Introduction

Bob Bitchin

three phone books for his number, and soon we were in his nice warm house. After a night of old-time talk and good food and drink, we hopped back on our scooters and headed north again, after promising to return for Christmas dinner in about two weeks. All that day we wandered up through North Carolina and Virginia. You know, it is a real trip to ride the back roads of states like that, where so much has happened. I mean, you ride along and see a sign that says “Shiloh,” and you get a lot closer to the history of the country. It is really a strange feeling. That night we ran into a dude named Fuzzy Dave, who heads up a biker rights organization called ABATE. They were active in fighting the helmet law. He invited us to stay for dinner and to crash at his home. We may be dumb bikers, but not dumb enough to pass up an invite like that. After dinner we hopped into his four wheeler (since it was about 18 degrees out) and visited a guy named Gary Zager. We talked about helmet laws and the like until late in the night.

The next day we got up and packed our bikes again, by now a familiar procedure. As we rode out of Fuzzy’s driveway we passed a farm house used as a hideout by rebel troops so long ago. The weather was starting to get cold. Even though the sun was out, it was only about 4 degrees at the warmest. We rode into Washington with Fuzzy, and met Gary there. They gave us the grand tour of D.C., including getting a ticket for not wearing a helmet in

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front of the White House. On that parting gesture, we bid adieu to our new friends and hit it north again. As the sun disappeared into the western sky and clouds, we started to think, “good campsite.” Our map showed one at the head of Chesapeake Bay that looked good, so we headed off I-95. Just as the rain started we found the park. It was totally vacant. The good thing about traveling in the winter is you have your choice of camping. The bad thing about traveling in the winter, as we were discovering, is it’s cold. We hurriedly set up the tent and spent the rest of a cold, wet night sitting in it watching the rain fall. What a bummer. In the morning the rain had stopped, but it was overcast. Still about 40 degrees. The temperature dropped to the low thirties, and was still dropping. As we passed New York City it was in the 20s. We pulled into Bridgeport, Connecticut, about three in the afternoon. Bridgeport temperature was 24. All this cold truckin’ was just to get with Rogue, a friend, and the International President of the Huns Motorcycle Club. We gave him a call and were soon warming ourselves at the Huns’ clubhouse. That night was party time, and party we did. The clubs on the East Coast are a lot like the clubs on the West Coast, except they park their bikes in the wintertime. West-coasters ride them year around. Other than that there is no real difference between the two areas. It is party + party = party, all night long, in both places. The next couple of days were spent in warm luxury, just sitting around and checking out the local

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Bob Bitchin

action. It is weird being 3,000 miles from home and only a short time gone, seeing strange sights and handling strange flesh. Actually, folks, they were the same as home folks, but the low-mileage woofies were even nicer. As with all good things, the good times came to an end. In this case, the end came when we heard storm warnings on the radio. All we could think of was being stuck here all winter. From the weatherman’s tone, we were in for a big one. Billy Jack and I decided to load up our scoots and hook it out of there. This time we chose west. We passed through New York again (yech) and rode on until we hit the Pennsylvania state line. Temperature was really starting to drop now. We pulled over just before we entered the turnpike and packed every bit of clothing we had onto our bodies. A few hours later the temperature had dropped to zero. We just kept riding. Damn, bikers are dumb. High in the Pocono Mountains we came upon a sign that said “camping ahead.” We followed the signs and pulled into Hickory Run State Park. As had been the case for the whole trip, we were the only people in the whole park, so we had our choice of camping spaces. After unpacking our tent and setting it up, we started looking around for some firewood. Guess what, there was none. In the entire park, not one piece of wood was big enough to burn. And the temperature was now down to six below zero. Being as smart and resourceful as the average biker, we condemned a picnic bench which had seen

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better times and reduced it to campfire size pieces. We stashed some and dumped high octane on the rest. I doused the fire on my leg caused by careless handling of the burn juice, and slid up the evening can of beans. With this weather we should have brought fresh T-bones. Our dinner guest that evening was a Smokey Bear Ranger. It wasn’t until he had stopped his car and walked over to warm himself by the fire that we realized the legs of the bench were sticking out, prima facie evidence a law had been fractured in a very literal sense.

A very long fifteen minutes later the ranger left. He never did say anything about the two legs sticking out of the fire. I know he saw them. I guess he just didn’t want to hassle a couple of frozen bikers. The following day we decided to head for some warmer weather. This cold was OK, but enough is enough. We checked out the map and decided south was definitely a good way to go. We turned left in Ohio, and headed for Kentucky and the bluegrass pastures. That night we stopped in a small town just south of Cincinnati, on the Kentucky side of the street, for a quick cup of coffee. While sitting there, Billy Jack informed me his mother lived nearby, and he would like to stay there for Christmas. This meant an unwelcome split of a team of dumb biker bums that had become close and (yes, I’ll say it) proficient at bad weather, hard luck wintertime biking. With me almost 1,000 miles from my brother, where we are supposed to be for Christmas, Billy wants to stay here.

