As some of you may or may not know, Milwaukee is currently hosting the 100th birthday of Harley-Davidson Motorcycles, with 200,000 to 300,000 riders and spectators expected to attend. So streets and highways in this entire part of the state are crawling with these over-chromed and under-muffled mechanical anachronisms. Many of their portly and unwashed owners apparently secretly suffer from chronic testosterone deficiencies, for which they compensate by needlessly twisting the throttle at stoplights, and roaring around town, weaving thru traffic. This morning on my daily freeway commute in my 1983 diesel Westfalia, a routine check of my mirror revealed a Harley rider approaching from behind, presumably on his way to the barbarian festivities. As luck would have it, we soon began ascending a hill and my 1.6L diesel briefly went into her James Bond smoke-screen mode, laying down a pretty good trail of soot. The leather-bound biker immediately changed lanes to avoid the hazy billows of smoke, and the clattery 'blap-blap-blap' of his rusty steed soon grew even louder as we crested the hill and he finally passed me. As he went by I saw that he wore an old-timey leather cowboy duster with furred collar, a greasy red bandanna, and an incongruous pair of fluorescent-green-framed mirrored sunglasses. The big engineering boots and lack of helmet told me that he, perhaps quite rightly, placed more value on his yellowed toenails then the contents of his cranium. As the two-wheeled desperado pulled back into the lane ahead of me, he looked back over his shoulder and very theatrically pinched his nose, the universal sign for "phew, you stink." I considered this for a moment and acknowledged that, at least momentarily, he was quite correct, then replied by pasting my face into the windshield and making a big show of plugging my ears with my fingers while grimacing and shaking my head. He stiffened in the saddle and seemed to falter a bit as he glared at me in his own mirror, his ten little piggies conferring amongst themselves to interprete my gesture and formulate a response. Finally, frustrated at having run out of clever visual retorts, he delivered to me the internationally recognized middle-fingered salute, and with a flatulant roar rode off into the sunrise. I don't know who got the last or best word in this little morning exchange on the highway, but at least until after the weekend, I'll be sticking to the back roads ... Jeffrey Earl 1983 diesel Westfalia "Vanasazi"
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