Month: August 2014

I’m using that as a metaphor, btw. I find it fascinating that one cannot remember pain. You remember the sweats, the swearing, thinking death would be a mercy, but you can’t remember what the pain felt like. So it was with crashing my lovely, lovely motorcycle. Not the pain (metaphor remember? Pay attention at the back.) but the feeling of being fully alive. I’d forgotten. Or rather remembered as one remembers pain. I took it as a truism, that while “the prospect of being hanged focuses the mind wonderfully” it is nothing like as focusing as the reality of imminent pain and possibly sudden, violent death. And then, your front end is skipping around at stupid speeds and you are heading into a roundabout at stupid speeds unable to break. Suddenly it all comes back to you. However briefly. I can see why in my feckless youth I pursued that experience. There is nothing quite like it. You either live or die, but you are 100% alive until then. I can’t say I’m as fond now, in my later years. The pain and damage to my bike don’t seem worth it. But it is a hell of a rush. In case you’re wondering what the hell I’m on about, I’ll start from the beginning. I was riding to work on Friday night. It was 23.20, no traffic, bone dry roads, ideal conditions in other words. I was chugging along in a 40 zone, I saw the traffic lights were on green so I blipped the throttle to get to them before they changed. I was focused on the lights, no traffic, no worries. I saw I was going to make it through the lights so I went to jam on the brakes, only to find some utter bastard of a lorry driver had shed half of his load of sand on the road. It was 2 inches thick, loose dry sand. The front end started skipping about like crazy so I had to let the brakes off or crash. I hung on as I skipped over the sand, miraculously staying upright but by the time I had regained control I was still going too fast with the width of one lane between me and the roundabout. I had time to think “this is going to hurt”, *island amnesia* over the handlebars landed on my head, thought “dead”, *island amnesia* put head up looked around, on roundabout, put head back down *pain* “how’s my bike?” Odd. The calm “this is going to hurt”, the equally calm “dead” when I thought I was going to snap my neck, then no continuity like “ooh, not dead” Or “my that smarts” just; aware of the pain, “how’s my bike?” Anyway, the good new is I just bent my brake pedal and bent my handlebars a bit, and snapped something off my helmet. And grazed one engine casing. Nothing too serious. Buggered both my wrists and bashed my groin badly. And battered my ribs. And […]

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