BikeStormer

Any motorcycling gentleman will tell you that Sunday afternoon is the time to ride. Take a warm clear day and your local neighbourhood becomes a veritable racetrack for heroes who dare to try.

But there is one drawback. Cars.

During the week the car driver, following the evaporation of fat arsed 4x4 mothers dropping Toby and Lucia off at St. Fiddleprix School, is usually some corporate type who has at least some fundamental awareness of the motorcycle world about him, or her. For that we have to thank the derring-do of the humble motorcycle courier going about his business. These weekday car types share their world with NTV’s and Bandit’s. To some extent they know their language.

But Sunday drivers potter and pootle about from grannies to mums, from picnic to park, kids arguing in the back, dad farting in the front paying as much attention to the road as they would a beige sigh. The only upshot is there are less of these tools on the road allowing me and my chums freedom to wriggle through them as if they’re frozen to the spot. Further advantage is in the form of disapproving gestures and the golden moment when one lip reads (in a split second) that all time motorist mantra ‘bloody idiot’s going to get himself killed’ in ones rear view mirror…

Still, it’s less than ideal. One distracted driver is more dangerous than twenty Slough based boy racers, yet we still take the risk. Why?

It’s because of us, all of us that ride, on Sunday we all come together, a shared collective of two-wheeled freedom… sort of, Harleys, mopeds and anything until 600cc doesn’t count… as we zip and flit past one another nodding like dogs safe in the knowledge that unlike those cunts in cans, we know, we understand.

We ride hard and fast, we take corners with our knees skishing on asphalt, brake until eyeballs kiss blackened visors, accelerate so hard our nipples poke out shoulder blades. Unmitigated joy, all the woes and worries of the world vanish in a flick of the wrist, I don’t know about you but outside of blowing my beans it doesn’t get any better than that.

And it lasts longer.

Jamie Dwelly