"sausage_creature" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thompson Hunter S)

pure speed in third gear on a gravel-strewn downhill ess turn is quite
another.

But we like it. A thoroughbred Caf├й Racer will ride all night through
a fog storm in freeway traffic to put himself into what somebody told him
was the ugliest and tightest decreasing-radius turn since Genghis Khan
invented the corkscrew.

Caf├й Racing is mainly a matter of taste. It is an atavistic mentality,
a peculiar mix of low style, high speed, pure dumbness, and overweening
commitment to the Caf├й Life and all its dangerous pleasures.... I am a
Caf├й Racer myself, on some days -- and many nights for that matter -- and
it is one of my finest addictions....

I am not without scars on my brain and my body, but I can live with
them. I still feel a shudder in my spine every time I see a Vincent Black
Shadow, or when I walk into a public restroom and hear crippled men
whispering about the terrifying Kawasaki Triple.... I have visions of
compound femur-fractures and large black men in white hospital suits
holding me down on a gurney while a nurse called "Bess" sews the
flaps of my scalp together with a stitching drill.

Ho, ho. Thank God for these flashbacks. The brain is such a wonderful
instrument (until God sinks his teeth into it). Some people hear Tiny Tim
singing when they go under, and others hear the song of the Sausage
Creature.

When the Ducati turned up in my driveway, nobody knew what to do
with it. I was in New York, covering a polo tournament, and people had
threatened my life. My lawyer said I should give myself up and enroll in
the Federal Witness Protection Program. Other people said it had
something to do with the polo crowd.

The motorcycle business was the last straw. It had to be the work of
my enemies, or people who wanted to hurt me. It was the vilest kind of
bait, and they knew I would go for it.

Of course. You want to cripple the bastard? Send him a 130-mph
caf├й racer. And include some license plates, so he'll think it's a
streetbike. He's queer for anything fast.

Which is true. I have been a connoisseur of fast motorcycles all my
life. I bought a brand-new 650 BSA Lightning when it was billed as "the
fastest motorcycle ever tested by Hot Rod magazine." I have ridden a
500-pound Vincent through traffic on the Ventura Freeway with burning
oil on my legs and run the Kawa 750 triple through Beverly Hills at night
with a head full of acid.... I have ridden with Sonny Barger and smoked
weed in biker bars with Jack Nicholson, Grace Slick, Ron Zigler, and
my infamous old friend, Ken Kesey, a legendary Caf├й Racer.