Motorcycle Explorer December 2014 Issue 3 | Page 44

A dinosaur, if you're a big girl's blouse!
B
ob finally answered his
phone just before noon,
sounding tired and angry. What
little he had to say was
borderline rude. He’d packed
up at first light and would have
been half way back to England
were it not for his woeful
ability to navigate. As it was,
he’d ridden a few miles down
the road to a town called Dax,
close to the Spanish border and
holed himself up in a café. He’d
spent the morning nursing a
slight indent in his right hand
where the lizard had chomped
down and almost broken the
skin. When I reached him he
was in a foul mood. I on the
other hand, refreshed by a
good night’s sleep and a fine
continental breakfast, was keen
to get back on the road.
.
Our trip had been hastily
The impetus for the journey
planned a few days before. We had been Bob’s recent purchase
sketched out a route that would of a Suzuki Marauder, the 800cc
take us down through France to variant. Being a cruiser it had
the Pyrenees, where we
quickly become the object of
planned to enjoy the wonderful significant mirth as most of our
roads for a few days before
group, myself included, rode
gradually making our way back sports bikes. Still, I’d been
home. It wasn’t an epic trip by
secretly impressed when I took
any stretch of the imagination,
it out for a blast along the local
but any respite from the pot-
bypass; it pulled like a train and
hole ridden, diesel soaked hell
sounded lovely. I was enjoying
of London and those mean rain myself thoroughly until I came
clouds that had settled over
to a roundabout where, were it
Britain like the motherships
not for the excellent reactions
from Independence Day was
of a startled chap in a Saab, I’d
going to be welcome.
have come to rest in his
passenger seat.