Welcome to the Charley Cooper Page
Charley is a biker who earns a living scribbling for Bike South Africa mag.
All the articles here are published with his kind permission.
So, without further ado, let's give Charley a right old Oirish welcome
Get up de yard, ya bollix ya !!!!
Charley's Chat October 2007 (Bike SA)
Even if you okes ride around with your eyes closed you must of noticed that lately the cops around here in Jo’burg have gone extra mal with all their little secret cameras and hiding in bushes and nonsense. But I scheme that the real problem is that most of us bikers ride around alone and so we can’t do anything to take these bullies on.
Well maybe what I should actually be tuning you okes is that it is the poor other okes who always ride alone who cannot take on the power of the law and who end up suffering the most. But us okes from our famous and fearless biker gang Da Cuzzins, finally hit back at the cops the other day. I just wonder what they’re gonna do when they actually find out what we did.
Anyway, it all started the other afternoon when me and Goofty and Howie are all sitting in the Radium Beerhall having a few sundowners instead of still being at graft when Mikely walks in. He tunes us that there’s a speed-trap just down the road on Louis Botha Avenue and that the cops are hiding in their van taking a moer of a stack of pictures of okes skieting past.
Mannie, who owns the Radium and who these days also rides a boney, overhears Mikely and tunes that these Metro Cop okes are also making him cross and that we should teach them a lesson and that whatever plan we come up with he’ll sommer sponsor the beers.
So now instead of just talking about vengeance, the four of us suddenly find ourselves caught up in a plan that we now actually also have to carry out. I didn’t smaak all this pressure at first and got all nervous, but by the third round of Mannie’s free beers I just sneered at my old bang-broek scaredness and had bigger plans than all the other okes put together.
Mikely, who is like a manager person at his graft and is quite clever at organizing things tuned that before we make any kind of decision about how we’re gonna get revenge that maybe we should all go check the van out first and then make a ‘more informed decision’ about what to do. I smaak it when Mikely uses management language on us normal okes.
Now as everybody knows, lots of okes become moer of aggressive after they’ve had a few dops, but us Cuzzins just get all friendly and happy, except for me because I just get tired all over my body and fall asleep. This kind of behaviour of course doesn’t help if you’ve decided that you’re gonna get revenge on somebody because to get revenge you’ve got to stay cross.
So when the bunch of us get to the plain-clothes type van with the camera sticking out of the one side and with the Metro Cops all hiding inside, we parked our bonies right next to it and started giggling to each other which is actually not a very biker-like thing to do but like I tuned you okes already, we’re not really all that fierce after a few dops.
I waited for Mikely with his management skills to decide what we should do and with my usual tiredness starting to creep in, I was hoping that he would come up with an idea quite quickly. Mikely showed everybody to shoosh and knocked on the van door and after a small while the door opened and a cop stuck his head out.
Mikely explained to the oke that we all wanted to become Metro traffic officers but that we first wanted to check out the ‘dangerous and skilled work that traffic officers perform on a daily basis in their efforts to keep the roads of our new democracy safe.’ As I tuned before, I smaak it when Mikely talks larney…
So now the van’s quite small inside and only three of us Cuzzins can fit in and so I am left standing outside with my tiredness now beginning to come on in waves and so I sit down behind the van to get some rest, but just as my eyes are starting to get heavy I notice a thing that makes me wide awake again…
Two minutes later and with the beer tiredness now completely gone, I stood up, strolled over to my Triumph, fiddled a bit with the back of the boney and started it.
The next thing the okes in the van knew, both me and my Triumph came skieting down Louis Botha Avenue at a moer of a spoed right past them. As the camera flashed away I gave the throttle a few extra blips and dumping the clutch and rode off like a regte oke from Germiston on a Friday night.
Even as the van got smaller in my mirrors I could check it rock from side to side as the cops inside danced and laughed from catching another oke in their silly little trap.
A couple of blocks down the road I did a you-wee and sneaked back up on the other side of the street in between the taxis and quietly parked my boney again.
Now us Cuzzins all carry a spare set of each other’s boney’s keys just in case we ever find ourselves in a bar fight again and have to leave in a hurry and are not in a good enough state to recognize our actual own bonies. From my set of keys I chose Howie’s Blackbird’s and after two minutes of also fiddling with Howie’s bike, me and his boney came skieting past the cop van as well. As the camera flashed away like a mini disco again, from inside their van I could plainly hear the cheering.
