Musical misdirect: Pendulum - Hold Your Colour
There's a drum&bass rave going off in my helmet but I can only put on a snare-and-hi-hat Drum Show with my left hand whilst my feet double-kick the pegs because my right is busy holding the throttle steady to hold my position in the formation and even though I know that if I were to skip ahead like a stone across the river of lost souls flowing through traffic that I've joined not a single one of them would judge me, I'm perfectly comfortable following the leader rather than encouraging the pack of over-enthusiastic puppy-dogs to chase me if for no better reason than that I have absolutely no idea where we're going and having to stop and let them catch me so I can ask for directions is straight-up awkward for everyone involved.
I must look like an absolute dickhead waving my arm around and headbanging, but that's not why I'm about to stop; we've just gone through the Cotter Rd speed camera and are about to top the rise that follows, and this is the point on this route where I like to flip my right leg over the tank and sit side-saddle waving at the cars we're overtaking on the straight where the Parkway goes part the Arboretum.
"Wheeeeee!"
I did not say wheeeeee, but I may have been thinking it pretty hard.
I started grooving to the private discotheque coming out of my helmet's integrated speakers because I was bored, but wanted to look like I was having fun. It didn't take more than a couple of songs before I realised I actually was; now I do it all the time, regardless of whether I'm in a group ride or not. "Dance like no one's watching" the cliché says; "Let them watch," I thought to myself, "or not; I don't have an actual fuck to give, so I'mma dance like that instead."
At least until shit gets real and I need to actually concentrate on my riding because it's hard to keep grooving when you're hanging off the side of your bike to take a tight corner at speed, and even harder to keep drumming with your left hand when its fingertips are dragging along the surface of the bitumen whilst pull-steering and maintaining throttle-control with your right to keep yourself from veering into the concrete barrier a handful of metres to your right. I shouldn't complain about having to make a choice; I've seen the videos Cash captured of me doing both, and I've been told that both look ridiculously fucking cool.
"Man, like... you're such a good rider, and you ride all sensible," Young Corey confided in me a during a stop a couple of weeks later, "but you're still So Much Fun to ride with!"
He nailed his front wheel of his R7 3m behind and 1.5m to one side or the other of my rear for the rest of the ride, and I made damn-sure to make it a challenge for him to keep it there, but not so much that he'd over-cook the right around the roundabout in front of the War Memorial.
Musical sleight-of-hand: Pendulum - Watercolour
Gideon and I have been sitting here staring at the horizon for a couple of hours now with our left foot on the ground and our right kicking the bass-line which my rear-view shows me is creating in a pattern of red light that would tell anyone behind me who can read morse-code that I'm either listening to Pendulum again or having a stroke, but I'm unconcerned about any of that because my mind is as empty as the asphalt in front of me with dash-dash-dash-dash-dash written in white paint and shards of broken glass repeating in the darkness in front of us until it converges with the solid white lines on either side. The space just outside my peripheral is full of a great many things which can't seem to break through the barrier imposed by my enviable ~220deg field of view, and since they owe me nothing and moving my head would mean breaking my staring contest with the vanishing point I'm disinclined to pay them any attention but even though I can't see them I know they can see me, so I can't help but be aware of them.
I know there are particles arrayed left and right and behind me which are straining at the imposed inmomentum of the Red light in front of us, all pointed in the same direction, but all aimed on different vectors.
I know that my personal velocity is zero, because even when I have speed, I still have no direction unless you can quantify 'thattaway'.
I know it's a Saturday, but beyond that I have no idea what day it is.
I know that's a ridiculous thing to say because it's not day, it's night.
I know I should find that thought hilarious, but still I'm not laughing because it's the point in the distance which consumes me.
I know it's time to take another breath.
I know there's a light at the end of the tunnel 3.2km further up the Parkway, but it's the flash for the speed camera 50m further down this road, so I'll need to be travelling at-or-under 100kph when I pass through it.
I know we'll be ending the ride at Mandalay Bus because I accidentally scored us a standing 20% discount with Stu when I last dragged a group of bikers there after a ride.
I know I'm probably going to order a Salt & Pepper Squid and a Chicken Satay Roti when I get there.
I know that none of this matters, and the weight of my past and my present and my future are an illusion, because nothing actually matters, except that for now I need to wait.
I know that time is a construct created by our minds which is just there to prevent everything from happening to us all at once.
I know that when the time comes a dozen wrists will feed the fire of a dozen internal-combustion engines and a dozen exhausts will roar as we all launch and all of those dashes merge into one.
I know that when we do, by the time we cross this intersection we're the one they'll all be chasing because they're all coming with me.
I know now it's time to go and take me out of here, because the light just turned Green.
Musical impulse: Pendulum - Colourfast
The colours polarise when you're moving at these sorts of speeds; white is what's behind you, red is what you chase, Red means Stop, Green means GO!!!!!!!, and Blue... blue lights are to be avoided at all cost.
Suddenly there's a flash of a different colour entirely in my peripheral vision as a yellow-and-black Suzuki GSX-R750 pulls alongside and falls into formation off my left wing, and the drum-beat of my heart stops. My eyes dart away from the road ahead and take in the spill of red curls streaming down like a rust-coloured waterfall from under a white helmet covered in 8-bit gaming icons and technicolour speed-lines, soft blue eyes sharpened with razer focus, plushie bee tucked under the pillion-strap, and slowly, quietly it begins to sing.
It's Her.
Right there.
Keeping pace.
Seconds stretch into eternity as we sit there perfectly still with neither taking the lead on our Suzuki's as we ride up Drakeford Drive at 80kph, and all I can think is, "fuck me fuck me holy shit fuck," because I honestly believed that I'd never get to do this with Her again...
...and now here I was.
Gideon sees the light ahead of us turn Amber before I do, and I can almost feel the thud of Her foot hitting the road when Her front wheel stops at the white line in sync with mine. My eyes don't deviate from what the map tells me is north, no matter how hard the Magnetic pull on the needle of the compass in my head tries to drag them toward the shooting star to port. As the seconds tick away I find myself cataloguing all the things I know to stop me thinking about the one thing I can't not care about until hours later the light turns Green, my right-wrist drops like the bass, the compass swings to stern, and the chase is on.
Let's see if She can catch me...
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