on prom night… really hoping I was headed north.

Travel Necessities (Chpt 3; Post 4)

Flame thrower or leaf blower?   Needed clean socks and undies.  And somewhere under the heap of mess against the wall was the dresser that entombed them.

At least I found a pair of jeans clean enough that I wasn't afraid of being bitten when pulling them on.  And a couple t-shirts that didn't knock me out when I picked them up and held them at nose level.

Bike gear was in the garage.  So was the fleece and under armor for the cooler mountain weather.  I could see it hanging from a rack through the hole in the closet.  Weaponry and ammo already stashed under the cowl in the tail of the bike.

Toothbrush, tooth paste, chapstick, a brush, and hair ties, were on the bed.  And a bandanna.  I never left home on a roadtrip without one.  That, and the three travel necessities: duct tape, zip ties, and safety wire.  The leatherman was already safety tucked inside my back pocket.

I would have tossed some epoxy onto the pile, but I must have squashed it one night stumbling my way to bed, because any evidence of the once new tube was a mangled mess of silver, tube, rock hard carpeting, and what have been solidified doggie drool.

Anything else I could pick up on the way or swipe from the Inn once I arrived.  And the shower would have to wait as well.

Standing there, I wondered if I could shoot my way through to the dresser drawers. I could almost see Jimmy tapping his foot impatiently.

Nervous bastard.

Screw it.  This whole packing thing was taking way too much time and effort.  I grabbed the dive bag, tossed in the contents of the pile on my bed, t-shirts, some stray socks and a fist full of undies from under the chair that Ebeneezor had somehow missed.  Last in were some spare zip lock bags.  I'd do laundry and repack at the Inn.  Pretend I was almost organized.  Surprise Jimmy.

Ebeneezor got a pat on the head and full bowls of water and food.  After I got on the road, I'd call Nate, the bartender at my regular dive bar and occasional dive partner, and have him check in on ol' Eb in a day or two.  Jimmy may have thought he was sending someone by to take care of my canine friend, but Ebeneezor took care of himself.  And didn't much care for strangers.

The dog was a semi-mobile, four-legged olfactory offense.  And likely brain damaged, left with a singularly intense focus on filling his belly with whatever unfortunate items found themselves within his reach.  Whether said items were organic, edible, or deathly toxic and indigestible had no bearing on Eb's need to devour all in his path.   

Eb was a also master escape artist.  He always found a way outside, whether to relieve himself, relieve trash cans of their contents, or relieve the neighbors of any morsals of food conveniently left anywhere except under lock and key and armed guard.

I did have a fence in the backyard, but I was under no disillusion that Eb could be thwarted by a mere wooden post.  I once installed an electric fence to keep him contained.  Returning home from a trip, I found him laying flat on his back, tongue lolling, grinning like a goon.  He was directly over the shock lines, apparently enjoying a bit of an electric lobotomy with his massage. 

He was also an ungrateful turd of a dog.  He never so much as raised his scruffy head when I stepped through the closest and into the garage.

Time to load the bike and get this circus on the road.