By the time I got back with Howie’s boney the other three Cuzzins were all standing outside the van and Howie was moer of a cross. As I switched his boney off he grabbed me like he was gonna klap me and if Mikely hadn’t stepped in I’m sure he would of. Mikely asked me what I was up to because his plan was to distract the cops so that they didn’t catch so many okes.
Quietly I showed the other three Cuzzins the Metro Cop’s van’s numberplate stuck onto the back of Howie’s boney and also where I had first stuck it onto my boney.
Mikely just smiled a big smile. ‘Hey take my boney next,’ he tuned and went back into the cop van with the others. I suppose a good management oke recognizes a better plan than his own when he checks it… Charley
Charley's Chat July 2006 (Bike SA)
I don’t know how many of you okes remember the thing I tuned you about a while ago when I opened my defense in court against this one of a moer of a strict cop who booked me for speeding and I asked the judge if he knew what a vortex was. I tried to explain to the magistrate oke just how an ordinary biker can sommer get sucked along on your boney and have no power over the forces of science.
I even had my old Matric Science textbook with me that I’d scaled from Dawnview in case I failed science again with drawings of vortexes in it to show the judge. Of course, just when I thought I was getting through to him, he stopped concentrating and rolled his eyes up to the sky and moered his wooden hammer down and tuned me to shut-up and on top of it sommer made me pay double the fine.
Now this thing of getting sucked along doesn’t only happen if an oke gets stuck in behind a fast vehicle like my Triumph, it also happens to okes in other ways too.
I mean, like you can be jolling along down the road minding your own business and a taxi will cut you off or some oke in a cabbie will sommer turn right in front of you and you will feel the need to demonstrate to the driver what it feels like to be cut off by doing it straight back to him. The latest You Magazine calls this the ‘Primary stages of Road-Rage’.
But even though we all know that there is nothing more noble than getting revenge on some oke whose made you the moer in, the next thing you know he’s trying to ride into the back of your boney and you’re wondering what you’re gonna do with the lekker set of new broken-off car-mirrors that you’ve got shoved into the front of your lummie. It is about a time like this that I want to tune you about today.
As usual, some taxi oke had cut me off and then tried to get all clever when I did the same back to him again by sommer grabbing my boney’s mirror and bending it skew. I was still leaning into the taxi’s window and trying to loosen the bobbejaan spanner on his steering column that he was steering with when this cop pulls us both over.
Of course the policeman now won’t believe us when we both tune him that we were just joking with each other and two weeks later the two of us are standing in front of a judge for ‘reckless endangerment’.
Now this Judge oke must of been watching a lot of Oprah Winfrey on the TV or maybe he just came from Cape Town or something or maybe he was just goofed, but when he hears the cop’s story he tunes that our problem is that we must learn to be more ‘accepting of each other and learn to demonstrate more empathy in our emerging democracy’. And to make sure that the two of us learn to be nicer to each other he sommer tunes that the Traffic Department must have a cop follow each of us around to ensure that we are not ugly to each other anymore.
As I leave my house the next morning in my rear mirrors I could check a cop pull out and start following me. It took only about one minute and twenty seconds for some old tannie to come reversing out of her drive-way straight in front of me and as I get ready to give her car door a lekker skop I check the cop in my mirrors. So instead I slow down and smile at the tannie and let her through while the hairs on the back of my neck stand up I’m so cross inside my head.
Soon I’m back on the M1 North and skieting in between the cars trying to lose my cop when I check the taxi oke who was in court with me up ahead.
Now what I haven’t tuned you okes in this story yet is that with me I've got a Tupperware box full of spiders and a rubber snake which I’ve decided to chuck onto the taxi oke’s lap when the cops aren’t checking me out.
I pull in next to the van and like give the oke a little smile and he checks me out and also gives me back the same sort of smile but I can sommer feel the hatred in his eyes through his dark sunglasses.
I get in real close to the taxi and when no one can check what I’m up to, I pull out the Tupperware and chuck it onto his lap and give him the thumbs up like I’m his best buddy and I’m giving him his lunch.
Now there’s no point in getting revenge on an oke if you can’t see the results, so I hang back and check the taxi out in my mirror.
