Their bikes had been grooving and gliding the past two days. They had made good time and covered beaucoup miles across the southwest desert emptiness. If the bikes had been their dancing partners, they would have said that they were cutting a rug like they used to say back in the 1920s. None of them were partial to the modern dance slang compliments like busting a move. It is big-time bad luck to associate the word bust with one’s motorcycle when you’re thousands of miles from home.

With their scooters two-step boogying to the road’s improvisational Cajun music, all the bikers had to do was point the way and keep themselves and the bikes and themselves fed and rested. They kept on smoking and spoking the roads.

They were sure that they had left their troubles firmly behind. Their 100 horse powered V-twin divas were lean and mean. All they needed were three more days to make it to the fourth and final corner. Just three more steps and they’d have gone door to door.

From New Mexico into Texas and Louisiana they’d been riding the rim of a great vacant southern highway. Howling on Texas crude high test, the motorbikes’ fire chased away each dawn’s chill air and fading half-moon. Their three bike formation was so knife-edge tight and imposing that big diesel trucks stayed away from rolling down their backs. Two consecutive days averaging over 620 miles each was their down payment on exiting this desert Big Empty. They couldn’t wait to hit that Florida border.

This day would take them from Baton Rouge to Pensacola Florida where the US Navy had located its aviation museum. Augustus and Marlow had a need to visit the old aluminum airframes that had occupied a significant portion of their military careers. After an afternoon visit, they highballed it to Tallahassee before the final two day push to Key West via Lake O and the Everglades.

This was the last day of significant slab time. They quickly finished off Louisiana, then Mississippi and Alabama. At a Florida rest stop, they were ambushed by the aromas of freshly mowed, sweet-smelling Bermuda grass and the Gulf’s warm salt waters. Marlow was back in his Eff-Ell-A!
After five hours and 300 miles, they entered the cool confines of the museum. As they wandered around the exhibits, they spent hours telling tales and swapping lies about young men and their flying machines. If their bespectacled eyes didn’t trick them, they spotted more than a few battle damage patches on the venerable birds’ fuselages from long ago wars in East Asia.

They spent an hour in the museum’s recreated Cubi Bar Café. The cafe was reconstructed using memorabilia from the Officers’ Club at Cubi Point Naval Air Station. For 40 years of deployments, squadrons and other units customarily presented a plaque or emblem to the Officers’ Club as gestures of thanks and remembrance. The Club closed in 1992 when the US Navy finally left the Subic Bay base complex in the aftermath of the Mount Pinatubo devastation. The recreation was chockfull of the best of the best. Before they ended this side trip down a nearly forgotten memory lane, they toasted the skills of those who caught the wire on the Cubi Point catapult in the “Red Horse Cat-House.”

After exiting the museum into the humid Florida panhandle air, they pressed on another 200 miles to an overnight stay in the Sunshine State’s capitol city.

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