Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Born to be Wild

There is nothing like the idea of riding on the back of a sexy motorcycle with the man you love, the breeze in your hair, the countryside around you, smelling all that fresh air. Well that is exactly what I did last weekend. I had never done it before, well, technically I have ridden on the back of the said motorbike with P before. But around Paris doesn’t really count and going on a road trip with the bike was definitely on my “list before you die”. So I was thrilled at the idea of riding on the Hwy aka “Born to Be Wild” to Alencon in Normandy.

We packed out little backpacks – because, you can’t take much on a bike so away went all my usual beauty products and makeup. We were going to stay the night at P’s parents’ house in Alencon. P’s parents weren’t going to be there so we had the 3 storey, stone, 60s décor, ‘stale un-lived in for the summer’ house to ourselves.

I didn’t have a motorcycle jacket. In fact, I didn’t have any motorcycle accessories apart from the borrowed helmut which was designed for a fatter head than mine and some borrowed polyester gloves, 3 sizes too big also.
So I donned my Zara-type, quasi motorbike style leather jacket and layered myself underneath with a woollen jumper, 2 woollen cardigans, and a skivvy. You can never have to many clothes on a bike, I was told.

Looking like a motorbike chick with grungy hair - Of we go. It took a little adjusting on the bike seat to feel safe and comfortable. I learnt to hang on tight so as not to fly off at acceleration. The old BMW is not a fast bike – but you still need to hang on.
I should also mention that I was getting over a nasty flu and P was showing early symptoms of the same nasty bug.

The excitement grew for me as we were leaving Paris and hitting the highway. P accelerated and flew past the cars on the autoroute. It was exciting for briefly a minute when I realised how bloody windy it was and how we were fiercely riding into the wind. I tried to turn my head with the bulky helmut but my head seemed to only sit in one direction, so to avoid fighting the oncoming winds I positioned my head in the same position – for an hour. So I got to see the scenery, mainly on one side of the road. Which was fine when there WAS scenery to look at, other than road barriers and trees flying past.

At one stage I squeezed myself into a position, very delicately mind you, to see what speed P was actually doing….160 km/hr. It’s probably best not to have looked at that really. And the awful thing is that what weighed predominantly on my mind was not how carefree I was but how there was little protection between me and the road and all I could think about was my impending death, perhaps some little stone on the road, some idiot driver, or the old bike could just decide it had had enough – all factors in leading to some horrific accident– and I hoped that if I did fly off the bike that whatever I hit, I would feel no pain and it would be quick and painless…years of nagging by my paranoid parents finally came to the forefront of my windblown mind.
Another frozen position was my legs. To maintain an open legged position, but not too open so as not to create more wind resistance is hard to maintain for anyone, accept if you are a 14 year old Romanian Olympic Gymnast or do regular yoga – which I am neither.

And the seat – comfortable for about 15 minutes – tops!
P and I designed some hang signals in case we needed to communicate. Because you really can’t hear anything when you are on that bike, Especially if it is roaring old BMW at 160km p/hr.
I finally gave up and waved my hand signal at P to stop. It was after about an hour of driving and I had to stop pretending how tough I was and besides, my butt really couldn’t take it any more.
Getting off the bike to stretch was a challenge. My legs seemed to have stayed frozen in a cowboy stance, (or I had a carrot up my bottom –whichever way you look at it). My butt really did ache and after a few minutes it seemed to come back to normal again. I took a look at the bike and knew that we had one more hour of arse pain and body stiffness ahead of us.



Apart from all that suffering I did notice that the French drivers really do make room for bike riders on the autoroute. P seemed to kick out his leg each time he overtook a car, which at first I thought was his way of stretching out his leg. But it was a polite signal to the driver. And each time another motorbike rode past there was a friendly wave. I didn’t realize that I was becoming part of this bike solidarity. Until we stopped in a small town St Celerine and I noticed all the other bike riders giving us a friendly nod or smile. Great – I was now a bikers chick. I certainly had the hair for it.

Coming back was pretty much like the journey going to Alencon. Accept there was a beautiful sunset on the horizon and the sky turned a beautiful mauve. But even with the beautiful sunsets around me, the coming dusk and the green fields, albeit with a stiff neck, I still couldn’t help but wonder or more like obsess about all my possibilities…and just that one little stone on the road…

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow you're braver then me!

islandgirl4ever2 said...

Hey there....

Please forgive my old lady bad memory... But, since you have my Cali blog on your blog list... I was in fact wondering if you know my French blog, News From France? For the life of me, I cannnot remember who you are as the only Ozi girls I know are Rochelle, Andrea, and Katia... I am in the So. burbs of Paris..
Drop me a line if you ever would like to join us in any outings... Take care, Leesa