2024 and a New Chapter

We were gathered around a table in the bar of The Clyde, on a warm Carlton afternoon. It was the typical Friday gathering of friends: retired philosophers, some of whom had taught me, and some of whom I had taught alongside. However, we had a lot in common beside philosophy: we were ex-seminarians (or an ex-monk in my case), we were all from working-class families in rural north-western Victoria, and we all loved motorcycles. You have already met Peter Drum on this blog, posing astride his Kawasaki W650...perchance outside The Clyde. He was there. This is me with his Model A on a very "drenched" New Year's Eve:

Why is this scene coming to mind now? Because of Brian Scarlett, a particularly fine example of a human being, who has since died. He was talking about when he gave up his BSA motorcycle after a nasty spill. He then paused, and remembered how his wife later said: "You know, I think you gave up too much when you gave up that motorcycle." After a second pause--with both a fear away look and a glint in his eye--Brian exclaimed "What a paragon of a woman!" We fell into laughter. Brian was a very funny man, and yet those words, "You gave up too much when you gave up that motorcycle," have in the last year gradually, increasingly slid ever so subtely into my mind's ear. It was from the periphery at first, like a wish for an old lover combined with the happy acceptance that life moves on, but then it became a longing, and eventually an ache. A motorcycle would arrive from the highway and pull over at the edge of my town, which is where I live, perhaps waiting for their friends to catch up, and I would stare out the window, my mind lost in its sound. I had given up too much. But of what? The thing, formless, nameless, invisible but fundamental, and yet present and somehow captured in those memories of a cold, winter day of blurred ferns and the silver of the wet road outside Toolangi. On the coldest days of winter I had those roads often to myself, and it felt religious to be in the silence there. Or out west, in a wholly different country, spreading myself across wheat fields and prehistoric flora as my struggling old bike pushed northwards into the desert. It has been almost a decade since my last post. Naturally much has happened. I will be brief, but will tell you the story in its relevant essentials. From touring 40,000km a year for a decade, heading out every weekend no matter the weather, I had begun to slow down. One morning, commuting through Melbourne, I crashed my W650 in the wet. I was taken to the hospital with severe pain in my neck but was ultimately fine, if very sore for a couple of months. I was also quite shaken by the hours of lying in a ward with questions about my injuries unanswered. Despite the shop repairs, the bike never felt the same. I sold it to a friend. That left me with the Royal Enfield, and I continued my trips around Victoria and Tasmania:

During this time I developed also a strong interest in cycling, riding daily plus taking some long trips, for example from Lancefield to Maldon via those same steep hills on which I loved to motorcycle. Plus I deepened my interest in electric bicycles, which had begun years before when we still used car batteries, and when lycra cyclists would lose their temper at our existence. Now I had lithium-ion, which could go so far (I always pedal my electric bikes). Below is an English-made Pashley with a 250w mid-drive motor that I fitted. This photo was taken on a trip to Warburton:

Here's a photo from a ride that began at Castlemaine, across to almost the border with South Australia, and then up to NSW:

I was still playing about with bikes, including borrowing and riding various machines from friends:

However, as I say, I had slowed down in terms of riding. Then came December 2016. While on a motorcycle trip around Tasmania something happened, a terrible experience. It was not related to motorcycling, but it both shattered me, and became a fulcrum, a turning point which led to much inward and outward change. For one thing, I got out of Melbourne. I had moved to the city at 17 to pursue a career in music, but I grew up in the dust of the Mallee and the mountains of southern Tasmania. My heart has always been in the country and the bush, and I longed to return. So in 2018 I pulled all my money together, and even sold my Royal Enfield, to buy a house in Maryborough, Victoria.