Well I don’t know what went wrong with my plan because the next thing I see is that the taxi oke’s grazing sarmies and then I start scheming to myself that I must of given him my actual Tupperware lunch-box by mistake instead of the spider and snake lunch-box and that sitting in my bag on my back is a bunch of spiders that must of been getting highly the moer in from all the bumping and stuff that was happening to them.
I smaak spiders nothing and scheme to myself that I’ve now given my lunch to a taxi oke who just rides in the yellow line when he wants to and makes trouble with the cops and swerves in between the cars and lies to judges and probably even dops it up in the traffic and so I felt moera cross. I mean, us biker okes never do stuff like that.
Well, enough was enough. Still on the bike, from off my back I pull my rucksack round, take out my Tupperware that’s full of spiders and stuff and because I won’t have a lunch-box anymore if I just throw it away, slowly start to open the lid to chuck away the stuff inside.
But suddenly the cop that’s been following me has caught up and pulls in next to me and starts to check out what I’m up to. When he sees the lunch-box in my hands and that it looks like I’m about to throw my food away he waves a warning finger at me and takes the Tupperware straight out of my hand and skiets off down the road.
I thought of chasing after the oke and grabbing the box back, but hey, it was probably easier to just buy another one on the way home… Charley
Charley's Chat August 2006 (Bike SA)
A few years ago I tuned you okes about a thing that happened to me where there were two bike gangs that almost had the same name as each other. The one bunch was called ‘Breed’ and the other lot called themselves ‘The Breeds.’
I can’t remember who was who anymore, but I do remember that the one bunch was moera neat and had clean bikes and stuff and that their bikes and colours were all lekker washed and ironed, while the other okes looked like they were straight from that wrestling thing on TV called Smackdown RAW.
Of course when one oke from the neatly dressed bunch and one oke from the other bunch met by accident at the bar let’s just say that the oke from the Smackdown RAW club began explaining to the neatly dressed oke why they shouldn’t share the same name.
Now, also in those days because I was still moer of a stupid, I was also still a school-teacher and when an oke is a school teacher he gets it into his head that he must teach and guide everybody else in the world for 24 hours a day. Like a real doffie I stepped forward to intervene in the big oke’s already very clear explanation techniques and tried to show the two of them that their names were actually very different to each other.
Being an English teacher at the time, I decided to start off by explaining to the oke from ‘Breed’ that he was actually a doing word and then to the oke from ‘The Breeds’ that he was a naming word. As two okes suddenly joined forces in showing me what they thought about their new labels, it occurred to me just how dof the whole idea of being a schoolteacher was…
Now I am reminding you okes about this story because us okes from Da Cuzzins had exactly the same sort of thing happen to us when we were at the Paradise Rally a few months ago.
There I was, minding my own business, just walking along trying to keep warm by drinking as much warm Castle as I could, when suddenly I check hanging from a tree this banner that tuned ‘Cousins’ with a big skull painted underneath on a red background.
Now I don’t know if the Castles were off or something, but for some reason or other I schemed that I had actually reached our campsite and so I started checking all over for my tent and even though I went into all the nearby tents and checked everywhere in all the sleeping bags and stuff, I couldn’t find my stuff or even Howie or Goofty or Mikely anywhere.
Well I couldn’t believe how slack the other three Cuzzins had gotten. They had left some of their wallets and even a watch and one of them had even just left his glasses lying under the bedding. I stuck all their stuff safely into my lummie pockets just in case some oke sommer walked in and stole it.
But then I also started remembering that I’d never actually noticed before that we okes from Da Cuzzins had a club banner of our own and so I went and checked out the flag a little more closely. It must of been made by Goofty I decided because the spelling was all wrong and us Cuzzins all know that Goofty’s spelling is not lekker.
I pulled down the banner and set off to go find the other Cuzzins to show them the stupid mistake Goofty had made on the flag and to give them their stuff back that they’d left lying around in the tent.
When I eventually found them they were all standing near the rally gate with beers in their hands laughing and making trouble with everybody that walked past. I showed them the banner and the stupid mistake that Goofty had made with the spelling.
When Da Cuzzins check out the red flag they tune me well done and start running around with it, but then Goofty tunes that he never did the spelling or the flag and then because Mikely had now obviously already had too much to drink, he pulls down his pants and wipes his bum on the flag and then the other okes also start laughing and also do terrible things to the banner which because school lighties sometimes also read these stories I can’t actually tune you about here.
Of course these days every oke in the world has got a camera and so everybody’s taking pictures of all this stuff happening.
