I had the real bike. But not the real license.
It bothered me, but not enough to swap the Harley for a moped with an
L-plate. That didn't fit my self-image at all.
So I worked out an elaborate story in case I
was stopped; I would flash my Pennsylvania license (a car, not a bike
license) and explain that I had been in England for less than six
months and was leaving within the year, which would put me inside the
statutory limit on applying for a British license. I figured I could
get away with this once or twice. At least until it was discovered
that I had been a resident for ten years.
It was risky, but now that I had the Harley I
wasn't going to give it up.
The object was not to get stopped in the first
place. I couldn't afford to look like a beginner on the bike.
I placed myself on a secret training program.
Up every morning at seven, leathered and on the road by seven-thirty.
Straight down the hill and into Richmond Park, coinciding my arrival
with the opening of the gates. Then around and around the eleven-mile
perimeter, practicing my corners and emergency stops.
Everything was going fine until the day it rained.
The smooth road surface was like an ice rink,
and I was into my second circuit when a six-point buck crossed in
front of the bike. I hit the brakes hard, front and rear. Too hard.
The back wheel slid out to the side and for a moment I was traveling
sideways at twenty miles an hour. Then the front wheel banged into
one of the wooden posts that separate the road from the grass
shoulder. It caught and stopped the bike. I continued to travel—or at
least my body did. The zippered bottom of my pants, a thermal-lined
waxed rainsuit, somehow managed to wrap around the left foot peg of
the motorcycle. By the time I hit the ground my pants were around my
ankles and my bare ass was pointing upwards in the Buddhists prayer
position.
"Are you injured, sir?" A female voice dragged
me back to full consciousness.
I looked up, over my own bared buttocks, to see
a mounted policewoman staring down. That she kept from laughing is a
testimony of her self-discipline. I did start to laugh; I couldn't
help it, it was a combination of unused adrenaline and acute
embarrassment.
Worse was yet to come. As I tried to stand up,
the pants went lower, leaving me cupping my traumatized genitalia in
a last-ditch effort at dignity. She dismounted and walked to the
bike. Bent down, turned the ignition off, then freed my pants from
the foot peg.
I was now curled in a fetal position, grinning
like an idiot, and passing cars were slowing down to look at the
accident. Finally, standing, I got my pants up, which was better than
I could do with the motorcycle. I couldn't get the leverage I needed
to lift it. The policewoman stepped in again and together we hoisted
the Harley.
"A deer ran in front of me and I skidded," I
explained.
"Are you carrying your operator's license, sir?"
I was taller than her by half a head and
probably ten years older, yet I felt like a little kid caught pissing
in the swimming pool. I pulled my wallet from my pocket and flashed
her the Pennsylvania license.
"I'm an American." I said it like it was the
single credential I needed to excuse my incompetence. She nodded her
head and waited.
"I'm only here for a few months."
She held my eyes for a moment then glanced at
the bike.
"I'm taking the motorcycle home with me, back
to the States," I explained.
"It has a British number-plate," she noted.
"I bought it here. To ride while I'm in Europe."
She nodded, then asked, "Do you feel able to
ride it now?"
"Sure."
She watched as I started the bike, clicked it
into first, and rode cautiously away. I caught a last glimpse of her
in my rearview mirror, remounting her horse. Then I turned the
slippery corner at the top of the rise—traveling at a near right
angle to the road, steering the bike like a car—and slithered back to
my garage. I checked the bike for damage (none), wiped it down, and
decided that my apprenticeship in Richmond Park had just ended; I
couldn't risk another rescue by the mounted police.
The next dry afternoon I saddled up and headed
into London. It was my maiden voyage to town, and my first experience
with heavy traffic: stop lights, cars, buses, and motorcycle
couriers.
If I had felt like a poser in Putney, then I
felt doubly self-conscious on Regent Street. Everything about me was
brand new, my engineer boots, my gloves, my flying jacket, my helmet
and shades, and my shiny black and chrome motorcycle. Even my
technique for navigating through traffic—pull out, gun it, then get
back in line fast—was new. Everything except my face. That was
decidedly not new. That had seen a good many more years than most of
the Kawasaki-mounted couriers who pulled up beside me at the lights,
looking over at the old guy on the new bike with what I interpreted
as a mixture of curiosity and scorn.
"How much did that thing cost you, mate?" was
the standard line from the collage of Darth Vader look-alikes in
full-faced helmets and tinted visors.
"A few grand," I would answer, underplaying the
money side of Harleying.
Darth would then reappraise my bike and nod his
helmet knowingly. "Is it quick?"
"Fair ..." I'd begin as the light changed and
the Vader look-alike astride his rice-burner left me in a cloud of
black exhaust. My image of the biking rebel (a hold-over from
college) was deteriorating quickly. I was more like an economy
version of the late Malcolm Forbes.
The other tough part about my weekly forays
into London was that each time I headed out of the driveway I
actually wondered if I would ever be coming home again. I found the
constant barrage of stimulus of cityriding a nightmare. Horns
blaring, people shouting, lights changing, everything happening at
once: I felt that sooner or later I was going to get hurt. Which is
not exactly the best feeling to have at the beginning of a ride.
The felling itself, a composite of danger and
inevitability, was not new to me. I had encountered it many years
before, during my days on the Norton, when I used to ride the bike to
the Philadelphia Karate Club. It wasn't the ride that made me anxious
in those days; the streets outside the center of the city were long,
wide, and straight, much less demanding than the Soho-Piccadilly area
of London. It was the karate class itself: the constant barrage as
the Japanese instructors barked orders as I attempted to block and
counter their kicks and punches. That felt very dangerous, but I was
determined to learn, so I stuck with it. For fifteen years I stuck
with it, and if I learned anything, it is that beyond technique there
is spirit, and beyond sprit is "zanshin."
