{"id":14345,"date":"2016-01-15T07:18:22","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T21:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bikeme.tv\/?p=14345"},"modified":"2016-01-15T07:18:22","modified_gmt":"2016-01-14T21:18:22","slug":"deal-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/deal-with-it\/","title":{"rendered":"DEAL WITH IT"},"content":{"rendered":"

I speed.<\/p>\n

There. I admitted it.<\/p>\n

I speed. Every chance I get. In fact, every time I ride anything I am, at every opportunity, speeding.<\/p>\n

Now before I go any further, all of you who have turned into tutt-tutting old molls instead of the motorcyclists you once were, go brew some tea and stroke your cat. This has nothing to do with you, and your views on how I ride my motorcycle are less than dust to me.<\/p>\n

\"RZ

Not me, but not bad.<\/p><\/div>\n

I speed. Get over it. Or don\u2019t. I would struggle to give any kind of crap at all either way.<\/p>\n

The point is that while the rules do apply to everyone, because we\u2019re apparently all one big happy social bolognaise of community-minded idiots, I don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t care because arbitrarily-set speed limits and the hysteria that surrounds their maniacal enforcement simply mean nothing to me. Yes, I have lost my licence quite a few times and I have certainly shovelled countless dollars into the state coffers, and I still don\u2019t care and I still speed, and that\u2019s the way it\u2019s going to be and the way it\u2019s going to go until they wedge my coffin into the crematorium.<\/p>\n

Why is this so? Well, if you\u2019re like me, and I know that most of you are (you tea-sipping, cat-patters aside), it\u2019s because it\u2019s fun to go fast. If it wasn\u2019t fun, I wouldn\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n

Is it safe?<\/p>\n

Is that a serious question?<\/p>\n

Is that even a question a motorcycle rider would dare to ask?<\/p>\n

The answer is: I don\u2019t give a shit. I didn\u2019t take up bike-riding because it was safe. I would not do it unless it was dangerous. So why make it more dangerous by going fast?<\/p>\n

You cat-touchers really have got this motorcycle-riding business arse-about, haven\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

The answer to that stupid question is that I am the one, I am the only one, who decides what level of risk I am prepared to put up with.<\/p>\n

If I feel that the run from Hay to Ivanhoe is best dealt with at 250km\/h-plus for as long as my mind and body can stand the battering, then that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to do.<\/p>\n

If I feel that the Snowy Mountains Highway is singing to me, and my Spidey-Sense tells me there\u2019s no cops ahead because I just passed one going the other way, I\u2019m gonna roll the dice. Every time.<\/p>\n

If I feel it is acceptable to howl across the Harbour Bridge at three in the morning doing 200km\/h, with tears streaming from my eyes and my open-face helmet strangling me, then that\u2019s what I will do. But I have not done that since the owners put up all the spy cameras, because I may be crazy, but I am not stupid.<\/p>\n

Australia is a big place. There is a finite number of Highway Patrol cars, and they\u2019re usually fishing on major road\u2019s where the fishing\u2019s best. I tend not to ride those roads unless I really have to.<\/p>\n

I am also entirely unintimidated by those farcical long-weekendy threats of dire double-point retribution. I know some of you are and will stay home rather than ride and take the risk of being done. Sucks to be you. If you didn\u2019t speed, you wouldn\u2019t have to worry about that, would you? Or maybe if you weren\u2019t so stupid, you might go somewhere where the cops aren\u2019t fizzing at the gills to catch you. I have nothing but contempt for people who\u2019ve been monstered off the road by police propaganda.<\/p>\n

I see you\u2019ve put your cat down in outrage and are now going to mewl at me about the safety of other road-users being compromised by my unfettered hooliganism.<\/p>\n

Save it, bitch-titties.<\/p>\n

I am highly unlikely to cause any physical harm to the occupants of a car I might collide with.<\/p>\n

Another bike? Sure. I may well over-cook a corner one day and take out another rider. Oh well. This motorcycling stuff is dangerous. We\u2019ve already established that. But in all honesty, I don\u2019t over-cook so many corners that you need concern yourself overly much with that. I haven\u2019t survived this long by simply trusting in the Baby Jesus to get me around a bend. It behoves me, as a motorcyclist, to constantly upskill myself as a rider, so that\u2019s what I do when I\u2019m not drinking in nudie bars.<\/p>\n

This is not to say, of course, that I am blindingly fast. Try chasing\u00a0an A-grader\u00a0around some day and see what fast really is. My mates will vouch for the fact that I am slower than some of them and faster than some of the others. Yes, they all speed too, by the way, every chance they get. It\u2019s one of the reasons we all get on so well.<\/p>\n

So there it is. I have placed my cards on the table and called.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see yours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I speed. There. I admitted it. I speed. Every chance I get. In fact, every time I ride anything I am, at every opportunity, speeding. Now before I go any further, all of you who have turned into tutt-tutting old molls instead of the motorcyclists you once were, go brew some tea and stroke your [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[67,61,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14345"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14347,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14345\/revisions\/14347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}