Departing San Francisco
Patrick Riegert
O
ne of your aluminum tent spikes. Approaching your
motorcycle around 8:30 a.m., raring to depart San
Francisco, that's what you see, and it's as glaring as
a bloody footprint on a white carpet — a glittering question
mark on the damp asphalt beneath an unbuckled saddlebag.
Your heart slows and a void opens in your belly, cold and
gaping.
You don't need to look to know, but you do anyway. You have
to. Your legs are lead, and numb reflex guides your hand to
the unsecured flap of a saddlebag. Fear now rimes the edges
of that sucking void.
Empty. Your motorcycle saddlebags are empty. Only a grimy bottle half filled with
fluorescent-lime coolant mixture remains. And the 70-cent metal tent spike tossed aside
by the thief or thieves, a sign as clear as a splintered door jam opening into an empty,
silent home.
Your mind only knows four-letter words. You bark one. It's all you've got. You're pissed
off and frustrated with yourself for not unpacking everything from your bike when you
arrived in the rain three days ago. Now half the gear you'd loaded onto your motorcycle
eight weeks and 11,000 kilometres ago is gone, and that doesn't leave you with much.
And your notebook! The one you've had for three years. It's vanished, too, and that violation
is a regret-laced bitterness digging into the centre of your chest.
But you can get through this, move past it all. Take a deep breath, seal your eyes.
Okay. Just get on the road, onto the Bay Bridge, and out of San Francisco. It's a hard
eight hours to Eugene, and that means you'll be driving through the mountains — at
night, in the biting cold of late December. That's weighing on you, too. (You'll hit freezing
mist-like rain just north of the California border, but — a small blessing — you have no
knowledge of that yet.)
You can't think of the road ahead. Just go. Leave this damn place. You're angry that the
last fifteen minutes of loss and piercing uncertainty have stamped a taint upon these last
three days, casting a pall over fresh memories of sunny wanderings, great food, and
friend-fuelled laughter.
You shake your head. Just go.
You thumb the ignition. Nothing. No click, no whir, no "I think I can" engine sputter.
Nothing. Your insides plummet and that engulfing coldness reasserts itself. You're perilously
close to kicking your unresponsive bike to the pavement and sounding your barbaric
yawp over the rooftops of the world, abandoning both hope and reason simultaneously.
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