it's pure disdain. she hates my car. she hates my carbs. my hands are mostly clean most of the time, don't know why that matters.

i push it out of the garage late at night, gravity it down the driveway, flick on the lights as i whip the front end down the street. building up speed, clutch in, 2nd gear, ignition on, sidestep and she's alive. it's an illicit late night love affair, a rendezvous of mechanical mayhem.

glide out of the subdivision, lights out in all the bedroom windows, slumber for the rest of them, but its time for me to come alive, to live my secret life. far enough away now to get the right foot working. she's less than a liter, but no muffler makes the glorified tractor motor sound nasty. I floor it, vacuum increases, fuel flow increase, rpm's increase, noise increases. air buffets over the brooklands. i engage 3rd with out touching the clutch, just because. It's the long gear, the do it all gear, ive picked a route just for it, i wont shift till i need to pull into the garage. 45 feels like 90 as i carve through rural pennsyltucky. lever shocks in bad need of a rebuild making the float seem even greater. contact patch, suddenly forefront in my mind. why? yeah right, i have almost none, 13x3. the drums scrub a modicum of speed when needed. Lift instead, the burble and pop is glorious. tonight Lucas is my friend, just enough lumens escaping to know I'm still on the ribbon of asphalt.

We soldier on, lean far out over the door, fingertips nearly brushing the crown of the road. Too soon I see the end of the jaunt, too much of a good thing and all that shit, whatever. Home. Park. Shut off the engine, sit there and listen to the cooling of metal. It's a meditative state, everything went well, now bask in it, the almost silence is the post script. I just walk over the door, look back at the car, I really need to put the passenger sear back in.