It has been truthfully said that a true friend is one who knows all your faults but loves you anyway. I have also said, on numerous occasions, that nobody looks after their friends like motorcyclists do. I have had the opportunity to prove both of these sayings again this weekend.
You see, today (Sunday) was supposed to be the second last meeting of the season at ACT Speedway. And, as has been common for the last couple of seasons, I received a call during the week asking me if I’d be happy to come down and commentate. Would I be happy? Can a duck swim? Does Dolly Parton have trouble seeing her belly button? Of course I’d be happy, so I dug my commentary gear back out of the cupboard and looked forward to the weekend. If for no other reason than relieving the boredom here at home with me being the only occupant of the house (unless you count two cats who still haven’t worked out how to peacefully co-exist), a trip to Canberra, a day at the races and a trip home sounded just ideal. And the more I thought about it, it seemed like a great opportunity to do the meeting but also to catch up with an old mate who I haven’t seen for many, many years.
That’s not quite true but it will become clear once I explain. Dave was one of the early members of Canberra Road Racing Club, a keen motocrosser/short circuit rider who had also dabbled in Formula 500 speedway and had had an earlier career in road racing back in the early 1970’s racing, amongst other bikes, a very potent little TSS Bultaco. When I first met him he had just bought and was ready to race an immaculate brand new TZ250D Yamaha. Dave progressed through “C” Grade extremely quickly and reached “B” Grade within his first year back on the tar, an impressive performance. Helped out by one of Canberra’s two stroke tuning “wizards”, Wayne Bryant, Dave’s TZ was soon producing over 65bhp, more than enough to put him at the pointy end. And so began a couple of seasons where Dave showed everyone just what he could do.
But, and there is always a “but”, isn’t there? Dave was also the father to two little toddlers and was trying to divide his time between his family responsibilities, his day-to-day job at one of the local motorcycle dealers AND a booming fabrication job on the side that saw him servicing bikes at home PLUS building some road racing sidecar chassis for paying customers. Something had to give and it was the road racing that had to be the item that was deleted from the menu. So, the little blue bike was sold (Dave has no idea where it ended up) and life took on a slightly less frantic hue.
People like Dave always have passions and a passion for radio controlled model planes started to fill in the time (and probably cost nearly as much money, truth be known,) and his retirement from road racing roughly coincided with my departure from Canberra and a new direction in my life that took me away from the track for a while too.
Fast forward 30+ years and a new username cropped up in my inbox. A guy called Dave Bailey had registered on my site. A quick check proved that he was, in fact, the same Dave Bailey. Not long after Dave came out to the speedway when I was commentating a meeting and we reacquainted ourselves after what seemed to be such a long time.
Since then Dave and I have kept in touch and we touched base again a few weeks ago at Eric Morgan’s funeral. I found out a bit more about what Dave and his wife, Debbie were doing (running a high-end glazier and window construction business), what hobbies he was now pursuing (he and Debbie both own a CanAm Spyder and spend a lot of time touring on them). Dave is still flying model planes but has graduated to a full-sized one, owning and flying his own two-seat ultralight. He and Debbie live on acreage out of town where Debbie looks after horses and also stock that they run on the property. Dave is still a passionate motorcyclist but also a plane “nut” to the extent that, late last year, he flew to New Zealand to witness the first flight of the De Haviland Mosquito that had been painstakingly restored by AVSPECS for an American customer.
So, where does this quite fit in apart from being (I hope) an interesting story? Well, both Debbie and Dave have asked me on several occasions to stay with them if I am visiting Canberra so that we can have a proper chance to catch up and “chew the fat” so I decided that this weekend would be a great time to do that. So I headed down yesterday afternoon, went out to tea with them at a little restaurant in the country town nearby and spent hours perusing Dave’s albums, drinking coffee, watching MotoGp Qualifying and finding out interesting things about each other that we never knew.
Unfortunately, not long after I arrived in Canberra it started to rain and it continued through the night. I wasn’t at all surprised to receive an SMS from the club at 0700 this morning to say that, due to weather, the meeting had been canned. But, you know what? I didn’t really care. Of course it would have been nice but the hours that I spent with my friends last night and this morning was worth the drive just by itself and I am already looking forward to being able to do it again.
Friends? There’s nothing like them is there?