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I made the mistake of going down dirt roads with that same guy who drove that fast with his Kawasaki...he and I drove in a Datsun pickup truck with a friend out to horse around on dirt roads, and I was in bed of the truck in back.

They were just dirt roads to nowhere through woods, and he was flying down them. The roads were in bad shape, with lots of abrupt short hills. It had been raining, and there were big areas in the road filled with water.

In the back, I was getting the snot pounded out of me, and I was hanging on for dear life. I was screaming at the top of my lungs for him to stop, but he either heard me and didn’t want to, or had the music up too loud...I don’t know.

It is a miracle I wasn’t thrown from the bed and maimed or killed, it was that bad.

Finally, he stopped, and I told him he couldn’t drive like that with me back there because it was really dangerous. So the rest of the time, he just concentrated on going through the big puddles and showering us. They were getting as wet as me up front.

Then, we came to a very large puddle. We couldn’t tell how deep it was, but stupidly encouraged him to go through, which he did by backing up far enough to get up a good head of steam, and when we hit the water, we went about halfway through, and that little Datsun must nosed over and the hood and engine engine completely disappeared so the water was halfway up the hood.

Well, we were stuck. This was pre-cell phone days, and we were out in the sticks, God knows where (this was near Jacksonville, FL somewhere)

We tried for about six hours to get that thing out. I recall we had some scheme with logs we dragged from the woods, trying to do something...I think the axle was stuck on a submerged log or rock or something, but were waist deep in water, pushing, pulling, nothing.

I was exhausted and freezing, and I remember the three of us were just sitting there after hours of working at it, completely defeated, not knowing what to do next, when all of a sudden...we heard dogs.

Lots of dogs, baying and howling, and down the road comes another truck, row of lights on the roof, with dogs running all over the place! They were hunting something, and boy were we glad to see them. They winched us out. I was damn glad to get out of there. We were able to eventually get the truck started and drove back to his trailer off base, and I ended up spending the night on his couch, I was so frigging tired.

The next morning, I was woken to the sound of that Pink Floyd song “Time” on full volume from his stereo, which he had rigged up as an alarm clock.

I think that guy was a bit crazy. You would never know it when we were at work with our squadron. Quiet guy, just did his job, but when I got on the back of that bike of his or the back of that pickup...I saw him in a different light.

I can’t even remember his name now. It was some kind of Eastern European name with a “z” and a “c” and a “k” in it...

I drove a KZ1000 once, friend gave it a tune up and a bath for his son. Never met the son, who was aroound 30.

Damn thing had so much power it scared me, never got above about 60 or 65. Couldn’t park it and get off fast enough.

My brother’s Honda 350 was enough for me. Got it up to 80 one day on a straight road, testing it out after a tune up, that was fast enough for me on 2 wheels. I knew I had a 2 mile straight road, plenty time to slow down.

On the way home I was keeping it to about 60, locust flew across in front of me. Got me in the right eye. Almost knocked me off the bike, I had to pull over for 5 minutes to get my wits back and let the pain ease up. Glad I didn’t have sunglasses on, they would have been shattered, I would have been in big trouble. Little used country road outside Bryan, might see a car in the next 45 minutes or so, those Ray Bans would have seriously hurt me.

Got a car up to 140 once, wasn’t crazy about that when it started to feel more like a boat going squirrelly...thing started wandering all over the road, I got off the gas. 76 Mustang, with a 283 but didn’t have the suspension for that kind of speed. So when it started to motorboat about 140 I’d had enough, only kept it up for a half mile or so...which goes by really quick...