2013年4月30日星期二
Miles: A Motorcycle Ride Through The West elm 327
In the summer of 1998, I made a trip on a motorcycle that many people would consider a dream to be lived. Add to this the fact that I did this as an act of my employment with all expenses paid for almost seven weeks. Since I had 4 weeks vacation and found most vacation boring, I offered my employer my 4 weeks vacation if they would allow me to travel on my motorcycle to visit as many constituents as I could on their behalf. They accepted that trade.
My job was to visit as many donors and potential donors as I possibly could for Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. For this feat, I enlisted a turquoise and white 1994 Harley-Davidson Wide Glide with thunderous pipes that always caused seniors and the middle-aged to recall all the curse words they could think of. I loaded up a elm 327giant T-bag that probably weighed 75 pounds with clothes for every occasion and perched it behind me on the passenger seat for a backrest. On the morning of June 22, 1998, I roared down my Holland, Michigan, driveway and raced for a dinner in York, Nebraska, that night, 753 miles down the pike. York is about 100 miles into the state, 50 miles beyond Lincoln, on I-80. US 81, a major highway that goes from Oklahoma to Canada, crossroads right through York. The town is almost 97% Caucasian and rural. There are lots of Germans out in this area. It sits at the front door of the Great Plains and is flat as a pancake. Head west out of York on a sunny day and the sky will open before you like a Cinema elm 327 as you sit on a 2-lane concrete slab as straight as an arrow.
I had made this trip out to York scores of times to see a certain unmarried farmer who lit one cigarette off the previous one, ate Texas toast and t-bone steak every night of his life, and poured stiff black coffee down his throat like somebody who was having a heat stroke. Then he would go home with a belly full of caffein, meat, elm 327 and smoke and sleep as if he were in a coma. The passenger seat floor in his car or truck was piled high with coffee cups and cigarette butts beneath a dashboard carpeted with brown dust. Driving to Chicago for him was like driving into a nest of cobras in Calcutta. He loathed every second of it. Sitting alone on a tractor or pounding down another steak and coffee in a fly-infested cafe with pickup trucks tied up in front in a joint called Sutton, Nebraska, was the same thing as Disneyland to him. He owned a a Blue Heeler that would launch x431 gx3 sit next to him in the pickup and menacingly stare down every car that came down the highway. As the car approached, the dog's head would lower and his eyes would bead in on it. When the vehicle passed, the dog's head would whip to the left for the final challenge as if he were saying, "I thought so." I visited several people in Des Moines, Iowa, on the way to him, and when I got there, I could barely hold my eyes open during the dinner while he nearly strangled himself on a 20 ounce t-bone, a chuck wagon of coffee, and enough cigarettes to finish off a cancer ward.
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