Meandering (photo free, but hey what the phuq!)
... Saturday morning, beautiful spring sunshine, I want the roads while it’s still quiet, free of canned-veg. I can take advantage of the occasional corner and turn the Buenos Aires urban landscape into an hour or two of country-mile.
0900 to 1100 an ideal compromise considering Friday night’s beer, the Sociology lecture for which she will need to propel herself out of the door at a similar hour (disrupting any thoughts of a little early loving and a lie-in) and the late-waking weekend traffic.
There’s also rugby on TV in an hour or two, Wales versus Fiji and I have a feeling the Fijians will be taking home the glory. I can get my urban countryside spin in first, then back in time for the match. Get a bit of lunch on the go and it will all be sorted, including the rugby, by the time she gets home. Perhaps by then a little siesta a deux might be on the cards?
With ride now love later urgency, it’s shower, cuppa, and leather ‘lite.’ A crafty balcony drag, on the tail-end of last night’s doob while she is in the bathroom. Five minutes to organise and check. Lingering kiss ‘hasta pronto’ at the door, she heads for bus, I head for the estacionamento smiling quietly. There’s apparently something about not wanting to wear leather in university lecture halls that gets me a pass from taxi-bike duty in the mornings, 0930 close enough.
Unchain my heart and loop the heavy steel links round the water pipe ready for my return. Hook-up the MP3 and phone to the leads by the clocks and tuck the little pouch into its cranny. Warm the engine gently. Cabled and connected, first gear selected, pull into the entrance tunnel and pull-up alongside the exit reader. Flash the monthly-user bar-code card at the infra-red scanner and wait for the barrier to lift. ‘Gracias por su visita.’
Gently bimble the still cool engine down the cobbled streets in this the heart of the old part of town, no urgency for a couple blocks, at least until you get out from the San Telmo labyrinth. Wait by the lights ready for wider avenue of the Paseo Colon. Across the street is the pseudo-Parisian Faculdad de Inginero, but then so much of downtown Buenos Aires is reminiscent of France it no longer qualifies as pseudo-anything, it is. The sun gently warming bones, hot oil warming the chillier recesses of the gently pulsing metallic heart beneath.
Lights change, bobble across the potholes and then there’s clean smooth asphalt underneath the Bridgstones. Eric Clapton’s searing intro to ‘Five Long Years’ floods through the Autocom and into the Arai and, as I ease on a few more revs, each set of traffic signals turns to magic green just ahead of me. Bike and rider are gently warming to the task ahead.
Through the four apexes behind Plaza de Mayo and the Casa Rosada, normally a favourite ‘hooning’ spot just out of sight of the tourists, but the traffic flow is all wrong and everything’s still too cold to attack with any gusto. Let the hornet swarm of 125s get their kiddies in the traffic light grand prix. Go gently, up the Avenida towards the massive but largely hidden Plaza San Martin, which will deliver you, primed, to the heroically proportioned Avenida Del Libertador. Let the games commence, John Hiatt ‘How Bad’s the Coffee.’
Three lanes open up to six in each direction, a foretaste of big boulevards to come. Pick your space but it’s a fair bet you’re not the only one keen to acquire prime asphalt. Five thousand revs and third gear sprints you to the front of the raggle-taggle pack of taxis, fume belching buses, twisted pick-up trucks, foreign-badged locally made hatchbacks and the odd German import.
There’s usually a multitude of small bikes, 125s, step-throughs, and small-wheel scooters, the 1200 assures me first dibs on road-space. Underneath the autopista towards Recoleta and in a few blocks things will open up, but the first grins of a little light spirited filtering are already starting to set tiny creases at the corners of my mouth.
Note the absence of lane discipline, frequent life-savers become exactly what they are called. Complete them diligently and you will find high speed Peugots and Citroens hurtling through your blind spots at alarming velocities. Fail to complete the check and the rapid and the unseen will surely find you soon enough. Concentration focuses on negotiating the traffic and the music slips into background.
Recoleta, the oncoming lanes of traffic fade stage-left as the avenue splits and you can open up a little on Avenida Alcorta, eight lanes all going your way and it’s easy, easy like Sunday morning, possibly more so on a Saturday.
