quarantine after posting up pictures of a trip
they did... a year ago.
The times they are a-crazy, huh?
You only have to look at the on-line caperings
of Editor Ben here. Bastard’s been filming
himself doing push-ups every day. I keep telling
him he should be doing them in the nude or
wearing a nice bonnet if people are to seriously
believe he’s fighting the Plague Boredom on
Social Media. He keeps deleting my comments.
My friends are also locked-down to various
degrees. Of course, the more they drink the less
locked-down they feel, or the more paranoid
they become about getting the Plague. It’s a
rich conflict. The really pissed ones are
sharpening shovels and axes and forming
legions to march on China to exact revenge
for the eating of Plague-bats, or something.
But in the main, they are bored. And this
boredom is tinged by concern. Not fear,
of course. Just mild concern. They are
motorcyclists, after all. They feed on fear and
are therefore used to it. Panic-braking into a
decreasing radius hairpin at 170km/h is where
true fear lives – not sitting in a house in your
underpants, illuminated by Netflix and
nourished by lager, wondering if the neighbours
will dob you in for wheelieing your bike up the
street in your girlfriend’s underpants. That’s just
boredom. And bored hands are the devil’s tools.
So it’s fair to say most of us will be hardcore
Satan-worshippers before this is over.
All the motorcycles we own are now cleaner
than they were since they were bought new.
Every nut has been kissed by a spanner. Every
hole in the discs has been swabbed with a
cotton ball (it’s not like the missus has been
using them to put on make-up lately, is it?), and
every skerrick of filth has been expunged from
the deepest engine crevice. Chains have been
cleaned and lubed and adjusted, then re-adjusted.
The bike itself has been moved several times,
with each new position in the garage offering a
new viewing angle for when you drink beer and
stare at it with fond memories of when you
used to ride.
If your bikes were bought second-hand, then
they are now worth more than they were when
they were purchased. New tyres, new air in those
tyres, 4367 coats of bees-wax polish, and cables
so lubed and greasy they leave drip marks under
the bike. Your hands are nothing but grimy
cramped claws, and you have so much Autosol
under your fingernails, each time you eat, your
food tastes like alloy-cleaning chemicals.
You find yourself scouring the Bikes For Sale
pictures on the Internet. Before the Plague,
you were not in the market for a new bike.
But now that your days may well be measured
in days, is it such a bad idea? How good would
it be to own a Brough Superior, huh? You’ve
always wanted one, right?
KIWI RIDER 93