Rushing out of my cluttered office outside the restraunt’s lobby, I’m stopped by my dining room shift manager “Linda called in sick and I’m also short two bus boys,” he exclaims!  “I’m sure you will solve the problem,  Jeff, that’s why I hired you” I replied as I walked by him and out the front door.  As I was getting in my Hummer, I got a short text from John that read “ride ride”, and I knew he was also on schedule, we’re gonna have some fucking fun tonight!  The regular garage gang are going four-wheeling tonight as they do very often in the summer, yet this will be John and my first ride ride with them all.

Just past our usual pull-in at the garage, we drive up in front of Mike and Candie’s place.  John maneuvers the pickup to a flat spot so we can unload the bike as everyone else is unloaded and getting ready to go.  Quickly our big green 4-wheeler is backed down the ramps and John straps the cooler to the front rack.  “You can’t bring those!” Mike yells out to his wife, Candie.  She is carrying four glass bottles of some kind of toxic tea and quickly looks at Sandy for support.  “You can put them in our cooler, we’ll just separate them and hope for the best” suggests Sandy.  Candie shoots a quick satisfied grin at Mike and hands the bottles to Sandy.  “Is Bart and Tania coming?” I asked.  “Yeah, they are going to meet us where your feet smell good” answered Mike.  “What did you just say?” I said with a puzzled look.  “The place where your feet smell good, you’ll see” Mike replies.  So we all finished up our beers and cigarettes, sprayed on the bug dope, got the last of our accoutrements together and we were off.  The roar of our three bikes screamed down the street past a couple of houses and then we crossed and drove into the woods.  The trail was sandy and very dusty at first so John held us back a little. As we got use to the new bike, I noticed that it was a lot more comfortable riding two than our other four-wheeler is.

As we drove further into the woods the trail changed from sand to hard dirt and there were a lot of roots, mounds, rocks and rivets to maneuver around that made it more exciting to drive and we could follow each other more closely.  Up on one bank, crossing over the gut to the other bank and around a stump, then right through some thick ass brush!  Oh yeah, we were definitely having a blast.  After about 20 minutes, we came to our first stop……….where your feet smell good.  It was a somewhat flat landing that had been logged and the ground was covered with cedar wood chips, and it really did make your feet smell good.  The sound of beer cans popping open and lighters being striked preludes the conversation.  “This is fucking great, guys, thank you!” says John.  “Oh shit this is nothing, wait until you see the pond where we are going” replies Tom.  “Yeah, it’s only about 2 ½ miles but it takes us four hours to get there and back” Mike adds, laughing. 

“I think I can hear an engine roaring, it must be Bart coming” Sandy says pointing to the opposite edge of the clearing.  “Yup, sounds like big red” Tom agrees.  After a few minutes, the roaring gets louder and out from the woods comes Bart and Tania both wearing dewrags and sunglasses.  The suped up black racing bike slides in the wood chips before coming to a sudden halt.  They looked like two rebels out of the Mad Max movies ready to rumble!  “Woohoo,” yells Tania as she hops off the back of the four-wheeler.  “I need a beer” shoots Bart at almost the same time as Mike tosses a can to him.  No room for a cooler on that bike, I thought to myself, then I had to walk around it and check it out; a very cool racing frame with mean looking tires, flaming skulls and the whole nine yards!  But I forgot to ask why the hell Tom called it big red, oh well, I’m sure I’ll find out eventually.

Everyone cracks open one more beer and Sandy explains “We also have a place we call moose poop, it’s where we had a moose poop fight “and everyone laughs.  Tom continues the story and explains, “Moose poop in the winter is like pellets so they just started throwing them at each other.” Then Mike added “That place is quite a ways north but we’ll go there again someday.”  “Okay, let’s ride ride!” says Bart, crushing his beer can between his hands and putting it in the redemption center (Tom and Sandy’s saddle bag). Everyone downed their last sip but Candie was nursing her bottle of twisted shit so Mike started in “drink it, drink it, drink it, drink it, drink it” as he taunted Candie in a nagging woman’s voice.  Like a trooper, Candie chugged it down and everyone gave her applause.  Off we go, all four bikes rev up their engines and take off onto another trail off the side of the clearing.  Through the woods again we go, Tom and Sandy in the lead, then Mike and Candie, followed by Bart and Tania and then John and I came up the rear.  I took a turn at driving and every time I revved up close behind Bart, he would rev up his racing machine and the exhaust almost sounded like a Harley.  The eight of us rode through the woods, pretty close on each other’s tail, whipping around tight corners between the trees, up on bank-sides, through a brook and after about another 20 minutes of riding we came to an absolutely beautiful quiet little pond with a man-made inlet to a babbling brook.  We hit it right at sunset and it was breath taking!

