Road Dills
Strutharama, class, I love riding motorbicycles. But every now and then I wonder about life as we almost know we imagine it on this azure orb which hangs in space where mankind makes his home.
And I especially wonder about the life form known as “car drivers” and, more especially, I find my Poor Befuddled Self wondering heartily as to whether, as a life form, they are actually alive and what form they managed to get to at playschool.
Specifically, I figure that the way about 98.5527 per cent of car manipulators drive, they failed playlunch at school and are also manipulating something else aside from the car.
Yes, I am indeed a trifle peeved. You see, over the past few days I have been punting about the place on Yamaha’s absoflaminglutely debloodylightful SRV250 tying up a few loose ends to do with what could be called my “life” … but only if you weren’t taking a lot of heed of the dictionary.
I have had to go here and, surprisingly, there to let a few acquaintances and comrades, associates and degenerates, friends and disgraces know that work for Yours Very Knackeredly is now out of the conundrum for the Term Of The (unfortunately) Unnatural. Aside from the odd few hours at the keyboard, that is.
As I point out ad nauseam, I am as Rook As Crookwood. At times this situation depresses me to the point that I imagine attempting to top myself. What a Terrible Waste of a Terrible Waist.
That is, of course, my business.
But I want to die either of my accumulated illnesses or, should they become overwhelmingly unbearable, by my own rather shaky and pudgy hand.
I most certainly do not wish to die by the idiocy and lack of control of some addle-pated semi-simian who is sitting where he shouldn’t be. Namely, in the driver’s seat of a moving vehicle.
Here’s a list of the dills I met today …
1) Mr Red Ford. No relation to Robert. This chappie I came upon when I pulled up next to him at a set of lights. He had one arm out the window and the other along the back of the passenger’s seat. When the lights changed to green he accelerated away but didn’t bother to put a hand upon the steering wheel for some 200 yards at least.
At the next set of (red) lights I was next to him again. “Don’t worry about that nasty wheel,” I told him good-naturedly. “Keep hanging onto that door. You never know when it’s going to fly open and the seat is going to fall out.”
He started swearing at me, but I was in a good mood, so I added, “And doesn’t it piss you off having your $40,000 crapmobile blown off by a 250cc motorcycle?”
He was about to climb out of said crapmobile when the lights changed. Off we went to the next set of (red) lights. As he was climbing out of his crapmobile at the next lights, I assume to belt me one (and me in a helmet and padded leathers … silly boy), said lights changed. “Don’t worry,” I reassured him. “I have your number. I’ll call you in the morning.”
I did (I won’t say how) and I will. At about 3:30am, when I’ll say, “I told you I’d call you in the morning.”
2) Mr Blue Volvo. There had to be one. This bloke decided to overtake me on the Sydney to Newcastle expressway. Except he decided to stay in my lane while he did it. This entailed his running off the side of the road on my left and then trying very, very, very hard to knock the little Yamaha’s cute front wheel from underneath it when he pulled back in front of me. I should add here that I was travelling at slightly above the 110km/h speed limit (only a klik or two while riding downhill on a trailing throttle) when he loomed up in my mirrors obviously only barely in control.
I was in the left lane of three lanes with no other vehicles within half a kilometre in any direction, and when I saw him coming I veered hard to the left to get out of his way and leave him almost three lanes to be a total moron in. So he tried to undertake me on the left by leaving the road.
I don’t think he’ll ever win the Nobel Prize for Physics. But I know where he lives, so I’ll deliver another prize myself.
3) Mr Mazda. Proving there is no life before death, this wonderful bloke followed me for quite some time along the Pacific Highway. He drove about three inches from my taillight.
I tried speeding up. He stuck to the taillight like glue. I tried slowing down in places where the road was three empty lanes so he would overtake. He stayed put.
I tried to lose him by taking a scenic detour. He came with me.
Finally, when a whopping great fire truck in front of me slowed to a halt to turn right, I slithered past on the gravel to the left of the road and gave the little Yamaha a large dose of the sweet globular fruit.
After three klicks of ridiculously high speed, there was our little mate right back on my hammer. It’s a wonder the Mazda didn’t burst a fnorg valve in its effort to catch us.
Over a rise we went, to be confronted with a 60km/h speed sign, a couple of pedestrians and an ecilop car. Naturally I slowed to a legal speed.
Unfortunately, the gonzo in the Mazda must have been watching my rear tyre much closer than he was the road. I noticed large clouds of foetid smoke envelop me as he put nice neat flat spots on all four of his tyres in an attempt to slow his boggomobile down.
That scared him off a bit and I lost him in some very slow traffic later. Fortunately, I know where he works, and I’ll be visiting his boss in the not too distant future.
There we have but three of the dopes I saw today. If you recognise yourself as the operator of one of the vehicles in question, you will no doubt have handed in your bike license to the pleece by now following my remonstrance with you.
My arm is long and my vengeance is swift, saith me. And be sure your sins will find you out.
Cop you later.
By Peter Smith. Two Wheels, August 1996.
