Two days later, I pulled up to Tommy’s sprawling house in the Black Hills. The man who greeted me looked nothing like the wild-eyed biker I’d known – with his neatly trimmed gray hair and reading glasses – but his handshake was still iron.
“You look like hell, Ghost,” he said, grinning.
“You look like my accountant,” I shot back.
We laughed, and for a moment, it was 1975 again.
Inside his garage was a medical office that would have impressed any hospital. Tommy had always been unconventional.
“I’ve been working with aging athletes,” he explained, preparing an injection. “This is a legitimate medical treatment – not some back-alley bullshit. Stem cell therapy for joint regeneration.”
As he worked on my knees, Tommy told me about his research, his divorces, his kids. I told him about the brothers we’d lost, the roads I’d traveled, the way the club had changed.
“You know,” he said, pressing a bandage over the injection site, “there’s more than one way to ride into the sunset.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”
Tommy smiled. “The Medicine Wheel Run is tomorrow. Five hundred miles through the Black Hills in a single day. No stops except for gas. It’s become a Sturgis legend – a test of endurance that even the young guns respect.”
