REALITY BITES

“HUMAN KIND / cannot bear very much reality,” said T S Eliot, and by damn he was right. The reality of the gathering darkness across the Hay Plains, along with the equal reality of a near-endless procession of kangaroos waiting to try themselves against my crash bars and the steadily diminishing reserve of fuel, all wrapped in the undeniable reality of a non-operational electric starter and the lack of a kick starter were combining to test my bearing-of-reality capacity. When the engine finally sipped the last of the reserve, coughed and stopped and the bike rolled to rest on the shoulder of the Sturt Highway somewhere between Hay and Narrandera, reality had me by the Dell’Ortos.

I got off, popped the R 90 S onto its centre stand as far off the roadway as I could while still on the solid tar – the buggers have a way of falling off the stand on uneven ground - and looked around in the near-dark. There was a house at the end of a dirt driveway a hundred metres or so across the road, and I was about to leave my helmet and gloves on the bike and head across there, when a cheerful voice not far behind me said, “What’s the matter, mate?”