Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 4:25 pm
That was a funny story. Thanks for the laugh.
I also think you write very well.
I also think you write very well.
Cheers blues. keep writing and happy riding.
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There are few words or phrases in my vocabulary that adequately describe the experience of getting out of bed at five o’clock in the morning. ‘Pigging awful’ is one of them. It’s a rotten feeling. If the early morning is a fist, then I'm the punch bag. But sometimes you've just got to be courageous about this. On Wednesday night, already stressed and knackered from lack of sleep, I set the alarm for ten to five, got into bed and curled up into a tight ball, trying not to think about how I would feel six hours later. I was doing this for the bike (I kept reminding myself): nothing else – nothing at all - would induce me to drag myself from under a comfortable duvet before I was good and ready.
So, Thursday morning I hit the bedroom floor at five o'clock, feeling like I’d just crawled out of a rock guitarist’s armpit and dragged myself downstairs to breakfast. I ate in a hurry, leathered up as quickly as I could, got my travelling kit sorted, and then, just as I was about to go out the door, my resolve collapsed and I spent the next ten minutes wandering vaguely around the house, muttering to myself . By the time I’d pulled myself together again, it was ten to six.
In many ways I’d been looking forward to this trip. Thursday was to be the day when my bike’s rumbles and rattles would cease and I’d get back to enjoying it. I was taking the SV up to Redcar Motorcycles in Leicester to have the new clutch basket fitted. The job had been booked for the previous Friday, but the part on order hadn’t arrived in time and I’d had to content myself with waiting another week. As well as trying to sort the vibrations, I’d asked the guys at Redcar to do my 16,000 mile service – the big one. They told me that I would need to allow two hours for the bike to cool down before they could begin and then the work would take most of the rest of the day. I needed to get there early.
IMNSHO, at this time of the year, the pre-dawn is neither beautiful nor awe-inspiring; nor is it any of those other romantic things that people imagine. It is merely comfortless. I sniffed the air outside my front door: it was chilly and noticeably damp. The weather forecast had predicted fog all over the Midlands and South right up until mid-morning. And as if to confirm all my forebodings, the moment I pulled my visor down over my face it filled with mist. Great!
When I hit the A1, just two miles from my house, it was already packed with commercial traffic. Long convoys of canvas-sided wagons were lumbering up the inner lane for as far as the eye could see. White van man was strongly in evidence, weaving at speed in and out of the traffic and doing his very best to be annoying. I had to take avoiding action almost immediately as one member of the species swung out suddenly in front of me without indicating. Up ahead, a long articulated wagon was wobbling up the outside lane at 65.005 mph attempting to overtake another long articulated wagon travelling at 65 mph.
The gods were not going to be friendly this morning, so I reckoned it was up to me to make the best of it. Many years ago, I tried being depressed, but discovered pretty quickly that it didn’t work. And anyway - I told myself - I was out on the bike, I was enjoying the challenge, the night air was fresh and the early morning was doing that thing to my brain: polishing my thoughts till they shone and paring back my sense of reality to its essentials. I felt happy - in a sleepy, melancholy sort of way.
Still, there was a maggot in the apple. By the time I turned off onto the A41, some forty miles later, the SV was vibrating for all it was worth. I gritted my teeth, comforted myself with the thought that it would all soon be sorted, and tried to concentrate on the road. My tiredness and early morning preoccupations made time slip by unnoticed. Unfortunately, they also slowed my reactions. And that was not good, for what was about to happen next. About twenty miles along the A14 the patches of thin fog grew more frequent; the fine drizzle, more persistent and despite everything I could do to keep it clear, my visor ran permanently with water. It was as though a whole procession of carnival lights had wandered into a hall of mirrors. I couldn’t make out the lanes or the bends in the road. Tail-lights twinkled like stars, their rays spreading out right across the carriageway. Sidelights danced crazily in the corners of my eyes. Everything in my visual field fractured and ceased to make sense.
There then followed a whole string of scary moments. Suddenly, I panicked. I haven't thrown a wobbler like that on a bike since I had a serious dose of hypothermia up in the Welsh mountains two years ago. But this time there was nowhere to stop. The A14 has few service stations and, at that moment, there was no sign of a turnoff. I dropped my speed to 60, jammed myself between two lorries in the slow lane, focused on the lights in front and hoped for the best.
A service station did eventually loom out of the mist. I turned the bike down the slip road, uttering my gratitude to the great unknown, and thruppenny-bitted round the corner like a three-week squid. (Thruppeny bits were small British, brass coins with thirteen edges. I’ve always liked that phrase but as the chunky little coins became obsolete in the 1970s it's only us older - i.e. 'more mature' - types that use it.) Trying to pay for food in the shop, I found my words weren’t coming out right and when I reached for my wallet, my arms moved awkwardly and with little jerks: my neck and shoulders had gone into spasm. Months of stress, grief and lack of sleep; the morning’s early start; the chilly weather; a meagre breakfast and poor visibility on the road had combined to put my body into a state of shock.
