Fear on the Road

But I love Halloween, and I love that feeling: the cold air, the spooky dangers lurking around the corner.
Evan Peters, American Actor

Lest Imagination Runs Away…

Riding my Vespa scooter through the countryside I began thinking about Halloween.  It didn’t take long for my imagination to begin creating scenarios straight out of the scary stories of my youth yielding a sense of fear on the road.

The healthy, life preserving fear of operating a two-wheeled vehicle, motorcycle or scooter, on the road remained intact.  Respecting, understanding and accepting the risk related to riding and performing accordingly is, at least for me, an essential element of being a competent rider.  But sometimes my imagination runs off…

The bare trees on empty landscape seemed ominous and twinged with foreboding — as if something bad had happened here.  My brain replayed scenes from old horror movies that would leave me spellbound late on a Saturday night as I would watch Bill Cardille’s Chiller Theatre on channel 11 WIIC in Pittsburgh.

Fear, Halloween and being scared was a lovely combination.

Turns in the Road

The weather has been sublime.  With few physical challenges — cold, rain, snow — both the scooter and my imagination could wander through a pre-Halloween landscape.  I’m surprised how often roads play a part in our collective imagination as places of danger.  Not the obvious traffic related stuff, but instead the pathological to supernatural occurrences.  A few movies that fuel the frightening possibilities of the road:

• Duel — Steven Spielberg’s 1971 directorial debut featuring a truck that terrorizes a driver on the road.
• The Car — Eliot Silverstein’s 1977 film of a mysterious car which goes on a murderous rampage, terrorizing residents of a small town.
• The Road — John Hillcoat’s 2009 film of a father and son braving life on a road through a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
• Walking Dead — AMC’s zombie series (and cable TV’s all-time most watched series) where you know every time a character heads out on the road something bad is going to happen.

I carry a lot of psychic baggage in my head available quickly to concoct a chilling idea of where the road is leading me.

I wonder if kids today are still watching scary stuff on TV after their parents go to bed…

Wandering Down the Road

The ride wasn’t nearly as scary as my imagination might create.  The day was mostly a slow, languorous journey through the fine, warm central Pennsylvania countryside. That’s a fine place to be.

But a rider always needs to be wary of the sudden appearance of a zombie.  Or a witch casting a spell that might cause said rider to trade a magnificent Vespa for a URAL or worse…