Regular

One evening about three weeks ago I got a text message from one of my riding cohorts. (should never have gotten a cell phone) He was out and about and was wondering if I wanted to meet him at Huntsville, a neighboring town about 20 miles from home, and make an evening ride through the hills? Sounded good to me so I headed down Hwy 412 to Huntsville. It was a great ride over. The sun was going down and the evening temps. were just perfect.
I pulled in to the little gas station/cafe and found Louis stretched out beside his bike in the parking lot, just sorta enjoying the evening.
We visited a bit and decided to grab a snack at the cafe before getting on the road. While we were eating, I got a text message from another of my riding friends, Johnny. He was wanting to know where we were as he wanted us to run by and meet his girlfriend. THE GIRLFRIEND! The one we had heard about and had never so much as saw a picture of. The one that gave us untold amounts of fuel for good natured harrassment of "old riding bud" Johnny. I quickly sent him a message saying we were in the area and would be right over.
We fired up and headed toward home like we were hungry and someone had just yelled "supper".
The ride usually takes about 20 to 30 minutes during daylight and, depending on traffic, the odd Possum or Deer, can take up to an hour at night. We were in behind a line of cars and making really good time for most of the way. At about the halfway point we had let the cars get ahead of us quite a bit to where it was just Louis and I it seemed like. As we started down this long straight that ended in a curve I noticed I was running right at 65 and thought that wasnt too bad, just ten over. I leaned into the curve at about that same time and noticed that all the cars that we had been following were stopped dead in the road about half way through the curve.
I grabbed both brakes and started down shifting like I knew what I was doing. Trouble is there wasnt enough room to be doing anything. The car was coming up fast and Louis was on my butt. Then eveything went into slow motion. I could see a wide shoulder so I thought I'll run around on the shoulder. At least if I have to put it in the ditch I wont be running at highway speed. Like I said, everything was in slow motion, I was keenly aware of everything. The wide shoulder. My brakes locking up and my tires squalling. Louis's tires squalling and his transmitton screaming and him yelling at me to slide faster as he was about to slide over the top of me. Then it was over. I was setting about a foot and half from the back of the car in front of me. Louis managed to squall to a stop beside me and we both looked each other over to make sure we were still among the living. The seventh car ahead of us in this mess suddenly turned on it's left blinker and turned into the darkness.
We had barely gotten started moving when I heard tires squalling beind us. A pickup had came around the curve the same way we had and nearly got us. The rest of the trip was pretty normal. Not even so much as bump in the road.
We pulled up to Johnnies and met his lady friend Jennifer(she actually exists) and visited with them for about a hour.
After I got to the house I sat and thought about all the things that had happend and came to a couple of conclusions. one: God loves me and was looking out for me. Two: cellphones are evil. C: I got to find something new now to harrass Johnny about.

Catch ya on the road