Fall in May

~5~ My Birthday Death Wish

"Because you get caught on this thing without one of those, it's not just a ticket. They'll impound the bike for sure and possibly an arrest for driving without. Then I will have the added joy of explaining to the authorities why I let an idiot loose on my watch. Which is something that neither one of us will want to explain to Irish when she finds out?" He shivers slightly at the thought. "And trust me, in this town ...she will always find out." 

Oh yeah, Sunny definitely spent some time talking to Irish Antichrist today about Death by Foster Care.

"Okay Aces, I get it. No riding around town to raise hell with my new badass biker gang, until all the X's are crossed and the local swine are properly paid off." I shrug off the obvious. 

"On your word then?" Aces reaches out and proffers me his hand to seal the deal.

"My word is my bond." I intone and grasp his hand, holding it for a heartbeat.

"Good enough for me." He relaxes and starts smiling down at the pile of scrap like it's his birthday. "Now let's get this thing uncovered and see what we are working with?"

After unwrapping the pile of junk in all its various pieces of scrap, I am a lot less excited than Aces apparently is with "our new project". He precedes to inform and extol the virtues of my new "used" motorcycle at great length. Even though I really have zero idea what he is talking about most of the time, he still feels the need to share his many mechanical insights with me.

"This an old Honda XR250L 96, that's been out of production for almost 20 years. It's got a 250cc four-stroke engine, so not super fast, but plenty fast enough to get out of its own way. Reasonably light and the suspension looks to be in pretty good shape. And it's a dual-sport, so it's street legal..." His eyes twinkle mischievously. "...and it's good for off-road."

"Cool." I nod appreciatively at the one piece of useful information so far, "street legal". So if and when this thing ever gets going, I can get the hell out of here and back to where I belong. After all, it's always Happy Hour Bar Fight somewhere in Insanistan, so it's always good to have a way out when the shit hits the fan.

"So what's the history on this beast, in case I get pulled over? Like exactly how used is it?" Cause I have a pretty good suspicion that when Aces says "used" and I say "used", while we are using the same word, we are most definitely not saying the same thing. I'm not so sure in Aces version "used" comes with some equally "used" paperwork from a "friend of a friend who knows a guy down at the DMV".

"Oh, Pegleg Pete bought it new to run around on his farm doing various chores and the such. I think he said it was up and running for a good ten years until Pete finally subleased the farm out to some boys who grow nautical hemp." Aces muses over whether or not he could score some hemp straight from the source. "Then it pretty much sat in his shed for the next ten years until it fell into disrepair."   

Regardless of the sordid war history of the beast, I can tell that Aces is really excited about another garage project. I have to admit now that I've checked out the pile of junk, that the bike is cool-ish. Dirty as all hell, and probably messed up in a myriad of ways that will get me killed, but apparently it is all mine. Another upside is there's also no electric starter, so I'll be kicking the crap on this thing on the regular. Which I think actually just adds to the mystique, so I'll deal with it.

"So for starters, you got no juice in the dead battery. But I have a slow drip charger in a box somewhere around here. So we'll hook the battery up and leave going overnight, see where we stand tomorrow. But in the meantime, let's get started cleaning everything we can." He hands me a wad of old T-shirt rags with a sly smile and imparts some more of his sage war wisdom on me. "Good mechanics are like all good artists, they always start with a clean palate ...and this thing is filthy. You know where the hose is, and if you need more rags? I keep a box in the corner of old T-shirts for just such an occasion."