Hunting The Snark

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Heavy Metal - The Ride. 1/12/2006

A while ago, a brother told us that he knew someone in the military, who was taking language lessons from him. And this student, who is very high up in the ranks, invited this brother, and his riding group, to the military camp where he was based to spend the day there, and have lunch with the troops.

And also mess around with their machines.

We left the city in the morning. When I say we, I mean the guys met up at the toll plaza fuel station on time. I was, rather unusually, late, because I had overslept. The alarm failed to go off for some reason, and when I woke, it was already past the meet up time. I called Finno, and he said three words to me, “Play catch up.”

So I rushed out in haste, pulling my gear on. I then reached my first problem. A cold blooded 2 stroke racing replica.

A twin, patterned after the 250 championship winning motorcycle. Which meant that the engine was tuned to this side of destruction, with handling to match. But not this particular machine, which had been spannered by a monkey who didn’t know what he was doing. This particular bike didn’t handle, and didn’t make power.

This now counted against me, because I was going to have to chase the rest of the guys down the highway. I cursed as I rushed out of the lift, because it was raining. The tyres on the bike were old, and weather-checked, which probably meant they would have all the grip of a female mud wrestler after a particularly grueling session in the ring.

I had no choice, and I blasted down the highway, pushing the bike to about 90% of it’s current limit. Which is something like about 500% below my normal limit, and about 1000% when I get the red mist. The bike sucked. It wasn’t happy. It didn’t pull. It didn’t want to go around corners. It just wanted to curl up in a corner of my garage and whimper.

I managed, to my surprise, to catch up with the rest of the group at the first re-fuelling stop. There were surprised looks and big grins when I rolled up. Not the least of which was because I looked a little like an angry bear riding a child’s bicycle. I was wet, I was cold, I was hungry. I rushed to re-fuel, and grabbed a can of coffee. A quick smoke later, we were off. A couple of the younger riders asked me what time I had left the city, and I said about 15 minutes after the main group left the first meeting point. There were dropped jaws at this, because the pace set by the group was in order of about 140 km/h, and this meant to catch up with the rest of gang at the first fuel stop, I had to have been riding the bike at … never mind what speed I was riding at down the highway in the rain. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t hanging around.

We reached the end of the highway, where there was a police escort waiting for us, to escort us to the army base.

They brought us to the base, where we were met by the commanding officer of the mechanised regiment, and given breakfast. A nice hot breakfast of lontong. For those of my readers who may not know what it is, it’s pressed rice, served in a hot chicken stock soup, with various condiments. Just the thing for a nice cold day. Because many of us were shivering by this time. The thick army style coffee disappeared very quickly, and all the smokers were immediately looking for some place to light up and be warm.

After some speeches, and the exchange of souveniers, the army boys let us loose on their machines.

We had a great time messing around with all the equipment. A sargeant was nice enough to give me a guided tour of his IFV (infantry fighting vehicle), showing me the FLIR sights, and targetting system and so on, when I caught him looking at me sideways out of the corner of his eye. I knew what was coming next, so I turned to him and said, yes, you’ve seen me before. No, you don’t want to know where. At this, I saw a light bulb go on in his head, and he mumbled something about eating dirt in far off places, and we grinned at each other.

After looking around the machines, we were informed by one of the Majors that they couldn’t bring us to the proving grounds, because it had been raining heavily over the past couple of weeks, and the ground was waterlogged. We took this to mean that his soldiers basically weren’t thrilled about letting a bunch of bikers loose on IFVs, and then having to drag us out when we got stuck in the mud. They did, however, take us around the parade ground for joyrides. Which we enjoyed immensely.

This was great. The air conditioning in the IFVs was heavy duty, and they came equipped with everything. Except cup holders. And the stereo system was for 2 way communication over secure channels. And there wasn’t a lot of leg room. It did however weigh in excess of 10 tonnes, which would have made it an ideal tool for dealing with traffic, and idiots in cars.

Imagine seeing this coming down on you in your rear view mirror.

• Posted in : On the road
• Author : thesnark

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