“This is Prisoner’s Pond,” says Mike.  “Why is it called that?” I asked.  “I’m not really sure, but my dad worked on it back in the seventies, they built it for the State so maybe it’s because they were state workers, they named it Prisoner’s Pond,” Tom said shrugging his shoulders.  Just them a beer fight breaks out between Bart and Candie, I missed exactly what started it but by the time it got our attention, Candie had beer dripping off her head and Bart was running for his life.  “Sandy Raccoon!” sings Tom, as Sandy tries to wipe some of the dirt from her cheeks.  With clean skin circling her eyes from her goggles and dirt covering the rest of her face, she did look like a raccoon!  Then out of the blue, in a moment of quiet, Mike starts whistling Copacabana and everyone took a shy shot at remembering the words as we all got into a groove.  Then out of the woods comes the lyrics clear as day being sung by Tania as she was taking a squat to pee.  The roaring laughter broke up our little musical moment .

“Oh my god your hair is all full of beer and looks icky,” Tom tells Candie.  As Candie untied her tight little bun on her head, her long light brown hair dropped down and she leaning her head to the side, and gave her hair a gentle swing to separate the kinky strands and immediately Mike got excited. It did remind me of some kind of pornographic commercial where the sexy model shakes her hair out in the moonlight and everyone else seemed to get the same feeling as the whistling and hooting commenced.  “Thanks, but I’ve got fucking heartburn from slamming that last drink!” Candie exclaims as she swats Mike in the arm.  She looked quite uncomfortable, doubled over sitting on their bike.  Tom gave her a beer and said, “You need to drink this, it will make you burp or fart or something that will help.”  Candie reluctantly took it and replied, “I’ll try anything at this point.” “Well if you are gonna fart, warn me at least!” says Mike scrunching up his nose at her.  “Yeah you can’t fart in the closet out here like Bart does,” adds Tom.  “Bart’s our closet fotter (farter)”Sandy explains when she sees my questioning look.  “He use to sneak a fart in the closet when he had a girlfriend at his house so she wouldn’t smell his stink!” Sandy adds laughing.  “Well, I farted in front of him first, actually,” said Tania quietly.  “What was that” I asked her.  “I said I farted first in front of Bart now he farts in front of me instead of in the closet” she replied.  “Oh my god, you are down here in the gutter with the rest of us now, Tania!” I exclaimed.  Once again our conversation had gone to shit, literally.  But it always leaves our gut busting and our faces smiling!

“Okay, it’s almost dark, let’s hit it!” directs Tom.  “Yup, time to go, finish your beers,” adds Sandy.  As we were all finishing up and crushing our beer cans, Candie suddenly lets out a large barking sound from her ass and yells “Oh god, there, yes!”  Mike, Tom and Sandy who were all closest to her immediately moved away and Bart and Tania started up their bikes and also backed up.  “Wow!” says Candie, “That’s so much better!” After a couple of minutes of coughing, gagging and laughing, we all started our engines and moved back in line towards another trail in the woods.  As we started down the path, I noticed Tom, Sandy, Bart and Mike all take a quick look back to make sure we were all together and ready to move and they all had the same satisfied, amused smiles on their faces.  Good friends, beautiful nature, cold beer and the smell of hot engines, does it get any better than this, I thought to myself.  “We’ll stop on the bridge next!” yells out Tom right before kicking it into high gear and roaring ahead of the pack. 

The Garage Goes Ride Ride – July 1, 2011 Part II

As our four-wheelers roared back into the deep woods we had to turn our focus to the head lights in order to see our path as the pitch black dark closed in all around us.  The breeze was warm and very comfortable on this early summer night as we all rode a little slower and more careful.  Between the beers and the dark, safety actually becomes second nature to this small group of tight friends.  Everyone keeps an eye and ear out for any sound of distress, no one will be left behind in the dark, you could count on that (unless of course they want to be left alone in the dark, ride ride does make some folks horny)!

