Motorcycling and Adventure - column

The motorcyclist who had pulled up on the terrace said: “I have been riding a motorcycle for a year now. But I still haven't experienced anything." I looked at his shiny bike and his neat motorcycle outfit. I looked at my bike that most people only think "What an old thing" and thought it was just pretty chilly riding in my t-shirt and sandals. But the farmer's omelette on my plate did its best to make me happy again.

Adventure wanted

“What did you think you were going through?” “Well, you read everything. Motorcyclists experience everything. I just drive in circles.” Women generally claim the right to emotions. We boys have emotions too. Not that we really know what to do with it. Yet. In the depths of our psyche – please note: a psyche has only been mounted in men since the year 1960, before that time we just did something – we would like to live like in boys' books from the fifties and sixties. But with a sex life. Because that was a somewhat neglected subject in that reading.

All false romance

Riding a motorcycle, being a trucker and being a detective are highly overvalued (plus, in the latter two, underpaid) occupations. For diehard motorcyclists, motorcycling is the most important incident in life. For many people, motorcycling is a lifestyle thing. And often it is also dreaming about your youth. The things you have done or would have liked to do. But then the kids came. Came the career and optional divorce and second marriage with a common second leg. 

Modern times

After that injury time you can take the rematch. Realizing boyhood dreams with the motorcycle of your dreams. Or its modern equivalent. Because even the most domesticated men usually still have a dormant Bokito gene somewhere. Three emancipation tsunamis haven't quite figured that out yet in a world where we men used to only use our 'soft side' to sit on.

Adventure is disappointing

“There is oil under your motorcycle” my fresh table companion indicated with concern. “Aren't you afraid that you will have a breakdown with such an old machine on the road?” “That's not bad luck. That's adventure” I corrected him kindly. And the fact that we are sitting here chatting is also an adventure. Look how pretty that little waitress is. And there is a sweet little Morris Minor.” 

“They are choices. An acquaintance of mine got a thrombosis in his leg on a motorcycle trip in Moldova. The doctors at the local hospital spoke only Russian. And in the OR there was a window open because of the fresh air. He left a fantastic scar. Another acquaintance of mine went off road and broke a leg in Scotland. He waited for two hours in the rain to be picked up in a landlord's Landrover. The patient and his companions were warmly received in the country house. 

The local vet looked at the broken leg and gave the fallen knight a solid shot of morphine. They got a stiff drink. The daughter of the house was on boarding school leave and was very impressed by the tough Dutchies. Once in a cast and in the Netherlands, the wife of the brekebeen decided that the hassle with those motorcycles had to be over now.”

That was not the kind of adventure my dining companion was looking for. He decided it was adventurous enough for now to keep riding on his own. “Because if I had ridden in a group we would not have had this conversation.” 

The secret: travel alone

Motorcycling has traditionally been somewhat individualistic. You drive on your own. Or maximum with two people. As a loner you are not threatening and the chances of unexpected encounters are open. I told how, after a motorcycle accident, a slaughtered calf and a marital fight at a B&B and some telephone work in the Lake District, I ended up in a two-person tent between a lesbian couple to dreamland. My table companion looked away dreamily. "Bad luck for you that they were lesbians, he mused." “Bad luck that one of them snored terribly” I replied. Because with all that boy's book dreaming you have to remain realistic.