Kalgoorlie Miner (17): Bicycle

A wise man who, like all wise men I know of, had a penchant for wearing tight leather pants, once said: “I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike. I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride it where I like.”

Like Freddie Mercury, I want to ride my bike. Like Freddie Mercury I also believe that fat-bottomed girls make the rocking world go round. Unlike Freddie Mercury, however, I rarely feel compelled to sing “I want to break free” while mopping the floor in women’s clothing.

But back to the bicycle, and to a point of clarification. When I say I want to ride my bike, I suppose I should say I do ride my bike, and I guess I do ride my bike because I have to ride my bike, and I must concede I have to ride my bike because I was caught drunk-driving, and it shames me to say I was drunk-driving because…

(cue blurry screen, descending harp arpeggio)

Judge (red-faced, spitting): Have you any excuse young man? Any excuse at all?

Villain (cooler than something very, very cold): Yes, Your Honour. The ridiculous amount of alcohol in my bloodstream made it quite impossible for me to determine right from wrong. I wouldn’t have even contemplated drink-driving, had I been sober.

(cue blurry screen, ascending harp arpeggio)

I’m sure that legal loophole has been closed, though it does seem to get people out of other offences: “I only bashed that granny because I had snorted three grams of cocaine”. That’s another column entirely though – the sort of fire-and-brimstone column best written by Graeme Campbell or Doug Daws. Has anyone ever seen those two in the same room?

I am digressing again. Sorry.

I’m super-glad that John Q. Law stripped me of my driver’s license, because it has enabled me to re-discover the joys of bicycle riding. Such a smashing way to get around, I tell you.

I revel in the feeling of traveling under my own steam, watching the cars go by with the straight-backed nobility of an aging horseman in an era of helicopter cattle mustering; the dumb pride of an amoeba in a world dominated by multi-cellular organisms.

I pity the fools in their air-conditioned vehicles, for whom every trip is an inconvenience – for me every ride is the trial-filled (prickles, unfavourable winds) equivalent of Ulysses journey home from Troy.

While drivers ruefully glance down at their pale, limp bellies, I gorge myself with high-energy food so that I may propel to and from work in world-record time, and as they furrow their brows over fuel prices, the screaming of my parched, oxygen-deprived lungs drowns out any such trivialities.

Like Robert Pirsig in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (see columns 1 and 4 on the website), I have become tuned to my bicycle. It is an extension of my body. I feel and hear it’s every flaw and tinker with it religiously, despite the fact that, historically speaking, I am far more an “in-the-grand-scheme-of-the-universe-who-cares-about-a-squeaky-chain” sort of person, than a tinkerer.

I leave you today with a tale.

I was powering through a deserted Centennial Park during an electrical storm late last year, and was overcome by a feeling that I was about to be struck by lightning. The funny thing was I really didn’t care – in fact I went no-hands, raised my arms in a Jeff Farmer post-wizardry salute to the sky and screamed “Take me Lord, take me now you bastard!”

He didn’t take me, but I think it would have been a fine way to go – fanging along in top gear, hair streaming out behind, adrenalin pumping. Oh well, there’ll be other storms.

On your bikes!