Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
down and don't really anticipate ever doing either, at least not deliberately. (A wheelie is
when, through the application of just the right degree of Too Much Throttle you get the
front wheel of the bike to lift off the ground. Getting your knee down is when you lean
over so far while taking a corner that the outside of your knee - or hopefully the slider
pad that you're wearing on top of your leathers - makes contact with the road surface.)
A lot of bikers wouldn't consider me a proper biker at all because I haven't done both of
these, or fallen off yet, and I wouldn't quibble with them. As I've got older I've decided
that life is largely about having fun without frightening yourself - or others - too much,
and the level at which I've set my bike fun just precludes such doubtless adrenalising
shenanigans.
This comes back to the whole thing about not liking being frightened, and fairground
rides. The few times I've been on an extreme ride, I've spent the time worrying whether
it's all been put together properly, and thinking back to my days as a non-destructive test-
ing technician, imagining hairline cracks propagating around bolt holes and slag inclu-
sions in the welds linking up under stress, while wondering if all this G-force is really
that good for the human body. On the other hand, it has to be said extreme rides are prob-
ably so ridiculously safer than Drunken Urban Climbing, or one plastered idiot throwing
himself off a high wall into the arms of another - even just the once - that the difference
is barely worth measuring.
I'm a solitary biker; I love the feeling of freedom the experience gives, even if you do
have to surround yourself with a whole prophylactic suite of helmet, armoured leathers
and Serious Boots. Of course, you don't
have
to; only the helmet is compulsory in this
country. But the thought of biking in a helmet, shorts, trainers and T-shirt (as you do
sometimes see people doing), so that, if something you couldn't avoid does happen, you
end up sliding along the road at 50 miles an hour or whatever, scrubbing off speed by
the gradual abrasion of your wrist, ankle, knee, pelvic and spinal bones - the flesh hav-
ing sloughed easily, if painfully, off in the first half-second or so - while your helmet
keeps your brain undamaged, entirely conscious and in full-on pain-appreciation mode is
enough to make me look upon my insect-spattered leathers with something almost bor-
dering on affection.
Part of the reward of riding a bike is that it makes you absolutely a better driver. The
most obvious effect is that you become more sensitive to the road surface. Obviously
when you're in a car you have to watch out for things on the road like ice and just lots of
rain and standing water (watching out, and then ignoring the signs and taking unexpected
upside-down excursions off Highland roads, in my case), but when you're on a bike you
suddenly became hypersensitive to the presence of stuff like a little gravel on the road's
centre line, a curved smear of mud extending from the entrance to a field, the rainbow