Almost Madness

monkeyboy

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Hants, England
Let’s start with death. Death has been stalking me recently. Brushing past me. Standing behind me. Someone I was talking to at work just upped and died. My beautiful little dog started to fade out and I had to cuddle him close and feel his soul slip free from his skin. Then I walked out the house only to find the grim reaper leaning against a hearse parked outside my neighbour’s. A keen gardener who’d suddenly gone from feeding the flowers to feeding the worms.

The reaper saw me, lent his scythe against a tree and floated over, drawing a huge dusty diary from under his cloak. “We’ve met before”. Gulp😳. He starts slowly leafing through his diary, pages go past and I’m wondering if that’s years.. months.. weeks or minutes. After a while he taps his finger 3 times and lifts his hood to reveal the dark cold void. “Remember. The gift of life is a limited time offer and it WILL expire. At this date and time, where ever you are, I will be there to make sure that it does. You can run but you can never ever hide”.
As he floats away, picks up his scythe follows the hearse I’m left to contemplate his words.

I’ve still got boxes to tick before I tick the oblong box they burn my bones in. Fuck that. So, despite the almost exclusively negative ‘feedback’ I’m getting about my plan, whose destination What3words starts with “almost madness”, I say bollocks to it all.

I’m going to run.

It’s time to turn money into motion. Up early and get the team together ready to go. I’ve got all the usual suspects. The Shit and Happens brothers are in charge of event management, Brute force and ignorance are on mechanics, and Lady Luck says she’ll join me where she can. Kiss my long suffering wife goodbye and I’m off.

I get maybe 2 yards off the drive and my mirror falls off into my lap
😳
. It seems Shit and Happens have got over excited about going away, have started running about on the bike and have knocked the mirror off. They’re looking very sorry for themselves.

“I hope it’s not the left mirror. The mirror I need to stop me pulling out in front of cars with a +100mph closing speed on the autobahn later. That would be really bad”

It’s the left hand mirror. Of course it is.. Fuck tiddly wink wank. That’s a good start. It’s right next to the lucky clover too. How did that happen!

https://flic.kr/p/2rnqByL
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Get to the tunnel. Lay on the floor. Sleep..
 
I’m heading east as fast as I can. No time to piss about. France is dressed in grey and it’s windy as all fuck as usual. It’s a dull ride I’ve done too many times before, only made interesting when God turns the lights out and throws down a storm for the last couple of hours.

Get to the accommodation and it looks like I’ve booked a panic hotel. How it works is you stand outside soaked to the skin in the pouring rain and you try to work out how to get in using a combination of emails, soggy pieces of paper stuck to windows, keypads whos keypad numbers and symbols are missing, a labyrinth of dark corridors and a computer that seems to show a spinning
🖕
90% of the time. If I’m lucky I should be just about get in before breakfast.

https://flic.kr/p/2rnqByF

Now anyone that’s been here before knows I have a problem. I’m not going to go on about it but I had to walk miles through thunder and lightning and hunt these down in the biggest supermarket I’ve ever seen. I don’t criticise your weed or alcohol habits, we all have our demons. Mine just comes out of cow tits.

https://flic.kr/p/2rnkgnx

Oh yea. And the broken mirror is so old it’s come away with half the bloody thread attached to it. Brute force and ignorance have stuck it on with gorilla glue and clamped it with some vice grips pending a more Heath Robinson fix I will formulate in my head tomorrow.

https://flic.kr/p/2rnpvxs

I Wake up before I went to sleep. That’s what it feels like anyway. Getting to the AC controller involved solving clues about sausages and sauerkraut so I gave up with that. That’s the financial model for these places. They charge you the day before then they make it so frustrating to check in and sleep that you just say “fuck it” and leave.

The glue has stuck the mirror but it’s weak and needs some help which I apply in the form of a big piece of tape. The bitch isn’t happy. It’s the equivalent of sending your kid to school with NHS glasses. She mumbles and moans and joins the dense morning traffic with her head down and her tail drooping. We’ve got about 400 miles to go today and it’s almost all motorway.

