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Warp 9. Engage! 4/2/2004

I was reminded that yesterday was April Fool’s day, and was asked if I got sucked in. I have to report in the negative, simply because I was busy at work the whole day, and when I got back home the nephews were waiting for their maths tuition. So the first of April passed very quietly for me.

There was a time, when the first day of the fourth month was an excuse for general mayhem. On campus, almost any celebration or holiday was a reason to be wary. Going back to or leaving your dorm room was an exercise in caution. It gave me a fair idea of how soliders must feel when patrolling an urban area.

We were not encouraged to use or park our cars on campus, and hence many of us rode motorcycles. In my case it was no hardship, since I always liked motorcycles. One of our coursemates had something nicknamed a ‘Water Buffalo’, or sometimes, “The Teakettle”. In an era where large displacement motorcycles were air cooled and 4 strokes, Suzuki had produced the GT750, a water cooled 2 stroke 750cc motorcycle. The bike was built in the 1970s, and weighed about as much as a pregnant water buffalo. And handled about as well. The bike was also kick started, electric starters in those days being less than reliable.

On the 1st of April, when the owner of the bike was in lectures, we sneaked out, and jammed the thottle cables to the bike.

At the end of lectures, we all headed out to the parking lot, to await the sweating and cursing that was going to ensue when our friend started kicking the bike and it refused to start. What we didn’t know was that his throttle was already jamming slightly due to friction, and that when we jammed the cables, the throttle slides were in the *OPEN* position.

Said friend (who was not going to be our friend for much longer), put the key in the ignition, folded out the kickstarter, and stomped on it. And the bike started first time, to the surprise of all present, including the owner.

Remember the jammed cables with the slides in the open position?

The engine immediately revved up into the stratosphere with a wailing sound not unlike a banshee being fucked up the arse with a telephone pole. In his panic, he tried to kill the engine by closing the throttle, but the cables were jammed, so nothing happened. He tried closing the kill switch, but it wasn’t functioning. By now the engine was approaching terminal meltdown, and the sound was incredible. Campus security had been alerted and we could hear the sirens.

So he thought he would try stalling the engine by putting it in gear and dumping the clutch. He pulled the clutch, stuck it in gear, and dumped it. And the bike responded by immediately hoisting the front wheel up into the air and taking off down the road. You know that effect at the beginning of Star Trek where the ‘Enterprise’ goes into warp drive and there’s this blurry streak? This was exactly like that. Except that in this case there wasn’t any empty space to go warp 9 in. What the space in front of the now close to vertical water buffalo had was a campus security patrol car.

The bike ploughs into the patrol car at what was later estimated to be close to 45 mph.The bike crumples the bonnet and shatters the windscreen into a million pieces. Our friend has now decided that letting go of the bike would be a good idea, and does so. Unfortunately he still has enough forward momentum to fly forward, and tear off the car’s light bar with his knees, rolling and landing behind the car, and breaking the rear windscreen and crumpling the boot in the process. By this time, we had all stopped laughing and realised the seriousness of the situation.

The aftermath? One totalled bike. One totalled patrol car. And it was determined that the accident was due to malfunctioning motorcycle. No serious injuries. And no one got caught. The owner of the Water Buffalo? He collected his insurance money and bought a VF750F Interceptor. Also water cooled. Which didn’t have a kick start. But it did have a radiator, with the radiator cap easily accessible. And one of us who was working in the campus cafeteria brought over a box of jelly cystals one day.

But that’s another story for another time.

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