It was round about this time that I pull out the oke’s wallets and glasses and tune them that they’d left their stuff in their tents and that they should be more careful and that if they didn’t have me looking after them then other okes would just steal their stuff.
The Cuzzins just checked me out blankly and tuned that they all had their wallets with them and that real bikers don’t wear glasses.
Now I know from school days even that things usually become clear to me moer of a slowly, but this time, I think because of the excellent clarification properties of the Castles, I figured out my mistake in a split second. Before this other Cousins gang found out that their colours were gone I was gonna have to get them back…
With my heart beating moera fast and my head now completely clear I reached the clump of tents where I’d gotten the banner.
Luckily it was dark already because when I checked how big and cross these okes were my mind flashed back to the time when the two Breeds gangs didn’t want to listen to my English lesson. In the dark I could check some oke with a camera showing a big cross oke a picture that he’d taken and then pointing towards the gate.
Early on the Sunday morning us okes from Da Cuzzins left the rally very quietly out by the back gate. As we rode past the okes standing there scanning us carefully I checked back at the other okes and the disguises they were wearing.
I wonder how long it will take those other Cousins to realize where the marks on their banner came from… Charley
Charley's Chat October 2006 (Bike SA)
You know, when okes in cabbies check bikers out they scheme that a biker’s life is such a lekker life filled with moera freedom and long open roads and a long string of los chicks. Well, actually, the okes in cabbies are all wrong.
In my time I’ve checked a stack of bikers who had a lekker life being a biker and living like cowboys, but then they went and got themselves married and got settled down and had kids and got a bond and then they sold their bonies and hung up their helmets.
Later some of these okes realized the trouble they were in and even tried to become bikers again by going out and buying a boney again, but unfortunately once an oke has gotten himself married he stops being a biker and he turns into a motorcyclist instead and we all know that Motorcyclists and Bikers are actually two completely different things altogether.
Because these okes are family people now, they’ve become all soft and on Saturday mornings you’ll check them cruising the shelves of Moskays looking for things like windscreens and panniers and other stuff to make their bonies more like a car. If you look those okes straight in the eye, you’ll check the old spark is gone and you can sommer see they will never be the same again as when they were still rugged happy bikers.
Now I am tuning you all this stuff because I scheme I need to explain some of the background of how me and Goofty and Mikely almost got bliksemed the other day when we went out for a graze.
It all started when Howie gave me and Goofty and Mikely free meal vouchers that he got in the post from a Spur Steak Ranch.
Now, I’d never been into one of these Spur Steak Ranch places in my life before and I know that Goofty and Mikely and Howie all smaak to graze meat a stack, so I tuned Howie why didn’t he come with us. As you okes already all know, Howie’s got a whole lot of kids and he just checked me out skeef when I invited him and asked me if I was mad. Looking back now I should of asked him what he meant by what he tuned me…
Well anyway, when we arrive at the place all we can check is kids running around screaming and shouting and playing on the swings and climbing through hoops and hitting each other with balloons and jumping on jumping castles and crawling through tunnels and spilling cold-drink and food on each other and crying all over the place.
Me and Goofty and Mikely each got ourselves a Castle each and started discussing the Rhino Rally that’s coming up soon down in Harrismith and how we were gonna skiet the toll roads on the way there.
Then just as I was about to tune the other two about how sneaky the cops are these days with their cameras hidden on the tops of moera high poles on the side of the highway and how easily we could bring the poles down, I checked this one little lightie standing next to us shouting at his dad to look at him.
It’s then that we noticed the okie’s dad sitting at the next table not looking at his kid but trying to talk to his buddy who was also trying to ignore his own kids who were also shouting at him to look at what they were doing.
That’s when the kid next to us started crying and that’s when the lightie’s mom started shouting at the lightie’s dad and then I checked how the dad’s knuckles on his hand with his dop got all white as he slammed the beer down on the table and with a clenched jaw turned his head to check his lightie.
Now that the lightie had his daddy’s attention he started to call his dad to come push him on the swings but the dad tuned the lightie that he was gonna push him later and then the lightie started crying again and then the lightie’s mom started shouting at the lightie’s dad again and that’s when us three Cuzzins started giggling…
So then I start checking out the table on the other side of us and there was also another oke trying to talk to his buddy who also had a kid pulling him by the arm. This other dad was at least a bit cleverer than the first dad because he’d obviously left his wife at home and was keeping his child at arm’s length as he kept on talking to his buddy, but even so, if you checked closely at the oke’s dop, you also could see the oke’s knuckles round his beer glass also getting whiter and whiter as the oke got more and more stressed.
