ISLAND MICK'S 40TH

or, The things we do for a few drinks with mates

by Boon

IN THE BEGINNING…

As usual, I was sitting at home on a Sunday night with a battered and torn arse and it was all the fault of a small Asian person. But please, read my story before you jump to any conclusions.

The text message I got from Some Janice the week prior to IslaMick's gathering had read: "You coming to Mick's party, lound-eye?" Previously, the answer had been no. I'd thought about it when the "Island Mick's 40th Birthday Bash" post went up on the BIKE ME! forums, but a whole bunch of other shit had gone on since then, including pretty much everyone from Sydney who had initially expressed interest dropping out for various reasons.

"I do amazing tlick with ping pong ball. Have to be seen to be berieved!" she followed up. Foul temptress! How could she know me so well?

Then I started thinking some more, loaded up Google Maps and cracked another beer. Punching in my address and The Holy Island yielded a distance reading of 1015km down the Doom – I shuddered.

Boon's Hume Highway Simulator: Pillion Edition. To play, stare at this picture all day.

I've done that deathly stretch of hideous road a few times, but only in cars. One trip I was stoned off my brain and had a ball, but the other times had all been tedious affairs even with a bunch of mates to scream at and make fun of. I figured if I was going to go, it was going to be for the party, not the ride – it was the Hume or stay at home and weep homosexually into my pillow when the awesome pissed photos started coming online.

I turned to Stoof who was parked on the bed behind me reading a book. "So, um, do you wanna meet some of my friends?" I asked.

"Sure," she grinned, knowing the fabulous company I keep. "Where at?"

"Melbourne," I explained. "Phillip Island, to be precise. We ride a bit on Friday night, camp somewhere, then finish it off on Saturday. We drink until we forget our names, sleep in some bald fella's front yard, then get back on the bike on Sunday and ride back to Sydney."

"Fuck off. Are you serious?"

"Yes. It will be a long, queer, painful trip, but that party will be like nothing you've been to before," I offered, thinking I'd be making this run alone.

There was silence. And blank looks. I could hear her brain working, and I suspected I'd never get laid again.

"I guess I'll have to find my sleeping bag, then…"

And just like that we decided to go on a 2100km, 29-hour roundtrip to have a few drinks with the Southern Clan.

I spent 29 hours riding a bike in a straight line for this? Fuck…

FRIDAY – I hate tents

There isn't a sliver of time during the week that has the same taste as 5pm on a Friday. It is a special moment, crammed with mystery, wonder and freedom. It heralds good times and the end of the monotonous rigours of slaving for a wage.

I hopped on the DR with a spring in my step and a grin under my helmet. There is something very arousing about the prospect of travelling great miles and while I may make many jokes about my tender rear end and the cuntishness of the Doom Highway, mark my words: I would do it all again in a heartbeat. Anything for mates and motorbikes.

Blatting home through the dense traffic and sweltering heat, I could think of nothing but the bridge at San Remo – the Holy Grail. Going over that bridge sends a shiver down my spine like few other things. It, too, is the beginning of very good times and its image dragged me through many shitful patches of arse-pillaging depression that the Hume threw at me.

In the scorching agony of our garage, I loaded up the MT and prepared my body for the rigours of the road by swearing at things, drinking beer and slapping my girlfriend on the arse a lot. Steph was pretty excited for this trip, too, despite how much I kept telling her that she would have had it up to her tits within a few hundred kilometres. "It'll be fiiiiiiine," she would continuously squawk back. I knew better.

What more could a man want?

After a great deal of fucking around with luggage and an entire repack when we worked out Stoof couldn't actually sit on the bike 'cos of how I'd packed the saddlebags, we were away. "To fuck with the Cumberland," I cried loudly as we emerged from the Fortress Cave into the bullshit that is Friday evening traffic on a long weekend. "Take me to the M4!" And man, woman and motorbike began hurtling towards Phillip Island.

Everything was going perfectly, but I had my doubts. During packing, we had decided to run the tent along the very back of the pillion seat with the ends tied to the saddlebags. It was a good plan, but I had felt the tent might roll back onto the exhausts and I was right.

I just hadn't realised HOW right I would be until we pulled up into the scorching heat of the night at Pheasant's Nest – our first stop, about 90km from home. Stoof had been given strict instructions to check the tent every few kilometres or so to make sure nothing had exploderised behind us, and she did this valiantly. Sadly, though, the girl isn't hung like a giraffe and is unable to loop her neck around and see underneath the tent to the section that is sitting directly on the edge of the exhaust.

The ex-tent

Being a bit red of hair, I tend to lose my shit pretty easily and Stoof was waiting for me to go berko but… nothing. Silence, followed by cackles of laughter. How could I possibly get angry? We were on the road without a care in the world and our tent had incinerated itself on the back of the bike. We laughed, filled the bike up, laughed some more, kicked the tent into a bin, took a photo and roared off into the night. I had considered that, at midnight or whatever ghastly time we ended up finally making it to Gundagai, I might not feel like setting up a full tent. So I had equipped us with a tarp and some rope, just in case the weather was nice enough to let us make do with the basics. And as the clock ticked over to 1:00am on Saturday morning and we finally trundled into the bit of grass I'd seen on Google Maps, I realised a tent would have been overkill.

The ride to our sleeping area had been like sitting in front of blast furnace in a wetsuit, eating a curry and having Deep Heat rubbing into you by large black men – it was hot. And turning off the air-con that kicks in at speeds over 100km/h on a bike made it even filthier. A tent was NEVER going to have been on the cards, so with a smile and a yawn we set up our tarp-hutchie.

You better believe my middle name is MacGyver

A pack of bugs attacked briefly as we set everything up by torchlight, but once the globes were dimmed and we prepared for slumber, it was peaceful… hell-fuckingly hot, but peaceful. And we drifted off to sleep… until the winds came. Some shithead had gone and put an industrial-sized fan behind the blast furnace and we were now treated to winds I estimate to have been hotter than a Jessica Alba-Katherine Heigl-Katy Perry threesome. Heaps hot.

And how did our tarp-tent deal with that? Like Rolf Harris and his wobble-board is how! Eventually, we ripped everything down, prayed it wouldn't rain and slept merrily beside the bike in the open air of Gundagai.