I read this story and my heart started to thump hard, for me, this story is fillied with irony....
In the spring of 1964, I was a 14 year old freshman at Santa Clara High. I didn't have a learners permit, but I did have a Honda Trail 55, "cheater sprocket", knobby tires, straight pipe with "snufr'not" on/off twist baffles.
There was a small group of us, some legal, and some not as far as licenses. We had among us a small collection of Hondas, Hodakas, Bultacos etc...
Although Santa Clara Valley was on its way to becoming the crowded heart of technology, it wasn't there yet...
Many days after school we would all push our bikes, or ride as surreptiously as we could down side streets to some open dirt field, dry creek bed, or empty orchard.
On a nearly perfect spring day we were doing exactly that, and after getting chased out of one place and heading for the next. San Thomas Expressway was being constructed then, and we found a perfect riding spot!
A large expanse of cleared earth, an overpass with long high earthen approaches, no concrete poured yet (so no connection to the other approach). A dry creek bed ran between the two long dirt ramps. We gleefully rode up the long face toward the top, some of us rode parallel to the ramp on the cleared flat area. Looking up we could see the unmarked cable across the ramp, those riding up the ramp could not see it because the cable was below their horizan line, and blended well with the dirt surface. We were able to beep, yell and wave just in time to warn the riders headed up!
One of my buddies stopped with the 3/4" cable stretched taut along his mid-chest! We all went "whew" (and other choice words), ducked under, or went around, and continued to the top. We then rode down the steep face portion to the dry creek below. We all spit up at this point, some going one way, and some the other down the creek.
I rode awhile, got a little bored, turned around to go back the way I came because I didn't really know where there would be any other convenient exits from the creek bed.
When I came to the ramps, I turned to climb the steep face back to the top (a little bit of a challenge for a Honda 55, even with the trail sprocket!)...
As I crested the top an involuntary gasp escaped me.... before me there was a squad of police cars, a couple of fire trucks, an ambulance just leaving the area. An officer near me addressed me with a bull horn, had me shut off my bike, put my hands in the air, while another calmly held a shotgun against my chest. Needless to say at 14 years old, I doubt that I held my water!...
Glancing around I saw a police Harley on its side bent and broken. Officer Rickabaugh died at the scene when he hit the cable, that he could not see while responding to a call of juveniles playing on motorcycles at the construction site. When I came over the top, the police hadn't figured out what happened yet!
Months later when the widow sued the county and the construction company, my friends and I testified that yes we too nearly met our own demise. Although we weren't guilty of any particular crime at the scene, this event haunts me still.