Monday, August 28, 2006
PAIN AND THE JOYS OF MOTORCYCLING
'
My right thigh has swelled up since the surgery and is now officially a thunder thigh.
I had my first physio session since the op. today and was absolutely knackered afterwards.
I fell asleep for about three hours afterwards.
I must say that I'm getting better at dealing with pain.
Seeing as I've been in so many situations where pain is a companion, I've had the chance to experiment with a few ways of minimising it.
I admit not too many have been successful, but I now endure it a little easier.
I guess, because it's so familiar now, it makes it more predictable and therefore more manageable.
It still hurts though.
Been having some more weird dreams again.
I went for another ride a couple of nights ago.
I found myself astride some sort of twin cylinder machine and felt that feeling I knew so well.
I had the wind in my face ( must've had the visor up ) and the every time I cracked the right wrist, the thing would just take off like a steam train.
It reminded me of Wolfy's Vee Two Alchemy, which I had a short ride on during one of the trips down to Tassie.
The Alchemy was the epitome of motorcycling for me.
A lovely fat V twin Ducati motor in a very light frame, big tyres, big brakes and awesome handling.
I remember getting on the thing and having this really nervous feeling envelope me, much like just before you lose your virginity.
You know it's going to be fantastic, that you'll realise a dream, that you'll never get that feeling back again and that you'll never be the same person from that point on.
I first met Wolfy outside a pub as he was getting ready to hop onto it, at the time I don't think I'd ever seen one in the flesh and had to go up and have a chat with him.
It wasn't until a few years later that we met again through a mutual mate and started our friendship.
Anyway, back to the beast.
The Alchemy was essentially a kit racing bike.
When I turned up to his house, the thing was in bits on the kitchen floor.
His main stumbling block was the lack of an appropriate oil filter, which eventually was substituted by a Renault oil filter sourced from the local garage, slightly modified with a hammer.
I mean, it had no gauges, no real road going gear on it, so you really didn't have any idea how fast you were going on it, you could maybe estimate according to which gear it was in.
When I took off on it, I felt like I'd just been strapped to a train.
The worked Ducati motor launched the bike and insanely grinning rider with a really confident V twin rumble and vibration, coupled with seemingly endless torque and power that was almost daring me to go faster, and so I did.
As there was no tachometer to indicate some sort of end to the festivities I had to guess the point at which the redline should be, then I changed gears and it did it again, and so on until there were no more gears left.
No matter which gear was selected it just pulled like an angry bull.
At one point I had a sudden momentary lapse of lunacy and decided that I should try the brakes, you know, just so I can get the feel for them.
Well.
I nearly performed a flying dismount with forward somersault.
Being used to my crappy FZ 750 brakes, which I likened to four crumpets trying to bring two spinning pancakes to a halt, I just didn't expect the bite that the Alchemy's race brakes had.
The tyres on it were a bit wider than they should've been and because of that, the bike required custom made sprockets.
But being such a light bike and having those tyres meant that you could lean the thing at angles my poor old FZ 750 could only have wet dream about.
Overall, the bike handled everything with such confidence that it made me feel like I was a better rider than I actually was, but did it in a very safe way.
I suppose I wasn't even giving it a poofteenth of what it was actually capable of.
Alchemies........ like Wolfy's, except not as trick.
The bike in the dream was the same.
It had the same qualities and feel as that Alchemy ( which Wolfy still owns, and it's probably still in his kitchen in a state of semi disassembly ) and it gave me a really warm and fuzzy feeling deep inside.
I really enjoyed cracking the throttle and having the thing pull away like it was being chased by the hounds of hell themselves.
At a later point in the dream I was travelling on a three lane highway in the pouring rain and going slightly increasingly downhill.
I decided I didn't like being there and spotted an exit to the right and not very far away.
As the exit was to the right and going uphill, and the highway I was on was going downhill, it meant I had to try and slow down and turn quite rapidly on a very wet piece of bitumen, whilst riding on a constantly increasing off camber section of road.
Probably every motorcyclist nightmare, apart from black ice..........or errant semi trailers.
At the very last few metres the back end stepped out and I parked the thing at a perfect ninety degrees to the highway right at the point where I had to cross the three oncoming lanes.
I waited for a gap in the traffic and took off.
I remeber feeling extremely apprehensive ( read: shitting myself ) and thinking "Oh crap, this'll be good!" but the bike just did it with ease.
I wish I had that bike five months ago, I probably could have continued cutting the corner and maybe missed the damned truck.
