Last night I put vinyl cleaner on my motorbike seat and then a bit on the tyres. Apparently the stuff makes tyres totally lose grip. Dad says it’s like riding around on ones own personal skid-pan. That is the sort of information that it is good to have before setting off.
So this afternoon I left my parents’ house to ride to Hobart
It is hot and as I am getting ready to go, Mum asks me if I really need to wear the thick leather jacket when I’m on my bike. I make a flippant remark that I only need it when I fall off. As I mount the bike, I am vaguely aware the vinyl seat is slippery. I think no more about it.
They are standing in the garden waving to me as I set off. At the first roundabout, no more than 50 meters from their driveway, I steer left to enter it and the front wheel slides out from under me. I go down hard on my left elbow and I can feel a scraping pain on my forearm. It is exactly where I have a scar that I got in 1983, the day I bought my first bike.
As I hit the ground I can hear Mum scream. From 50 meters away, through the helmet, through the scraping, grinding sound, my mum screaming pierces everything.
I banged my elbow, I winded myself, cracked a rib and my bike slid at least 10 meters into the roundabout, but that scream was the worst part by far. It is a scream of profound horror. The kind of scream someone makes when they are seeing something that they have imagined a hundred times, but try not to think about.
By the time I got my bike up and back to the driveway, mum was crying and shaking, her face was red and wet, screwed up like a damp, used tissue.
She was sobbing and saying that she thought she was seeing me die. I know that she is afraid of the bike and has dreams of me coming off and being killed by a truck and so I promised to sell my motorbike. It wasn’t a half promise, like ‘I promise to mow the lawn’, it was a real promise, a binding promise that a person with integrity has to keep.
I’m OK with selling it. I’m a different person to the one who, aged 18 decided that Mum & Dad will just have to suck-it-up and deal with it because what I want is more important than the ice cold knife in their guts every time I ride.
I have had friends die since then. I have seen the train wrecks that are their families.
If I got mashed onto the road it would destroy my family. Their happy lives in their lovely home, the animals that they love and the peace that they have earned would be ruined forever and that outweighs the insignificant fun that I have on my motor bike.
Later that day I drove to Hobart
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When I got back to my flat, I immediately locked the door.
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