Homegrown. Rock to the rhythm and bop to the beat of the radio. The Kings of Leon propel me under the pedestrian footbridge at the Facultad de Derechos, where she will, about now, be settling in for a two hour bearding in Sociology. 60 plus, pretty much setting the pace. At this prudent hour it’s more of a skirmish than full blown urban combat. In truth the 125s are able to slide through gaps too slim for a GS and often make better progress. I notice a couple of neat looking, new, Honda 250 twins to one side of me. Cracking bike for the urban landscape, but a little small for my 6’1”
Wary of the blind-spot nutters and the drivers with ‘flexible’ traffic-light timing hurtling out of side roads, I make progress. There’s a big tourer ahead of me, less able to slither through the gaps than me, I manage to get alongside it comfortably as we reach the Rond Point restaurant. 1200RT Buenos Aires plate, flip-face lid, flipped, shades, cordura jacket, jeans, trainers and no gloves. Distinguished grey goatee, we barely have time to nod before launching together, heading the surge away from the lights.
I take it easy, crack off a couple of easy passes and then back off and wait whilst the more sedate steed catches me. Very smooth. Together we make progress from lights to lights, it’s a section of avenue that’s wide enough, but hemmed in by tall, balconied, buildings, lines of parked cars and side turnings every 100metres, so progress is a relative thing even on a quiet weekend morning.
Fortunately the lights are well phased, so you can make several intersections on a seemingly perpetual green. Overcook it and you’ll catch the red, rendering progress even more relative. The best time, when you’re hot for a little light action, is when you just clip an amber preceding a red. Pin it! You can beat the next amber and play catch up with the lights all the way back to a ‘new’ green, traffic conditions permitting of course. Illuminated overhead signs give the straight through ‘onda verde’, ‘green way,’ speed in km/hr, add a bit of lane discipline and you could do the length of this avenue on cruise control.
Where you don’t get the timing you don’t get too much co-operation. Small cars and sometime large ones try to forge unmarked lanes in the spaces vocally claimed and jealously guarded by European bikers. But you gather attention when you reach a standstill. I don’t know why quite so much attention? La Langosta (The Prawn, locally referred to by some friends as ‘El Misil’ The Missile) is not the only GS in Buenos Aires, I’ve seen a few in my travels.
But the 125s outnumber all, they swarm at lights and there are lots of shouted questions. During the week many come from the multitudinous despatch riders, rag-tag bundles of mismatched and battle-scarred riding gear, visors glazed with ingrained grime. I point to my ears through the lid and shake my head, anonymous behind race tinted visor. I generally can’t hear the question through the combined foam of helmet and MP3. Lots of car drivers give thumbs up.
Drivers of German imports are less than ‘sympatico’ with their two-wheeled teutonic brethren. They tend to look down the nose at you and hare away like maniacs on the lights, like you can’t catch them. The temptation to occasionally demonstrate two-wheeled power to weight superiority in the drag-race, dick-measuring contest of life sometimes overwhelms.
I tag the RT in my mirrors, the avenue will open up soon when we reach Parque 3 de Febrero, there’s a curve or two where carving lines will become more than the mere product of cavalier lane changes.
Into the park, the road splits around a monument. Left side, quicker off the lights, but can leave you set up wrong for the ‘railway curves’ ahead, one of the few genuine toe-down opportunities in town. I split right, I want the best of the curves, the RT appears to be following a couple of cars back. I hurtle off the lights planning to get some clear space for the RT to follow into and I have plenty of time to get up to speed for the right-left under the upcoming rail bridge.
Bollocks, a couple of old, slow, pick-ups block the best approach, I don’t find RT in my mirrors and it’s decision time. Pin it again, drift left, dodging hatchbacks and ancient Ford Falcons to find that special space between groups of vehicles. Watch for the pothole dead centre, it can swallow a wheel. Under the left hand span onto the brakes a ‘gnats,’ trail off the gas, notch down a couple and gentle right. Then it’s all about the exit, flip over, 80mph. Left hand working the inner bar, pushing you down and then pulling you back up as you straighten out, letting the front stay light, to make the ‘ton’ plus before shutting off for the next set of lights. Watch the locals, they always short-cut the corner whatever speed they are doing. Local knowledge, wonderful thing.
Off the lights by now committed to taking the left track around Plaza Del Ecuador, another high-speed curve affording another hard leaning, counter-steering opportunity, the last before the waterworks and the resumption of traffic-light drag racing. Onto the waterworks straight, no RT. Make another decision, dodge through the park half-way down and loop back towards downtown along Libertador, or hang on a while and check out the riverside, it seems like an obvious spot where other likeminded riders might gather. Check it out, blat straight on through the taxis and take the overpass to Ciudad Universitaria. The traffic is fairly light and I am able to settle into a rhythm, it matches the seductive, lilting, bass-line to Guadelupe by Los Piojos, that’s being piped into the lid. Note to self – plus two on the volume.
