Is that thing diesel?

by Paul Carter

  There was one that was almost the right size, and would work at a pinch. ‘I can get a slightly smaller version of this belt in from Mexico in a week; it should work fine,’ Steve said. He had saved the day. ‘We have enough of these to get you going, and the rest can be sent on to meet you. Just let me know by phone where you are and I’ll freight them to you.’ Steve even sold me the belts and bearings to match the new shafts and sprockets at cost. I was stoked and mightily relieved.

  Matty was getting ready to knock off for the weekend, and he handed me a beer. ‘Mate, we’re not coming in this weekend, but here’s the key—you make yourself at home and use all my tools. With any luck we’ll have the shaft sprockets on Tuesday, whack ’em in and you’re off.’

  That night I walked across the street to the hotel doing the maths in my head. I was rapidly going over my budget for spare parts, but there was no backing out now. All I could do was move forward. Tomorrow I would finish changing out the nuts and bolts on the bike, then pull the front end off the spare bike and fit it to Betty.

  Saturday found me in the workshop at 6 a.m. with a coffee, the radio and more tools than I’d ever seen. Meantime in Adelaide, Rob had received via courier the parts we’d pulled off Betty, and he spent the weekend machining new sprockets and shafts. I continued pulling every nut and bolt off Betty and replacing them with high-tensile steel ones, nylock nuts and lots of thread lock. She had shaken herself to bits. The front end was a mess, the triple clamp was worn; the forks vibrating had taken its toll. Everything was stripped and replaced.

  The morning passed quickly. At midday Rory called me to say he was waiting for me in the Deus café. I washed the grease off my hands and ran around to meet him. ‘Can’t thank you enough for this,’ I said, and shook his hand.

  ‘No worries, Paul.’ Rory was very relaxed and easy to talk to. Dan arrived with the camera and set up in the middle of the shop, and Saturday afternoon shoppers and bike nuts milled around watching.

  Rory had obviously done this kind of thing before. He talked easily to the camera, he spoke well and knew exactly what he was talking about. He described the ideal fit of a riding suit for professional racers and amateurs, and explained the difference from a rider’s point of view in the different suit designs as well as different types of leather. ‘Right Paul, if you could hold out your arms like so,’ he said. I did as I was told, and Rory started taking my measurements, then entering them into his laptop. I was rather enjoying the whole thing, until Rory got to the crotch measurement. ‘OK, Paul, I need to get the tape directly on the skin here, so I’ll need you to hop out of your jeans.’ There was a pause while my mind raced for an answer.

  Rory grinned. ‘You’re not wearing underwear, are you?’

  I shook my head. Dan looked up from the camera. ‘Mate, who goes to a racing suit fitting jockless?’

  I tried to look penitent. ‘Sorry, guys. I’ve been on the road and just ran out of clean undies.’

  Dan was laughing. ‘There are many subtle refined stages in the cycle of a man’s jocks on a roadie,’ he said, adopting a declamatory stance, placing one foot on his tripod case and leaning forward with an elbow on his knee. Shoppers gathered closer to listen. ‘Obviously, after the initial soiling your first step is to simply turn them inside out and soil the exterior; next, depending on any skid activity you can wear them back to front, or burn them and go straight to the final stage . . .’ he gestured towards my crotch, ‘where Paul is right now, the free ball.’ Dan smiled in a knowing way.

  ‘Deus will lend you a pair of shorts, mate,’ said Rory, nodding towards the clothing section. I asked one of the guys working there, grabbed a pair and raced off to the change room and was back on my spot ready for Rory to stick a tape measure into my boys.

  ‘All done.’ He shook my hand, we traded business cards and that was it. Dan packed up his camera and was off to enjoy the rest of the weekend in his home town.

  I changed back into my filthy jeans and went back to pulling the bike apart. By 4 p.m. I was getting tired. We were supposed to be heading out for dinner that evening with Dad. It had been very dull in the workshop without Matty to bounce off and learn from.

  I called Clare to tell her I was shutting it down for the day. Dinner was booked for six so Lola could eat without passing out in her food. Just before I left I did the pat-down thing: watch, wallet, glasses, keys—no, wait, wallet . . . wallet . . .WALLET, WHERE’S MY FUCKIN WALLET?