150 miles in and the traffic stops dead. Google says there is an accident. Given the speed the Germans travel at it’s unlikely to be trivial. So I start to filter. The Germans are really good about filtering. Making as much room as they can for me but I’m nervous. You know those videos you see of massively obese Americans on mobility scooters with two huge arse giblets hanging over the sides? Well that’s what i feel like. I had the panniers pushed out slightly to accommodate the extra fuel tank and now I’m paranoid I’m going to jab a giblet into the side of some expensive German metal. I breathe in, tense my giblets and slowly make my way through the melee for a couple of miles, leave at the next junction and cool the bike down with a dash through the woods to the next village, giblets swinging in the breeze.

As luck would have it, there is a very lovely coffee and cake shop just waiting for my patronage. The Bitch is still in a strop and insists I park her in the disabled bay due to her injury. Women😳

https://flic.kr/p/2rnrgUf
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My server is exactly as I expect nowadays. Dressed to deliberately obfuscate their gender. Are they a Fräulein, or are they a boylein? I give up with this shit. I classify them as a Roylein and have done with it.

I rejoin the motorway a couple of junctions down after the accident and I’m back in foreplay mode. The journey doesn’t really start for a few days yet and this part is just that. Foreplay. And as much as sliding your fingertips across very familiar warm flesh is pleasurable experience, your mind is sure to wander.

Should the hot/crazy matrix scale be extended from 10 to 20 to accommodate Britney Spears?

What end of an egg comes out first? The pointy end? Do chickens ever have breech births? Exactly how loose is a chicken’s woo woo?

And then you come back to reality, you’ve missed your junction, you’re almost out of fuel and the sat nav is looking at you with its hands on its hips and shouting “are you fucking listening to me?”

“Yes dear. Sorry”. And I’m full of fuel and back on the pink line😁

Tonight is a small town just inside the border of Poland and a hotel/detention centre. A cheap room, no en-suite but a sink/emergency loo will do.

https://flic.kr/p/2rnrgTt
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I’ve got to adjust the chain because it’s looser than the aforementioned chicken’s woo woo. I step out the door and nearly into some weird man child creature. He’s walking the other way but turns and follows me. I’m not sure if I’m going to get robbed or licked to death. He follows me to the bike and starts jibber jabbering. I do seem to have something that always attracts the village idiot. I can’t get the bike on the centre stand as it’s too heavy so I ask man child to help. There is definitely something wrong with him. He is definitely a flask of tea, some nice jam sandwiches, a few scones and cakes, a blanket and a wicker basket short of a picnic. I ask him to pull the back of the bike but he just grabs the tyres and tries to pull them off. I suggest he pull the panier but he goes all Geoff Capes, grabs the box and nearly tips the bike over. Jeeeeesus Christ almighty. I do feel sorry for him because he was born with an empty head but I just don’t need this right now. Eventually he goes off to count the petals on the flowers and I get my chores done.

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Quick walkabout and back to the sweat box for another sweaty sleep.
 
What's with the autographs ?
 
I start the day sinking my tongue between warm fleshy folds then deep into the moist darkness of an outrageously delicious chocolate croissant, served with coffee by a young lady whose gender was screamingly obvious. The place is full of tight white blouses standing proud with lady bumps as cool, hard and pert as perfect scoops of ice cream. And all for only £6😁.

https://flic.kr/p/2rnqEd4
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Get out to the bike and it appears it’s had a visit overnight. A work college of mine, whose lungs have survived on 90% nicotine since the age of 18 months, with a cough that could eclipse a cold start of a 1950 diesel locomotive and who could easily get a job on the local council, riding about in the back of a flat bed and spitting in pot holes to instantly fill them seems to have made a special journey to Poland overnight and gobbed on my mirror. It looks a bit drippy but it’s set rock hard. Saves me a job anyway😁

https://flic.kr/p/2rnpvvZ

But other news isn’t so good. In a bid to offset any problems when I’m away, part of my trip planning involves going online and making a big order from The Catalog of Disasters. These arrive, as advertised, always late, in the wrong size and delivered to the wrong address. Such was the success of this year’s order that I only got the bike on the road with 1 day to spare so I didn’t manage more than 50 miles before heading out. And it looks like The Catalog also sent me some freebies that someone delivered enroute.