Avenida Costanera runs along the bank of the River Plate, fishermen are strung along the wall across the street from spacious steak houses and the incongruous ‘Holy Land’ theme park. Calvary to the rear, giant, grinning, fibreglass Messiah to the fore, all visible beyond the railings. If you’ve a mind belly up to the zinc ‘asador’ counter in Los Platitos restaurant first, where you will be waved up to a prime pavement parking spot by a baseball capped attendant, for a sinfully delicious fix of wood grilled flesh. Then you can walk off the guilt afterwards in a plasterboard Bethlehem. Not for me today. I cruise quietly along the avenue eyeing for bikes, there are just enough speed humps to keep the place from being a rat run and, this morning at least, to keep other bikers away. Too guilty to risk a steak, I’m in no mind for redemption.
End of the Avenue, no biker gangs to be hung out with, I take a hard right and I’ll head out towards River Plate Stadium, back to Libertador and the ‘speedway section’. I stick with the main highway all the way to the ring road, Avenida General Paz, which marks the boundary of the Capital Federal, where you get federal cops and law, and Greater Buenos Aires where provincial Argentina begins. I could call in on Javier at Dakar Motos, in Vicente Lopez just the other side of the ring road. Nah, I’m out for a blast I’ll call in next week.
Hey hey, ha ha, hey hey, ha ha, Los Piojos encourage the needles to wind their way round the clocks, 150, 160ks plenty of space to carve through the traffic. Up the ramp onto G’ral Paz, avoid the left lane, there’s a massive steel-plate expansion joint that runs axially along the length of the ramp, exactly where you want your tyres to be. Slide across right and risk entanglements with the dawdlers wandering around the second lane cutting the corner of the ramp. No winners here it’s the devil or the deep blue sea. The mind has wandered off the soundtrack, concentrating instead on the ramp, the traffic, and the exit for Libertador, just 300metres up the Buenos Aires equivalent of London’s North Circular, the Neasden bit.
Fewer trucks on weekend and the right lane is clear. Crack off the main carriageway down the tight, twisty, concrete off-ramp, looping back under the carriageway ready to merge with the Libertador flow. Bugger, the Federales have one of their check points in action. I stick out like the balls on a bulldog and one of them has clocked me. Shit, he waves me across to the right hand lane at the junction with Libertador, his mate stopping other traffic to make way for me. I normally try and blast through this piece of road, drifting left away from the capture zone hoping distance and momentum will render me unstoppable, but this little mama’s boy is determined. Too often they have been too determined in the instance of my approach.
There are two of them, Moto Guzzi 850s parked up and a little ‘box’ of four orange traffic cones by way of an interrogation area in the right hand lane. I pull up just inside the box, making no effort to un-necessarily close the gap between me and their peak-cap, Rayban affected cool. I leave the engine running and the lid remains firmly strapped to the noggin. As a concession to my own hearing I surreptitiously unplug the lower Autocom connection, by my left leg. Cool Cop One saunters across and clearly asks me to switch off the bike, I shrug my shoulders, shake my head ‘no hablo espanol senor,’ the bike continues to tickover undisturbed. He asks me to remove my lid. ‘No comprendo, no espanol,’ the brain-bucket remains firmly in place. If Arais leaked brainwaves he would by now be picking up the mental vibe -
I can keep this up all day, you chose to stop me at your convenience, like all you ****ers choose to stop me, instead of picking on some fume belching pre-historic Chevy packed full of weed, which is what you’re supposed to be looking for in the first place!
Cool Cop Two eyes over the bike, spots the foreign plate and tells his mate he’s got a ‘gringo.’ Cop One’s cool ‘I’m in charge’ demeanour starts to crumble, what the hell can two regular bike cops do with a foreigner who, it appears, cannot understand them?
He hesitates, the veneer of competence visibly cracked, ‘documentos senor,’ he wants the lot, for what I have no idea ... allow me to demonstrate. I reluctantly reach inside my jacket and produce a plastic wallet of documents, he reaches for them and I deliberately hold them out of reach. I extract the International Driving Permit that is legally required in Argentina, knowing that it’s guaranteed to fool the pair of them. He takes it and, with cool Cop Two peering over his shoulder, tries to make sense of the internationally agreed form of driving licence.
Clueless, neither of them have the foggiest idea what they’re looking at. He leafs cursorily through the translation pages without finding the Spanish, occasionally eyeing his mate for guidance. I offer no help whatsoever and he never reaches the photo-page before closing the little booklet and returning it to me. ‘Gracias senor.’ I plug the music in again and let Ian Dury mask the cop’s final comment as I pull away, ‘What did you learn at school to day, Jack Shit.’