  A horrid pang of doubt ripped into my brain. I started a mad search around the workshop but found nothing. Panic started to fill me. Everything was in that wallet: all the funds for the trip on a Visa card, my personal cards, licence, all the usual suspects. I called Clare.

  ‘Calm down,’ she said. ‘Now, when did you last see it?’

  ‘When I got my coffee this morning.’

  ‘Did you eat lunch?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Honey, no wonder you get so tired, you can’t keep skipping lunch. Right, start retracing your steps and call me back when you find it.’

  I retraced them out into the shop a billion Saturday shopping punters had traipsed through. My heart sank. I bolted into the change room, but it wasn’t there either. Perhaps the cash got lifted and they tossed the wallet? Eight bins and a dumpster later, I called Clare back. It was now 5 p.m. and dinner was in an hour.

  ‘OK, sit down, have a glass of water and go over your day again slowly.’

  I forced myself to stop racing and just sit. I thought hard about every step of my day. Then it hit me: when I’d got back to the workshop after meeting Rory, I pinched some chewing gum off Matty’s desk, and went to the toilet. But the shop toilet was busy so I used the one in the workshop . . . so . . . I was the only one who’s been in there all day! BANG—I slammed the toilet door open and was on all fours round the back under the plumbing quicker than a refugee in an airstrike, peering over half a dozen copies of Just Bikes and The Picture. There was no sign of it. I sat there on the floor of the toilet and thought about getting on the phone and cancelling everything. Was it too late already? Had all my accounts already been handivacked?

  I stood up and stared into the stained porcelain. Fuck it, I had to check. I rolled up my sleeve and dived my hand in, right in, up to the elbow in, and had a bit of a gag when my chin nearly hit a yellow pee stain on the side and . . . wait a minute, my middle finger was touching the unmistakable corner of a credit-card-sized single-fold, polished black leather Dunhill wallet. ‘YOU FUCKIN RIPPER!’ A bent coat hanger finally got it out. I was so excited I called Clare immediately, toilet water still dripping down my arm.

  ‘That’s great, honey—where was it?’

  ‘Oh, on the floor by the workbench,’ I lied.

  Having said all that I can assure you, had I not found my wallet, this book would still be in your hands now, but you would not know that I fisted a public toilet.

  Dinner was a dismal affair in a nasty, cramped vegetarian restaurant. There were ten of us, we ordered, and an hour later I went for a walk with Lola who was getting very hungry and angry. We got two Subways and stood out the front eating them, then went back inside, waited for another fifteen minutes and finally gave up and went back to the hotel.

  On Monday afternoon the bike was almost ready. All it needed now were the sprockets, shafts and new bearings. Matty had seriously beefed up the frame and brackets that made up the drive housing, he put on a set of highway pegs, and another set above the originals, so I had a choice of three different positions for my feet. All I could do now was wait. Rob’s custom-made parts arrived on Wednesday afternoon and we put them straight in. I repacked the truck and got everyone organised for our departure the next morning.

  On Thursday we were out the front of Deus, waiting to go. Dare, Taka, Ben and Matty had all come out for a chat. Again I had been saved by my mates.

  Saying go
odbye to Clare and Lola is never easy, but I pulled on my helmet, climbed on the bike, had one last look, gave a wave and we pulled off. My father-in-law, Phil, was driving the truck, Dad was in the passenger seat and Dan was in the back. Phil has driven trucks from Sydney to Brisbane for the better part of 30 years, so I just followed him out of town. Dan wanted to get a shot of the bike going over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, so we pulled over, stowed the doors, strapped him into the shooting seat in the back and made for the bridge. Everything went well—well, almost everything. Betty’s CVT drive fell apart, but that was because I’d forgotten to tighten up the bolts.

  A massive dust storm had blown up from the desert the day before, sandblasting the city and turning everything orange. There was still a weird hue in the sky as we broke free of the traffic and headed north.

  Stage three was a straight run up the Pacific Highway through Newcastle with a brief detour through Bucketts Way. It’s a popular run for riders. Some parts of the road are not so great to ride on but at my speed and with all the vibration it didn’t really make any difference. We meandered along with the Karuah River past wide paddocks and shaded forest, then turned left at Gloucester and on to Nabiac and the National Motorcycle Museum.

