OLD BLOKES
“May you live all the days of your life.”
- JONATHAN SWIFT
WE ARE ALL IN the prime of life, which means our ages range from 67 to 82 (Cough, cough! Ed). We have all been involved in the motorcycle industry in various ways for most of our lives; in my case, for over 50 years (although I’m not the oldest here). And we ride whenever we can; one most welcome thing about getting a bit older is that you can just take time out and go – although some things don’t change. We still argue. But liked the man said, “One good thing about passing 60 is that you argue less. It’s not that you agree, you just can’t hear each other.”
This was a four-day ride down to the Snowy Mountains and, with a bit of luck, back again. It was planned by our most senior member but, as always, I couldn’t help sticking my oar in. Over pizzas on the first evening, I pointed at the map and said, “You know, we don’t have to follow the highway here. This road along the coast was sealed recently.”
Now you need to understand that there are different kinds of time. “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana,” Groucho Marx said, and that has absolutely nothing to do with this story. What I’m on about is the difference between time as it is measured by calendars and what Mrs Bear calls “Bear Time”. To get from that to calendar time, you double it and add a bit. Anything that I reckon happened ten years ago, in calendar time happened at least twice that long ago.
The “recent” tarring of the Bermagui to Tathra road, then, was at least 15 years back. But at least it is tarred; I remember telling someone that the road north from Taralga was sealed, when in fact the local council had ripped it up years back to protest the lack of government funding…
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
“You can’t help getting older, but you– GEORGE BURNS
