Fiction #1

Sometimes, when the road is open and my hog is leading the pack, I like to slip my shades off to hang around my neck and I stare into the hundred mile an hour wind. The initial discomfort is tremendous. My eyeballs instantly go so dry I can almost feel them crack. I force my eyes to stay open, to stay focussed on the blurred lines of the road. Then my face starts to distort so much it feels like my lips are pulled back to my ears. Water tries to flood my eyes again and again but fails always.

It's when the water gives up trying that I begin to see things in the wind. I can't turn my head, I can't move my eyes. If there are trees along the road, tall pines with trunks bare almost all the way to the top, they bend up and almost meet at the top of my vision. The road gets longer and wider and I know exactly where my bike will be for a thousand feet. When Riley or Bronx move up on my left or on my right I see them only as a crazy blur and it doesn't seem like I am on the same road they are. I gun it and and they are pulled back away from me. When I gun it like that I can only know where I will be for the next five hundred feet and then I don't see further than that.

When I ride with my eyes in the wind time moves fast. I've driven through small two-street towns and only realized when someone told me that night we'd missed a meet. They go by only as square shapes with no colour. I notice only a tension in my forearms and increased concentration. I know people are afraid of me.