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I get to scare people half my ageA reader sent me a letter last month, asking why the photograph of me on this page featured a motorbike. I referred him to the editor because I have no idea why I am pictured on a motorbike and can only assume that the editor gets some sort of weird pleasure out of featuring a geriatric columnist looking like an idiot.
I always have loved motorbikes, though.
However, they haven’t enjoyed me much. I remember 30-odd years ago, I hopped aboard my brand spanking new Moto Guzzi 850T3 on a sunny Sunday morning and was able to get all of 300 metres from home before ending up with a Volkswagen Golf parked on my foot.
The driver had been dithering about from one side of the road to the other, looking for an address, when I tried to overtake her. I saw danger and stopped dead. She didn’t, and turned across my path, running over my foot.
Of course, I wasn’t wearing boots. I’d thrown away those years ago when I had a little fold-up Honda monkey bike in the boot of my car to beat rush hour traffic and kept forgetting to take off my boots when I went into meetings.
Also, people in buses used to laugh and point at me, mouthing words such as: “Hey, check that breeker with the biker boots” as they roared past and forced me into the gutter.
Anyway, back to the middle of the road with a Volkswagen parked on my foot.
Three broken toes later, and eating a stale croissant at home with my leg in the air instead of a hearty English breakfast at Sun City with the prospect of my leg over my pillion passenger a little later in the day, I decided that riding bikes on roads was too damned dangerous.
So, after two decades of deliberation, I bought myself a 200cc Yamaha Blaster quad bike and headed off with it on the back of my bakkie to Midrand where I was told there were “40 kilometres of gentle undulating trails absolutely perfect for quad bike beginners”.
I parked near a bunch of off-road bikers and asked a young Darth Vader about the whereabouts of the quad track. When he’d finished laughing at my old Nava helmet, gumboots and gardening pants, he pointed vaguely north and I headed off excitedly for my first taste of gentle undulating trails that were bound to be absolutely perfect for a quad beginner like me.
Unfortunately, I took a wrong turn and ended up on a motocross track surrounded by screaming two-wheelers and faced by a barrage of ruts, corrugations and whoop-de-do’s roughly the height of Table Mountain.
Not wanting to look like a complete arse, I opened the throttle wide, muttered a prayer and held on for dear life.
It all went quite well actually, considering that I was operating at about 300% above my competence.
I stood up on the foot pegs to avoid a broken back and multiple hernias and would have made it all the way round if my damned baggy gardening pants hadn’t let my equally ancient underpants slip down from my hips and strangle my knees.
Nonetheless, I persevered with quad biking until I pulled a hamstring and had to fight off my nursing sister neighbour, intent on administering a suppository the size of the Goodyear blimp.
Not to mention the agony of being rescued by my son after rolling into a ditch and ending up with the quad on top of me.
That didn’t hurt at all actually, but what had me screaming was when my nasty little offspring lifted the bike off me by shoving his booted heel right into my nethers and shouting, “One, two. three, heave!”
Not easy to reprimand your children from a supine position, covered in mud, wearing an old Nava helmet and speaking in a high voice.
I also just had turned 60 and decided my testicles had taken enough pounding to last 100 years, so I thought I’d get into something much more sedate and bought a 250cc Beta Trials bike. Marvellous Italian craftsmanship and the ability to climb three-metre walls and park on its back wheel up a pole.
I discovered that this looked much easier on television than it did in real life, and that riding about over rocks and things all day without ever being able to sit down was not my cup of tea. Quite apart from the fact that the first time I tried to ride the thing, it got away from me, threw me off and burnt my leg on the exhaust.
At last now I have found the answer. A black and bright chromed 1 200cc Harley Davidson with Screamin’ Eagle exhausts on which I can tootle about at two miles fortnight and occasionally blast off from stop streets at the speed of light amid a sound like a bunch of thunderstorms.
It is extremely relaxing and satisfying, particularly when one is able to go about scaring people half your age.
Chris Moerdyk