My front tyre is loosing a lot of pressure for a start. On my trip to Tajikistan last year my rim got smashed harder than a pretty boy in prison to the point that, like the pretty boy, it couldn’t do a loud fart even if it wanted to. I’ll have to find some goo to see if I can sort that out.

And No2 is an oil leak. I saw some spots under the bike yesterday but I assumed that they had come from my bladder due to the exertion of exiting the bike😳. Turns out it’s oil though. It’s coming from an area that Brute force and Ignorance had been working on the day before the day before I left😞. Not much I can do about that except keep adding oil. And cry.

https://flic.kr/p/2rnqBwM
 
I’m headed for Frombork in northern Poland today, about 350 miles. Poland has been busy laying down smooth €100 notes in the form of new toll roads and I’m soon on autopilot again.

https://flic.kr/p/2rnqEbW
https://flic.kr/p/2rnpvvt

Today I’m really wondering why I’m doing this again. Trying to work out my motivation. I guess the truth is that as I get older I’m increasing feeling like my soul is staring out the windows of a rapidly dilapidating, almost derelict house. The thatch has all fallen out, the front garden hasn’t been mown for years, the paintwork is all worn, the ceilings are saggy, the front door doesn’t close properly any more and the plumbing is all shot to fuck. I need to do the things I want before it’s condemned and demolished. And I want to do the thing I’m trying to do this time. It’s been an itch for a very long time. There is a famous Dutch woman world motorcyclist called Itchy Boots, well I’m the old English equivalent, Itchy knackers, and it’s time they were scratched.

Back to reality, my stomach is making emergency calls to my head so I head into the nearest big town. I walk about 200m from the bike and someone taps me on the arm. I told you I was a world weirdo magnet right? Well I turn round and there a some scruffy individual looking at me and wanting to shake my hand. I thought he was a motorcyclist because he’s all dressed in dark clothes but he says not. He says he’s a member of the ‘black’ something. Anything that begins with ‘black’ isn’t likely to be collecting money for small children with cancer. I ask him about his arms. They’re covered in tattoos but it looks like both have been tightly wrapped in wire then had a current passed through them. It’s a mass of cut scars from top to bottom. “Ah” he says. “Prison”. Ok then…. Time to say goodbye I think.

It’s a really pretty town though with a big square, a river and lots of beautiful people.
 
Frombork is a tiny place on a big lagoon. It has a huge fuck off cathedral on the hill so God can look down on you and make sure you’re praying. I’ve got this praying thing down to a fine art now. I pray that my hair won’t suddenly grow and I won’t suddenly wake up like Paul Michael Glaser from Starsky and Hutch. I pray that my tummy banana won’t go on a sudden growth spurt and burst forth like a baby’s arm holding an apple, and I pray that Billie Piper won’t beat down my bathroom door and run into the shower with a new bar of Wrights cold tar soap. Well, the last one did actually happen to be fair but she bought Pears instead of Wrights so I had to turn her away. Anyway, I have 100% success rate with praying. That’s why I’m a believer🤣

Check into the hotel. I know it’s the one for me, it has a motorcycle in the dining room.

After a lot of shouting an attractive woman in a short dress appears and just motions for me to follow her upstairs. She runs up and I can’t find where she’s gone until I see her adjusting the bed through a door. A caveman I usually keep under lock and key in my head has escaped and is putting all sorts of ideas into my head at this point but luckily he’s appended and the English gentleman takes back the helm as she smiles and slides past me out the room.

Go out for a saunter. It’s a really tiny place. It would almost fit in my pocket. Yet another secluded spot on the planet for souls to congregate.

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Well today didn’t exactly go to plan😞. Woke up early, had breakfast, pontificated, dithered, because I didn’t want to get to Kalingrad to early. The border is only 20 mins up the road.

Rode slowly towards the border, through a small town, overtook a nun on her way to work, watched a bird of prey grab its breakfast from a field, and arrived at the border. It was empty, except for someone in a hut that came out to tell me it was closed and I had to use the one further south. Excellent.