  Our stop for the night was a small house in a paddock directly behind the museum. As usual we arrived late. Dad and Phil had spent the day on the road chatting and both looked tired, so Dan and I wandered over to the main entrance of the museum in the dark. A massive bike was displayed out the front. Dan lit up the camera, and its beam cut through the pitch-black interior, bouncing off hundreds of neatly lined up, polished handlebars. ‘Wow.’ It was an Aladdin’s cave in there. I was like a drooling kid outside a toy store window at Christmas. I pushed on the door as if somehow by magic it would open and automatically all the lights would come on, beaming me through the looking glass and into Bike Nirvana.

  The door of course remained locked, so I had to wait till morning, but as soon as the museum opened, I was there hopping about like a cartoon rabbit ready to spend my morning soaking up bikes, bikes, more bikes, bike stuff, bike trivia—bike everything. The place didn’t disappoint. I have never seen so many bikes in one place. Imagine the Titanic was stacked entirely with bikes, that’s how many bikes there were. Or you know those offshore firefighting vessels with their massive water cannons? Imagine they shot out liquid bike, that’s how many bikes there were. My mind melted, I didn’t know where to start. Every machine I’d ever wanted to take a gander at was there, but soon Phil and Dad were gently trying to wean me off the bike drip I’d so quickly become addicted to. ‘Mate, we should think about heading off,’ said Filthy.

  ‘He’s right son, let’s go.’ Dad had to drag me of there to my own bike—my bio, no-power cement mixer of a bike. It was a bit of a comedown.

  We continued on the Pacific Highway. Just outside Kempsey I shredded the last of the original CVT belts, so we put on the first of the new make-do ones I’d got from Steve in Sydney. Getting the bastard on proved to be a nightmare. An hour later we were back on our way to Grafton, where Clare has family. Her mum, Cathy—or as everyone calls her, ‘The Cath’—grew up around Grafton. Filthy told me about Cathy’s cousin, Don Walker—‘Great songwriter,’ he said. Over the years Mr Walker has penned an astonishing array of chart successes for the likes of Cold Chisel and others. ‘You know the song “Flame Trees”?’ asked Filthy as we entered Grafton.

  ‘Mate, I love that song.’

  ‘Well, that’s about some trees here in Grafton,’ he said. We stopped for a quick visit with the family and then continued on to Ballina, our stop for the night.

  ‘There it is, mate.’ Filthy’s voice woke me; I had gone catatonic on the bike again.

  ‘Where’s what?’

  ‘The Big Prawn,’ he said. Yup, there it was, Ballina’s pride and joy, looking a bit run-down and scary. Usually all the big things, like the Banana, the Pineapple and so on, are a bit polished, they look kind of soft and familiar to the eye, but the Prawn looked like a dirty alien and certainly didn’t make me feel like diving into a big plate of prawns.

  As it happened, it was time for dinner. ‘I think I’ll have steak,’ I said. Later, my belly full and the beer icy cold, we sat around talking until my lids started to droop. A hot shower and a soft mattress beckoned.

  By 8 a.m. the next day we had passed Mullumbimby, where my good mate Erwin has a property. Four years ago, Clare and I stayed there with Erwin and his wife Lucy. He’s worth visiting just for a trip to his toilet; called ‘The Long Drop’, it’s just a little outdoor dunny in a shed with no door, set right at the crest of a hill that gives you an amazing panoramic view down a valley. I was just sitting there, minding my own business, when yes, you guessed it, I did the ‘Exposed-Arse Spider Dance’. This version differs from the others, but only in the most subtle ways; essentially it’s just a flat-out sprint and roll.

  By mid-morning we had crossed over into Queensland. By then we were back on the Pacific Highway and I was back to feeling silly each time a big, ballsy, hairy-armed biker sidled up for a look. As I sat in my upright bio-fuel typing-pool riding position, hairy-armed bikers glanced over at me with a mixture of pity and amusement. Seated astride their Harleys in that laid-back, reading-the-weekend-paper-in-the-armchair position they travel past me effortlessly, their bikes sounding like several howitzers going off in unison. Even when bankers, lawyers and brain surgeons skip a weekend shave, get up early, saunter into the garage and throw a leg over their Harley, they get that face on, that look-at-my-bad-arsed-substance face. When they go past me, I can practically hear what they’re thinking: ‘I’m cool today baby, but next to this thing I’m really cool. Hey, I think it’s a diesel.’ I knew that for the entire ride I was never going to bump into another twat riding an irrigation pump, I was never going to go fast enough for anyone to want to ride with me, unless I befriended a retired biker in a golf cart. I was never going to hear someone say, ‘Hey, you have a slow bio-diesel Frankenstein special, so do I—let’s be friends.’