Like many people of my age and inclinations--doing work that put passion first and pay second--I had despaired of ever buying a home, at least in a place I wanted to live. I had not been saving for a house. It was a sudden decision and a scramble, which became heightened after I signed the contract for the house--subject to bank approval--and the bank went from wanting a 5% deposit to 20%. It cleaned me out. I moved two hours away, with no car and a few hundred dollars to my name. It so happened that the day after I decided to leap, and continue with the purchase despite not knowing how I would make it all work, a friend called, asking by change if I wanted to buy his car. I offered him a payment plan for that glorious Ford Falcon station wagon, and it served also as accommodation for the half of the week that I continued to work in Melbourne. The latter was an experience--living in a car half the week--but I come from working class people and remember my father doing so when he travelled to distant job sites, and my grandfather doing do in his Holden station wagon when he went fencing on farms. It was the obvious choice, and I enjoyed the project of making it work. If the experience became some kind of theme, it was mainly due to the fact that I was working as a counsellor at Jesuit Social Services, which is a very middle/upper-middle class world of social workers, some of which despite their passion for helping us poorer classes, were horrified at what I was doing. Because they considered me intelligent, they assumed I was of their class, and there was something shameful or frightening in their kind of people having to "resort" to this. As further good fortune, everything in my new house worked, so I could simply focus on sitting on my porch in disbelief at my beautiful new life, and saving money. This became an exuberant time. A motorcycling friend Marlon, whom I have since lost touch with, and who has appeared variously on this blog, bought a house during the same week in Ballarat, an hour south of here. He too had given up on the dream, and carried the force of that old despair into his new exuberant chapter. A song by The Peep Temple became, during the month leading up to settlement, a drunken anthem for our excitement, and we would sing along in joy: "I have ghosts in my walls and in my pockets...but at least I own my house!"

By living very frugally I got into a position in which I considered it prudent, given my distance from work, to buy a second, back-up vehicle. A cheap motorcycle was the obvious choice. I gave myself a budget of $2000, including on-road-costs. I found this Yamaha V-Star 250 for $1800.

The purchase of that bike was a whole experience in itself: I bought it from a young, very bogan mechanic in Dandenong who had lost his license. Throughout the whole inspection and later purchase his mother, unseen from somewhere inside the house, nagged at him, while in between explaining the bike to me or filling out the forms, he screamed back at her "WHAT!" and "Fucking shut up!" and other delights. I was reminded of this. Anyway, the V-Star was great fun. I have never sought great power in my bikes, and this 250 could do most things perfectly well, with the exception of losing speed on hills. But then some things happened. Two things, to be precise. In the decades prior I had ridden all over Victoria and Tasmania, in all conditions and at all hours, and had never crashed outside of the city. Around my new home, however, there are kangaroos in numbers I have not seen elsewhere. I have had many near misses, and have smashed up the front of one car from such a collision. Most people here have stories to tell of such collisions, indeed it is local tongue-in-cheek wisdom that if ever you become lost in the bush, simply follow a kangaroo, for very soon it will lead you into the middle of the road. Well, on the way back from Rheola on my exciting V-Star, I hit a kangaroo at speed. My left foot still aches, five years later. Fortunately I managed to keep the bike upright, to the astonishment of my passenger. Then, a mere couple of months later, the same happened again. This time it was night, in the short stretch of highway speed between Carisbrook and Maryborough. I had not intended at all to be out that late, but there you have it. I collided with the animal on the front right of my bike, and felt its continued impact across the right of my body, which hurt like hell. In the collision my headlight was smashed off, blinding me, and the combination of the impact and my evasive trajectory sent me off the road at 80kph. I only knew this because the surface below me changed--I could not see a thing. I grabbed the brakes but started fishtailing in the gravel while still at high speed. One's mind can move incredibly fast in such moments, and as I considered the choice between again and probably going down, or just rolling to a stop but with the risk of hitting a pole while still at speed, I chose the latter. I have never believed in "dumping the bike to avoid an accident," and consider such talk incoherent nonsense. As it was on that night, I was lucky.

In the weeks that followed, I found that I had lost my motorcycling mojo. I just couldn't relax on the bike, even in the middle of the day through open fields. Kangaroos are less common here at day, but certainly do jump out even then. I sold the bike and bought a 1980s ute. In time I took up drumming again, having stopped when I was 19, and like many musicians I became also extra protective of my hands--another reason not to ride.

