"Leo Frankowski - Stargard 7 - Conrad's Time Machine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

interactions within motorcycle gangs. That's how I bought the BMW. Forming our
own gang will be much pleasanter and safer than trying to join the Hell's
Angels."
Great. Me they stuff under a mountain. For him, they buy a motorcycle.
"Hell, why not?"
"Excellent! Ian will be with us, at least at first."
"Ian McTavish? What's he doing with himself?"
"He got his bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering two years after you left, and a
second one in World History at the same time. He has been working for General
Motors ever since. He has three weeks vacation due him, and we're to pick him up
in Michigan this coming Friday."
"Great. Who else?"
"No one. Just the three of us."
"So three people constitute a motorcycle gang? I mean, if you've got this paper
to write . . ."
"I can pad it out a bit. No one reads these DOD things anyway."
Hasenpfeffer lent me a tie and made me wear it to the graduation ceremony. I
thought it looked funny with a T-shirt and a leather jacket, but it was his
show. It was about six hours of boring people proving how boring they could be,
and after all that, they didn't even give him his diploma, just a blank roll of
paper. The real one was to be sent later. Much later, as it turned out.
The party afterwards was worse than the ceremony itself, with all the grads and
their families standing around while the professors came in, "made an
appearance," and left as soon as possible.
I'm patient enough to put up with things like that for old friends. Once in a
while. At least I didn't have to stand in formation.
In the course of the day, about a dozen slender young women came up to say
goodbye to Hasenpfeffer. They each got a smile, a hug, and some vague promises
about seeing each other again. He politely introduced each of them to me, but it
seemed that I wasn't somebody that they wanted to meet. They each left as soon
as possible.
That night and the next morning, we got all his stuff packed and a moving
company hauled most of it away for storage. A half dozen more girls came by for
their goodbye kisses, and one of them spent the night with him. He actually
invited the last two of them to spend the night, but with me, since he was
already occupied, but they developed pressing engagements elsewhere. They both
left at a dead run, although one of them stopped to see if I was following, and
to pick up a rock.
The two of us were on the road Friday morning at ten with a clear blue sky above
us.
We took the short cut through Canada, and 401 is a good place for road bikes. I
was glad that Hasenpfeffer had bought a BMW because people who own them don't
much like rolling with those who ride all the lesser breeds.
It's not that we're uppity, so much, though pride has a certain amount to do
with it. It's just that a BMW is about the only machine that can go on forever
without breaking down. I had to stop running with a buddy in the service because
his Honda had an average of three mechanical problems a day, and that sure ruins
a trip.
But with good machinery between our legs, we knew that there wouldn't be any
holdups, so we could afford the time to make about four beer stops and load up