You are here: Home / Archives for Opinion

A walking shadow.

August 11, 2008 By

I spent this afternoon at the bedside of a mate who only has a couple of days left to live. Terminal liver cancer is about to claim him and he has just celebrated his 59th birthday.

I’ve known Les for 41 years and it is so hard to watch how he has wasted away. I can’t imagine life without his constant, cheery, telephone calls and crazy emails that he sends me from time to time.

Most of all, I can’t fathom why a man of unfailing generosity and kindness should be taken from us when other, less generous and less charitable souls get to live a long and healthy life.

He has asked me to speak at his funeral. How do you sum up a man’s life? What can you say that can adequately express what another person means to you? What can you say that can comfort the widow and the children and grandchildren? Words are not enough.

Most of all, sitting beside his bed this afternoon watching him drift into eternity reminded me that each of us have a responsibility to live our lives so that no-one will have to lie at our funeral. I know that I will be able to praise his character and his life without once resorting to half-truth, white lies or evasion.

I hope that, when my time comes, I will be able to entrust my eulogy to someone who can tell the unvarnished truth about me and be proud to look my family in the eye as he does so.

Shakespeare said, “..out, out, brief candle. Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.”

And the Apostle James sums it up like this..”Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”

What will YOU be remembered for?

Filed Under: August 2008, Thoughts

Off the road again.

August 9, 2008 By

With apologies to Willie Nelson….

My first day for over 7 months without a bike. And it’s looking like it could be quite a few weeks till I am back in the saddle, depending on the availability of parts. It amazes me that a bike that is now effectively 14 years old (the Testarossa ran from 1994 to the end of 1997 unchanged) can have retained so much of its value.

I have been assured that mine won’t be a write-off, but, all the same, I had a look on bikesales this morning just to check on prices and availability and I was stunned to see that relatively high-mileage examples (80k and more) are still being offered for sale (and, presumably, bought) for figures up near the 7 grand still.

New, they were close to 15 grand, a very high price in their day, but there are still plenty of them around and parts are getting harder to get, especially body parts (no, I don’t mean kidneys). I’ve looked on fleabay and there are plenty of mechanical parts but no panels at all.

Could be a long wait.

The local newspaper sent its photographers out on Thursday to capture some images of the hail storm. At the 1:49 mark there are some pictures of Mount Ousley very close to where I crashed. Very scary. You do start to get a bit worried when you see fully-laden semis and coal trucks with their brakes locked on, skidding down the mountain on the ice.

Filed Under: August 2008, That Sucks

Get about – Get a bike

August 8, 2008 By

This was the very catchy slogan of one of the motorcycle pressure groups some years ago when they were trying to convince people that using a motorcycle to get around on made good sense.

Now, being on the “inside” we know that this is so, but the wider community still doesn’t seem to be entirely convinced. That is why the front page article in last Friday’s Sydney Morning Herald was so interesting.

In order to evaluate the merits of various forms of commuting (and, I suspect, to embarrass our Transport Minister), they gave 6 people the assignment of travelling from Ryde (in the heart of the Transport Minister’s electorate) to the city centre by 6 different methods. The progress of each competitor was monitored and their total elapsed time was recorded.

Final results read as follows.

First: Scooter, 25 minutes

Second: Push bike, 32 minutes

Third: Car, 37 minutes

Fourth: Train, 1 hour 12 minutes

Fifth: Bus, 1 hour 14 minutes

Sixth: Running, 1 hour 20 minutes

Now there are a myriad of conclusions which can be drawn from this experiment, but please allow me to draw just a couple.

1. Obviously the scooter/bike will win, as it can filter the traffic and not be stuck in traffic jams for as long.

2. The two methods of public transport did a woefully inadequate job of serving the commuters’ needs even compared to a car, the train taking almost 3 times longer to deliver its commuter to the same spot (and, remember, this is a journey of only 15.5 kiometres!!)

3. All the bleating about how we must get people off the roads and onto public transport becomes a total farce when the system can’t cope with the number of people who are using it NOW, let alone how many WOULD be using it if cars were banned, (for example) from the city centre as the eco-Nazis are suggesting.

The lesson is clear. If you want to get about, get a bike.

Filed Under: August 2008, Insights, Techniques

A nut in every car.

August 5, 2008 By

In Bill Cosby’s famous sketch he praises the New York subways by saying, “Not only do they take you where you want to go and bring you back, but they go out of their way to entertain you. They put a nut in every car.”

After a few days of commuting to Sydney I think I understand what he was talking about. The Princes seems to be inhabited by nuts of all kinds, and I have started to categorise them. Please bear with me and see if you recognise any of these nuts.

Nut #1. Mr Businessman. Mr Businessman is driving a fleet car, usually a plain brown wrapper BA Falcon. He’s wearing a white shirt and a tie and his suit coat is hanging on a hanger inside the driver’s side rear window. His mind is on the meeting he’s going to and so he doesn’t know he’s going 140 when the limit’s 110.

Nut#2. Ms Pretty. Ms Pretty is driving an ever-so-slightly blinged-up Mitsubishi Mirage/Honda Jazz/Hyundai Getz. She’s only finished talking to her best friend 10 minutes ago, but she can’t stay disconnected for too long and, while she’s looking for the number and fumbling for her phone, her foot goes further and further down onto the accellerator until the car is going far faster than its maker ever intended. Her make-up is perfect and her dress sense is beyond reproach, but she also has headphones on and her mp3 player is assaulting her eardrums so she can’t hear the scream of the tortured motor or the siren from the emergency vehicle that is right behind her trying to get her to shift into the left-hand lane.