I sat down with a pork pie and a bottle of fruit juice and waited. One thing for which I am hugely grateful is that although I have nerves like firecrackers (very uncool when you are a teenager; very irritating in middle age), I have the constitution of a horse and recover quickly from almost anything. Within fifteen minutes, with a little food inside me, I’d reassembled myself and felt ready to get back on the road.
By that time, the dawn had arrived and the sky was turning a pale, if uninviting blue. I’ve always found the dawn a surreal time of day. It brings a lightening of the spirit, but a simultaneous flattening of mood. It’s like recovery from stress: there is relief and a letting go of tension, but also a shutting down of exhausted emotions. I felt drained.
I rode the last fifteen miles of my journey to Leicester along the M1. It was here that I hit roadworks, a 40mph limit and the new speed cameras that work in pairs and calculate your average speed as you travel from one to the other. No-one on the road was taking any risks. It was a slow, tedious ride in third gear. At junction 21, the Leicester/Coventry turnoff, I felt very glad to be riding a bike. The traffic on the roundabout is so heavy at that time of day that one car manages to get off the M1 slip road and into the traffic flow about every minute. Lorries take longer. There were about thirty vehicles waiting at the junction when I arrived. Filtering was never more of a pleasure. I imagined all the looks of pure hatred on driver’s faces as I swept past them and then accelerated hard into a small gap in the circulating traffic. Torque is a wonderful thing.
When I reached Redcar Motorcycles I was definitely the worse for wear. In the shop I lost one of my earplugs. It just disappeared. The only explanation I have is that I must have dropped it down the loo. It was a custom job and cost me fifty quid. But I was dog tired and, right then, just didn’t give a "poo poo". I left the bike in the capable hands of Chris, the mechanic (I’m a trusting soul. I have no experience of this guy’s work, but I have a good feeling about him. He seems to know what he is talking about) and set off to explore the delights of Leicester.
First, I needed food. After that… Well what was I going to do with the rest of a bikeless day in a strange town? I wandered around the covered market for a bit, bought some fruit, then set off to try and find a Tourist Information Bureau. The guy in the Bureau was about fifty, extremely helpful and wanting to talk bikes (I was still wearing my leather jacket) like it was an urgent need that he could no longer restrain. There are three things, I’ve noticed, that will get you into conversation with strangers faster than anything else: dogs, bikes and children. (Give me the first two, for preference.) He knew Redcar Motorcycles, and told me that it was a father and son outfit and that it had been around since, as a lad, he had crashed his first Triumph (or was it his first Kawasaki?) We went through a long list of bikes he had owned in great technical detail. Most of it went right over my head.
Half an hour later I found myself wandering around yet another cathedral. Only this one is a bit different from most. It’s a small gothic building, only recently consecrated as a cathedral and has been much 'restored' by the Victorians. Whenever the Victorians got their hands on a medieval building, they usually ruined it, but not in this case. Leicester cathedral is just beautiful. Not beautiful in the manner of a big gothic church, not overwhelming and impressive. This little gem is as cosy as a Victorian parlour, warm and inviting. A service was in progress in one of the small side chapels. A congregation of about six elderly people were responding to the dreary liturgical mumblings of the priest. The routine inconsequence of their ritual seemed incongruous in this setting and irrelevant to the sense of security and strength radiated by the building that surrounded them.
I’ve always loved wandering around old churches, especially at times when there has been great stress in my life. I like their big echoing spaces and their sense of history. And right now, I need to know that my wife’s death, when it happens, is not an isolated event but part of a greater history of things dying. At the moment, her death and separation from me feel like uniquely painful and incomprehensible things. When you live with a partner you love long enough she becomes a part of you. The idea that she will cease to be while you continue to live in the world seems a gross violation of everything that is essentially human. If I don’t stand outside my feelings from time to time, I’ll go nuts.
In a small way, visiting these beautiful old buildings helps. Gothic churches are filled with images of death, carved into stone and wood, and illuminated in stained glass. In their detail, they are complete representations of the human condition as it was imagined by the medieval Christian community. Buildings like this also carry a sense of continuity. They remind me that death can be survived: life carries on. I don’t mean that I believe in an after life. I don’t and that’s not the kind of reassurance I’m seeking, but the persistence of such images down the centuries grants me two things: the knowledge that Di’s death will not immediately be the end of me, and that my own death is, nevertheless, certain. And in both these truths, I find reassurance and some peace.
On leaving the cathedral I made my way on foot across town to the National Space Centre and an adjacent museum which was located in an old steam pumping station. I avoided the ring road, and wandered along a network of footpaths that followed the river through the Abbey Park. There were few people around and I was glad of some peace and quiet. The only sounds were the calls of water birds and the soughing of wind in the autumn trees. I rarely have time for my own thoughts these days and moments like this are precious.
