In my latest opus, THE MAGIC OF THE BIKE PATH (A Jack Miller Senior Moment: Book Six), cosmic bike rider Jack Miller finds himself in a never-ending fog bank, where he meets some, ah, “unique” life forms. This includes Bigfoot, who Jack encounters as he walks alongside his bike. Here is the scene.
But I did scramble atop the gel seat a couple of minutes later when a huge, hairy two-legged creature emerged from the fog to my left.
“Whoa, pal, where ya going in such a hurry?” the huge, hairy two-legged creature asked in a voice that sounded a great deal like George Clooney. “I’m not gonna eat your face or suck out your brains or anything.”
The huge, hairy two-legged creature had approached so quickly that he now stood in front of the Nishiki, so a hasty departure would not have been possible anyway. I had to hope he was a man (ape?) of his word.
“Yeah, that’s better,” he said. “Just wanted to say hello and hidey ho, since you were passing by. You got a name?”
Hidey ho? “It’s…Jack,” I stammered. “Jack Miller.”
I had to look up at his head, given that the…creature stood about eight feet tall. Despite all of the brown hair covering nearly every other inch of his body, he had none on his smiling face, which appeared human-like.
“Nice to meet you, Jack Miller. That’s a fine-looking bike you have there.”
“Thanks.” Something just dawned on me. “Uh, are you…Bigfoot?”
His smile widened. “You can call me Bigfoot, or you can call me Sasquatch, or you can call me Yeti, or you can call me Wild Man, or you can call me Nantinaq, or you can call me Wood Ape. For that matter, you can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay, but you—”
“You doesn’t hasta call me Johnson!” I interrupted, grinning. How would a mythical creature know a gag from an old beer commercial? Maybe Bigfoot wasn’t mythical after all. “I’ll just call you Ray.”
“That’ll work.” We did a fist bump, and somehow I avoided five broken fingers, given that his hand was the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
Frame 352 of the Patterson-Gimlin film.
“So, Ray, obviously you guys are real,” I said, which sounded kind of dumb, but what do you talk about with Bigfoot? “You’ve been referenced in the myths and legends of numerous cultures, but aside from some true believers, most folks think that you don’t really exist.”
“Actually, Jack, my people and I are dimensional beings. We pop into your world on occasion because we enjoy messing with you.” He aimed a big hairy finger at me. “Present company excepted, you humans are a gullible lot.”
I nodded. “You got that right, Ray.”
“We have some laughs over how intense those true believers, as you call them, are in trying to convince others. And we love the hoaxes that some of them come up with to try and fool the masses. Hey, does this look familiar?”
Ray struck a statue-like pose that I immediately recognized. It looked like he had been running but froze in mid-stride, his left arm extended in front, the right arm behind him. His head was tilted way to the right, clearly looking at something over his shoulder.
“That’s the famous—or infamous—frame 352 of the film shot by two guys named Patterson and Gimlin in a Northern California forest,” I said.
Ray straightened up. “Hey, you know your stuff, Jack.”
“I researched it a while back for a story I was writing. Yeah, it happened in 1967 along a tributary of the Klamath River, and those guys swore it really took place. To this day people are still debating whether it was real, or just another hoax.” I looked Ray square in the face. “So was that you?”
Oregon has its very own Bigfoot Center.
Bigfoot flashed a devious smile. “My wife, actually. She’s always had a mischievous streak in her. Those two guys were shooting a documentary, and they must’ve had an orgasm when she let them see her. She came home right after that, and ever since then we’ve had a grand old time observing the true believers and the naysayers argue over whether it’s real or not. Quite entertaining, actually.”
I grinned as I shook my head. “I’m having a hard time getting my brain around this.”
“Hey Jack!” Ray suddenly exclaimed. “When you get back, you can tell everyone that you know the old film is real, and that Bigfoot himself told you.”
“Oh yeah, right,” I scoffed. “And you ran into Bigfoot where? they will ask? Oh, in the middle of a fog bank, I would tell them, after I rode through a portal off a cosmic tunnel on a mountain bike. I’ll come off as nuttier than the nuttiest of the true believers! No way, Ray. What happens in the fog bank stays in the fog bank!”
My new friend clapped me on the shoulder. Jeez, that hurt like hell! I gnashed my teeth and tried not to show it.
“Whoops, sorry, Jack. Hey, you’re okay, and I wish I could hang out with you longer. But me and a couple of buddies are gonna cross over into the Olympic National Forest up in your Washington State and scare the shit out of the campers. Should be a hoot! Watch the news reports.”
Ray eased over to the edge of the dense fog. Before penetrating it, he again struck that familiar pose. Yep, frame 352 of the Patterson-Gimlin film. Then, with a wink and a smile, he was gone.