Making memories? – column

Making memories. You often hear that phrase these days in travel stories and advertisements from holiday providers. As if making memories is a separate sport, a goal in itself. Well, I'm 71 or so. That keeps changing. When I was about ten, the motorcycle bug struck in the form of my boyfriend S's stepfather's C77 (or C72). That's when I started what they so aptly call "Making Memories" these days. Back then, it was: "I started messing around with old mopeds." By messing around, you simply create memories. As you get older, you simply discover that.

After 'the motorcycle' came to me as a phenomenon (also modern language), my pocket money went to The Weekly Motor MagazineI still remember the price: 60 cents. That's how I realized there were many more types of motorcycles than just S.'s (step)father's sheet-steel rocking horse. Especially since S. was a bit older. Because when I was still riding my (super-fast) Zündapp, S. already had his driver's license. And a Suzuki T500, whose spokes he constantly tore. I wasn't allowed to ride it. But I was allowed to paint it.

My first real motorcycle was a Jawa 250 with one of those damn-easy-to-fold L-plates. I lived in Maarssen-Dorp and, near Hilversum, suddenly saw a car with a driver I knew: my father. He was in the field and drove carefree, without an L-plate, all over the country, including Belgium. Hooray! Another memory made. When we met at home, we had a good father-and-son chat.

Luckily, I remembered a childhood story he'd once told. Just after the war, things were pretty chaotic in the Netherlands. My father was a late teenager then, and he'd told me he'd worked in food distribution just after the war. He'd thrown a hand grenade into the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal and fished for whatever floated to the surface. I used that argument as my defense for my offense. I remember my father bursting out laughing and giving me a slap on the ears.

With a driver's license, the world in my memory became infinitely larger. Filled with the kind of events you didn't plan, but that simply happened. They became memories.

Like the time my friend Wim crashed into the back of a car that had stopped at a red light near Utrecht's Julianapark. His CB450 (with disc brakes and a five-speed gearbox) was left behind, while W. tumbled over the roof and landed in front of the car. The driver was so startled that he tried to escape the impact and drove off. He ended up well over W.. I remember the struggle of lifting the car off the fallen motorcyclist and dragging the patient out from underneath. I still remember how strangely his leg looked...

I remember Jurre at a BSA. He always had a Chocomel bottle in the pocket of his leather jacket. If he felt he was being treated unfairly in traffic, he'd pass the offender and throw the Chocomel bottle at their windshield. "Why a Chocomel bottle?" "It's so comfortable in your hand." Obviously.

Meanwhile, I got a job with a company car. I had to sell stainless steel for a French company. Back then, there was no automotive industry whatsoever. At the end of the month, you claimed your mileage. And you were as free as a bird.

I remember the first time I started researching routes from the whole row of phone books I'd gotten from work. Then I mapped out routes through towns (and back then, towns) where motorcycle shops were located. I was already riding motorcycles that were already out of fashion. So—without a tie—I'd go to those often small motorcycle shops and ask: "Do you happen to have any stuff for..." That's how the motorcycle dealer got rid of his dust collectors for a handful of guilders, and I got things for next to nothing that now, less than half a century later, you'd have to buy with gold. I didn't get rich from it. Not financially, anyway. But the time a motorcycle dealer from—as I recall—Doorn said: "You're out of luck. We just put that old junk out for scrap. But you're in luck: take out what you want." Look, I remember that perfectly.

Add to that all those loosely planned vacations that started with: it's raining. But it seems a bit lighter there. So I head that way. And so you arrive at the end of April in a late snowstorm in an English village where the main attraction is a diorama of a village scene. Strange, though: all the "inhabitants" of the diorama were stuffed, and neatly dressed, hamsters or something. A spontaneous trip to Birmingham to pick up some parts for the Trident shouldn't have been planned in the first week after New Year's. When the accompanying Bonneville broke down, we were rescued by a British family with two beautiful daughters. We were allowed to repair the Bonnie in the family garage and stay overnight. That turned into three nights... The cold and wet during that trip? I'll never forget that. The warm welcome and hospitality of the Slugdens? I'll never forget that either.

Nor was the encounter with British veterans in France who had flown air raids at Sword. They had formed a gliding club. For 5 pounds, I was allowed to fly in the club's two-seater. The pilot was the club's puppy. He wasn't taken entirely seriously by the seniors. Because he had flown a fighter jet. Over Korea. And that was clearly not considered serious flying. One of the veterans recounted nostalgically that he had flown over Rotterdam after the German bombing and that he still had the fondest memories of his pre-war visit to Rotterdam with prostitutes—EDIT: sex workers. I've repressed the flight in the rickety two-seater. Never again. But otherwise, I remember that event as if it were yesterday.

You don't make memories. Memories are things that happen to you. But that's obviously not a business model for travel agencies and tour operators.