Turn round and immediately nearly stuck my helmet up a stalk’s chuff as it took off from the roadside with a mouthful of nest. Bloody hell those things are HUGE. I had to duck out the way of it’s undercarriage😳

Get to the other border at 9:30. There is quite a queue. Single file. No pushing in. Wait your turn.

https://flic.kr/p/2rnrgMr

Two hours later. You can’t see the difference can you.

https://flic.kr/p/2rnpvqd

4 hours later. I’ve moved about 300 yards

https://flic.kr/p/2rnkgfU

5 and a half hours later… 400 yards. It’s 3pm and they seem to be letting 8 cars through every 1 .5 to 2 hours. I calculate I have about another 5-6 hours wait, plus 2 hours to get through, then an hours ride. The total calculation comes in as “fuck this” so I decide to leave. It’s a shame but I was only going to be in for one day and by the looks of it it’s taking just as long to get out. My schedule doesn’t allow for that. Kaliningrad is just a side show and I have to concentrate on the main event.

https://flic.kr/p/2rnqE72

I remember last time I came out. A 12 hour epic. I was talking to someone then that said it can take days to cross from Latvia but I didn’t believe him.. until now. Plans have to be flexible and I’m skipping to plan B. Get to the Latvia/Russia border ASAP, pack loads of food and drink, and wait. I can go to Kaliningrad on the way back.
 
Wake up paralysed with apathy. I just can’t move. I’m feeling deflated and defeated. Where the fuck did I put my Gotovation? Maybe I didn’t pack it. I did leave in a hurry.

Move my head and look out the window. What’s that? An arrow in the sky? It’s pointing towards Russia. Either The Reaper has been out with his skywriting pens or a plane has lost a wing and had a terrible accident. Either way, I’m taking it as a sign.

https://flic.kr/p/2rnrgKh

I walk out into the sunshine to look for some photos but I’ve been here many times and overfamiliarity breeds contempt. I won’t find any inspiration here.

https://flic.kr/p/2rnqBrG

As I’m walking back to the hotel there is a ping in my pocket. It’s from the Russian I met in Tajikistan last year. He’s just this moment bought a house to the east of Moscow and he’s waiting for a visit. “Hold on mate. I can be there in 2 days👍”. “Excellent. See you then”. Sorted. And just like that, my Gotovation jumps up from under the duvet like a dog that’s heard the word “walkies”. That’s all I needed. I’m just a dog. Throw me a stick.

Even The Bitch has pumped herself up at the news. Her front tyre has only lost a few psi in the last few days, and the oil leak isn’t constant, it’s like my own personal leak, it only happens at the most inconvenient moments.

https://flic.kr/p/2rnqBrB

I’m suddenly feeling much better. I’ve got purpose. The next target is set. Everything looks more rosy. Like the tall blonde basking in the sunshine at a pavement cafe, her lips wrapped round the rim of an ice late. 100m there is a woman on a run, doing her lunges and distracting the traffic. I’m soon joined in the traffic by a little lady biker, her long ponytail/lead running all the way down her back to her bum. I’m thinking it can’t get any better when a cycle path joins the road, and there is slim Lycra goddess with her hands behind her back, slowly roller-skating in a rhythmic, totally hypnotic motion. As luck would have it, the speed limit for the next 20 miles was 10mph. What are the odds😁

I tell you. It’s a good job I’m now a dysfunctional old man. A man that’s changed his ‘Under Armour’ underwear for ‘Out of Order’, a new absorbent range by M&S for the older, less watertight gentleman. It’s lucky I’m not 18. Jesus I wouldn’t be able to stand upright round here for fear of slipping and sliding around in my own semen.

I’m out in the countryside. The Bitch wants a word. She wants me to tell her I still find her attractive. She wants some tasteful pictures done. Artfully blurred to hide the wrinkles. This usually involves me riding down some scary muddy track or across a field, on in this case, both. Still, she’s working hard and I want to keep her happy at all costs. What the lady wants..

https://flic.kr/p/2rnkgdu
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