David, my client, and I took off to Haliburton last Sunday for a toot along some twisted bit of road. Now one of the biggest problems Ontario has is an almost total lack of them, crazy ones anyway. Ontario’s highway engineers are surely some of the world’s least imaginative – to them, curves are the devil’s playground and must be avoided like the Autobahn.
Now I must preface all this by saying I’ve driven the 101, aka the coast road from Vancouver to Mexico (in a ’67 Ford Galaxy 500), I’ve ridden motorcycles and jeeps on the madly kinked ribbon of macadam laid down upon the lava mounds of the Gunung Batur caldera in Bali, I’ve powerslid through the jungles of Sulawesi, dined on rocks and bush-flies on the GAFA (Great Australian Fuck All), and slamshifted my way through many a Thai hinterland. So I suppose for me, discovering Ontario’s bikeworthy roads is rather like losing your virginity to Angelina Jolie and Giselle at the same time, only to bump into Courtney Love on your way home, and she offers you a drunken BJ – well, hmm, I, um, that’s really kind, but uh…
Still, I did enjoy myself immensely. And it was necessary to get out under the sun and away from all the estrogens that strain at me (step-daughter, wife, her four female employees, a sister, a mother), though I do love them all. And David is a rock-solid rider, something I also need in my life – you know, a proper role model. He doesn’t do reckless.
I do though — under optimum conditions, of course. And I managed to crank it, on and off tar. We found some dirt track in the bush about 10k south of H-town and I went a bit batty in there. It was dry, so traction with the Battle Wing street tires was no sweat. The F800GS handles so naturally, too, fishtailing when it should, unleashing no unpleasant surprises other than mad acceleration, except when I forgot to switch off the ABS and couldn’t do the 100-foot back wheel skid I’d planned. I don’t know about ABS… I’m sure the scientists at Bosch who thought it up meant well, and it’s saving lives daily. But when it engages, it feels like God, an all-knowing Germanic God, is reaching down and sticking his fingernails into my Brembos, saying ‘Nein, Herr Paul. Ziss iss not ze time for such silliness. Now shtop it!’ Fortunately, you can turn God off. You just have to remember to.
We rode and we rode and we rode, and it began to hurt where it will. And when we shot out of the secondaries, back onto Hwy. 35 south, and got on the 401 west, it was traffic. So we nudged back northward at around Oshawa and took Hwy 2 through town. Oshawa’s cool. Never seen it before. Assumed it was all treeless subdivisions and Pontiac Sunfires like it looks from the 401. But it’s got old buildings and guys with dreadlocks and girls with good legs and has a charmed, human feel to it in places. It’s also got at least one stupid wanker of a cab driver who ignored the advance green that was in our favour and nearly plowed through David. But like I say, he is solid and sensed that slacker brainwave long before it became an action and so avoided drama with barely a heart flutter.
And my role model imparted a lesson in me: When on a bike, everyone’s out to get you. Never think otherwise.