Nut#3. Mr Foreman. Mr Foreman is driving a big 4WD; you know, the Land Cruiser or Patrol type. You know he’s a foreman because somewhere on the driver’s side door, or on the front mudguard is a discreet little logo indicating the company that owns the vehicle. You can also tell because he’s wearing a flourescent vest and maybe even his hard hat (driving one of them things the way he drives, he’s going to need all the protection he can get so that’s probably a good idea)

Nut#4. Mr Courier. Mr Courier is driving a Mitsubishi Express van. It’s a fairly new model, but already it’s looking a bit battered and scratched as the hard life of a courier’s van catches up with it. Despite the fact that the van is made for inner-city deliveries, Mr Courier is fanging it along the highway, well above the speed limit, weaving in and out of the traffic and treating his fellow motorists to a regular blast on the horn if they don’t get out of his way. The poor vehicle sways from side to side with the lateral stresses of stupid lane-changes and you sense that the van will be on the scrap heap long before its time is really up.

Nut#5. Mr Rice Boy. Mr Rice Boy is driving a pimped-out doof-doof machine; a Subaru/Lancer/Civic 4-pot screamer. It’s lowered. It has a set of auxiliary instruments mounted on the “A” pillar where they are best able to completely obscure the driver’s vision. It has a 4″ dump on the end of a stock exhaust and muffler system and it sounds like a swarm of bees that have been trapped under an egg cup. Huge wide and low profile wheels and tyres and a built-in moral obligation to pass everyone on the road also come as part of the package. The stereo is cranked and the subby in the boot is pounding it out. He can’t hear the ambulance behind him either as he hogs the right lane, but he doesn’t care, because he’s Mr Rice Boy.

There’s lots of other nuts too, but I’m sure you’ve got the idea. But, here’s the funniest thing of all. Without exception, these nuts are tooling north at speeds that are well above the posted limit, all the time, and they are doing this why?

SO THAT THEY CAN GET TO WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, bizarre as it sounds, these people are racing the pack so that they can get to work FIRST.

As I said, there’s a nut in every car.

Filed Under: August 2008, Humor

Of MCC and things.

August 5, 2008 By

I went to the monthly meeting of the MCC last night. The Motorcycle Council of NSW is an umbrella group that represents the interests of motorcyclists in NSW in particular as far as political interference in things motorcycling is concerned.

MCC keeps a close scrutiny on impending legislation that is likely to affect motorcyclists, knowing, as it does, that such legislation is usually framed by faceless bureaucrats who have no knowledge, nor interest, in motorcycling at all. These gutless wonders feel no shame in framing regulations that are arrantly stupid, repressive and, in most cases, unenforceable, and they justify their stupidity in the most patronising and condescendingly “Big Brother” way by making pronouncements about them being good for “safety” or “the environment” or some such other absurd non-sequiter.

The latest piece of absurdity and revenue-grabbing has been the push to have motorcycles fitted with front number plates. This has been initiated in Victoria where all speed cameras are forward-facing (that is, they photograph the front of the vehicle as they approach the camera). Plainly, these cameras can detect, AND photograph, a speeding motorcycle, but the resultant photograph is useless in terms of tracking the bike and the rider, issuing a fine, and, shock, horror, raking in some cash for the avaricious Victorian government to whom exceeding the speed limit by a massive THREE KILOMETRES AN HOUR is a capital crime.

Now those of us who are old enough to remember, will recall that front number plates USED to be fitted to bikes and were eventually discarded on SAFETY grounds; ie that they presented a danger to both pedestrians and to the rider in the event of an accident, and good riddance to them.

Now we have this proposal rearing its ungly head again and, guess who one of its major proponents is? Yes, that ultimate buffoon, enemy of all things motorcycling and public moron, Harold Scruby of the Pedestrian Council. Eh? Run that by me again. Number plates present a danger to pedestrians; that is a proven fact. And yet here is the head of the body set up to serve their interests, foaming at the mouth at every media opportunity, screaming about motorcycles needing to have front number plates on REVENUE RAISING grounds.

Anyway, as I confidently predicted from Day 1 of this absurd chapter in the bureaucrats’ motorcycle-bashing tirade, the issue is about as close to dead as it is possible to be without having actually had the last rites pronounced. And it is through the efforts of the MCC and the AMC that this has come about.

However, before we get too smug and comfortable, this whole sad episode has shown us how much the government and bureaucrats hate us, and, let their be no mistake about this; they loathe us with a passion, and how easy it is for the faceless fools to ramrod through parliament legislation that is stupid, discriminatory and downright dangerous, always cloaked in the mantle of respectability and designed to appeal to the BMW-driving, lattee-sipping, cahrdonay-swilling denizens of Rose Bay and Wharoonga who “demand” that their elected representatives do “something” about “those noisy motorcyclists”

Be on your guard; there IS a target on your back every time you strap on your helmet and the enemy is far more dangerous than the redneck fool stopped behind you at the traffic lights in his Falcon ute with the R M Williams sticker totally obscuring his rear vision.

Filed Under: August 2008, Thoughts
« Older Posts