A Springtime Rite Of Passage
The Pack
(Editor's note: In the wake of -- we hope -- winter's final wail, all too many of us have been shoveling shin-deep slush -- with bent-over bad blizzard backs, to boot. But, just about now, however, the first real spring day will arrive. It won't be heralded by the calendar nor prognosticated by TV's wise weather wizards. But, perhaps after a driving night-long rain, the skies will break, the sun will rise and the roads will be washed clean and dry for the first time since October. By afternoon temperatures will soar breathtakingly into the sixties and seventies. And, humankind's fancy will turn to spring-time thoughts like young love, picnicking -- and motorcycles! The following story --- received by us in a mysterious parcel with no return address -- says it all about that last subject.)
It started with a faint distant rumble that rolled down the river valley like a runaway locomotive. That grew to a thunder like squadrons of antique airplanes overhead. That finally shook the ground where I stood beside Route 202, waiting alertly in anticipation. The pack was coming. And you could hear it many, many miles away.
It had happened every April since I could remember. When I was just a little tyke, dirt smeared on my mug, pants torn, it was all I could do to run down the long driveway just in time to see the pack blast by. It was always at least ninety motorcycles and riders in tight, precise formation -- pounding the macadam under the weight of some twenty-seven thousand pounds of highly polished metal, filling the countryside with the throaty crackle from scores of engine exhaust pipes, leaving in its wake a pungent haze borne of hot aluminum, burned rubber and castor lubricating oil.
Time in my life went by and the pack leader's beard gradually changed from jet black to salt-and-pepper. And then one year, instead of making fast and furious tracks in my Keds, I chugged out to watch the annual rite of passage on a little beat-up, third-hand mini-bike. The small Briggs and Stratton lawnmower engine had as many stripped bolt threads as busted cooling fins, but my chest swelled with pride as the thundering herd approached. Did I catch a slight nod of acknowledgement from its leader or was it just my imagination?
The pack in motion seemed to have a life of its own. Individual bikes and riders blurred into a smooth flow of motorcycles streaming through woods and farms and fields, scattering leaves and roadside sand like the propeller wash of a huge airplane. The reflections of sun and blue sky and trees overhead jumped from the chromed gas tank on one bike, to a polished camshaft cover on the next, to the fast twinkling of wire-spoked wheels on a third. And the pack's ability to pick a perfect riding day was uncanny. It was always that first rare crystal-clear spring day -- with brilliant sky that belied the lingering chill from left-over winter.
The year came when I was no longer condemned by my youth to tear up and down the driveway on a mini-bike. Long, cold difficult hours of work put money in my jeans -- not much -- but enough for a start. After calling and combing county-wide, I found what I wanted, neglected in the corner of a dingy basement. With a friend I hauled it up into the outside air, grabbed all the boxes of parts and took it home.
Slowly, in a crowded corner of my room, this machine grudgingly gave ground to my attempts at breathing life into it. Finally, on a still midwinter night, it suddenly started and ran, exploding into a Teutonic roar of foreign lands and forgotten decades -- deafening my ears and burning my hands with the sharp sweet sound and fury of success. And soon, christened with new parts and still more sweat from my brow, it became real -- a big black German motorcycle.
In April the day came for a trial ride -- and to hell with a license plate. The plan was a quick blast down Route 202 to the safety of a dirt road that would return me back home through the woods. All was made ready. Acknowledging the importance of the moment, my motorcycle started easily, its sound now familiar, its controls now comfortable.
But suddenly the hair was up on my back. Why? Was that just an echo of my engine running? Or, could I really believe what I was hearing? And then, as my insides shook and my eyes watered, I knew.
It was the pack.
The pack was coming and somehow -- beyond my wildest dreams -- fate was going to let me join it.
Smoothly, in a rising fever of anticipation, I let out the clutch, swept up to the end of the driveway and stopped. As the thunder of the pack engulfed me, my motorcycle's engine idled steadily, patiently, waiting for its brethren coming down the road.
Before I knew it, the pack was upon me -- slowing ever so slightly -- with a hand signal from the leader to fall in behind. Now all of a sudden, the wind was full in my face. Motorcycles and men and beautiful women were all around me. The air felt charged with the heavy electricity of immense power. And it seemed as if the pack stopped moving through time, that the road and the world streamed by us instead, keeping each individual bike in a gentle, stable, swaying equilibrium.
But soon, so soon, too soon, the dirt road approached, forcing me to slow and stop off the highway even as the pack beckoned me onward. I shut down the engine and stood there transfixed, listening and watching as the pack slowly diminished into just a glimmer, and then a whisper, and then nothingness.
As I rode back the lonely dark dirt road to home, the memory was already glowing like an ember in my mind. For a few sweet short seconds I had been part of the pack.
And now I knew I would ride with it forever.
-- 1982
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