Loose Lines [Jan/Feb 1992]

The heat gets to you that way. Bangkok summer madness, temperatures soaring towards 100 degrees, a hundred yard walk drenching you in sweat... I was dressed as inappropriately as you'd care to imagine for motorcycling - a cheap pair of flip—flops, tee-shirt and lightweight jeans. But that shouldn’t have been a problem as I wasn’t riding a motorcycle

A four hundred yard walk back home after a day spent wanearing around Bangkok shops was more than I could face, so I leapt on the back of one of the many motorcycle taxis. I wasn't too worried, except for an initial sharp turn it was a straight line down a relatively narrow lane. The bike was a Yamaha RXZ, but its owner being short of leg, the forks were moved up four inches in the yokes and shortened shocks out back. Suspension movement was limited to about an inch at each end.

Its owner was about par for the course, sporting a dubious grin and an itchy throttle wrist. He looked like he dealt in smack on the side; a popular pastime in Bangkok, selling drugs to foreigners then informing the police who would either haul the miscreant away or demand a huge bribe. Sometimes both.
 
About half a dozen motorcyclists make a living out of ferrying residents from the apartment block up to the main road. Mostly, the bikes are cut down step-thrus. All of the big four have factories in Thailand churning out these things with tuned up two stroke motors, front disc brakes and very flash paint. They are popular because they're about the only bikes the Thais can safely reach the ground upon. Yamaha even do a version with a Deltabox frame that actually looks better than it sounds.

These strokers scream up and down the road ail day long, a banshee wail that would shatter milk bottles if the Thais had such civilized things. When business is quiet they have races and play chicken with the traffic which comes every which way at the best of times. Lumbering lorries taking short cuts mingle with sweating cyclists hauling trailers full of waste paper, the road chronically narrowed in parts by parked Mercs and BMWs overflowing from an upmarket restaurant.

One Honda mounted fool had a leg sliced off in a collision with a speeding car, apparently surviving the trauma and probably finding more lucrative employment begging for money, waving the stump at tourists; in pans of Bangkok you can hardly move for the maimed lining the pavement, such things as social security not yet recognised in Thailand. It will get even worse when the hordes of AIDS sufferers finally hit the streets, Thai men renown for visiting brothels (even the smallest towns have one) and not wanting to spoil the fun with silly things like condoms.

l was not thinking any of this when I got on the back of the Yamaha. All I wanted to do was get out of the heat, half the street knocked down in a speculative fury there was no shade to offer cover. The pilot drove off in an excess of revs and clutch slip, straight in front of a taxi driver whose quick turn into the next lane almost caused a massive pile up, only avoided by an ancient bus slamming on its brakes. Drivers who cause mass carnage are renown for fleeing the scene in Bangkok, and I could just imagine finding myself astride the Yamaha trying to explain to irate cops that I wasn’t actually the owner.

I resisted the temptation to slap the rider around the head for such foolish behaviour; he was, anyway, distracted enough looking in the handlebar mirror, positioned not to give a view of traffic trying to rear end him, but to check that his hair was still in place and his grin sufficiently insouciant.

Motorcycles in Thailand usually come with an excellent set of mirrors but these are almost invariably junked. Another Thai idiosyncrasy is for motorcyclists to ride on the pavement when the road is so choked that even a narrow fifty can't get through. The latter might just have something to do with an obscure law which limits motorcyclists to the inner lane, a statute ignored even by the cops until they were put on commission on traffic offences to discourage them for asking for bribes.

A slow, sharp left-hand bend should have been child's play. I banked over with the rider automatically. Although I dislike riding pillion, I tend to go with the pilot rather than try to dictate a line I might have thought more appropriate. I had time to ponder for a moment that perhaps we were leant just a bit far over for such a slow corner when the rider banked over even further and the next thing I knew the bike had flipped over on its side.

If I had been less blasted by the heat or more conscious of what was happening I could probably have stepped away from the bike or even counteracted his insane act by flinging my body over to the opposite side and saving the both of us, but I didn't   unlike the rider who neatly stepped off with an experienced fluidity. My left leg acted as a perfect cushion for the fall of the machine. The Yamaha features a neat alloy footrest hanger, the one failure in its design is that the stand stop is perfectly situated to dig into the foot of passengers when the machine goes horizontal.

The owner of the machine quickly hauled the bike off my leg, offered a wide grin in a kind of apology whilst I tried to pick myself up off the floor. My left foot's big toe registered its displeasute when I tried to put some weight on it. Other toes chimed in when I looked down to survey the missing flesh. Another large chunk of skin was missing from the back of the same foot. The pilot suggested that I get on the back of his machine whilst I tried to combine a look that would kill on the spot with trying to sublimate some of the pain.

I hobbled off in disgust to a nearby pharmacist, muttering to myself a long stream of obscenities, cursing Thai men with more verve then skill, motorcycles in general and my own foolishness in not wearing the decent pair of shoes which was my normal wear. I just couldn't be bothered to find the energy to tie up a pair of shoelaces!

The usual shouting match followed with the indolent Chinese behind the counter. I did not want to add to my pain by covering the torn flesh in tincture of iodine, as he suggested, and he only handed over some alcohol solution to clean the wound and some disinfectant cream after a long argument. The chances of serious infection in Bangkok are high. Doing something stupid like bathing the wound in water or leaving it open to the polluted air are quick ways of ending up in hospital facing amputation.
 
Along with paranoid thoughts of infection I had to contend with the idea that some bone in my big toe might be broken. It was fast swelling up and going black. I reassured myself that if indeed it was broken I would be in real agony, ergo it must be merely strained or bruised. I walked back to the apartment. if walk is an appropriate word to describe all but hopping on one foot.

The RXZ pilot pulled up alongside me, gesturing that I should leap on the back again. I think the look I gave him overcame the language barrier and he roared off in disgust. I had time, during my ponderous progress, to work out that the radically altered suspension combined with the unusual mass of a foreigner, had given the Yamaha steering geometry that allowed the front mudguard to catch on the frame's down tubes when the forks were turned at a certain angle. Again, that I failed to recognise this before getting on the Yamaha is down to the effects of the heat.
 
By the time I returned to the apartment, my clothes were wringing wet from sweat and I could hardly walk on the one foot. I wasted another hour cursing just about everything with my foot rested out of harm’s way until the pain diminished to an almost tolerable level.
 
Luckily, in such moments I can always reflect that the pain is absolutely nothing compared to spending hours in the chair of an apprentice dentist, who appeared to take a delight in exposing roots and practising with various drills on my admittedly decayed teeth. A couple of days later the pain suddenly disappeared and I could walk more or less normally. The torn flesh healed cleanly and my paranoia receded. The obvious lessons were once again learnt, although I admit at my age I should not have needed to relearn them.
 
The funny thing was that the sheer exultation of being pain free once again almost made the experience worthwhile. It is too easy to forget just how lucky one is to be in good health and burdened with problems that in the greater scheme of things are merely minor. That is not to say that I intend to make a habit of falling off motorcycles.

Bill Fowler