I feel lucky to be here. It’s hard to say how much luck was involved but I’ve just used up another two of my nine lives so I’m having an unhealthily large whiskey. And enjoying every drop.
I know that motorbiking is a dangerous way to get about and, believe me, I ride pretty cautiously these days, always trying to anticipate the unexpected and always very conscious of the fragility of the human body. With biking as with life, you either believe that many years of something not happening makes it more likely or less likely to happen: it’s a kind of ‘glass half empty’ thing. I’m probably a ‘half full’ type of person but that doesn’t mean I don’t ride carefully.
Coming back from Cornwall this afternoon, with a head full of life’s problems, I was keeping a close eye on my air temperature gauge since my sister had warned me that there was some snow here in the Cotswolds which could well freeze if the sky remained clear. I took the shorter route back at the M5 junction, a calculated gamble because the gauge suggested it was a balmy 3.5ºC. I climbed up a couple of hundred feet towards the top of the hills where the temperature was, as I’d guessed, a degree or two less but still not freezing.
So I was taking it carefully. About 40mph. The higher I got, the more I met patches of snow in the middle of the carriageway. I know the form with snow: ride straight over it - ie don’t turn - and, of course, don’t even think of using your front brakes. It was dark and there was little traffic, though I was occasionally dazzled by the lights from the odd oncoming car.
It was during one of these moments of blinding brightness that disaster struck - I rode over one of the snow patches. Except it wasn’t snow; it was ice. Instantly the bike lost its grip on the road and I knew I was about to go down. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck - I think I managed to exclaim my not-so-famous last words five times as I wrestled with the handlebars and stuck a boot down to try and keep the floundering bike upright. At the same time, I could see there was a car coming towards me - about 30-40m away - and I had a strong premonition of going under its radiator grille. Plainly I was going to fall but would it be on the my side of the road or under the car?
And then, magically, the car had passed, the bike got a grip on the road again and righted itself. And I was alive. Amazingly, somehow, I had managed to avoid what clearly would have been a fatal fall. I, literally, could not believe it. How had we got through? The bike had been all over the place and suddenly it was riding in a straight line! Adrenaline is a wonderful drug and I laughed out loud at how, more by luck than skill, I had just cheated death. I was a moment away from oblivion and I had got away with it!
It was a great feeling: to have been no more than a fraction of a second away from falling in the path of the oncoming car, a chance away from the whole sorry saga of blue lights, hospitals, late night phone calls and all that crap. Life felt good indeed.
Did I mention losing two of my nine lives? It’s true. While on the way down to Cornwall just before Christmas, I was passing a lorry at about 80mph when it shed its front tyre. Other than a small piece of something hitting my leg, the first I knew about a possible problem was when I noticed a large black shape rolling along the carriageway in the gloom just a few metres ahead and to one side of where I was riding. I had no time to think. Aware that the tyre was moving towards the middle lane, ie across my path, I instinctively moved to my right. At the same moment, the tyre decided to roll over to the left, so I’ll never know whether it would have bounced off me or I would have bounced, painfully, off it.
For some reason, this incident didn’t produce the same adrenaline rush as my encounter with a patch of ice. “It was all over so quickly that I didn’t have time to react,” is the comment that one hears in these circumstances. Except, of course, from those who have used up their nine lives, for whom, sadly, it is all over so quickly.
I am writing this not to elicit OMG or ‘get off yer bike’ responses but as another reminder that we’re all incredibly lucky to be here, living affluent, healthy lives. Reader, make 2018 the year you seize the moments as they fly.
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