Boris Mihailovic Recent Twisty Bits IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS I have come to realise that motorcycling is far greater than the sum total of its constituent parts. Sort of like a Moto Guzzi. I think I have always known this on some subliminal level, but it became a conscious realisation a few weeks ago. It came to me one frosty, sub-zero morning in Sofala; the kind of morning where you find a crust of ice on the seat of your motorcycle, and your rancid, night-after breath mists the air in front of you with various noxious poisons your body has been trying to deal with while you slept. My mate Baron and I had just spent a tedious few minutes abjectly pushing my mate Biffa’s battery-dead SV up and down the main street of the little town with scant success. Apart from forcing men to drink strong liquor and sing Johnny Cash songs in front of an open fire, cold weather has a similarly deleterious effect on motorcycle batteries that aren’t at the peak of their game. And Biffa awoke to discover his battery sticking its acid-poor middle finger up at him. So we did what mates do. We pushed him up and down the street, wheezing like bullocks, and hating his guts, which is the right and proper thing when you’re wearing bulky bike gear and being made to exercise just after dawn. Of course the bike didn’t start so I rode off to the campsite up the road where more of my mates were camped and where I knew there were jumper leads. This was not the first time something like this had happened. And it will not be the last. And it is things like this, these little inconveniences, these annoying commercial breaks, these mechanical consequences (and even those rare major catastrophes) that all contribute to the endless richness of motorcycling. If your motorcycling thing consists almost entirely of little Sunday jaunts to all those dreary regular motorcycle ‘hang-outs’ where the cops lie in wait, where the coffee is mostly shit and where the usual collection of posers, pretenders and popinjays assemble, then you’re gonna struggle to comprehend what I’m talking about. But that’s alright. That is your struggle. My struggle, by comparison, enriches my life beyond measure. And it is the accumulation of those little things, those vital minutiae that make motorcycling what it is. The expression on the faces of my friends when we pull into some distant wind-scoured servo after having been gnawed on by the weather and the road, the angry red marks on their faces from the helmets and goggles, the hollow tonk as one of those helmets hits the ground because the rider was just too cold or tired or speed-blasted to make sure it was sitting properly on his seat, the spat curse that follows that sound, the helpless feeling of standing in some table-drain because your mate’s bike has refused to proceed, but yours works and some plan has to be cobbled together to make things right, because leaving him to be eaten by bears is inconceivable, is what forms unforgettable memories. The savage piss-taking as loose luggage is re-lashed, or a missing glove is searched for at some barren rest stop, the stomach-lurching spasm as you’re passed at criminal velocities and the chase that ensues, the interminable waiting for the slow bastards to get their shit together and their gear on when you’ve still got 1500km to go before you’re home and the clock is ticking, the shared cigarette in the shade of a cicada-filled tree as road-trains grind past you, the last of the luke-warm water you’ve been carrying for the past 400kms being glugged down and poured on your head, the internal muttering that goes on when you’re showing the reserve light and the nearest petrol is maybe, possibly, hopefully only 67km away, all flavours the rich stew of riding. And do I need to mention the brutal fines, the tedious licence suspensions, the awkward hospital visits, and the dreadful funerals that salt a motorcyclist’s life-long journey? But all of these disparate experiences serve to flavour the objectively simple paradigm of riding a bike in ways that make such a simple exercise far greater than the sum of its relatively simple parts. It is never boring. It can never be boring. Even the regular daily commute can be, and must be, an all-gland squirt-fest of skill and daring, and mostly success and self-congratulation. If you’re motorcycling caper isn’t doing this for you, then you’re doing it wrong. Seriously. Happily, you will be among the very first to sell your bike when the CTP prices are jacked into the stratosphere by our caring rulers and their even more caring buddies running the insurance scams. And since this idiot country is addicted to the myth of perpetual growth and endless profit, you can rest assured that this will happen in the not so distant future. The rest of us will pay whatever is asked. We have no choice in the matter. We’ve never had any choice in the matter.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 01:57:43 +0000
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