Exactly the same as riding a motorcycle.
"Zanshin," translated loosely from Japanese,
means "perfect posture," but it is not so much as attitude of the
body as an attitude of the mind.
In the early days of the martial arts, when
masterless Samurai wandered Japan, zanshin was the difference between
life and death. It was a relaxed preparedness, a sort of professional
paranoia; an acute awareness of potential danger from all sides and
at all times. Many Samurai would never bathe; in fact, it is said
that Musashi (16th century), the "sword saint" of Japan, did not take
a bath or comb his hair once from the time he took up the sword. He
would not permit himself the relaxation of the water, the
vulnerability of his nakedness, or the lapse in concentration
required to attend to his vanity. Other more hygenic warriors bathed
with their long swords—razor-sharp single-edged weapons with blades
between two and three feet in length—beside them in the tub. They
were always prepared to defend themselves, and even sleep became a
discipline of "relaxed body and alert mind." Death was everywhere.
Zanshin was viewed as the most important
element of combat, whether armed or unarmed. After all, what was the
use of having the fastest draw, cut, and parry in town if the other
guy had already removed your head? The art of zanshin was to stay
relaxed under pressure, and aware of all avenues of escape, evasion,
and attack. "Calm under fire" would be a more Western definition.
Zanshin made its way into Western civilization
via the old gunfighters of the Wild West. Watch Clint Eastwood in
Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and see the
attention to detail given the gunfighters. The stillness, the
concentration, and the resolve. The build-up, the tension, then
bang!Somebody dies. Like a chess game where the stakes are
flesh and blood.
So riding a bike required zanshin; it was
dangerous. First of all, I, the motorcyclist, was exposed, more or
less (a lot more than less). Most protective helmets have only been
tested for impact at speeds of 4.5-5 MPH, and the strap beneath the
chin has been known to strangle the fallen rider. Leathers are good
to minimize abrasion but they sure as hell won't protect anyone from
broken limbs, and neither will they keep a red-hot exhaust pipe from
burning the leg to the bone. No one would put two boxers in the same
ring if one weighed six stone and the other twenty-four stone, plus
held a shield made of steel. Yet that's the difference between a bike
and a car. The answer is: don't get hit.
And that's precisely where "perfect posture"
came in. Because the essence of perfect posture was concentration
coupled with relaxation. It was OK being aware of all the dangers of
biking but I couldn't ride as I had a hot poker jammed up my ass,
rigid and waiting for something to happen. If muscles are tight,
reaction timeis slow.
Even a great set of legs in a short skirt was
an enemy, as evidenced by an early spring trip on the 883 down the
King's Road after that first cold, wet winter.
It was as if I had rediscovered the female
anatomy after a long spell in solitary confinement. There were
hundreds of women, short ones, tall ones, and then there she
was ... Not only with stockinged legs and high heels but with a
killer ass, tight and round. She was walking out of Peter Jones's. I
stared. I revved. I did everything but sing. She kept her eyes front
and continued walking. I followed at idle, giving her hindquarters
full concentration as she headed for the zebra crossing.... Hell, I
could just about make out a pantie line beneath her blue cotton skirt
... When—
Whack!
Smack into the rear end of a Volvo estate.
Naturally there was no damage to the Swedish
tank, just an ugly dent in my fender. And it was completely my fault.
(Unless you want to blame it on a combination of testosterone and
silk.)
Zanshin.... Vital.
Particularly when you ain't got a license.
Zanshin. The way I had learned about this relaxed alertness in the
dojo was by perseverance. In other words, by continuing to train.
There were no short cuts; I could read about it, talk about it,
philosophize about it, but the only way to get it was by going to the
training sessions and experiencing the pressure of the simulated
combat, by visualizing my opponents' hands and feet as sharp-bladed
weapons. I simply could not afford to get hit. On the 883, Piccadilly
and Soho became the dojo and the cars, trucks, buses, and couriers my
opponents.
I was going to town three times a week anyway,
to train at the Marshall Street dojo, and always, rain or shine, I
took the bike. The ride to town became a discipline in itself.
At first, almost every time I made the
twenty-mile journey I would have a near miss. A skid in the wet, a
narrow escape from a car door opening as I came up the inside lane, a
vehicle turning right without indicating. Someone shouting at me,
diverting my attention. The trip there used to tire me out more than
the karate training. I felt like a guy with a psychological L-plate,
self-conscious about my riding abilities and even more so about my
shiny new motorcycle.
Then, gradually, by virtue of repetition, I got
used to it, more relaxed, and the near misses decreased rapidly. I
was beginning to anticipate better and read traffic situations before
they happened. A sign that I was improving was my traffic-light
conversations with other riders. They were still asking the same
questions, "How much does it cost?", "How fast is it?", "Is it
reliable?", but I was no longer intimidated. Because I was using the
bike, I felt less pretentious about discussing it, and began to feel
like just another guy on a motorcycle, and not the old boy with his
new toy. And so after each of my trips I appreciated the 883 a little
more. Not only did I own a beautiful bike, but the bike actually had
a practical function.
Polishing became ritualistic. As soon as the
engine and pipes cooled down, no matter how tired I was, I washed and
polished the Sportster.
My first six months of Harleying were centered
around riding the motorcycle in and out of town, using the bike like
a commuter vehicle. No riding companions, no winding country roads.
No biking scene.
That was to come.
|
is a registered trademark of