Why is it that ships and sportscars are all female, but bikes are just ...bikes? (Or barks, if you read Simon Fourie's well-known Seff Effrican "Barks Essay" magazine.)
One exception was my Yammy, "The Old She-Bitch" XT 550.
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| Like all red-topped she bitches, she wanted to be ridden hard twice a week. |
Given to me as payment-in-kind on the sheep farm, dropped many times by too ambitious mates on the party farm, and firm first-love of three generations of teenage cousins, she made her mark in many a man's heart. And shins.
And elbows. And especially biceps. Had a thing for biceps, she did. She knew just how to snag the cable to the rear drum to create a vicious little slide that would throw a big oke off in beautiful trajectory that would scrape off at least 40 cm of skin. Failing the cable snag, she could always drop a cog to go from 4th to 3rd just as you enter an apex. For the uninitiated, those falls were always Biblical.
I eventually learned to get off in mid-air, so to speak, and can testify that Jacky Chan was right when he advised that the only way not to hurt after a drop like that is by hitting Mother Earth harder than she is going to hit you.
And elbows. And especially biceps. Had a thing for biceps, she did. She knew just how to snag the cable to the rear drum to create a vicious little slide that would throw a big oke off in beautiful trajectory that would scrape off at least 40 cm of skin. Failing the cable snag, she could always drop a cog to go from 4th to 3rd just as you enter an apex. For the uninitiated, those falls were always Biblical.
I eventually learned to get off in mid-air, so to speak, and can testify that Jacky Chan was right when he advised that the only way not to hurt after a drop like that is by hitting Mother Earth harder than she is going to hit you.
Sigh... my old she bitch. Like all she-bitches she wanted to be ridden hard at least twice a week. Fail her on that, and she would go into a rusty sulk, piling all her hate into the back-pressure of the kick-start, releasing it mostly on about the 9th down stroke.
She could kick back hard enough to dent steel-plated shoes and easily holed thick-soled takkies. Once, she sent a tiny oke literally flying right over her tank. Almost broke his leg, she did. Luckily it was on the party farm and he only noticed the bruises the following week.
She could kick back hard enough to dent steel-plated shoes and easily holed thick-soled takkies. Once, she sent a tiny oke literally flying right over her tank. Almost broke his leg, she did. Luckily it was on the party farm and he only noticed the bruises the following week.
I am not going to miss any of that.
I know the old she-bitch won't miss any of my clumsy attempts with the spanners either.
Instead, she is now the prized property of an oke in Machadodorp who can like to make out between his shiftings and his wrenches.
Machado means axe in Portuguese, and before the ANC's cadres ruined it, it was a real beaut of a small town in the loveliest part of Mpumalanga's Highlands. Maybe you'll still spot the she bitch there, purring like a new kitten between the thighs of her latest mechanical lover.
I know the old she-bitch won't miss any of my clumsy attempts with the spanners either.
Instead, she is now the prized property of an oke in Machadodorp who can like to make out between his shiftings and his wrenches.
Machado means axe in Portuguese, and before the ANC's cadres ruined it, it was a real beaut of a small town in the loveliest part of Mpumalanga's Highlands. Maybe you'll still spot the she bitch there, purring like a new kitten between the thighs of her latest mechanical lover.
