ride up and down the street. All of the parents were frustrated with how loud his bike was but to my knowledge no one ever called the cops, as a bunch of the other neighborhood teens had motorcycles and would ride them on the streets for a few blocks to the foothills where they could ride outside city limits. Some of the teens had drivers licenses and some didn't, but all of the bikes were off-road bikes that were not street legal.

One day at the end of winter when I was in probably third or fourth grade, I showed up at home after school without my gloves. I had walked home from school, which was only two or three blocks away, so my mom sent me to retrace my steps to see if I had dropped them on the way home. As I was walking back to my school the kid with the loud motorcycle pulled up and asked me what I was doing. When I told him, he offered to give me a ride along the route so I could scan for my missing gloves.

I knew him — this wasn't a stranger-- so I hopped on the back of his bike. We took off along the road on the way to my school. When we got to the school property he rode over the curb and started racing up a grass hill that was partially covered with snow. His dirt-bike knobby tires started tearing up the soggy grass and leaving long muddy trails wherever we rode. I don't remember, but I was probably having a pretty good time ripping around the school property on the back of his bike.

A short time later we saw a police car come around the corner and head toward us. He immediately reached back and shoved me off the back of his bike and hit the throttle and took off on the road the opposite direction — I'm sure he planned to outrun the cops and knew I would be a liability in that situation. The cop car accelerated and chased him up the street.

I'm guessing he lost them pretty quickly — this was a not-uncommon occurrence with the guys on our street — and eventually the cop car returned to where I was now walking back home with a soaked, muddy backside (and no gloves still). The officers pulled up alongside me and asked if I knew who the kid was.

I paused, thought about him shoving me off the back of his motorcycle, and responded. "Yup. I'll show you where he lives."