Once upon a time, 15-year-old X got her motorcycle license. For three years she was extremely responsible with this privilege, until she went to college.
Unlike her peers, who expressed their desire for rebellion in drinking, drugs, and sexually transmitted diseases, X decided her particular brand of youthful nonconformity would involve motorsports. Namely, street racing.
So, at 18, she set off to seek her fortune with a group of nighttime street-racers that, to be fair, met in a rural area that was unlikely to pose a risk to standard motorists. There were watchmen with walkie talkies (actually, I’m going to show my age, here, they mostly had those horrendous yellow phones that doubled as walky talkies, you remember those? the chirps?) who kept the area clear, and warned of any disturbances.
She went a few times. Raced a few times (won a few times!). It was all, frankly, anti-climactic after a steady diet of progressively more absurd Fast and Furious movies.
Until one night, when someone on watch-duty messed up. Or maybe this was a planned sting of some sort. But the cops arrived; multiple cars. And pretty much everyone ran.
Now, I’d never been in trouble in my life. I had a 4.0 and I was an only child with the definition of helicopter parents (excepting the motorcycle license, and no, I still don’t understand that logic. Can my 15-year-old get a motorcycle? Certainly! Can my 18-year-old headed to college next week have a curfew later than 8pm? Perish the thought! Anyway). In the split second I had to decide, my 18-year-old brain, in its infinite wisdom, said: Motorcycle fast. Police car slow.
So. You know. I…motorcycle fast-ed.
Immediately I was like. SELF!! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!! You just made this so much worse if they catch you!! But I was already in top gear going well over 100mph, so that train of thought quickly turned into: I must not get caught.
I don’t know if you’re aware of how much faster a 600CC motorcycle is than the average Crown Victoria, but just know that it’s a lot. Especially when the motorcycle rider is less than 100lbs.
So the half-dozen of us who all booked it the same direction, we know we’ve got at least one car following us, but they’re a fair ways behind. The trick is getting far enough ahead that you can quickly get off the road and hide without them seeing your exit. So we all start peeling off to find our hiding places.
Now, between our meeting location and my college, there was an IKEA. I’d bought the bookcase for my dorm there. And I’d unpacked the bookcase into my car in the IKEA parking lot, so I could throw away the giant cardboard box in the enormous blue dumpsters behind the store, rather than deal with it back on campus.
I head for the IKEA. I pull around back. I immediately turn off the bike and toe-walk my way between one of the dumpsters and the store wall, completely out of view of the street and most of the parking lot.
It’s literal minutes later that the cop car finally goes flying by, and evidently they don’t think, “hey, I should stop and check behind the IKEA dumpsters.” Several more minutes pass. No more cops.
At this point, the adrenaline turns into existential dread and shaking so bad that I have to put my kickstand down because my anxiety-ridden perfectionist body is not meant for this kind of stress, even when self-inflicted. I quietly have a panic attack, swear to never disobey the law again (unless it’s for civil protest), and, finally, when I’ve pulled myself together around an hour later, I slowly make my way home.
I never attended another race. Because I am a baby.
But I’m a baby who outran the cops, so.
A visual aid of 18-year-old X and her bike (named Shadowfax) (Shadowfax lived up to her name, that night. All hail.)
(To be clear, I do not endorse this behavior. I could have hurt or killed myself going those speeds or even put some innocent bystander in danger had other people been out and about that night. This was very, very, stupid.)
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