Dirt surfing

The roar of the engine was loud, but was muted by the bandana tied around Mike's head, pulled down over his nose and mouth to keep the dust out of his lungs, partially held in place by the sunglasses that hugged his face to do the same for his eyes. He sat in his UTV atop the mountain, looking over the paths that he had available to him, looking not for which one was going to be the easiest, but which would be the most fun. Boulders, sharp turns, thin roads. Those were the things that caught his eye. All with the backdrop of dozens of mountains of multi-colored stone, covered in trees and shrubberies that accentuated the hard lines of the stone's history.

With a kick of the gas pedal, and a kick of the engine, he was off. By all accounts, he wasn't moving all that fast. Twenty-five, thirty miles an hour tops, his speed was nothing compared to that of the cars down on the highway miles away. When he topped the hills, he could see them in the distance, small moving dots on straight lines. They couldn't feel the wind like he could, blowing in his face, and in his hair. They might even call him crazy for loving the way the dirt he knocked loose was ripped up by the wind and his engine, whipping around his head and chest and arms. The way that it reminded him he was alive, and not just a machine telling another machine to move.

He flew over the rocks, the impact of his wheels hitting the ground hard when he least expected it rocking him to his core. It tested his core and his arms, his ability to keep control of both himself and of his vehicle. He watched the road, felt the way it bucked his wheels, and at times he let go of the wheel completely. At times, he had brought a few friends up to ride the trails along with him. They had screamed when he let go of the wheel, and the fact that he had regained complete control of the wheel only a few seconds later had not consoled them. They couldn't understand that it was a necessity. That holding on in those moments could break his fingers or arms as a rock underneath grabbed his tire and yanked it in the opposite direction.

He was well accustomed to traveling by himself because of that. So the excited scream of his passenger - a cute girl he had picked up a few weeks ago - was something he was unaccustomed to. She didn't seem to mind in the slightest as he flew, as he rocked, and as the glass of his half windshield and the closed top roof rattled the way that he knew his bones were. She called out for him to go faster, to fly higher, to hit harder. She was a freak, just like he was.

He could get used to having a passenger like that.