Motorcycle Madness and Midnight Manicotti

By Elizabeth Heaton

Parents will go to almost ANY lengths for their kids, even grown kids. This is a wild tale
of parents who leave their home in England, and put their own lives and careers "on hold"
to fly to NYC, to help their daughter, Willa, whom they suspect may be having a nervous breakdown.
She flees the restaurant where she's a chef, to head to California to start up her own eatery.
Her parents, Liz and Colin Archer decide to hop on a motorcycle and travel the East Coast,
Canada and the rest of America, in her tracks, all the way to Santa Monica, California, to help
their daughter make her dream of having her own restaurant come true. Follow along on this zany, wild goose chase, to far flung locales, and bizarre situations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503562257

Elizabeth Heaton

A self-employed artist and restorer of antique and classic autos who shares her life with her husband of over forty years. They work together each day at their business. They supply vehicles for the entertainment industry and the music industry for film and photo shoots. When not working at their business, the author writes poetry, short stories and novels. The husband-and-wife team also very much enjoys recording and playing music when they can. Playing guitar and singing brings them great fun and joy.

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Copyright © 2015 by Elizabeth Heaton.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/24/2015

Xlibris

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People’s names have been changed

in this tale for their privacy.

To my husband.

To my brothers Dennis and Floyd.

To my sisters Carol and Kathryn.

To my nieces and nephews.

To my friend Gayle.

THANK YOU TO:

My publishing consultant

Jimmy Barnett.

And to Lorraine for her help

in remembering all the stories!

And to all the craziest I have known

in the music and cooking worlds.

In my life, it seems as if every whacko or dramatic event starts with a phone call. I am probably not unique in this phenomenon. This time, it wasn’t from Lorraine but from my daughter’s boyfriend Derek.

Willa’s gone AWOL, and she’s been fired from the restaurant! She hasn’t shown up to the apartment in two days, and I’ve run out of places to look for her!"

Have you checked with all her friends? After his first words, I was panicked, but I wasn’t going to show Derek that I was. "You live with her. Where do you think she would go?"

Yeah, I checked with her mates from the kitchen and the people at the apartment, and all her ‘pertinent’ stuff, like her cell, purse, suitcase, are gone, and I am fucking wigging out here! Everyone tells me that you cannot file a police report until someone is missing for forty-eight hours, as the cops can’t be bothered.

Right at this time, while I am on the horn with Derek, I hear Colin’s ring tone go off. He is talking to Willa. I told Derek we have found her, and I would call him back as soon as we got the scoop. I love Derek to death. He is the perfect mate for my daughter, who is mercurial, wild, and prone to wide swaths of emotions and plans. God love her, she is like me, but as I’ve grown older, I realize it’s better to tamp it down a notch, especially since my husband Colin is so laid-back and reserved.

Derek is three years younger than Willa. He is a striking blue-eyed blond beauty from California, who had parents in the restaurant world. They had two successful places but have semiretired. I believe Derek wanted to ride Willa’s coattails since he knew in his heart she would have a restaurant of her own. She’s a uniquely creative gifted chef.

Turns out, Willa made plans with someone who was doing a drive-away (someone who is paid to drive a car to a certain destination) out to California. When she called, she was somewhere in Pennsylvania. She had made friends with the couple and all was OK. I was crushed for Derek since he had no clue that Willa was having a love-hate affair with her lothario boss for over a year. If I knew, being so far away, what was going on, I can’t imagine why he did not know, but that is how people sometimes block out what they don’t want to know.

I gave it a few hours, after consulting with my husband, before telling Derek that she had left and was on her way out to California. We decided that it would be best if we made some reservations to fly over to New York. We hopped the next plane. When we arrived, we shot straight to their apartment in the Bronx. It was somewhat of a communal affair, much as I had lived in Laurel Canyon, with people coming and going at all hours and most of them in the foodie world. Derek was a sous-chef at La Cocque Viet where Willa was a chef proper. When we got there, he was in complete devastation. She had taken everything, so it had been planned. He said that Willa and the owner, Falcone, had had a stupendous row, with pots, pans, and food flying and F-bombs echoing off the walls, when she stormed out. He could not leave—it would have meant his job. He needed to pay the rent on the apartment.

On the plane ride over, Colin and I discussed what we might do. Colin said that he had always wanted to do a motorcycle trip across the United States. His feeling was that we shouldn’t be there in California, right when she arrived, to bail her out as so many parents of the era were doing. He thought it might be good for her to try to figure things out. The idea of riding a motorcycle across the United States with Colin seemed so romantic, and at that point in our lives, things had gotten way too tame for me, so I was up for it.

We were staying in a hotel nearby and asked Derek to come and talk things out. After a few beers, he was a sobbing mess and confessed that he knew it wouldn’t last. She was way more ambitious than he was. He was just thrilled to be where he was with her. He had no grandiose plans for the future the way she did. We mentioned our idea of maybe going out to California to hook up with her and see what her plans were. He said he was in a bind and could not go; his commitments meant his livelihood. He wanted us to keep him informed as to her welfare at least. Willa was pretty much his whole world. When we were taking him back to the apartment to drop him off, we noticed that he had a motorcycle. We inquired about it.

He said, "Fuck it! Take it, I don’t need it. The only reason I had it was because Willa liked it! I walk to work anyway…"

We, of course, offered to pay him for it, and it turned out, he had some debts that were dogging him, and he accepted. This motorcycle was a Honda 350 SL. It’s basically a dirt bike with knobby tires. It seemed in perfect condition and had what is called a cissy bar on the back of the seat, where you could attach a backpack.

Back in our hotel room, I began making a list of the things I knew we would need for such a trip. We did not let on to Willa that we would be going to California just yet. We had never undertaken such a monumental adventure, but we both felt the timing was right. Colin’s band commitments back home in England were not so great that they couldn’t get someone to fill in for the month or two that we would be gone. So I made my list. We found an outdoor camping and hunting co-op. We purchased a tent with a rain fly, two rolls of padding for the ground, two sleeping bags, a camp cooking kit with stove, fuel, and pots and cups, a coffee pot, two little pillows, two buck knives, some rope, two plastic bag rain ponchos, plastic forks and spoons, a lantern, some candles, waterproof matches, basic canned goods, an opener, and a helmet for me; Derek gave Colin his.

We purchased a large backpack and attached it to the cissy bar. We also found some tools in a tool kit, which we attached to the backpack with a bungee cord, in case we needed to do some on-the-road repairs on the bike. Colin was a motorcycle buff and knew all about them, mostly British bikes though.

I got a good map, and we were pretty much set. I decided this would be a very good test for us. I had always