The Bike Life

The Shining

by Ken Bingenheimer on January 31, 2010 at 03:46AM
© Johnathon Evans
© Johnathon Evans

Have you ever been out on the road and stayed at a really creepy place? I’m not talking about dumps. Heck, we’ve stayed in plenty of those, like the place in Kemmerer, WY, where it turned out the three rooms next to ours didn’t have roofs. You see, they’d had a fire awhile back . . .

No, I’m talking about places that make you think of that old Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall flick, “The Shining.” Or maybe the Bates Motel from “Psycho.” The OFMC stayed in one of those places a few years ago.

Some years prior to that, on our annual OFMC motorcycle road trip, we had been crossing the Big Horn mountains up in Wyoming going east on US 14. We were pressing on to Sheridan that day but coming around a bend we scooted past a lodge with some cabins that struck me as very appealing and perhaps a place to plan on stopping in the future.

Skip ahead some years and our route was taking us back over the Big Horns, this time from east to west. John and I agreed that there was this place up there where we wanted to spend the night, but when I pulled in to the lodge I had in mind it wasn’t the same one he had in mind. Didn’t matter; it was a nice-looking place.

Shall we just say the people running the place were a little odd? Taking care of prospective guests seemed to be the last thing on their mind, and we kind of got the feeling we weren’t welcome. It almost felt like, to them, we didn’t even exist. At John’s suggestion we mounted up again and went on another 10 miles or so to the place he had been thinking of.

The problem with that place, however, was that it cost more than double what the first place was asking. Reluctantly, we headed back. Standing at the front desk, no one seemed interested in taking our money. And again it was like we didn’t exist. I finally got very pushy, corralled someone and demanded to be registered, and they deigned to check us in and give us keys.

Getting dinner in their restaurant was the same. Hello, is there anyone who would like to wait on us?

We finally ate and spent some time shooting the bull on the deck outside our rooms, talking about how weird this place was. Would “Here’s Johnny!” be awakening us from our slumbers? But the night passed uneventfully, with the exception of Dennis’s Gold Wing falling over as its sidestand sunk deeply into the rain-saturated gravel of the parking lot.

In the morning we agreed to eat breakfast up the road. Good-bye. So long. We won’t be troubling you any further. Just one final chill down our spines as we left, to send us on our way.

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About The Author

In addition to writing for Rum Bum, Ken Bingenheimer writes for The Examiner, as well as other publications. A lifelong writer, and a longtime biker, he figures that writing about motorcycles is the perfect job.

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