Even in the closest relationship, there is a part of you that always stands alone and remains uninvolved with your chosen partner. Di has a part of herself that is completely private and has always been closed to me. I’ve always been aware of it, but never wanted to acknowledge it till now. Now, I see it very clearly. I see that her journey into death is one that she will have to take on her own. I can’t help her, or travel with her. All I can do is let her go. If she is going to make a good death, a peaceful one, she needs to leave the world in full possession of herself, unattached and unencumbered by anything she must leave behind, especially my need for her. And I’ve discovered an astonishing fact, that it is in this letting go that all the greater part of my love for her resides. Understanding this has pulled the cork from the bottle and has allowed the love I feel for her to flow in as pure a form as I have ever known it.
Of course, I too have a part of me that she has never owned, and if I am to survive her death intact, I need to recognise and accept this too. I was horrified, at first, when the thought occasionally crossed my mind that I could start a new life after her death and that it would be refreshing, something I could even look forward to. It felt so disloyal. (I don’t know if anyone on the site is interested in these musings, but it helps me to record them here. It is often as I am out and about on my bike that many understandings come to me.) Di has no interest in motorcycles. And since I got back into biking, it has been while I have been out riding that I have been most aware of this separateness from her.
Of course, in all this I’m assuming I’ll survive her. Who knows for sure. I could take a tumble down the road at any time or be run over by a bus. I’ve not thought about my own death for a number of years, at least, not since I bought the bike. For a long time the bike made me feel too much alive to think of death, which is ironic since it certainly reduces the odds of my living to a ripe old age. But who can make sense of statistics? And who understands probability? I mean, really understands it deep down in their guts. I have a degree in Philosophy, which taught me to think in abstractions. But that is a bit of a joke as I’m really a peasant, at heart. I know what I can see and touch and taste. And I’ll know about my death when it happens (if it’s not instantaneous). ‘Probably’ is just a piece of conceptual junk that rattles around with all the other conceptual junk in my head. You accumulate a lot of mental rubbish in the course of fifty years.
And the bike teaches me a lot about living and dying, too. When I’m strong and confident, I ride like there is some ancient intelligence working through me. It’s effortless and egoless, much deeper than anything that preoccupies my daily mind. It puts me in touch with a moment by moment experience of life in a direct and bodily way. And it makes me supremely happy. When I’m scared, I know in every muscle that I’m fighting to survive. Either way, riding makes me understand that to be alive is a tremendous gift, not to be squandered, and in some measure, it teaches me what it is to be human, as well. In contrast, so much of the rest of my life – my working life in particular – is just a pointless passing of time. When this emotional chaos is all over and I’ve achieved a measure of tranquillity once again, it will be time to review my life and make some serious decisions. Taking three months to do my Baltic trip on the bike will be one possibility. Giving up my job will definitely be another.
The museum was closed. That was a disappointment. The steam pumping engine it houses has been restored and in working order. I love Victorian steam engines. Like internal combustion engines they are a knowable technology. I understand how they work. Microchip technology, on the other hand, loses me completely. There is something spooky about circuits and computers that, useful and fascinating as they are, completely mystify me. Rocketry, on the other hand is pretty boring and for the opposite reason. As sophisticated as the technology surrounding it is, in principle it is moronically simple. Rocketry is just a lot of big metal tubes filled with solid fuel pellets. Hmm.
The National Space Centre was a bit of a disappointment (rather like the National Space Programme.) The exhibits were really intended for school kids. They wer broad and lacking any kind of complexity. The most interesting thing, to me, was a display about ‘Galileo’ the new European commercial sat-nav system that has been set up to rival/complement the American GPS network. It will have 30 satellites, as opposed to America's 29. There was a detailed explanation about why one extra was required but the whole thing sounded like ‘Yah! boo! sucks!’ to me.
At three-fifty pm I got a call on my mobile from Redcar Motorcycles to say the SV was ready for me to pick up.
Back in the showroom, Chris showed me the old clutch basket. The original part on the 2003 model was faulty. The rivets holding it tended to weaken and the basket came loose, causing the vibrations. The basket would jam and unjam itself making the bike vibrate intermittently. The replacement part had been upgraded for the 2004 model so the problem should not recur. It sounded like good news and I was eager to try the bike out. I said goodbye to Leicester and headed for the motorway.
Hell!
On the way home the bike vibrated just as much as before and rattled worse than ever. So, as you can imagine, I felt pretty glum - worse – worse than glum, just wholly fed up. But as I continued to ride her over the following days I noticed there was a difference. The amplitude of the vibes was not so great and they were less disturbing. Over time, the rattle disappeard completely and hasn't returned. This leaves me still hopeful. The bike has recently been developing definite problems with the fuel injection system and I'd already spoken to a local firm about getting it balanced and set up on a Yoshi box.
I'm an incorrigible optimist, me. I'll let you know.
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