In my work, where I draw on philosophy to help people with hardship and flourishing, I have seen many clients with chronic pain, and the emotional misery and despair which they confess to me in all its dreaded dimensions, sometimes week in and out, has changed the way I feel about risks. I dont want to experience that. So, motorcycling became something "I used to do." A risk that was a great passion at a certain time in my life, and for which I was lucky to walk away mostly without injury. And so I have not ridden for five years. And yet, there's a danger in doing some things, but also in not doing them. There's a danger in staying in an unhappy job, or relationship, and a danger in not leaving. I have a good life. I am more happy than I have ever been in my life. During Spring and Summer I play multiple gigs every weekend. I make a moderate but, given my old-fashioned frugality, very adequate living doing work I am passionate about. I spend my spare time reading and writing in my field of work. I have a great relationship that is now half a decade old, with a deeply intelligent, empathetic, and talented woman, and we share many similar passions and ways of being. And yet, something has been missing. Life is good, secure...safe. I've become comfortable. And soft. This of course is the usual answer we give: I need some more adenture. Well, hiking or gravel cycling is an adventure, and is much healthier, and much safer. No, there was something more that was missing. Something beyond mere adventure and the virtues associated with it. There has been an aliveness that was missing. An aliveness of a distinct kind, which comes from flying through the air, whether cold and grey, or golden and blanketing. Which comes from lying your body down on the forces that push back as you corner at speed. That comes from the journey at speed, where you forget yourself and your seperateness and become the sun, the heat, the landscape. There is also a beauty, almost undefinable, in chrome and wheels and the hot smell of leaking oil. There is a danger in motorcycling. But there is a danger in not motorcycling. In not riding I had lost something of my spirit, the spirit that is particular to Matthew Bishop. Plato suggests we are composed of intellect and spiritedness and appetite. I had become all intellect and appetite. I decided that, while I need do motorcycling in a way which makes those kangaroo collisions less likely, yet I still need motorcycling in my life. Like last when I bought the V-Star, I am in a frugal situation, but of a different kind this time around. Last year I paid off my house. I am mortgage free, but that was also my savings, so I have started again to build some basic wealth. So, as a kind of history repeating, I gave myself a budget of $2000, and found a motorcycle for $1800. I bought a 1997 Honda CB250 Nighthawk, with 23,000km on the clock. It is very good condition, very well stored and maintained. Despite the low kilometers, and probably because of the age, the previous owner had opened up the engine, top to bottom, to satisfy his mechanical care, and he refreshed the top end while there. The bike came with a box of high quality consumables including a chain and sprockets, even though there is no need for such things at this time. Perhaps like myself, the previous owner had what I call sparanoia. As promised by the previous owner, the motor purrs and runs perfectly, and the bike rides beautifully. For the sake of my own sparanoia I have purchased a spare engine for $200, which I intend to dismantle and refresh, with the help of a friend who also rides. After all, I now own two sheds, full of good tools and much bench space. This time around, I want to become the kind of motorcyclist who rebuilds his own engines. This is the life. Some people would consider a 250cc below them, or too underpowered. I don't have much respect for the former attitude, which is typical in motorcycling, and among too many men in general about things in general, but I can respect the latter concern. I cannot reliably achieve 100kph on this bike, so it would be problematic as a highway tourer. At the same time, numerous of my favourite 500cc bikes across the years have topped out at 80 or 90kph. They have done that either through an inability to safely go faster (bad brakes and a tendency to explode) or because the engine felt so strained and unpleasant at 100kph. For me, as I say, I want to do riding differently. No more long days which mean getting caught out at dusk, or returning after dark. But that's the beauty of where I live. It used to take an hour of commuting out of Melbourne to begin the real ride. Now I am in the midst of riding country. I pull out of my gate and turn right onto secondary sealed roads leading to other towns, or left and into the bush, on good dirt roads which lead also to other towns. I live in the land of contemplative motorcycling. I live in a place where the better roads and better rides allow for 80kph or lower. And, so, I begin my next chapter.