“LIAR, LIAR, BIKE’S ON FIRE”

It would be nice if the next time you heard someone say “I had to lay the bike down”, you take a chair and belt him in the face with it. Then back it up by stomping him until the police hose you with pepper spray.

It’s certainly what I’m considering.

Because it really is the only recourse left when one is confronted with such a statement. For that statement encompasses everything that is wrong with many of the people who ride motorcycles today.

Let us look at what that statement is about.

At face value, it is (and is meant to be) a declaration of skill in terms of collision avoidance. You are meant to understand, applaud, and appreciate the rider low-sided his bike to avoid impact with a car. Or a tree. Or a werewolf.

It normally goes like this: “Yeah, I was just riding along and this car/tree/werewolf came out of a street and I had to lay the bike down to avoid hitting it”.

It is right at this point you need to pick up a chair and swing it into the shit-swizzle’s face as hard as you can.

And then say to him as he lays there with his eyes rolling around in his head, gagging on broken teeth and cheekbones: “You lie! Stop lying! Do not lie again!”

Because he is lying.

He didn’t purposefully and with great skill lay the bike down to avoid colliding with something.

He crashed. Like a bitch. A stupid, panicked, I’m-shit-at-this bitch.

He was riding along, something came out of a side-street, he befouled himself, grabbed all the brakes in the world, closed his eyes and slapped himself onto the roadway like a wet dishrag being flung into the sink.

There was no skill in this. No intent. He really didn’t plan for it to go like this when the object appeared.

But he wants you to think it did. He wants you to nod appreciatively at his display of riding prowess. A lesser rider would have hit that car/tree/werewolf. A lesser rider would not have had the presence of mind backed up with the skill of professional stunt-rider to “lay the bike down”.

But he did.

And that is a lie and that is why he needs to eat a chair.

He didn’t hit the car/tree/werewolf out of sheer luck. The same luck that ensured his entry into this world was via the aid of a mid-wife rather than a piece of Sorbent.

Of course, sometimes the bike is thrown onto the roadway and still hits the car/tree/werewolf, in which case the blame will be apportioned accordingly, ie. At the car/tree/werewolf, and it will be a case of: “It just came out. I couldn’t do anything.”

Yeah, well, you could have avoided it. But you crashed into it instead. Which I know is not the optimal choice.

I know this because I have done it myself.

A few years ago I centre-punched a car that had turned into my path. I broke my neck and speared all of my left-arm bones through the flesh of my wrist.

I didn’t “lay it down”. I just slammed into the car.

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Could I have avoided it? Sure. If I had been on my game a little more. If I’d have anticipated a little more. If…if…if…

At the end of the day the driver was legally at fault, but I was the one in hospital because on that day and at that exact time, I was not on my game.

My fault. No issue. Hell, it’s not like I’m new at this. Car drivers do all sorts of Crazy Ivan shit. I want to beat them with chairs too. And before we entered the Age of Video Surveillance, I did. Except I didn’t beat them with chairs. I beat them with large shifting spanners, helmets, mailed gloves, and steel-capped boots. Halcyon days.

And I can guarantee you that each and every one of those drivers whom I beat like a retarded plough-mule is today far more motorcycle aware than he was before the beating. You’re welcome.

So don’t give me that shit about violence never solving anything. Violence solves everything. It always has and it always will.

It is why governments all over the world use it, and it is why we live in a relatively peaceful society. The mere threat of police beating us with truncheons is usually enough to get us to behave.

So I contend violence is especially efficacious when it comes to solving things like the deep-vein stupid that produces arrogant statements like “I had to lay the bike down”.

I can admire a bloke who owns his screw-up.

“Yeah, I stuffed up. It was my fault. The pins come out in three weeks and the bike was insured, so I’m planning what to get next.”

See? No need to for a chairing here, is there? I’d probably shout him a beer or two because it’s hard for him to crutch his way to the bar and carry back a round.
But don’t lie. Only bitches lie.