.
My right thigh has swelled up since the surgery and is now officially a thunder thigh.
I had my first physio session since the op. today and was absolutely knackered afterwards.
I fell asleep for about three hours afterwards.
I must say that I'm getting better at dealing with pain.
Seeing as I've been in so many situations where pain is a companion, I've had the chance to experiment with a few ways of minimising it.
I admit not too many have been successful, but I now endure it a little easier.
I guess, because it's so familiar now, it makes it more predictable and therefore more manageable.
It still hurts though.
Been having some more weird dreams again.
I went for another ride a couple of nights ago.
I found myself astride some sort of twin cylinder machine and felt that feeling I knew so well.
I had the wind in my face ( must've had the visor up ) and the every time I cracked the right wrist, the thing would just take off like a steam train.
It reminded me of Wolfy's Vee Two Alchemy, which I had a short ride on during one of the trips down to Tassie.
The Alchemy was the epitome of motorcycling for me.
A lovely fat V twin Ducati motor in a very light frame, big tyres, big brakes and awesome handling.
I remember getting on the thing and having this really nervous feeling envelope me, much like just before you lose your virginity.
You know it's going to be fantastic, that you'll realise a dream, that you'll never get that feeling back again and that you'll never be the same person from that point on.
I first met Wolfy outside a pub as he was getting ready to hop onto it, at the time I don't think I'd ever seen one in the flesh and had to go up and have a chat with him.
It wasn't until a few years later that we met again through a mutual mate and started our friendship.
Anyway, back to the beast.
The Alchemy was essentially a kit racing bike.
When I turned up to his house, the thing was in bits on the kitchen floor.
His main stumbling block was the lack of an appropriate oil filter, which eventually was substituted by a Renault oil filter sourced from the local garage, slightly modified with a hammer.
I mean, it had no gauges, no real road going gear on it, so you really didn't have any idea how fast you were going on it, you could maybe estimate according to which gear it was in.
When I took off on it, I felt like I'd just been strapped to a train.
The worked Ducati motor launched the bike and insanely grinning rider with a really confident V twin rumble and vibration, coupled with seemingly endless torque and power that was almost daring me to go faster, and so I did.
As there was no tachometer to indicate some sort of end to the festivities I had to guess the point at which the redline should be, then I changed gears and it did it again, and so on until there were no more gears left.
No matter which gear was selected it just pulled like an angry bull.
At one point I had a sudden momentary lapse of lunacy and decided that I should try the brakes, you know, just so I can get the feel for them.
Well.
I nearly performed a flying dismount with forward somersault.
Being used to my crappy FZ 750 brakes, which I likened to four crumpets trying to bring two spinning pancakes to a halt, I just didn't expect the bite that the Alchemy's race brakes had.
The tyres on it were a bit wider than they should've been and because of that, the bike required custom made sprockets.
But being such a light bike and having those tyres meant that you could lean the thing at angles my poor old FZ 750 could only have wet dream about.
Overall, the bike handled everything with such confidence that it made me feel like I was a better rider than I actually was, but did it in a very safe way.
I suppose I wasn't even giving it a poofteenth of what it was actually capable of.
Alchemies........ like Wolfy's, except not as trick.
The bike in the dream was the same.
It had the same qualities and feel as that Alchemy ( which Wolfy still owns, and it's probably still in his kitchen in a state of semi disassembly ) and it gave me a really warm and fuzzy feeling deep inside.
I really enjoyed cracking the throttle and having the thing pull away like it was being chased by the hounds of hell themselves.
At a later point in the dream I was travelling on a three lane highway in the pouring rain and going slightly increasingly downhill.
I decided I didn't like being there and spotted an exit to the right and not very far away.
As the exit was to the right and going uphill, and the highway I was on was going downhill, it meant I had to try and slow down and turn quite rapidly on a very wet piece of bitumen, whilst riding on a constantly increasing off camber section of road.
Probably every motorcyclist nightmare, apart from black ice..........or errant semi trailers.
At the very last few metres the back end stepped out and I parked the thing at a perfect ninety degrees to the highway right at the point where I had to cross the three oncoming lanes.
I waited for a gap in the traffic and took off.
I remeber feeling extremely apprehensive ( read: shitting myself ) and thinking "Oh crap, this'll be good!" but the bike just did it with ease.
I wish I had that bike five months ago, I probably could have continued cutting the corner and maybe missed the damned truck.
.