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Bob Bitchin

We stopped at his mother’s house for the night, and the next day, as the Snow Monster descended on the United States, I left for North Carolina by myself. As I headed into Tennessee the snow got bad. I hooked it over the mountains and down into Knoxville where the weather was a little better, but that was just to sucker me into trying to make the rest of the trip. Bikers are all pretty dumb, and I am probably the dumbest, because I fell for it. I made a hard left in Knoxville, and soon I was heading up over the great Smokey Mountains. The snow started to come down again, but this time it was a little thicker. The first hint that I might be in a little bit of trouble was when I noticed there were no more cars out there, just me and the 18-wheelers. It was then I noticed no snow moving equipment was working, and only the big trucks could make it over. As the snow increased it became a white blanket. My visibility was cut down to about 25 feet. I closed in behind a truck and followed him. All I could see was the left taillight. For what seemed like an eternity I followed that lone red light. Every once in a while I heard another truck going the other way, but very few of those. It was just me, my bike, and that red light. After what seemed a long spell of me trailing the red dot against a world of white, the snow lightened a little bit and I could see the truck that I had been following. It said “Frozen Food” on the side. No shit. The splash guards on the truck were about a foot thick with ice, and that started me thinking. I looked

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down to find that my feet had become completely encased in frozen slush. It was all the gook the truck had kicked up for the last 60 miles. The ice and snow was about 4 to 6 inches thick, and it was as solid as a rock. The snowmobile boots and the special Calafia riding suit had kept me warm, but the snow and slush froze on the outside. I knew I was in trouble when I tried to down shift from third gear as I pulled of to get some gas. My foot was frozen solid to the foot peg. Damn, bikers are the dumbest people on earth. I made about four figure eights while scheming what to do. I decided to pull up next to a wall in the gas station and stall the bike using my front brake. This I did OK, but I couldn’t take my hand off the bars to take off my helmet without falling over, and no matter how hard I called, the gas station attendant couldn’t hear me.

I imagined spending the rest of the winter as a frozen sculpture in a abandoned corner of an Exxon station. Just then a Highway Patrol car pulled in and asked the attendant what I was doing over there. A few minutes later he had taken a hammer and screwdriver and broken my feet loose from the foot pegs.

How embarrassing. Fifteen minutes of warming up in the station, and explaining how it had happened, got me back on my frosted bike and started down the hill again. Farther I got, the better the weather got until, as I headed into North Caroline, the weather was almost nice. All of the snow and ice had melted off the forks

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and front of my bike, and it just looked like a normal old dirty bike. As I pulled into Winston-Salem and my brother’s pad it was just getting dark. I pulled the bike into the garage and the rest of the night was spent talking about my close call and getting thoroughly wasted. What a lovely way to spend a day, huh? The next couple of days were like a dream. Riding around in a car, with the heater on. Eating big steaks and home-cooked food. It was really enough to spoil me, even if I hadn’t been on the road for awhile. The crowning glory was Christmas dinner. Turkey, ham, and all the fixings. But all good things must end, and so must the holiday spirit and good times. Before I even knew it, the time had come to pack up the old scoot and head out to meet Billy Jack. We had made plans to meet in Knoxville the day after Christmas. It was hard to do, but I managed it. I made for the mountains again. This time I was lucky. No snow. Just a lot of cold weather. That night Billy Jack and I tried our damnedest to make each other jealous with rundowns of what we had eaten and the warm beds we had lain in. Each claimed the better dinner and the tenderest care, and neither would believe the other. It turned out a tie. We decided the best place to go in the winter was the Gulf Coast, so we headed south, for Mardi Gras Country. We didn’t care if there was no Mardi Gras this time of year, we were going to New Orleans any way, mostly for the warm weather and Creole cooking. The farther south we got, the more we realized

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we had made the right choice. Heading out over the long bridge over Lake Pontchartrain, the temperature was well into the 70s, and we were riding for the first time without jackets. Life was getting to be almost bearable. In spite of comforting warmth for the first time in what seemed years ,we stayed only a day then headed out again. We headed west, out of New Orleans, towards that big Texas state, where we got a big lesson in weather and thermodynamics, which I will pass along to you for future reference: In the dead of winter, when you putt through a warm front, the next thing you will putt through is a wet front, and in this case it was almost a solid wall of water at the Texas state line. The folks down there call it rain, but I know better. I’ve seen rain, and this was not rain — it was a solid wall of water. I wondered how they got it to stand up like that. Well, anyway, for the next 300 miles we rode through this mobile ocean, all the way into Houston. There, just as it was getting dark, the rain ended and once again it was almost nice out. Even though it was dark, the temperature was still in the high 60s and very comfortable. The next day of riding was uneventful, until we jammed into this little town called Sheffield, just as it was getting dark. Sheffield stands out so well in my mind because people there are without a doubt the unfriendliest folks in the world. We were about a quarter of a mile out of town when my chain slipped off the rear sprocket and

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