FROM THE FRONT
As the weather warms, so my mileage increases – and I’ll assume that yours does, too. It is undeniable that dry roads and blue skies inspire the fair weather rider in me rather more successfully than dark clouds and lashing rain fire up my secret adventurer side. I was reminded of this only the other day, while ploughing home through a Maytime thunderstorm which drenched my gloves so effectively that they sort-of collapsed, forcing me to buy a new pair. The horror!
The other side of this is that I’ve always been a stubborn, occasionally defiant and infrequently aggressive rider, and whenever my one-time regular riding pals announced that they were taking the car to one of our meets I would sneer internally, tog up, then head out aboard whichever rattling ruin I was polluting the planet with at the time. And I cannot deny that there is a certain smug satisfaction in being the only fool there with dripping bike gear rather than a cosy (and dry) cardigan.
I did this only the other day, in fact, meeting a pair of pals for lunch up near Tewkesbury. I set off in the gentle rain that the ever-accurate comedians at the Met Office had forecast, and then hit a thunderstorm. One of those truly irritating storms which travels with you. You turn east, so does the storm. You turn west, and so does the storm. So I sat in a soggy puddle, visibly lowering the tone of the fine establishment where we were eating.
‘You put us to shame!’ laughed one friend. I just wished I’d brought the car…
In the same way that modern riding gear can breed a certain complacency, a decent belief that whatever the weather threw down upon me I would emerge mostly moist rather than drowned, so modern tyres and brakes and electrics conspire towards the unwise theory that I am unlikely to face unexpected kinetic contact with the road surface. And that same modern riding gear, complete with wonderful protective technology, suggests that even a falling-off need not be too terrible. Which is just as well.
Sense and sobriety reared their twins heads when one of my close friends revealed that he had run his old bike into the side of a car – a car which had pulled out in front of him in that classic moment of myopia… or stupidity, to be more accurate. Despite boasting excellent modern rubber and a decent set of twin front disc brakes, my friend was unable to stop, hit the car and ended up in the road. His riding gear had done its job – and he wears only top class stuff, in case you wondered. So he was shaken, bruised and considerably angry, which is a lot better than being resident for painfilled weeks in an orthopaedic ward.
The bike is a write-off. Front end, all one side and possibly a bent frame. Being an older machine, a lot of the model-specific parts are entirely unavailable, so even if he wanted to rebuild it, the job would take years, probably. And the worst of it, ignoring the criminal incompetence of the car driver and the fright and physical damage to the rider himself? Nothing will happen. He is a skilled and very experience rider who takes every precaution and every care. We even joke about it over supper from time to time. The driver? Nothing will happen. A mild slap on the wrist. Which is just wrong, really.
Ride safely