An Easy Sunday Ride
 
Tire pressure? check.  Oil?  check.  Chain tension? Check.  Oiled?  Check.  Gas?  Check.
 
Saddle-up.  Time to ride. 
 
It's Sunday morning, 9:00am.  I'm meetin' the boys at a little resturant down by Cheat Lake for a day long ride.   I throw a leg over the bike, ease the choke up, turn the key and grab the levers.  After I kick the side stand up, I thumb the little red button, and 998cc's rumbles awake.
 
Ruby and Ketchy's is a quick jaunt through town, and the boys are already there.   I order a cup o' coffee and sip on it till they finish breakfast.  By the time they're done we've got the trip mostly laid out.  Seems we're heading down to 50, and Mount Storm.  I liked the sound of that.  Mount Storm indeed.
 
I ran over to a nearby hotspot to pick up a pair of sunglasses while the gang finished and settled the tab.  That hanled it was time to mount up.
 
The usual suspects were all there.  Curt's Aprila was parked next to RJ's 929.  Behind them were my cbr1000, and our resident yankee buddy, Brian's 900rr.  Brian had a little blonde cutie along for the ride, and she and I hit it off immediately.   A friend from the hospital, Jeff, was also there with his big BMW, and we had apparently picked up a straggler, a 17 year old with a Honda F4.  Not a bad gang.
 
As we're all mountin' up I'm checkin' my pocket for the MP3 player I brought.  I thought about hittin' it, but decided I'd wait a while.  I wanted to hear these bikes run a bit. 
 
We scoot out to interstate, which is only a couple blocks.  We don't plan on takin' I-68 very far, but we want to get to Bruceton Mills pretty quick, and that's the best way.   Curt, RJ, Jeff and Brian are all in front of me as we turn up the exit ramp.
 
Now bikes are made for different things, and well, my bike was made for the interstate.  After we merge into traffic, I slide over to the left lane.  I see curt up ahead movin' that left leg and scootin' back a bit in the seat.  I've ridden with curt a long time, and I know what that means.   I've already got the bat bike up into it's powerband though, so I take my chance.  I nail it.
 
There is a distinct THUMP sound in my helmet as I pass Curt, and he was doin about 90!  Now there's no doubt that the Aprila will run me down pretty quickly, so I play it cool.  I get about half a mile ahead of him, and lay off.  I let him pass and laugh at him.  This is what we do.
 
We make Bruceton Mills in about 5 minutes or so.  We pull up to the exit and wait for stragglers.   I figure it's a good time to hit some tunes, cause the roads are fixin' to turn twisty, so just before we turn towards kingwood, I hit play on my brother's MP3 player.
 
Now I didn't know what was on this thing, but I figured if it sucked I could just turn it off.  About 5 hundred yards down the road I hear:
 
"Janie was a waitress at the only joint in town,
she had a reputation as a girl who'd been around,
down main steet after midnight, brand new pack o' cigs
fresh one hangin' from her lip, a beer between legs..."
 
An involuntary grin crept upon my face, and my right hand twisted just a little.  It was gonna be a good day.  
 
8 minutes later Mr Keen's song was over and the sun was shinnin' down.  My shield was about half up, the wind was in my face, and we were dancin' through twisties like they were set in 3/4 time.  Then what do I hear?
 
"Awwwww We gonna take you home tonight."
 
Now if you've never thrown a bike around you wouldn't understand, but when "Fat Bottom Girls" came through my earbuds, I thought I'd died and gone to Heaven.
 
Up ahead I see a hard right.  Curt is easing up to take it on the high side.   I go with him, but it's banked sharp, so I slam the throttle wide open and lean hard into the turn.  The nose dives below Curt well to the inside, I hold the throttle open a few seconds and let the bike lift itself up, and once again I'm long gone by the time Curt figures out what happened.
 
I slow down and let he and RJ go by.  To be honest they're just faster, and take way more chances than I do, so no reason to hold them up.  I lay back in third while we ride along the rivers and make our way to 50.  No reason to get tired this early.  Mount Storm lay ahead.