madbikeboy

Stuck in hell.

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Hi everyone,

I'm sitting in the office, I'm the only one here, I'm bored out of my tree - scoot is at home chained to the garage floor. And out of the small window to my left I can see blue sky.

This is hell.

I'm considering going postal, but there's no one here.

So, instead, I thought I'd write some shit to connect with my happy place.

I read once that Jesse James was riding in his Dad's Chevy Impala, and a bunch of Hells Angels rode past - from that moment he was hooked. I've had a couple of moments. The first was when I was about 11 years old, I bought a old 80cc chook chaser off my neighbour for $100 - I'd saved my money from my paper round for about a year. I hid it under the house, the likelihood of getting permission to buy a motorcycle was somewhere between winning lotto and getting hit by sewerage, ejected from a 747 flying overhead (I was 11, I had been told that this was a possibility, and I spent a good part of that year looking up each time a plane went overhead). That was the best and shortest bike ownership in my life. I actually got it going (proving that even if you're dumb, if you keep fiddling with it, something happens eventually). I pulled my first wheelstand on that bike. I had my first crash about 0.2 seconds later. The crash was bad, but explaining how I happened to be on a motorcycle. Much worse.

The second most impressive thing I saw in my impressionable teenage years was Mick Dohaan, sliding that evil bike around the racetrack. The most impressive thing was even cooler, it involved my first real girlfriend and two hours of sex before she started getting kinky and creative (catholic girls rock). But Mick left an indelible impression. I cadged rides on friends bikes, and I fell for an evil bitch mistress in a big way - if you've ever owned an RG500 or RGV250, this bit requires little in the way of an explanation; it was all the stuff of dreams, living from one paycheck to the next.

In 1999 I opened the throttle on a Hayabusa all the way. Forget Mick and kinky chick - this was like being saddled up on an ICBM screaming yehaar as I changed up, then up, then up, then up. Relentless. I think each time we ride through a mental barrier, you can't relate to whatever was the previous experience. It's like losing your virginity, the world looks a different way.

I was just finishing uni, seven years of study and little chance of affording something decent. I had to wait a while, then I went guarantor on a mates hayabusa loan - I had bought my first house, and what with the need to actually consume solid food (anything more expensive that 2 minute noodles was completely unobtainable), this got me close to bike ownership again. A couple of years later, one small incident, and a judge with no humor saw me resitting my licence again.

A brief flirtation with an RGV250 made me remember that the gold old days need to remain those, and not repeated (don't go back to ex-girlfriends either, you leave them for good reasons). I then managed to talk the then current fiancee into looking at a bike with me. I'd just bought her a new car, so she had no leg to stand on when I painted her into a corner. Mixed metaphors aside, I became the owner of 99 GSXR750. I rediscovered life and living on that bike. It was loud and obnoxious (well, it'd be rude not to be), and quick. I had little care for living because I so miserable at home, so I rode with the commitment of a suicide bomber.

After a bit of personal readjustment (leaving wasn't so hard after all) and with getting to the age where I thought I could actually co-exist with a fast scoot, I bought my current bike. I searched for months on trademe, I wanted a K2, I wanted one that had been owned by a slow old guy, she needed to have black rims, and be the black and metallic blue. I had to go to Christchurch to find her, and it was well worth every moment of saving, searching, and dreaming.

Life is really good now, so much so that when I'm sitting in my office cubicle, I can sit back and smile at the skinny 11 year old pushing his first bike home and under the house within the cover of darkness. I can sit in my happy place in meetings thinking of leaning into the corner, footpeg scraping, the sensation of the front wheel lifting as I roll the throttle. I can smile and nod at people at corporate breakfasts, all the while dreaming of my next track day, or the ride home from work through the traffic.

This is why I ride, it is also why I am - not just who I am. I love the roar of the wind on my lid, the sensation of accelerating faster than any other living thing. I feel odd and removed in the real world, more misfit than fit. I love the rest of my life now too - but I live for the moments where I pull the cover off scoot, starting her, listening to the oil lubricating the bike as she warms, the idle uneven and scratchy. Sitting astride her, becoming part of the metal cacohpany, pushing into first, then opening the throttle and lauching myself into adrenaline again.