Summer 2018, a hot summer. And Christa was with the police

Summer. Fiddle around in shorts and a fluttering shirt. Kewl!

A Arnhem police officer saw it differently

He 'shared' the photo he had taken of a fallen motorcyclist. The somewhat gloomy looking man in the photos clearly had 'asphaltic eczema'. His tattoo looked less damaged than his environment. Perhaps tattooed skin wear is more resistant? On the other hand: on the day it was thirty + degrees in the Netherlands, I came back from North Holland.

At Baarn I caught up with three people on trikes. Men with bandanas, large mirrored sunglasses and minimal shirts around their muscular double-colored torsos. I think they were screaming in their baskets in the evening while the tattoos hung in sheets of their burned bodies.

Nicotine stop

During a cigar break, I met a motorcyclist next to a gas station who hung sickly over such a vandal-resistant table event in the up-to-date type of motorcycle outfit where I still get warm in the winter. He was overheated and dried out. I helped him undress, took him to the toilets to keep his wrists under the cold tap, put him in the shade on the floor and gave him a liter of AA drink. He said his wife thought motorcycling was dangerous and only let him go out in complete combat gear. Twenty minutes later he had put some of his contraceptives in his suitcases and we said goodbye. Wondering if he has put himself back in the suit around the corner in front of his house.

Christa was with the police

But I had the nicest motor moment of this summer at ice cream parlor Udine in Dieren. When I stopped my tricycle there, a girl of about five years old approached me. "My grandmother also drove a motorbike!" She pointed to a kittish-looking sixty plus lady next to a happy-looking contemporary of the self-satisfied scratching species. I gave the lady a friendly nod and, smiling, gave her my helmet. She looked doubtful for a moment, then got up and said, taking on my helmet, "That's really a while ago!" I started my tricycle.

With a graceful gesture, the dynamic grandmother arranged her skirt over the gliding saddle, put the machine in his one, and drove flawlessly away and took an exemplary turn to the right. "She used to work for the police," he said unclear. Christa's round was no longer than around the mall. She came back, parked neatly, beamed and treated the ice creams that I had actually come for.

Clothing is important

Also on a classic motorcycle. But the current fear and safety thinking has really broken. And if action groups arise in a society to close playgrounds because children can hurt themselves, then that country is on the wrong track. And if the doctor says with dry eyes that even 1 glass of alcohol can cause irreversible damage to the human body, then I think "Cheers!" .I'll be making a nice rice salad soon.

My Lief and I eat them in the evening on a IJssel beach. With a few nice glasses of cool white wine. And when you look at a passing barge in the thick evening light with a cigar in one hand and your glass and the other hand, you feel immortally happy.