The sound of the engines slows down as we approach a dimly lit clearing.  Carefully one by one we drove our bikes onto a little wooden bridge, just long enough to fit all four quads in a straight line.  The moonlight was providing quite a bit of illumination as the babbling brook cut through the tall trees and let the dim light filter down to the water.  You can hear the chatter and laughter already as we get off the four-wheelers and pass around the beers.  “Wow, this is fucking unbelievable and I don’t even have my fishing pole,” I stated.  “Yeah, this is a good brook to fish, Mike confirms”.  It really is a gorgeous night and I can hear all the critters full of life in the woods, with crickets and frogs leading the symphony.  “Drump pop pop pop,” suddenly exploded from the direction of Candie and Mike’s bike.  “Holy fuck!” screams Mike as he runs down the bridge toward us just as Candie hops off the bike and starts shaking her ass.  “Woohoo!” she yells in obvious relief.  “Oh that’s just nasty!” gags Tania as she also moves to our end of the bridge.  “Fuck me!” screams Sandy.  “You need to keep that stink up there!” She warns Candie.  “Hah!” Candie replies as she slowly stalks down the center of the bridge in our direction shaking the smell from her pant leg.  We all danced around to get by Candie’s stinking ass and ended up spread out along the railing opposite the bikes.

 Looking down into the bubbling black water, you could see the reflection of the moon rippling through the waves.   “I love to go fishing” says Sandy.  “On our 15^th wedding anniversary, Tom and I went to the lake fishing and we were catching perch left and right,” Sandy explains.  “But I couldn’t drink beer because my stomach was fucked up and all I wanted to do was catch a fucking Pumpkin Seed,” she continues.  “Then finally I get a bite and it didn’t feel quite as heavy as a Perch and as I reeled it in, I saw it was a huge Pumpkin Seed!  I was so excited; it really made my fucking day.”  Tom and John join Sandy and me looking over the railing into the water and hand us our second beers.  It’s quiet for a minute, and then Tania says, “We gotta go, it’s fucking dark and I’m drunk!”  “Oh relax,” Bart tells her. “You aren’t that drunk, walk the line!” Bart says pointing to an elevated wooden plank running down the center of the bridge.”  “Oh, I can do that!” Candie blurts out as she puts heel to toe and balances herself, like a high wire act gone wrong.  “It’s easy.” Candie says as she leans to one side and sticks out her leg to stop herself from falling off the plank.  “Alright, I can do that.” Tania exclaims.  Now Tania and Candie are wobbling left and right as they walk this silly wooden plank that is at least five inches wide!  Then Sandy says “Look out, and I’ll do it while saying the alphabet backwards!”  Yes, Sandy can actually say the alphabet backwards as fast as I can say it forwards.  “Zyx,” Sandy finishes and does a little “Tada!”  We applaud Sandy’s talent and Tom says, “It’s really amazing how a slat of wood can amuse three grown women to this extent, but Candie does have to work at 4:30 AM so, let’s hit it boys and girls.” It was a sobering reminder of our obligations, as we all nodded and finished up our beers and cigarettes.  Cans, butts, and any trash at all goes into one of the saddlebags as we love to have our fun but we DON’T litter in our woods! 

One by one, we pull back into Mike and Candie’s front yard and directly begin loading the bikes.  Once the work is done and everyone is all set, we gather around one of the tailboards to say our goodnights and have one last beer.  “Man, that’s a great trail, I’m so fucking relaxed!” says John.  “I’m taking my stinking ass to bed.” Candie tells everyone as she waves her hand over her head while walking toward the house.  “You sleep outside, you smelly bitch!” Mike yells to Candie.  “Fuck you, you sleep outside!” Candie shoots back.  Everyone laughs at the face Mike makes in response.  “Yeah, we’re taking off, we’re horny.” Bart states calmly.  “Okay, let’s go!” Tania replies, jumping off the tailboard to her feet with great enthusiasm.  “Well, thanks again for a great ride ride, everyone.” John says.  “Yes, thank you thank you guys!” I added.  “Love ya,” Sandy tells me as she gives me a hug goodnight.  “We’ll see you guys next Friday!” Tom tells us all as we get into our trucks.  We honk the truck’s horn and wave to Mike, Tom and Sandy as we pull onto the road and head back to our reality.

Until next time……………….. yti  The Garage©