Motorcycle Explorer February 2015 Issue 4 | Page 122

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cross Switzerland the weather presented me with the tail-end of winter, taunting with one
final snap of cold. Only when confronted with the furnace-like heat of India would I long once
again for such refrigerated cool. By Stuttgart I was chasing a setting sun and concentrated on
riding at 130mph on an unrestricted stretch of autobahn. The evening was dark and cold but I
rode the final 200 miles to Regensburg in three hours which meant I had covered 703 miles
since leaving the Alps after breakfast.
Diary: thoughts before the following morning
I am in bed at night. I have not yet woken. I hear only the sound of wind and in my dream see
tumbleweed flicking against the windowpane. Nothing inspires me to want to wake and ride
another day. I snore quietly, my breath suspended in the cold air. I remember soft secret smiles
and I cherish their taste like milk. In this suspended consciousness my family is far away and I
am being carried by strange winds.
Somewhere in Bulgaria I rode hard into a pothole, smashing the bulbs in both headlights. I
should have stopped but decided to continue without front lights across high mountains in the
middle of the night. It was still winter and snow piled up where the forest joined the asphalt.
Since leaving Budapest I had slept for only four hours and that was huddled on a bench in a
restaurant. The Romanian countryside had been flooded with unseasonable rains and
throughout the night I found myself having to avoid cows that had wandered from their fields to
lie on the road. Now I was kneeling by the front wheel. The rim was smashed, the tyre half off
the rim. There was nothing I could do. I lay down in the road, closed my eyes and slept.
When I awoke I saw a light in the distance. I got up and for an hour or more pushed the bike
slowly towards it. The light turned into a gas station, the attendant just locking up for the night. I
asked him if he would store my bike until the morning. Another guy appeared out of the
darkness and offered to drive me to a hotel. He said he would pick me up after breakfast and
help me get my wheel fixed, so I booked a room, went to bed and slept until there was a knock
on the door. Exactly as he had promised, this complete stranger drove me around the backstreets
of town to find someone who could repair the damage. The tyre hadn’t burst as I had first
thought, but the rim was bashed back half a finger’s length and was unusable, so we looked for
someone who could hammer the aluminium back into shape.
The countryside was full of rustics wheeling scrap in their barrows and rag men shouting from
house to house for iron and bits and pieces. Stressed though it was to be there without a usable
front wheel, my mind was cast back to my boyhood, recalling the Rag and Bone Man shouting
out “any old iron” as his horse-drawn cart rattled across the cobbled back streets on the
outskirts of central Manchester. Another chap collected what were then returnable glass bottles
and anything plastic, and on Tuesdays the Corona “Pop Man” used to come by, selling fizzy
drinks from the back of his truck.
Out here in the Bulgarian countryside we found someone who knew an elderly gentleman who
grew vines on his patch of land. Next to his house he had a workshop, and most importantly, an
oxyacetylene torch. As I sat for an hour, maybe more, he repeatedly heated and hammered the
rim, taking care not to split the metal. I sat back and reflected on how a sophisticated, finely
tooled component could be restored to functionality in such a crude manner, eventually drifting
off - deflected if you like - into random thoughts. What about that little girl we knew in our inner
city primary school, the one who showed us little boys what she had under her dirty skirt? And
the boy who at ten still sucked his thumb and the fat boys who cleverly sided with the school
bully? It was a rough old school, stuck between a busy road and the old bus station. There was a
black lad who ran amok amongst us all, bashing and thrashing before braining some teacher