Queasy Rider

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday March 17, 2007

Lissa Christohper

Helmet on, engine revved; it's time to put life and limb on the line.

I HATE BEING a beginner. I especially hate it when there's a lot at stake if I make a mistake on the learning curve. Bodily integrity and life itself, for example. I have bought a scooter, you see, and am learning to ride it. Two decades after getting a driver's licence, I am again awash with L-plate adrenaline. I accelerate in jerks, wobble around corners and mutter frantic prayers to a god I do not believe exists. Every time I start the engine, one part of me asks another: why exactly are we doing this?

As required by the RTA, I did a motorcycle rider training course to qualify for a learner's permit. The course was excellent but I still can't believe I am actually allowed out on the road. The RTA may as well have said: here, trembling novice, take these yellow cardboard L plates and go out amongst the hurtling four-wheeled killing machines driven by monkeys ... and ... er ... see how you go. Experiment with your own life and limbs with our blessing.

Only now do I understand what 60 kilometres an hour really means, let alone 80 or 100. Such enlightenment strikes when there is virtually nothing between you, the abrasive surface of the road and a chilling head wind. In a car you are protected from the truth.

The L on those L-plates may as well stand for leper. Cars do ludicrous things to get around me, even when I'm cruising on the speed limit in a straight line and willing my back and shoulders to exude relaxed confidence. (From the front there is no hiding the facts: face locked in a rictus of terror.) I remember the learner leper effect from my teens when I was learning to drive a car but it seems more virulent on a scooter.

I also remember wailing to my father that I would never ever ever master the hill start and so would never, ever, ever, qualify for my car licence.

When I am lying awake at night fretting about the scooter, I try to comfort myself that I did master the hill start and I did get my licence, but there are some problems with this line of thinking. Cars include a lovely protective steel bubble, scooters are vulnerability in motion. Also, cars do not just topple onto their sides under a certain speed.

Nonetheless I keep getting back on the damn scooter. I set out on short journeys at off-peak times, the route obsessively imagined beforehand: visit a friend in a nearby suburb, try out a roundabout, pick up fish and chips for dinner, practise 10 U-turns in a cul-de-sac. So many near misses. So many unexpected challenges.

After a week of fiddling and cursing, I surrender and go back to the showroom to be reminded how to open the tiny glove box.

I think I have adjusted the rear vision mirrors correctly but in fact I have loosened them in their sockets and, as I accelerate, I suddenly find myself blind to the traffic growling behind and riding with two shiny, chrome and glass flags flapping on either side of the bike.

I park the scooter in a bit of a ditch and have to hurl myself at it bodily, rugby-tackle-style, to get it back off its stand.

I am subject to one of the spiteful, lesser-known laws of physics as I coast up to a set of lights that change to green before I come to a complete stop. Instead of a smooth acceleration forward I shoot off into the left-hand gutter, legs akimbo, elbows waving like an albatross caught in a crosswind.

When will control, competence and finesse be mine? When will I feel safe in my own hands?

Of course, there have been some good moments and I anticipate more. (Soon. Or I'm quitting.)

Scooters are cheap to run and the petrol tanks are small but I didn't realise how small. The first time I filled the tank I spurted premium unleaded everywhere - giving the "do not overfill" sticker a thorough soaking - and it still cost only $4.80. I did a quick celebratory jig beside the bowser, waving a fuel-soaked wad of paper towel at the driver of a four-wheel-drive pumping past the $70 mark.

I have also enjoyed going into the motorcycle accessories shop full of Kevlar and leather and helpful men with lots of tattoos. (Kevlar is a strong synthetic fabric that gives riders protection from abrasion.)

A shop assistant with flames tattooed up his forearms is very helpful on the subject of protective gear. I comment to him that the scooter riders I see around town don't seem to wear much of it. I've even seen a guy riding around on a Vespa wearing Speedos and thongs, plus the only piece of protective gear that's legally required - a helmet. It's as if these riders believe that coming off something cute and fat with retro-styling will be somehow less injurious than coming off a motorbike. Or is it that a vehicle associated with Audrey Hepburn couldn't possibly lead to injury?

The tattooed man nods and says, "Yeah, you want to say to those blokes in shorts, mate, didn't you ever come off a skateboard in shorts as a kid?" Then he adds, "You know, you break a bone and you're in and out of hospital pretty quick with a cast, but a bad graze, especially one that gets right into the meat, you're in hospital for weeks ..."

I have to take a moment to lean against a rack of flashy Shoei helmets and breathe deeply until the image of minced meat passes. Back out on the street I have to take another moment against a pole when a young man pulls his very big, very powerful motorbike up onto its back wheel and roars off at about one million kilometres an hour. He is wearing shorts and thongs.

I wish I could do a wheelie like that. No, I don't. I wish I could just master a simple U-turn so I don't have to keep driving around the block every time I overshoot my target. Or that I could accelerate gently forward at the traffic lights instead of sideways.

I cannot wait to have the skill and confidence to peel out from behind a traffic jam, as I have seen other riders do with enviable ease and grace, and move up the inside of the lane to the front of the queue.

It is my great hope that by the time the APEC summit comes around in September, I will be confident enough to loosen my terrified grip on the handlebars and wave at the cars stuck in the predicted "traffic chaos" as I weave cunningly through gaps in the traffic and cruise legally along in the bus lanes. I will be emitting barely any pollution as I go. I will not wait for stinky trains. I will not stand in the aisle on bloated buses. I will park easily and I will pay $5 for a tank of fuel.

This, I tell myself, is why I keep getting back on the damn scooter.

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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