A Ride

An Aretha Franklin unit that sings like Aretha Franklin. The old truck on the right, just waiting to die loaded with a ton of firewood or sheetrock. Below zero tempuratures required.

A couple of minutes from the porch.

Dwindling cliffs on one of the Twin Lakes.

Sitting on Aretha, sipping a Miller, and watching the granite and birch speak to me.

An old timer in his seventies broke camp from the first lake and rode up to check her out.

He was pretty excited to see a machine running that was built back when he was gettin' jiggy with the real Aretha. He was riding an ol' Elan and wasn't comfortable letting it idle for too long. So he split.

On the way to the lakes, this cutoff trail exists. At sixty degrees from level, it rises about two hundred feet. At the top, I once watched a bogey suspension disintigrate from underneath a bombadier my dad let me use. Then there was the Elan that the patriarch of the c-boy clan was kind enough to let me destroy. That one overheated at the pinnacle of this trail. The excess heat found its way to the gasoline tank, which was around half full and, yes, ignited. It opened up the hood of the machine and left my stunned ass thirty feet behind the machine. The eyebrows came back eventually. In summer and winter I remember this spot. Here was my very first bout with mortal luck.