MiKE: Effing dangerous.

For some strange reason, the both of us had similar thoughts come to our heads this past weekend.

Inexplicably, Serene mentioned this morning about long distance drives/rides in this part of the world. Specifically, she said that we should take the opportunity to go on a long road trip one of these days, to see the wide open spaces, especially in summer. But, she continued, we should not do it on bikes, even though when we were back in singapore, we would have thought that it would have been such a romantic thing to do: wide open roads, single lanes carving their way through sandstone sculptures, bridges over meandering
waterways carrying abundant life, salmon jumping out of the water and all.

Coming back to reality, we realized that it would be quite costly to do that - the price of a good bike here is about that of a decent used car (Yamaha FZ1000, ~$10k; Toyota Yaris ~$18k new); then we have to count in the price of the protective gear - easily $2-3k each, which we would have to find storage space to keep in our already crammed-to-the-max hostel-room-on-steroids. And we still would not be able to drive it in winter; having gone through half of winter, we now understand that -15ºC is no joke. A car, in comparison, would be so simple: open the door, get in.

And then we started to reminisce on the biking experiences we had. Like our deciding that, since it was raining so hard on the North South Highway, we should slow down from 150 to about 130km/h. And then, since the cars were stopped, we better go no faster than 90 as we filtered through the cars in the pouring rain. Rain, that was pouring so hard, we later found out, that it shut down Changi airport for a whole day.

Or what about the time we were going crazy, trying (and managing) to set our speed record from Cameron (Tanah Rata exit on the NSH) to Sungei Buloh (I cannot remember the names now; so this could be wrong) at an average speed of 133 km/h. That included the slowing down to a stop at the exit.

Or the interminable ride from Krabi to Singapore, where we had decided, at 1pm when we crossed the Thai border into Malaysia, that since we only needed 10 more hours, we'd ride on. And ended up riding through yet another tropical storm, a jam of Pakciks and Makciks in their Kancils, stretching from Ipoh to KL after Hari Raya, and into a shiny long nail in my front tyre outside Seremban, which took us until 3am to fix. We pushed on, into the dead of the night, the highway spookily emptied of any other vehicles, and we had to do leapfrog manoeuvres to make sure our visual field changed sufficiently to stop us from sleeping. Still, it was terrifying to look back and see Serene's headlight in my rearview mirror make sudden side-to-side movements. She had fallen asleep, and in the jolt that she'd awake with she had caused the headlights to swing.

Or what about the silly things I'd do on the Pan Island and Ayer Rajah Expressways, on the way home after work past 5pm; there were at least a couple of occasions where I had raced (separately) a Ducati Monster and one Multistrada as we were lane splitting; I'd be just riding along, minding my business, when the distinctive v-twin burbling note would catch my attention, I'd look into the rearview mirror or to the side, and then I'd have to ride faster to keep up with that work of art on two wheels.

***

Somehow, through it all, we were safe. Well, except for that incident with the van. We were looking back at this last 6 months or so that we have not ridden our bikes; and realized that perhaps it has been a really good thing. Because it allowed us to take a step back and reflect. We'd realized that if we were still back in Singapore, we'd probably would still be riding, and I'd probably have 'upgraded' to a bigger and badder class 2 machine, perhaps a Ducati, or a BMW, or maybe even just a Honda. And we might have ended up in a bigger accident. But we were 'forced' to stop riding. And I think it must be the time off riding, that for the both of us, at almost exactly the same time, had the same thought: what we did was effing dangerous.

Just so I/we have an exit though: No, I doubt that this has anything to do with age, though being December babies, we just 'celebrated' another successful circumnavigation of the sun. And even though I think it is scary now, I am still pretty sure that motorcycling is still, within limits, safe. I guess we just have to make sure we do not do silly things now...