{"id":2255,"date":"2007-02-25T18:52:36","date_gmt":"2007-02-25T08:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bikeme.tv\/?p=2255"},"modified":"2013-10-09T14:50:46","modified_gmt":"2013-10-09T04:50:46","slug":"a-friend-in-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/a-friend-in-need\/","title":{"rendered":"A FRIEND IN NEED"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am sure that some of you will be surprised by my recent glacial and ever so slight progress up the tree of altruism.<\/p>\n

The push-bike fascists, the safetist toe-rags and those un-men who are not permitted to look at girls in their underpants by their scrag-like wives will breathe a sigh of relief \u2013 albeit through their mouths \u2013 that I am not always the dumb, vicious, soul-stealing demon you imagine me to be. Just cos your girlfriend touches herself when she looks at my picture and wishes it was me pinning her roughly to your stained mattress, doesn\u2019t mean that I also wish that. But I am full of such surprises, you know.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve actually quite surprised myself at my most recent act of benign selflessness and sacrifice.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t usually have any time for people in their late 30s who suddenly want to start riding motorcycles cos they think it\u2019ll fill the worthless void they\u2019ve thus far made of their lives, and our brief conversations normally go like this:<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanna buy a bike and start riding!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGood. Do you have private health insurance?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUm, No. What bike should I buy?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAn MV Agusta.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bike you should buy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNever heard of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGo kill yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, when my good friend Biffa approached me with this late-onset desire to ride, I couldn\u2019t just blow him off. He is the only mate I have that doesn\u2019t ride a bike, and while I have never held that against him, I have often figured he\u2019d actually quite enjoy it. I never actively encouraged him \u2013 and it doesn\u2019t take a genius to work out why (if you don\u2019t know, then consider how you\u2019d feel if you talked a bloke into taking up riding and his head exploded on the pavement cos he fell off), but I have always offered whatever advice he asked me for.<\/p>\n

\"southcoastshiver

This is my brother, Biffa. He is not listening closely to Luke’s riding tips.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then one day, he called me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve hired a bike. You wanna go for a ride?\u201d<\/p>\n

He had done his LAMS course and because of his age was able to go out and buy whatever capacity bike he desired as soon as he passed his test. But being not-a-child, he figured he\u2019d rent the odd 250 for a few weekends and taste a little of the sweet madness that grips us all so irrevocably.<\/p>\n

When I got to his house, he was wheeling a blancmange Honda 250 renter onto the footpath and grinning like a gibbon full of beer.<\/p>\n

I was intrigued. He had the helmet I helped him buy, and the gloves he insisted on buying against my advice\u2026and that was it. His experience consisted of riding scooters in the dim past and training for war, so I figured he wasn\u2019t a total lost cause.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you wanna go Old School or New School?\u201d I asked, noting how closely his good lady was watching us both.<\/p>\n

\u201cOld School is we go to the nearest pub, drink a schooner and ride immediately to Melbournistan, pausing every hour to drink another schooner. Eight hours, eight schooners, arrive in Melbournistan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the alternative?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe ride around town until I pass out from boredom or you die under the wheels of some bus.\u201d<\/p>\n

His lady was still uncertain I was kidding \u2013 only because I only half was. Had he picked Old School, I can assure you we would have been on our way down the Hume right sharpish.<\/p>\n

But Biffa is no man\u2019s fool. And he certainly wasn\u2019t about to cruel any hope of getting laid for the next six months no matter how much he may have wanted to do the Swampville Beer Run.<\/p>\n

Still, I was seriously concerned as we set off on Option Two.<\/p>\n

How many of you have ever shepherded an utter novice around Sydney on a Saturday night? When he eventually sailed off the bend in the main road and into a fortuitous side-street, I was thinking that the Hume may not have been such a bad idea.<\/p>\n

But he didn\u2019t fall off. And when I took him on his second ride to the Road Warriors Caf\u00e9 on the Old Road a week later, he didn\u2019t fall off then, either. He did overcook a corner rather brutally, but then so have many of us and at much, much higher speeds.<\/p>\n

He was still grinning at the end of both rides, and is now thinking of buying a Thruxton. Or Maybe a Monster.<\/p>\n

I reckon he\u2019ll do alright.<\/p>\n

As for me, well, I\u2019m feeling decidedly saintly and proud about myself. I didn\u2019t start splitting peak-hour lanes leaving him to wallow in despair, I didn\u2019t give in to the Old Road Mongrel in me and hope he\u2019d keep up, and I didn\u2019t give him a headache by offering endless critiques of his riding.<\/p>\n

I just shadowed him, and other than telling him to stop dragging his foot on the brake, I kept my mouth shut and let him ride \u2013 and learn by himself, cos that\u2019s how he\u2019s always gonna be riding. Just like the rest of us. Or have you forgotten that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am sure that some of you will be surprised by my recent glacial and ever so slight progress up the tree of altruism. The push-bike fascists, the safetist toe-rags and those un-men who are not permitted to look at girls in their underpants by their scrag-like wives will breathe a sigh of relief \u2013 [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[220],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255"}],"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=2255"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2736,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255\/revisions\/2736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}