  Lunch in a gas station, a quick pee, then a final push into Brizzy, where we dropped Dan and Betty off at a hotel in the city. Filthy had to grab a cab to the airport, and the old man and I drove across town in the truck to spend the night with John Lloyd, an old Air Force flying mate of Dad’s, and his wife Glenda. John’s a great guy; I ran into him at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival last year. He had me in stitches with stories about Dad, and told me lots of things I didn’t know about him. John’s memories of those days, long before I was born, were clear as a bell, and by the end of the night I started to look at my father in a new light, like a veil had been lifted. They were like two young blokes again, bouncing off each other, laughing. I hope Erwin and I will be like that in years to come.

  Mathew Downey, Clare’s big brother, is not physically big—in fact, none of Clare’s family is big. But what they lack in height they compensate for in character, and Matty is no exception. He was waiting for me with Betty and Dan in the city centre, his bag packed and the obligatory Downey silly hat parked on his head. We stood around outside his hotel for half an hour. I said my goodbyes to Dad, John and Glenda; Dad looked good standing there with his old flying mate. I was itching to get going. Soon Betty was shuddering away under my arse, the Sunday morning traffic was minimal, and we peeled off into the city, waving. I got lost a couple of times, eventually hitting the Warrego Highway en route to Toowoomba.

  Truth be told, I was feeling a little shitty. A few riders I’d chatted to before Brisbane, including Howard, had told me about an amazing ride through Brisbane Forest Park to a place called Mount Glorious; apparently it’s a world-class blat. Once they’d stopped laughing at Betty they all said the same thing: ‘Don’t bother on that thing, mate, come back and do it on a real bike next time.’

  I tried not to think about it, but it was a still, gloriously sunny morning, and soon huge packs of Brisbane riders were
swarming in my mirrors then shooting past me, whap, whap, whap. Dozens of big sports bikes vaporised into the distance doing three times my speed, no doubt on their way to Mount Glorious for coffee. If I lived there, that’s what I’d have been doing that morning. A few riders, puzzled by my smoky slipstream, pulled up level with me on the highway, flipped up their visors, eyeballed Betty’s shuddering frame—dry-humping me violently at 80 kilometres per hour in the slow lane—and at the top of their voices fired off the standard: ‘Is that fuckin thing diesel, mate?’

  My ride eventually went from 80 to zero. There’s this giant hill outside Toowoomba and Betty didn’t stand a chance. Back in the truck she went; this time I managed to get her up the ramp without stacking her. Even our truck struggled to get up that hill, doing the last few kilometres in first gear.

  We stopped in Toowoomba for something to eat.Matty had a good laugh at just how slow Betty actually was, and asked whether I enjoyed the humiliation of all those riders zapping past at light speed. He wondered out loud if Betty was in fact not a motorcycle but rather a machine for destroying drive belts cunningly disguised as a bike. I took it all, knowing that Matt, a strict vegan, had his coming. We were approaching the outback— no place for a vegan. Sure enough, every time we got hungry, poor Matty went through the inevitable horror of trying to find something to eat. People just don’t get vegans; I heard countless roadhouse employees rattle off what they could do for him, but, oh, that’s got mayo in it, or ham, or egg—sorry mate, how about a bread roll? On the trip his standard meal three times a day was any fruit he could find, fresh or tinned, and a salad roll, and by that I mean a bread roll with no butter and two lettuce leaves, perhaps some tomato or cucumber if he was lucky. Failing that it was a bucket of hot chips for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

  By Toowoomba, Betty had chewed through four of the interim CVT drive belts. We only had one left. We decided to take a punt and push on to Roma; I called Steve and asked for the belts coming from Mexico to be delivered out there. We pushed on. The new belts should be in Roma tomorrow, and fingers crossed, so should we.