The first few blocks might as well be Oxford Street, buses, shoppers, shopping traffic a straight strip of tarmac and hundred metre traffic lights, but it’s a small price to pay for the speedway section a couple of Ks ahead. I progress gently along the four-lane, two-way section mindful of left turning vehicles. It’s not just the sudden left turn that’ll catch you out, or the lack of meaningful turn signals that’ll have you t-boning a Fiesta. Wait until the turn is conducted from the right lane swinging across three other lanes, that’ll get you praising the gods of ABS and servo braking. I see the tunnel ahead, the park and the opportunity to once more turn up the wick a bit, just beyond.
The tunnel’s important though, it’s three lanes, down from four, so everyone’s got to shuffle to get in there. Mirrors may be attached to your neighbour’s vehicle, but it would be unwise to expect them to be used. I resort to the aftermarket Stebel Magnum horn to fend off those who would get too intimate.
I claim my lane, centre, the left lane has a persistent water-main leak beside it, at the bottom of the entry ramp, and potholes on the up-ramp at the tunnel exit. The right hand lane also has potholes and water leaking on the exit ramp. The centre lane has the dry line and no potholes, especially important when you’re buried deep in the mid-tunnel murk with a race-tinted visor. I can’t hoon through too quickly and make the best of the mid-tunnel curve, but it’s all done in a few seconds and daylight and proper visibility return. More lanes appear, drop a cog or two and open up to take advantage of the space, but only for a moment as I approach the eternally red lights at Plaza Bolivia.
Wait patiently, locals will anticipate the green, lurching off the line before red has added amber. Having seen how locals also like to chase a ‘closing green’ light well into the pink, I’m never tempted. Real green arrives and I’m off, passing the early starters before they’re across the intersection, its two way traffic but there are seven lanes heading my way, the start of the speedway.
Rush hours turn can even such generous paving into a packed car-park, but at this hour on a Saturday, even though it’s not empty, there’s little to restrain either revs or enthusiasm. Only the phasing of the lights ahead offer any note of caution, too fast and I’ll have to stop-start again. It’s a straight blast down to Avenida Dorrego and the railway bridges.
Again the width constraints of the bridge temporarily reduce the number of lanes, so more shuffling is required, but add the local corner-cutting tendencies, the minor complication of a kink in the road around another military statue, and the words piss-up and brewery spring naturally to mind. Experience says drift right whilst the lemmings sort their own mess out in the left lanes, then cut back across ‘the vacuum’ to exit this little section left lane and hard on the gas, well ahead of the pack.
But caution it might look like all twelve lanes ahead are yours and they’re very tempting. Sadly only the right hand six are, except apparently on feast days and saints days, and oncoming traffic is often hidden until you’ve got a bit of speed on. But generally there’s more than enough space to make rapid progress and it’s a one km blast to the Magna Carta Monument.
Same routine at the monument, lanes disappear, chicanes are to be straight-lined and lemming syndrome takes over amongst the car drivers. Same routine, enter to the right and carve across late and exit in the left lane. Except this time go hard on the gas, drift left, drift left, drift left, this is a fourteen lane section and they’re all running your way. This is the real speedway, a ton-up urban raceway. Power to weight superiority gets you clean away ahead of the pack, but for chrissakes watch that blind spot when changing lanes down the road, I’ve been passed along here by an Audi that I’d humiliated at an earlier set of lights, when I was allegedly tickling the magic number.
Out of the park and back into Recoleta, there are more lanes all heading in the same direction, if I wasn’t concentrating so hard on the traffic I’d count them accurately, but I reckon there’s eighteen or even twenty at one point, well maybe if you gather all the slips roads and stuff. It doesn’t last for ever, lanes start disappearing after the Art Museum and it’ll soon be two-way traffic again, but you’ve had a blast through the park and cleared a few cobwebs. Last minute decision, I take the right turn in Recoleta and run up Avenida Pueyrredon, it’s going to turn into retail hell this afternoon when the shoppers are out, but now while it’s quiet I can take advantage. A few blocks ahead I can cut back down Corrientes to the Obelisco and Avenida 9 de Julio.
