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I know I’ve told you a couple or three stories about the quick trip I made in the summer of 1976 on my 1972 Honda CB450, but I do not recall whether I already told you this detail about my injured toe. If so, let me know, but here I go again.
The ride, I would have said before, was from Los Angeles to Rio, Wisc., fast I as I could go, mostly on the Interstates, long, long hours for several days. I had a brief visit here with my grandparents, and then rushed back home to L.A. by way of San Francisco, where I picked up a passenger for the last leg of the itinerary. I was in school then and had a summer job awaiting me. I might have already told you all of that, but did I mention, too, that I, on the return trip, coming through Nevada, slept one night on top of a concrete picnic table in a rest area posted with large-print warnings that rattlesnakes were residing there?
The signs did not say whether the snakes posed a nocturnal threat, but I figured staying up off the ground was a prudent pose to take, and so, in my jeans and jacket, and with only the starry sky above my head, I slept like a rock upon that rock. In the morning, though, in the dawn’s dim light, while still dreaming, I rolled out of bed and tumbled to the ground, striking, on my way down, the booted big toe of my right foot against a corner of the picnic table’s concrete bench, and probably fractured my toe.
I say “probably” because I am not sure. I didn’t get it examined or x-rayed, but I do know that, for the rest of that ride and even for months thereafter, my toe was too tender to lift the little shift lever on the 450. For every upshift, I swung my knee wide and used the inside of my ankle to tug the lever upward. Over time, I nearly scuffed a hole through the heavy leather on the side of my brown, hand-me-down work boots.
That is all. You have possibly heard from someone else that motorcycle travel can be dangerous, and I just wanted to add this little chapter to whatever I have said before. I will say, though, I did not encounter, eye to eye, any actual living rattlesnakes anywhere, at any time, in the celebratory summer of 1976.
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