I was in an ugly chunk of terrain and mightily overheated. I was rolling down an endless trail, counting out my 10 minutes, planning to stop at the first good shade or when my time ran up… at which time I’d guzzle water like my life depended on it.
I spied headlights ahead. Someone was driving a UTV down the narrow trail toward me. There was no way we could pass and the UTV would flounder in the swamp if pushed too far. So, I found an opening, rolled my bike into crotch deep weeds but kept the wheels on solid ground, and waited. I checked that my muffler wasn’t going to set any brush on fire but the muffler was well shielded. Silly me! I was frying like bacon but the little bike was in normal operating specs. Conditions beating me to death were “well within the bell curve” for my brick shithouse of a bike!
I was weary and sighed the frustrated and sweaty sigh of a man who’s had too much fun. My sense of adventure faded and I wished I was home and in air conditioning.
Then everything changed!
The UTV rolled up with three laughing women jammed side by side in the bench seat. They were joyously joking and smiling like a combination women’s book club and bar crawl had first gone mobile and then went ridiculously remote. They sure were having fun! If anyone might roll up in the middle of the forest to give Paul Bunyan himself a wedgie it was these three. They stopped next to me and said the most beautiful words in the English language.
“Want a beer?”
I almost fell off my still idling bike!
“Yes! Yes I do want a beer!”
I had my helmet off in a flash and practically fell over reaching for the can.
I had met what I call the “Beer Faeries”. It was a miracle and may God bless ‘em! This hard partying trio of ladies had left civilization some 85 miles ago (I was only half that far from my campsite). They were having all the fun a Polaris and two coolers can provide. They had matching shirts with some sort of dirty joke printed on them. They had spare fuel and all the gear they needed but without the uptight planning I’d been doing. They apparently do this sort of shit all the time.
I had to blink twice to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Here I was, roasting to death in literally in the exact definition of “middle of nowhere”… yet some woman was handing me an ice cold beer!
It was a shit brand of canned swill and I didn’t care. It was the best damned beer I’ve ever had!
They were telling me how last week they’d gotten lost and came home at 3:00 am… which was fine with them because that’s why they make headlights. I only heard half of it. I chugged the beer like an under-aged loser and wiped the can’s condensation on my forehead. I was instantly refreshed.
One of them was taking a piss on the other side of the UTV and I tried hard not to notice… though honestly that’s all me and had nothing to do with her. She might have peed on my boot just for fun.
The driver was standing there in flip flops which looked so much cooler than my sweltering motorcycle safety gear. The third one was lighting a smoke and insisted on pressing two more cans into my hands. I stowed them in my bike’s cooler… they were now the most precious things I owned.
They piled in their rig, stomped the gas, and they were gone. Like a switch being flipped, everything went pure nature again. The party on wheels had left and I was once again hearing only the sound of deerflies.
Did that really happen? I crushed the can and stowed it. Yep, it happened.
Life is grand!