Chapter 12

the sound: Cream – Crossroads, Janis Joplin – Cry Baby, The Temptations – Papa Was a Rolling Stone, Deep Purple – Smoke on the Water, Elton John – Burn Down the Mission, Moody Blues – Go Now, Herman’s Hermits – Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter, Rolling Stones – Brown Sugar, Lulu – To Sir With Love

The sights and sounds of the Minneapolis freeway immediately transport me back to the last time Beach and I had ridden across the border with a gang of friends for a concert and a weekend of drunken debauchery.

We’d stayed at the Duluth Radisson and driven the rest of the guest’s in the hotel crazy running around the circular hotel from room to room, most of us half dressed and half drunk like big kids in a big kid’s candy store.

We’d ended up partying with the headliners from the concert we’d attended and found out just how decadent life could be when you had “enough” money…tequila bottles and lime rinds had littered the floor of the pool and when the hotel manager tried to stop the partying the band’s manager gave him a wad of cash tied up in a rubber band “to cover the damages” he said in his staid British accent. Mike had loved it, the band was one of his personal favorites and he felt like he was living large accompanying them to the show.

Before we came home Fred’s wife Moira (the self proclaimed sex fiend) had decided that we couldn’t leave without stopping at a sex shop and we’d had a laugh terrorizing the staff there as well. I mean, really, just what is so scary about 12 bikers and 7 women in a fuck book store?

In the end we’d come away with a 10 inch penis shaped vibrator for all the single girls back home. Mike’d been puzzling about how we were planning to get them across the border without claiming them and having to pay extra but Moira told him not to worry as she had a plan.

We climbed on our bikes and headed out to the freeway, I remembered the roars of the engines and looking ahead to see Al’s ape’s and Fred’s chopper glistening in the sun. We’d only ridden about 15 minutes when Moira’s arms started flapping around like she was having a seizure.

We’d all pulled over on the side of the road and Moira jumps off and drops her drawers for all to see and fishes out the Benewah balls she’d purchased for herself in the store!

More laughter was had by all, a little name calling not withstanding and I remember thinking that we really were a family – a family of misfits, but a family none the less.

Just before we’d got to the border Fred had pulled us all over and Moira had slipped a vibrator into the pant leg of each of the guys as they sat on their bikes, the end result being that all of them looked like they were hung like horses and happy to be there!

And as only our good luck would have it we had all female border crossing guards that day…all they did was look at the bulges like they were gob smacked and wave people through to the other side.

Mike and I’d laughed all the way home.