Environmentally Safe?

          Something happened to me which moved me to write this short recollection...

          It was a beautiful, warm (60s), sunny fall day, with a fair bit of gusty wind. Looked like a great day for a ride, so I took the FXR for a little 40-mile spin. Did some highway time, did some (rather late) lunch time in a town about 20 miles away, and then did some back roads for a while, going back to the highway. Feeling fine, having a total blast of a time! The New England foliage was awesomely spectacular; this has to be the peak of the foliage season in this area...

          Just before I hit the on-ramp to the highway, I encountered a sheet of plastic; the color of a plastic milk bottle  —  that sort of "milky" off-white? It was about three or four feet long, and was flying across the road as I came along. I swerved, and I thought I'd missed it.

          As I approached the turn-off on to the highway ramp, I looked down; first to the left, then to the right. Couldn't see any plastic. "Guess I missed it, all right." (smiling)

          So I hit the ramp, low in third gear; accelerated off the ramp exit on to the highway, kicked up a couple of gears, and settled back in the seat, relaxed and moving right with the traffic. Nice day... Sunny... Warm... Pretty trees beside the road... I was smiling...

          Then I noticed some guy in a compact next to me; he was pointing down, and jabbing his finger downward. "Oh, shit  —  something's wrong!"

          I pulled off to the breakdown lane in a real hurry; I've discovered in the past that when someone does that, there really is something radically wrong. If a cager can see it, I know damn well I'd better stop fast and take a look.

          That damned sheet of plastic had caught under the engine, where I couldn't see it; and as I was riding, it flapped upward in the wind, and hit the hot exhaust pipes, welding itself to the pipes. "Shit! Shit!! Shit!!!" Isn't it odd... When things like this happen, we go back to a very basic kind of vocabulary?

          There was too much plastic welded on to the pipes to attempt to remove it all; only the part of the sheet that hadn't been welded would come off. Stank like hell, too, once the bike was stopped.

          So now the FXR sits in the garage, waiting for me to go out there tomorrow afternoon after I'm through working, and find some way of taking that cursed, burnt, globby plastic off those nice used-to-be-clean pipes...