Batavia is a small city in New York where I had my first real job and apartment. I graduated from Attica High School in 1983 and had taken two years of vocational education as a machinist in the BOCES program. The manager of Hub Mold, a local tool and die shop in Batavia, asked the machine shop instructor to send the two best students over for an interview. I got the job and started the day after graduation. Batavia does not have a lot of entertainment, so we would often go to the sand wash in summer. There had been a large gravel mining operation on the West end of town. After it closed down, the open pit mines filled with water to form huge, deep lakes. There are trails all around and several ways to get back there in vehicles. On the weekends, huge keg parties were a regular occurrence. You could swim in the quarries and even jump into them from the top. I would ride my bike off the biggest one then dive underwater with a rope to retrieve it. It was a real crowd pleaser. Sometimes the cops would raid the parties, but there was really no way for them to secure the area. There was a warehouse with a winery at the old Batavia Mill and we would get cases of wine take it to the wash.
I realized after a couple years in Batavia that it was a dead end for me and I needed to get out. After enlisting in the Air Force, I quit the job at Hub Mold and moved out to California with my dad until my enlistment date. He was living in Washington D.C. at the time and needed a change as well. We met up and drove out west, landing in Avila Beach. Life took me many different directions over the years and eventually to college. I quit school for a while and went back out west, this time to Oregon. Eventually though, I had to finish what I started at RIT. My car had died over the winter of 2005 my only mode of transportation was bus or bicycle. After final exams, I got on the old Takara and headed east out of Rochester. 40 miles later, I was back in Batavia. I thought I'd go by Jeff Crone’s house on Trumbull Avenue and see if he still lived there. His dad was sitting on the porch and Jeff came out to see who was at the door. We ended up grabbing a bunch of booze and riding our bikes out to the sand wash, just like old times.
Both of us were riding down the street with a bag under our arm and we cut off on the gravel road up to the tracks. About 50 yards in, I heard "Stop, I'll only chase you down." I never looked back, just peddled as fast as I could up the road and around the gate. Jeff had a mountain bike, but mine was a 10 speed road bike. Still, I remembered the trails and followed as quickly as I could. We went around the first wash and up to the edge of the old railroad bed that forms the boundary of the wash. We tossed our bikes in the brush and hid near the top. A four wheeler cop came down the railroad bed from the other direction and parked about 50 feet from where we were hiding. He just sat there for about 15 minutes and waited. After he started up the quad and continued down the trail we rode in on, we grabbed the bikes and rode down the railroad bed as fast as we could. It turns into all farms and fields back there, so we cut into the woods and headed toward Richies Bar on Route 33. It took about an hour and a half to carry our bikes through the woods to the bar and we locked them up out back. We walked in expecting the cops or something, but it was just a bunch of regulars and they paid us no attention. After about 5 drinks or so, we called a cab back to his house. He took me out to every bar in town and we got trashed. I didn't have much cash, so he hooked me up for the night and I crashed at his place. The next morning, I hiked back the same way through the wash, grabbed the stash we hid, got my bike from the bar, and headed for Buffalo. Two days and 85 miles on a bicycle; what an adventure that was! It is kind of funny how things come full circle in life sometimes. Sure glad I didn't have to spend the night in jail. Good times.