April 22, 2001

  • ~~~In the Sights~~~

    We were heading out east to a popular country beach on the Lake Erie shoreline for an afternoon of beer-drinking and girl-watching. My buddy Mike was driving his convertible BMW and I had taken to two wheels on my Yamaha 400 (I know, I know…this is a totally-wus bike power-wise and towards the high-end, but it was one of the quickest bikes from a dead-start with an aptitude to always do a wheelie.) Once out of the city limits and on the open highway, we decided we could "open up" a little--police surveillance was unlikely, so throttles went agape. Hot highway, screaming breeze, dodge the kamikaze bugs, race the earth with ease. I had taken to the inside "fast" lane on this 4-lane highway and my buddy was shadowing me in the outside lane. Cat-and-mouse, then mouse-and-cat, we exchanged leads, side-by-side, as we took turns splurging on accelerators. Finally, I had had enough. I zoomed solo to a lonely lead, leaving Mike to become a small detail in my rearview mirror. Wild speed, free man, suck the rush! Looking back but occasionally in that rearview mirror, details remained receding dots.

    Then one of those dots decided to get bigger, and I figured "OK, here he comes…" From dot to small dimension to geometry, a re-encounter coming up my lane, …but damn, the details--shape, color, hug to the ground--weren't right. It wasn't Mike, but whoever it was, was in a world of hurry, and the thought *the cops* crept in. So now, watching the mirror more than the highway ahead, I slowed from well 100+ back down right around the century mark, both to get a better look and to suggest to the cops, if they were cops, *Hey, I'm not speeding after all!* With the distance between me and this car coming up behind now even more quickly closing, I observed more detail: a convertible, meaning, not a cop! But then, who the hell and why? Perhaps, medical emergency, I thought. So I shifted to the outside lane to let the car by, but it shifted likewise behind me in response. Now in the mirror, with the car about a fifty feet back, I could see a guy driving, smiling, with a girl next to him. What the f???…I decided to accelerate and shift back to the fast lane again. But this maniac behind me followed, in apparent locked-in delinquent pursuit. So now I'm doing about 20 (add the century, of course) and this creep has crept to within feet of my back tire. Assessing this finally as a life-threatening situation, what maneuver, I brainstormed, did I need to take to shake loose???….

    But then another dot to dimension to geometry did grow in my mirror: my friend, Mike, of course! He had been laying back, observing the interplay of myself and this self-appointed adversary, but had seen enough. So now it was my turn to watch as Mike brought his convertible up to the right of the car behind me until he was precisely side by side. I could see him grinning behind his sunglasses, and his blonde long hair was streaming in the rushing air as he looked directly over to the girl now door-to-door opposite him. She was a brunette, apparently not really "into it" since she lacked the evil smirk her boyfriend had assumed. She was about to get "into it" even less as my friend Mike pulled his Colt Commander 9mm pistol and aimed it, still smiling, directly at her head.

    The unfolding show in my rearview mirror was about to end. The horror she realized as she turned to observe a bullet poised at the far-end of a short barrel was unmistakable. She looked to the right: beholding a gun and a smile, turned to her left, grabbing her boyfriend, who himself then looked swiftly to the right with instant dreadful recognition. That car's details of geometry soon transformed back into dimension, then but a dot, pulling off to the side of the highway in a braking cloud of dust.

    Now this buddy Mike was the friend who had also once saved me from falling off a cliff. So as he pulled up along side me with us both still flying at full cadence down the road, I felt doubly-indebted for his assistance. I looked over to my right, and gave him in acknowledgement, while myself grinning, a full thumbs-up. His response? The pistol which had disappeared now suddenly reappeared and the sights were targeted directly at my head! Still grinning, Mike was playing psycho by suggesting that he was about to take me out.

    Mike loved to grin like the Chesire Cat, and complementary to that character, did the threat he posed to me, once played for full-effect, disappear. We did proceed to the beach to relax, watch girls, and drink beer.

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