Or how about that project bike? You have lots of
time on your hands. Now is the perfect
opportunity to buy an old Shovelhead Harley
and build that show-winning chopper using old
bits of screen-door and plumbing off-cuts you
have lying around. Or maybe even have a crack
at building a WSBK-spec Superbike. Gixxer thou’s
are cheap. As are R1s.
It’s pretty simple, really. You drink half a bottle
of tequila, log onto TradeMe, and just go nuts.
It’s not like you’re using your stupid credit card
for anything else right now, right?
Hell, you probably don’t even have a job
anyway, so it doesn’t matter if you get a full
race-spec set of Öhlins forks and some of them
fancy Brembos with carbon discs to go with the
carbon wheels you just bought. After all, the
banks can’t get blood out of a stone and if
there’s no money after the Plague, can they?
And in these strange times, the onus is on the
financial institutions to be understanding.
It’s like that old joke: “When you owe the bank
$500 it’s your problem. When you owe the bank
$500,000, it’s the bank’s problem.”
Do you have a dirt-bike? Then you’re better
off than your road-bike-owning mate. It’s not
like he can build a track in his yard, can he? But
you? Pilgrim, all you need are some bricks and
some boards and some good Christian shovelwork
and you can have your own motocross
circuit, although most of you on a farm probably
already do. It will be tight and technical, but
that’s nothing six beers can’t sort, right?
Too lazy to build or dig? Then you’re suddenly
all about Trials. Pull off your seat, get a sledge
hammer to lower the sub-frame a bit, and off
you go. Hop up the stairs, down the stairs, off
the fence, the wheelie it onto the pot-plant,
balance and hold on the back wheel, and mind
you don’t put your feet down or you’ll lose
points... and repeat.
Whatever you do, do not even think about
the fact there is no MotoGP. No WSBK. No
motorcycle racing of any kind for the
foreseeable future.
The most negatively impacted racer by this
is Valentino Rossi, who is of an age where every
week not racing is a week closer to retirement
and the healing of Marquez’s shoulders. The
Doctor is reduced to petting his dog by a lake
and posting pictures of it on Instagram.
Sure, there’s been two virtual MotoGP races,
and I’ve watched them because I’m MotoGPobsessed
idiot, but it’s hardly the same. If I
wanted to watch kids playing Playstation, I have
a 23-year-old who’s moved back home, mashing
his controller in the back room. And he’s more
temperamental than 100 Zarcos.
So that’s kinda where we are right now.
Though by the time you read this, we may
well be somewhere else in the Plague cycle.
Editor Ben may well be exercising fully nude
by then, and if that’s not something to look
forward to, I don’t know what is.
94 KIWI RIDER