Black Ice

I found myself looking forward to hanging out with my motorcycle buddies after work each day. We would meet up in the break room over at the FMS (Field Maintenance Squadron) barracks. Neither Steven nor I were members of the FMS but it became our hangout because that was where motorcycle-ese was spoken. Some nights we would venture out for a ride together.

My daily routine would start each day by getting up early and having breakfast across the street from our barracks. It was exactly 252 steps to the enlisted man’s chow hall; that is from my room to the front door of the chow hall. If you were in just about any other service you would call Air Force food “from heaven” but if you had to eat it every day it soon became mundane and sometimes it was better to go to the Base Exchange snack bar and microwave some cardboard pizza. However, breakfast was always good. I could eat breakfast there three times a day if I had to.

After breakfast I would start up my Honda 450 and ride up the hill to the flight line, show my line badge to the guard at the gate and ride on through to our shop. My ride would go past the hidden Command Center on the left, as I took a little S-curve to the right then to the left. The road would straighten out somewhat and I would cross the flight line. As I passed by the 22nd and the 53rd Tactical Fighter Squadrons I knew I was going in the right direction.

As I got close to running out of flight line, I had to climb up the next hill leading to the Zulu and Victor Alert areas, and I would turn left just before the gate to Victor Alert as I coasted into our shop area. All this was on access roads as the taxiway was reserved for military vehicles and war birds. Except for a few places where we would cheat a little.

I always tried to arrive early after that notorious day when Jack Burch, our NCO In Charge of our maintenance shop, pulled me aside and quizzed me about getting to work on time.

“But I got here at 0800 Sarge,” I responded to his initial question of punctuality. I showed him my watch that read 8:03 AM.

Then he gave me a lecture about arriving early and having a cup of coffee, being relaxed and ready to turn to without being “late.” He told me everyone else does it, in an attempt to use peer pressure. I didn’t tell him that peer pressure doesn’t work on me, I grew up in a large city and I almost never succumbed to the pressures of doing what everyone else was doing.

But the reason it worked on me was that it had been only three years since I lost my father and even though he didn’t look anything like my dad, I would have listened to anything he said just on the father image he projected. Sgt. Burch was to influence many things in the years to come for me. I realized that he was the person who pulled strings with the Air Force to have me stationed in Idaho with him after my orders were cut for me to go to Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, YEAH! It was my disappointment when the change came through canceling my gambling trip.

I guess we are getting too involved here so I will narrate back to the issues at hand, Black Ice.

My first encounter with the stuff was on my motorcycle early one morning. Any of you see what is coming? Yep, I slowed to take that little s-turn in front of the command post and BINGO; I slid right off the road into the bushes and my embarrassment. Actually I just went straight but it was a slide, as my brakes didn’t work for beans, on the ice.

Lesson learned for me. Watch out for black ice. Never try to lean into a turn when the road is wet or icy. Take turns slowly. I really tried to laugh it off that cold winter morning, out there in the little briar patch next to the command post. It wasn’t working. I was just trying to justify my actions. I was being stupid and there was nothing I could change about the past.

Not too long later I was hanging out with the guys and we all wanted to head over to Speicher Bahnhof for a little Saturday evening entertainment and maybe a couple of Bitburger Pils. If you were stationed at Bitburg you know where it was, around the backside of the airbase, close to the real town of Bitburg that went by the name of Spicer. And Bahnhof is the train station. Well this was a little gasthouse along side the road as you pass the cutoff for the train station.

The evening turned into night and we eventually had to head back to the base. And guess what was all over the road? Yep, black ice.

All over the place.

Can you imagine a gang of motorcycle riders all riding along in a pack with their feet on the ground? There we were, Steven on his Kawasaki triple, me on my Honda twin, Bach on his Triumph, there was even a BMW R75 and a Norton twin. All of us had our feet out trying not to become a statistic.

I even got mine into second gear a couple of times.

What a thrill ride. Frozen feet and all; warming them up on the tarmac.