The mother of all dates with fate....a serious dumping of my then motorcycle.  I have been putting off and putting off writing about this brush with fate.  In fact, it has haunted me for three decades now.  

    My memory was jogged the other day on a visit to Whitewater's Fourth of July festivities.  Over the last few years they moved their main party right adjacent to downtown.  Heide and I walked past the old tavern where the motorcycle debauchery began all those years ago.  

    After I got out of the Army my main task was to get a motorcycle. By the late 1970s I had two: A small 350cc Yamaha, and a 1975 500cc Kawasaki.  The Kawi was the infamous two-stroke racing bike - it was then to that generation of riders, what the crotch rocket is to today's motorcycle tribe.  Nothing good could have possibly come from my relationship with that machine.

    I did ride it to Ohio in 1980 for that Army buddy's wedding. After the wedding, I headed for Colorado to see another Army buddy.  Not too many bad things happened - only one near miss with a cement railroad abutment. In fact, it was a memorable adventure.  It was the era of the Japanese motorcycle culture.  The Harley Davidson company had not yet resurrected itself from the dead. 

    I had met Heide in Lake Geneva later that summer of 1980. The economy was so bad in those days, many of us drove motorcycles to save money on gas, maintenance, and parking, et cetera.  By 1981 Heide and I had decided to get married.  

    As time for the wedding day got ever nearer, a pal from work who would be an usher at my wedding and also had a motorcycle, and I, went out for a beer after work.  Old Mark was a college student, but he was a salty guy and we ended up in a place called the Long Branch Saloon - a narrow woody local joint on the back street of the consummate college town. 

    I had a nice pair of sun glasses I wore in those days that lightened up while indoors.  It was a beautiful sunny late afternoon day toward the end of summer.  After our one beer, and then another, and another, and another, and....I got the wild idea to go back to my apartment (six miles east of town) and make a sandwich. Actually, that speaks to the economy then, and our age. Any money would be saved for....beer. 

    "I will be back in a half hour," I said. 

    "I will be fine," Mark said.

    I left Mark with two college chicks that were sitting on his lap and busted out the door, hopped on my bike that was waiting patiently at the curb, and blasted down the street.  The street lights were now on, but I did not notice it was now dark out.  

    Once I hit the edge of town, I yanked the throttle and the racing bike hit 80 in a couple seconds.  The street lights were now gone and it was just me, Highway 12, and the majestic Wisconsin corn fields.  Being preoccupied with the prospects of marriage, and perhaps having been side tracked by the beer....you think....I had forgotten to put on my clear safety glasses I used at night.  I still had the sun glassed on.  Everything went black.  

    I missed a gradual curve and drifted onto the gravel on the shoulder of the road.  Of course it pulled me into the grassy ditch.  I kept going...at 80....on into one of those majestic corn fields.  I could feel the leaves hitting me in the face.  Now the bike was on its side and I was on top of it like I was lying on a surf board.  

    The bike came to a stop a few rows of corn into the field.  I was stunned for a moment.  My chin was bleeding.  I picked myself up and patted my torso.  I was still alive.  But was I sure?  There had been a black moment of silence.  

    The glasses were on my face - cracked, crooked, and bent like in some comedy movie.  

    There was nothing to do but walk back to town.  In that pre-cell phone era I stopped at a house with the lights on.  Remarkably the people let me in to make a phone call.  Rather than call my dad, who I knew would not be amused, I called my Best Man. 

    "Can't help tonight Bob, I got to baby sit my kids," he said as if I was simply talking about needing help to move a sofa. 

    I hung up the phone and turned to look at a man and woman staring at me with disdain and worry.  I looked down at myself and then noticed the blood and ripped cloths.  

    I don't remember getting back to my apartment.  The next day another co-worker and I hoisted the motorcycle up in the back of the company pickup truck.  

    Can you imagine how many people noticed the bent silver fender peeking out of the corn field? Nowadays, the people in the house probably would call the cops.  Cell phone calls would flood the 911 Center about the motorcycle crash. Cops, ambulance people, and the fire department would be searching the whole field for a victim and or a perp.  No, not in 1980, we just went back and picked up the bike the next day. 

    I have always wondered if I died that night and the life I live now is some kind of shift to a different reality. The concept being, no matter what age you live to, you must actually finish life, but just in some alternate reality.  Each time you die, you shift to another reality. There was a television science fiction series that explored a similar concept.  It was called "Sliders."  It was perhaps ahead of its time and faded away after a couple or three years.
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    Because I have been on the precipice of kicking the bucket now and then over the years, and this life of mine sure has been strange at times, the thought hassss crossed my mind. 

    It's probably just my imagination. 

Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" - book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).