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  • August 01, 2024 3 min read

    One Last Ride

    A short story

    I’d not been feeling quite right for a couple of weeks now, not since that ride. No calls or messages from anyone either. In fact, I’m not even sure what I’ve been doing since then.

    What a ride it was! Fast … it’s not the word. Not sure what happened after I left the group though. Hopefully one of them will be in touch soon…

    OK time to get the bike out. I think a ride will clear my head, help to get things in perspective.

    I headed for the lanes just south of Maidstone, and though I know the area pretty well I saw a turning I’d never noticed before. What’s to lose – I took it.

    As I pulled away from the junction, two hundred yards or so ahead I saw another rider, beckoning me to follow. Not sure who he was, but what’s the harm – perhaps he’s recognised me from somewhere.

    We rode for I don’t know how long - every so often he’d mark a junction but was well away by the time I reached it. Couldn’t quite see what he was riding, possibly a Japanese middleweight, the sort of thing I rode myself twenty years or more ago. And though I was on my 1200, try as I might I just couldn’t get close to him. Perhaps he’s got a destination in mind.

    I slowed as the road narrowed and heard the unmistakeable high-pitched buzz of a Fizzy – my first bike – as it shot past me leaving a trail of two-stroke fumes. He couldn’t have had any view at all – is that how I used to ride? Probably was!

    As the view opened up, I saw the rider again, stopped at a junction. I thought about just giving him a wave and heading straight on, but suddenly realised that I wasn’t really sure where I was. Not only that but I felt my bike slowing and turning as if by itself as I followed the rider. And he was pretty good with a perfect line at every bend.

    Outside a dilapidated house I saw an RD400 carelessly parked. That’s what I got when I passed my test – surprised that it wasn’t locked and under cover the price they are these days.

    We’d got onto a wider stretch of road and in a lay-by noticed a group of riders laughing and smoking, one poring over a road map. They looked to be in their thirties or thereabout – reminded me of the bunch I used to go to the Island with. And the bikes Z1, GSX1000 LeMans – all ones I’d owned or ridden. I gave them a wave but no response. Perhaps they hadn’t seen me.

    He was really speeding up now. Every so often I thought he’d lost me – but then there he was far up ahead, beckoning, beckoning…

    In the car park of an abandoned pub another group of riders; these looking smug and prosperous with their twenty grand bikes and flip-up lids. Is that what I look like now? Absorbed in their sat-navs and phones, they didn’t seem to notice me either.

    What’s the time? The clock on my instrument panel hadn’t moved since I last looked –have to get that checked.

    The rider went into the next series of bends faster than I ever could – but perhaps if I could catch-up I could talk to him and tell him that I really need to get off this ride – I was beginning to feel that I’d had enough.

    Then suddenly – the surroundings were somehow familiar. But blue lights everywhere – police and ambulance. Nonetheless he beckoned me on and we passed though the taped-off area as if by magic. Bits of glass and plastic everywhere and a bike wedged under the wheels of a tractor unit. Sombre looking medics were loading a red-blanketed stretcher into the ambulance.

    I noticed that the bike was the same make and model as mine.

     And, funny thing was, it even had the same registration plate.

    Martin Nameless

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