MATHOCHISM
6 | AUSTRALIAN ROAD RIDERT
he heat stung, even
under the fl ow of
air over my skin.
Maybe because
of it, actually. That very hot,
dry breeze of a 40°C summer
a ernoon in inland Australia
is impossible to avoid. I’d
been broiling in the jacket
and now I was toasting out
of it. The only protection I
was wearing on my arms was
sunscreen, but I couldn’t stand
the thought of pu ing on the
non-vented jacket again.
By the end of the day I
looked hilarious. The gloves
had kept my hands an
even brown. The sun had
almost blackened my arms
from wrists to biceps. From
biceps to just below the
shoulder, where the wind
had blown up the sleeves of
the T-shirt, I was burned red.
Above that, white. You could
have fl a ened me under a
steamroller and waved me like
some alternative Aussie fl ag.
We were cruising around
on holiday, riding wherever
our whims took us. Riding
without a plan is a liberating
thing. But somehow we’d
ended up in western NSW
at the wrong time of year,
sweltering in the outback
heat rather than cooling
off by a Snowy Mountains
creek. The experience wasn’t
without its pleasures, though.
The heat and vastness
imbued a slow laziness in us,
sapping us of any residual
stress we might have been
carrying over the hard
working year. Heat haze and
mirages played all around
us. Willy-willies chased dustall over the plains. Country
towns, where almost nothing
moved in the midday heat,
provided full meaning for the
word laconic.
I felt as hot and dry as the
gravel crunching under the
Road King’s tyres as the road
dropped into a gully with a
full causeway at the bo om.
Water! At the same moment,
a car full of kids headed down
from the other side. I slowed,
not wanting to meet them
mid-crossing. They slowed,
not wanting to confront a
Harley mid-crossing. Like two
people running head-on in a
corridor, we dodged: I sped up,
they sped up; I slowed, they
slowed; I commi ed to cross,
so did they.
We both hit the water at the
same time. I glimpsed their
faces just as their expressions
changed from shock to
laughter before the wave of
spray engulfed me. I copped
it full on and was completely
drenched. Rage boiled up
inside me ... for about a nano-
second before I felt cool and
refreshed. This was far be erthan any air-conditioned
comfort I could imagine.
The kids drove away
laughing. So did I.BAD ATTITUDE
A friend told me about coming
across an accident on a road
he knows well. A motorcyclist
had missed a corner, spearing
into a barbed-wire fence that
didn’t do him or his pillion
any good, though it appeared
there were no serious injuries.
“Everyone goes off there,” he
said. “Mostly it’s cars, which
do a lot more damage to the
fence. The trouble is, the road
runs straight and goes over a
rise and immediately over
the rise it turns right, but
you can’t see the corner
until it’s too late.”
He could see a simple
solution: “They should just
put up a sign.” I was surprised
there isn’t an advisory sign
up already, indicating there’s
a bend and suggesting a
safe speed for it. “I rang the
council about it,” my mate
said, “but the guy there only
said people go too fast.”Ah, so it wasn’t simply
incompetence that dictated
there was no safety sign
up on a demonstrably
hazardous bit of road, it
was intransigence. Some
arrogant bureaucrat reckons
those who crash deserve
it. It’s not the fi rst time I’ve
encountered that a itude.
But as my friend pointed
out, for the cost of erecting
a small sign, we tax- and
rate-payers could be saving
the cost of call-outs for the
emergency services and
maybe medical costs. If
someone’s off work a er a
crash, it costs businesses
money. There’s the cost of
repairing vehicles and the
fence. Over a number of
crashes, that’s hundreds of
thousands of dollars, maybe
millions. Not to mention all
the other non-fi nancial costs.
Too bad if someone is killed.
“I feel like pu ing up a
sign myself,” said my mate.
I felt like wrapping the
signpost around that council
manager’s neck.
— Mick Matheson ARRBeating the heat on a summer ride can come when
and how you least expect it
HOT AND NOT
BOTHERED
■ The perfect sign
for that bad road?ARR112_006_Editorial.indd 6ARR112_006_Editorial.indd 6 2/3/2015 9:47:01 AM2/3/2015 9:47:01 AM