A large crowd gathers for the biannual Slimey Crud Run in Wisconsin. Photos by the author.

This essay first appeared in Motorcycles Are Magic: An Anthology, edited by Melissa Holbrook Pierson with assistance from George Sarrinikolaou and published in 2021 by 10mm Socket Press. Pierson, the author, participates in the legendary Slimey Crud Run and explores how motorcyclists stay connected, intended or not.

The invitation to dinner might have been a spring petal on the wind, gone by unseen in the turn of a head. How did I manage to hear the ding of the incoming text, even as it mimicked a tone identical to the imperative summons of the hotel desk bell, over the layered noise of so much coming and going" It configured itself from the molecules of the air of the bar at the airport Chili?s, where I sat killing two hours between flights. The name of the person who had issued it was ?Jeff,? to whom I?d been ?introduced,? also by text, that morning. He was the vague someone I was told would help procure a bike for me to ride in the vaguely understood run I?d attend the day after I gave a talk at the Black Earth Library. This was the reason I was downing Sam Adams in the first place in the Chicago airport en route to Wisconsin.
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