This year, it was my turn to drive. Although it's a 417 mile drive door to door and a 7 hour drive, usually I enjoy just tooling down the road listening to tunes. In fact, I'm going to share with you a little secret that no one else knows - when I crest the Siskiyou summit I jot down the song I'm listening to. Not sure why I do that, but I do. This year, going south it was The Doors and the song was The End (fitting, as I had just come to the end of Oregon and was entering California). Going north it was U2 and the song was New York.
The drive usually has some curious moments, such as wondering what was behind the "Traveling Tsunami Seafood Show" that I saw on a truck.
Or wondering for years what those references to the State of Jefferson in the Yreka area meant, and then finding that there was a well organized plan to secede Southern Oregon and Northern California into a new state and may have actually happened if not for the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. immersion into World War II.
Once in California, and especially in the Shasta Lake area; the road becomes a long skinny shoe and memories are the laces that tie it together in random association as the miles skip by:
- Learning how to ski at Mt. Shasta pre-avalanche that destroyed the lift
- Living at Lakehead and being only slightly social and certainly suspicious with the kids from Dunsmuir.
- Hiking Castle Crags with Mike Thetford.
- Riding my Yamaha dirt bike on the back roads from northern Lakehead. Chris LaBella was in his 65 Mustang and we were racing to see who got home first. He did, as in the dark on my dirt bike I crashed hard into a ditch and suffered no broken bones but broke a lot of skin and was a bloody mess.
- The private, non tourist swimming hole at Dog Creek.
- Climbing up and then onto the catwalk underneath the I-5 bridge over the Sacramento Arm of Lake Shasta. The sound and movement when a semi tractor-trailer thundered over your head!
- Backing my 1967 Camaro down the government launch ramp at Lakehead, until my 60-Series rear tires were about an inch deep in the lake (didn't take much). Popping the clutch and letting that 327 roar as I did a smoky burnout 3/4 of the way up the ramp, laughing as the incensed fishermen threw beer cans at me!
- The old junkyard we found above Salt Creek, probably from the early 1900's.
- Riding our dirtbikes on a custom made to order motocross track when the lake diminished enough to expose Turntable Bay.
- Getting high at Tim Kobe's house at O'Brien and staggering down to the freeway to moon cars (yes, I had my moments of juvenile delinquency).
- The tribute at Salt Creek to King. If you are going south on I-5 just past the Salt Creek exit as you begin to incline, you can get a glimpse of a cross on the left hand side of the freeway. There is a little door and a picture of a German Shepherd. King's owner was crossing a road and began to have heart trouble, a car was approaching around a curve and King through himself against his owner, putting himself in harm's way and dying to save his owner's life.
Well, there are many more memories but probably the coup de grace that made me legendary was:
The incident of the runaway motorcycle and the Lakeshore Villa Market.
I worked for a few years at the Shell station still in Lakehead off of I-5 just before the Sacramento river bridge (it's still there today). The owner at the time permitted us to purchase gas and services at her cost. Being somewhat isolated we had developed a quite a little bartering system finding tourists running low on cash and worrying about how to get home. We traded gas and products for all kinds of things including 8 track casette tapes, camping gear, tools - just about anything, and then reimbursed the boss at cost. One fine day a local came in and really needed some tires. I had some cheap recaps in stock, and we finally agreed to swap the tires for a dirt bike. He gave me a ride to his house where the plan was that I would get the bike and head home (in those days, we were bold enough to defy the law and ocasionally ride our dirt bikes on the road, terrifying tourists as we rode wheelies down the street and screamed like rockers with sore throats).
A bunch of our mutual friends were at his house, and in a James Dean kind of coolness I swung a leg over the bike and kicked it to life. I revved the throttle a few times, and then thought "what a great attempt to show my friends what a bad a$$ rider I was". Well, it turned into a self fulfilling prophecy as I rode badly, and made an ass of myself! I snicked it into gear, popped the clutch and showered my buddies with a spray of gravel excised by that 3.5 inch knobbie as I rocketed toward the store. We had built a little berm, and my plan included a snazzie berm shot, followed by a cross up over a small jump and then I was around the store and headed home.
Alas, 'twas not to be. As I worked upward through the gears I realized that the berm was approaching too fast - way too fast. I eased on the front brake, nothing. I grabbed now at the rear brake - nothing! I attempted to open the throttle release - NOTHING! Having exhausted all the usual means of slowing down, I downshifted; redlined the motor and sat transfixed in paralysis as the rear wall of the store in slow motion filled my field of view. Ka-WHAM as the front tire punctured the wall, throwing wood splinters and embedding itself. I can still see the forks bending as the bike stopped instantly, but my body remained in motion. Bowing to the unflexible law of centrifugal force I was slammed into the store with a WOOOMPH as all the air was forced out of my lungs. I heard crashing on the other side of the wall and realized merchandise was falling off of shelves.
A blissful moment ensued when the motor died, and I lay peacefully in the dust too stunned to hurt yet. Then, the gravity of the situation (pun slightly intended) caught up with me and I rose to a sitting position and thought the universal code of teenage boys in trouble - "must escape before getting caught". I grabbed the rear while of the motorcycle and attempted to rescue it from the vice of it's impaled prison, but it would not budge. By this time patrons and the store owner had run around to the back of the store to find out what happened.
Well, what happened was that I became the laughing stock of the community for several days (and had to pay for the repaire of the store and straightening of the forks) as my story was recounted over and over. Until I did the next dumb thing.