Stop start, stop start, there are lights all the way and my timing is out of phase with them. It’s also all straight and the only relief from boredom, apart from the idiosyncrasies of Argentine drivers, is the MP3 pumping Amadou and Miriam’s ‘Senegal Fast Food’ into to the lid. A couple of clicks and I’m at Corrientes, a few more blocks of straight and early shoppers, round the obelisk and back out towards Recoleta on the famous Avenida Neuvo de Julio.
This is one hell of a wide boulevard, it is claimed to be the widest avenue in the world. The central ‘through’ carriageways hold up to eight lanes in each direction, the service road, alongside has another two or three and there are wide medians between. That is twenty plus lanes of traffic, a pedestrian’s nightmare that takes two or three sequences of light changes to walk across. But it is impressive and doesn’t demand the grim determination and steely resolve required of drivers on the ‘speedway,’ everything is slower and more relaxed. The car-drivers thumbs up come out and the 125 swarm returns.
The avenue is about to become the autopista to the Aeropark, I don’t want that. I follow the right hand filter lanes back towards the end of the Libertador speedway and the back road home, back down the way I’d set out. The Stones come through on the Autocom, warm sun greets me when I emerge from the slip-road canyon.
The Libertador lights are unusually green when I get there, the road surface is not so good, you can get a bit of lean, but you can’t pin the throttle back until you’ve got the bike near upright. But when I can I do. I can see the lights at Plaza San Martin turning green a few blocks ahead, gun it and I can be through before they change back to red. Red line or red light, I surge ahead on the cresting, hypnotic and beautifully harmonised chorus, ‘anybody seen my baby, anybody seen her around.’
Straight across the plaza, suffering a mild sense of guilt in the presence of pedestrians I persuade the needles not to push too far clockwise. I just catch the last set of lights turning amber as I take the gentle right curve leading onto Leandro Alem, left hand lane as all the buses use the right hand service road. It’s down to two lanes and they’re a little busier now, but the avenue is over hung by trees once you get past Luna Park and the station, the spring sunshine is highlighting them to their best. Quietly making progress and I’m at the head of the line of traffic when we reach the curves behind Plaza de Mayo again, perfect!
Loads of space all around, I sail through the last set of lights and into the left hand entry, digging my shoulder in and working the left hand bar to get the bike over. I feel the tail twitch out right and my left shoulder starts a sudden, unwelcome, involuntary dip as the rear tyre hints at letting go on the suspiciously stained concrete and mosaic over-banding. It’s big enough to count as a ‘moment,’ and would have been fun viewing for anyone behind me. I hold the counter-steer and ride it out.
On the gas briefly then off again, down into the third and set up for the first of the two right hand apexes. Feet placed well back on the pegs to keep the toes out of the grinder, I try not to let the last little hiccup take too much of the fun away. Smooth lean, clean, carved curve right. Back on the gas, hold third and the same again, trailing the throttle into the second apex as I look for traffic bunched at the lights ahead on the left hand exit. It’s clear, the cars ahead are through and the lights are still green. Hold the throttle and gently swing over for the left and it’s the home straight back to San Telmo. It almost got close to being some corners.
The last eight blocks or so wind it all down slowly, I turn off the avenue and onto the cobbles of first Carlos Calvo and then Defensa, in bimble mode. There are more pedestrians to worry about and the cobbles offer poor grip. I pause to let some cross the access before I swing back into the estacionamento. I pause a moment or two while a couple of cars shuffle and then I can swing up to, and back-pedal into, my assigned space.
Up onto the centre-stand, I switch off, unplug and dismount. Retrieve my heavy chain from the water pipe and then loop it through the rear-wheel and over the pillion pad. I switch off the MP3, disconnect the phone and remove the carry pouch from its clock-side cranny. As I stroll out into the sunshine, thinking of lunch, rugby and that siesta, I realise that I’m still gently humming the Rolling Stones …
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, and I know it's stating the obvious but you will have to join the ranks of clean air brigade and give the fags up
.. Lecture over, just look after yourself from now on mate
augie) and a gentle stroll in pursuit of a light luncheon and to pick up me medicaments. Slept all afternoon. Just as well, tellys bust and England got a Rugby lesson from South Africa from what I can gather ... it would all have been far too stressful ... but the nurse is ... erm ... keeping on top of the situation 
Recommendation being heeded, it would be churlish to ignore sound medical advice 
, we strolled to La Boca. 
) to La Boca Juniors, footie team of Deigo Maradonna 
, which didn't cool his demeanour too effectively. I think he decided I was best left to it really and eventually he toddled off. 
and begrudingly produce a licence but no passport, and only in extremis. 
England appear to be entirely capable of fekking up their encounter with Samoa, as we approach the 60th minute 
