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Although he’s generally an incredibly insightful young chap and his writing occasionally verges on the brilliant, the Boy Biker has never quite managed to get his head around the fact that the deadlines on a monthly magazine tend to roll around pretty steadily. Here’s the original BB’s offering from issue 119 in the summer of ’07 to fill the gap – Ed
OK I might have tempted fate last month, but nearly 3 years isn’t that bad, especially considering I have spent all of them charging around London. That doesn’t take away from the fact that it is now a massive effort to go and get a beer out of the fridge. As for stairs and crutches… not exactly a match made in heaven, more like A&E.
That’s right I was bitten by a Mercedes. I was approaching RED traffic lights, and there was a Merc in the right hand lane indicating to go left. Naughty. But being the sensible rider I am, I went down his outside. I was just rounding his bumper when (I presume) the lights started to change. Now being in London obviously means that all observations go out of the window and drag racer reactions to changing lights are permitted. Well on this occasion the driver of the Mercedes A Class had a foot and leg in front of his tyre, but still decided to drive forward, causing my leg to be stuck between his car and my bike and leaving some rather nasty tyre marks on
my footwear.
Well my bike went down and I hopped around for a few seconds, while the driver just sat in his car watching me. The red mist descended and a torrent of abuse rolled out of my mouth, to which he responded with: “What were you doing?” That’s when I went completely ballistic, and after a couple more minutes of me shouting and him changing his tune to, “I’m sorry” I realised that I was in substantial pain and that a car full of armed police had turned up. Unfortunately they declined my request to shut the guy up at gunpoint, and called me an ambulance instead.
I overheard his side of the story and it went a little like this: “He was zooming down my inside and turned into me at the traffic lights. My car was stationary… no there is no damage to my car” (this would later change when he told another set of officers on bikes that I had caused some scratching on his wheel arch. Hmmmm.). Of course they saw straight through that – obviously he wasn’t moving, I ran my foot under his wheel and crashed my bike. There were tyre marks on my footwear for god’s sake. WHY LIE WHEN IT IS BLATANTLY OBVIOUS WHAT HAPPENED? Anyway a kind officer parked my bike up, we exchanged details, and I established with the police that he was chatting out of his rump.
I could at this point raise issues about the standards of the NHS slipping, as I lay in the back of the service’s oldest ambulance listening to comments such as, “Does this thing work?”’ But gas and air is a wonderful thing and the ambulance journey flew past. Before I knew it I was in a waiting room at St Thomas’ hospital… waiting. All manner of drunk, sick, wounded and bleeding came through the doors whilst I waited, including two other motorcyclists, one with a bad limp and the other in a wheel chair with two broken arms, which begs the question: what kind of bike accident sees you break both your arms?!
So I waited and eventually got poked in all the places that it hurt most and sent for an X-ray. Bit of a broken foot but not much they can really do about it, just painkillers, ice, and elevation. Less painful, but more visible was the cut on my leg. Blood and lost skin are a painful combination, but again thanks to the NHS for gas and air.
Unfortunately my bike was up for sale as The Dealer has sourced me a new one, but that may have to be delayed until after I’ve called a solicitor…
