Excerpts From The Life Of A Logging Camp Kid

Episode Thirteen: The ATV Installment

Even if I looked this cool; I still wouldn't ride as a passenger.

There is a saying: Always a bridesmaid, never the bride. Well, my variation of that old phrase is: Always the driver; never the passenger. My time at the logging camp had a lot to do with the development of my ATV philosophy. Here are a few examples that will cast light as to why I have that mantra:

1. The sad state of the middle finger on my right hand.

I tend not to use rude gestures, but my ability to flip the bird in its purest form was cruelly snatched from me due to riding passenger on a three-wheeler. Most of the ATV's in camp were brake-less three-wheelers from the 1980's. I have to admit that I loved to ride out onto some gelatinous, glacial tidal mud, lock the handlebars, and proceed to spin the old vehicles in endless circles. Throwing mud at each other with glee until we ran out of fuel was the greatest, and I can still hear our laughs and occasional chokes as we ate a face full of sandstone jelly. However, one time I was riding passenger on the back of a Honda 125 three wheeler. We were flying along at about the ten mile marker past camp. Our road was cut with a pretty severe crown due to it being composed out of sandstone gravel that liked to turn into a viscous mud when it rained. Which was of course, almost every day. As the road only existed to move logs, they really didn't care about it's ATV worthiness, and as my driver began veering toward the ditch from the height of that lofty crowned road, I began to wonder why she didn't begin to downshift to slow us down. As we hit the ditch and I flew through the air, I vaguely remember thinking that, "Wow, that's what alder trees look like upside down." Somehow, as we landed, the handlebar crushed my upward extended middle digit. It snapped like a piece of dry birch bark, and my first thought when I caught my wind again was that there was no way in Hades that I or my parents were paying to charter a plane to Yakutat so that I could have my finger set at the doctor's. I've included pictorial proof of my most excellent finger setting skills. Every time someone asks me to ride as a passenger on anything, I just glance at my middle finger and hard pass on that offer.

One glance at that joint is solid proof that I didn't miss out on a career as an orthopedist.

2. The completely legible On/Off switch scar

Before I had the driver/passenger enlightening, I endangered myself at the hands of many a driver. One of the girls that I lived in camp with enjoyed whipping around with my 3 feet of hair streaming behind us. Maybe it made her feel like she was astride a Pegasus and my hair was the mythical horse's tail. Or maybe I was just a bit of a masochistic, naive idiot. Perhaps it was a bit of both. Anyhoo, We were out with a bunch of camp inhabitants for a day ride at the beach. Crissy started flying toward a creek bank. As we got closer I remember yelling, "Crissy! The physics are all wrong! Abort!" She responded to my sage advice by gunning the three wheeler. We hit the vertical sandbank with such force that my knee busted out the on/off switch as I sailed over the handlebars. Even after all of these years, the on/off letters are still legible. At least I landed in sand.

3. The Testicle Testament.

Crissy's father also offered up a bit of wisdom in the passenger department. The man was drunkenly launched off of a three wheeler with enough force that it ripped open his dangly bits in the most grotesque way. We earned quite a bit of money from him as he needed a large amount of ice from the cookhouse for a couple of weeks. His pale countenance flashes before my eyes when I think about sitting astride any motorized vehicle in the form of a passenger. How bout NOPE!

4. The Alder Tree Atrocity

One of my worst wipeouts and greatest of my no-passenger charter articles happened when I was flying down a heavily switch-backed road on the back of yet another three wheeler, as a, you guessed it, passenger. This time I was riding with a boy! Gasp! I know, you'd think a fifteen year old girl would know better! We had gained an impressive amount of speed, and I remember yelling into Jimmy's ear, "You need to downshift before the next corner, it's loaded with washboards!" He didn't downshift. I remember thinking, as an alder punji stick embedded into my flintlocks that, when I could breathe again, I was going to beat Jimmy to death. He barely had a scratch. I looked like I had been mauled by an alder-clawed grizzly. It must have been impressive to behold, me berating a boy that was a good foot taller than me, all while clad in twigs and alder leaves cascading from my hair. The blood streaming from my mouth added a subtle effect, of that I am sure. His stupid, non-able to take a corner self had to walk back to camp.

A lovely tree, Its beauty is less enjoyable when its sticking out of your backside like a porcupine quill.
Source

There are many more instances of my ATV catastrophes, but these occurrences stand out most in my history as the greatest examples of why I don't ride as passenger but rather drive whenever an off road vehicle is around to be rode on. I just don't think that I would bounce like I used to.

And as always, unless otherwise cited, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's spark plug build-up smeared iPhone.