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BB's World Revisited (Continued) After we unloaded the bike off the pick-up checked it over and re-fueled it, now it was our turn for a fill up too, so we had a few beers with Klaus and introduced him to the rest of the crew and after a shower and some steaks we all headed off into town to sample a few bars and then piled into Klaus's Vee dub like some wacky keystone cops flick and headed out to his farmhouse for a more Steins of bavarian lager beer and a cool selection of music. His lady was named Renate and she was a real star! As she sat cross legged in a circle on the floor she was skinning up joints of a small variety of Amsterdam's finest, and passing them out to the left and then to the right, like some sweet lil fun dispenser! Much respect to Klaus for his luck in love we all agreed, and partied on way into the night and all wound up pretty shit faced. In the interests of keeping this story of a nature that you wouldn't mind if your grandma read it, and in the time honored fashion of investigative journal's of the period, let's use the old cliche one more time and just cut it there with "we made our excuses and left". Next morning, we all got together for hearty breakfasts washed down with plenty of black coffee and began to shake off the hangovers from the party night with Klaus and Renate. I looked over at Ped and remarked at the level of red eye he was sporting and in a blood shot eyeball exchange he comes back at me with "Huh! you oughta see 'em from this side".....What a fucking wag this guy is! Anyway's, at around 11am we all saddled up and headed out in convoy with the rest of the guys for the last leg of the trip. Dam it was cold! the snow was flurrying and I would say that it felt about - 9 deg. celsius on my hands, but as I was not packing a thermometer at the time, it's just a guess based on the amount of pain I felt as we restored the blood circulation by warming our hands and gloves on the mufflers during the frequent pee/smoke stops along the way 'till we got to Thurmansburg. It's good to ride in a pack in adverse conditions. For one thing, as long as you are not the tail end charlie, you get pretty immediate attention if you go down in a heap. It's like a kind of collective spirit that binds you all together, looking out for each other and pitting your mettle (and metal) against the elements as a group thing. Talk of birds of a feather flock together..man this is it! Every one of these guys has this amazing camaraderie etched deep into his soul. We are all riders, and understand every nuance of what it all means, pain, elation, adrenaline, jubilation...any number of fancy phrases you could stitch together would no way adequately describe the feelings you can get in touch with living a bikers life. It even transcends language barriers with it's richness of body language and shared common expressions used in the parlance of marques and models of machines and what we do with them. And now, we were about to throw ourselves head long into a multi-national melee of some of the grittiest riders around and get us a dam good time! We latched onto some stragglers from another outfit that seemed to know which way to go to get to the camp site at Solla as there were no direction banners posted as promised by the organizers. Well, there may have been, but you know what it's like, they had probably been re-sited showing the wrong direction by pranksters or even scooped up as handy kindling for that all important camp fire by some of the... ahem... wilder elements that were attending. The main site was on a hill side with pretty steep approaches and plenty of slush and deep drifts so we found a good spot not too far away and having trampled down the snow and shelling out a few Deutsche marks for a some hay bales off a farm trailer set up to provide this service, which we then got into splitting up and spreading the straw around our site around before pitching up the tents. I won't go into the various logistical problems you encounter by doing this sort of rally on a solo machine, I imagine you already understand the basic requirement of keeping your bike shiny side up on treacherous road surfaces, but it soon became crystal clear to us all that a sidecar was the handiest choice of tool when it came to gathering logs and kindling not to mention the beer rations that would be required to oil our own 'fun'wheels...Uh? what sort of parties do you go to then! It's written that mad dogs and englishmen go out in the midday sun. Ha! they also ride motorcycles in sub-zero temperatures to remote locations, get wasted on copious amounts of weed and beer and laugh a lot. Not quite the epitome of an intrepid Scott of the Antarctic expeditionary undertaking, but by some measures still requiring a fair bit of enthusiasm to drag you away from your favorite over-wintering pursuits for a short while. So everybody has their party piece don't they? Me 'n Ped would often drop out of our slang loaded local dialect and effect an upper class educated english accent to exchange a few observations in that clipped peculiar way it was done in the old news-reels that used to be shown in cinema's. It was our way of ape-ing these sort of guys while creating much lightweight entertainment and amazement that all this eloquent BBC type english was being issued from two unshaven swarthy rag-asses. Life was very cool.... literally. As I mentioned earlier, some aspects of this sort of rally have similarities to those arctic expeditions, and one of these was the flag you raised on the perimeter of your camp to mark out your spot. so besides the union jacks from uk riders there was also a good representation of most of the european tricolors and the occasional club colors and insignia evident. I hope you will pardon the pun, but this sort of acted as an 'ice breaker' so it was easier to identify other english speaking groups and introduce ourselves for a beer or two, but by this time, slugs of schnapps were the best currency to use and many new friendships were forged with the bottle being passed around to anybody wanting to share some. With all the added tonsil lubrication, it was also far easier to engage in a lil back slapping and mutual bullshit with the foreign dudes. So, you get the drift now...Awww there I go again...Duh! but you know what I mean. Generally, it turns into a short party circuit, where as every one is stomping around the site buying souvenirs and being friendly and getting heavily into the spirit of the event. By nightfall, having been fed from the various imbis stalls with the hot tureens of soup and the ubiquitous burgers or wursts on offer, the big marquee with a diesel generator out the back has a well stocked bar and a makeshift stage ready to host a few guest bands for the nights entertainment. There is a rotating psychedelic light show playing onto the canvas walls and roof that lights up the heaving mass of leather clad head cases with lights that alternate all across the spectrum of colors as the main event gets underway. Is this living? I'll say it is! Ped smiles and we do a high five. We made it mate. Tonight we gonna par - tay! You may wonder how a r-e-a-l party can happen with no babes to share the fun with. Well I can assure you that this is no gay convention, and there are a few sweet looking girls around but they are all well and truly spoken for and belong mainly to the organizers. The few others around are a tad butchy and are probably suffering a mild case of penis envy anyway, but it's no hang. We are both now married with young wives back home and are sensing that this could be the last time we do this sort of gig without some hassle from the sweet lil femmy halves of our respective existences in the future. Y'know, raising kids an' all. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing a mannish sort of thing every now and then, and this way, with my passion for motorcycles, I found a credo that I live by to this day. It's a character building thing like they try to cram into a few outward bound week-end events as a 'corporate team building exercise' that a few organizations offer to this very day. But I doubt they will get the enduring memories like you do when you ride a motorcycle, or the friends you make and sometimes sadly lose along the way. Motorcycles should be compulsory! They will teach you road craft to an extremely high level. You will build a self reliance and resilience to occasional hardships. Sometimes they will bring you great joy and sometimes make you want to tear your hair out in frustration. In fact a lot like a woman can and I believe that is why we often refer to a bike as 'she' or in as a female gender like 'my babe' or the Ol' gal. But most of all, they bring like minded people together. Irrespective of nationalities or styles. Birds of a feather do flock together, and in the run up to christmas 2007 I salute you all with: Peace on earth and goodwill to all men, but especially fellow motorcyclists. Everywhere! Dedicated to: Pete 'Pedro' Howells (m.i.a.) ~ Phil 'Stormy' Knight / Triumph Bonneville (r.i.p.) ~ Ken 'deathwish dutty' Dutton (m.i.a.) |