Over at the jumping-castle quite near us was a mother waving a finger straight in her husband’s face and moera loudly tuning the oke to stay standing right there at the jumping-castle till their lightie was finished jumping because she read in the one You Magazine that child thieves hang out at jumping-castles and steal kids right from under people’s noses.
As I checked down at his lightie with a real tattoo on each arm blikseming some poor other little lightie trying to hide in the back corner of the castle I got the feeling the oke sort of wished that someone would steal his lightie.
Well not since Howie had to beg the headmaster at The Hill High to take his daughter back into the School had us Cuzzins checked anything so funny. We sat there killing ourselves and pointing at the okes chasing their kids all over the place as their bossy wives followed.
We ordered another dop and raised our glasses and toasted each other and promised to remain single forever and threw our heads back as we downed our celebratory dops.
I think its because I drink faster than the other two okes that I was the first oke to open his eyes from our great swallowing and saw the okes first all standing in a circle round us with their kids on their hips looking at us moer of a cross.
‘Are you laughing at us?’ the biggest oke tuned checking us out straight. We all lost our smiles immediately and sat there straight-faced and would have been okay but then Mikely started giggling again and we had to run… Charley
Charley's Chat March 2007 (Bike SA)
I’m sure you oke’s have at least once in the traffic checked an oke who’s put a ‘TURBO’ sticker or something like that onto his boney’s side-cover and then stopped right next to you at the robots. Without even looking hard at the oke’s engine you can sommer see that he doesn’t have a turbo, but then to prove to you that he really has got one, he revs his motor to moer and gone as the robots change.
As he disappears off into the distance in his own cloud of smoke and noise you just shake your head to yourself because you sommer know that never in your whole life are you gonna be as stupid as that oke, because if you want to pretend, you must do it properly…
That’s why, when the other day I found this ex-race tyre standing outside the back of Moskays my heart started beating moer of a fast because when an oke has a tyre like that on the back of his boney everybody shows respect.
For those okes of you who ride like namby-pambies and don’t know what a race tyre is, it’s a tyre that comes off a boney that has been raced hard on the track. What makes it moer of a special is the fact that the tyre is all blue and burnt looking and worn right down on the sides. When other bikers check rubber like this on the back of your boney they realize very quickly what a main oke you are and back off.
Now the dof thing about a race tyre is that once you’ve fitted it you’ve got to ride carefully with it or it wears out quickly because race tyres are actually made of moera soft rubber and when okes check you later with a normal tyre they’re sommer gonna know that you were only pretending to be a main oke.
Also now, you can’t let anyone check you carrying a used race tyre around because race tyres are supposed to get all burnt and shredded while they’re still fitted to your boney and then it would also be moer of a dof of you to walk into Moskays with a tyre that they’ve just chucked away, tucked in under your arm and then ask them to fit it onto your boney. When other okes find out what you’re up to, they’re quickly gonna start calling you a liar and a wannabe and other ugly names. A tyre like this therefore has to be fitted when nobody is looking.
With my new race-rubber wrapped up secretly under my lummie and tied onto the Triumph’s backseat I took a slow ride back to my house. At one robot another oke on a boney stopped next to me and started checking out my strange lummie covered package, but I just gave his silly tyres with their full super-safe tread a sneer, shook my head and looked the other way.
Back home I parked my bike in the middle of the workshop and locked the doors so that no nosey outsiders could check what I was up to and started working immediately.
The first thing that occurred to me was that when okes started checking out my lekker worn back tyre they were also gonna look at my front tyre which was still new. Five minutes later with a rough file and a blowtorch the front tyre looked very nearly the same as the one from the Moskays rubbish pile.
Now, I’ve been to an actual racetrack and although the spiteful clerk of the course there wouldn’t let me race, I’ve checked those race bonies close-up. A real race boney is all scraped under the exhaust pipes and the covers are always worn away from when the okes go down moer of a low in the bends.
Luckily, I still had Goofty’s angle-grinder which I’d borrowed so long ago and that even he can’t remember who took it anymore and so I could start work at once on the engine sides. This kind of work can be very tricky, but with the steadiness in my hands which I’ve been able to develop over years of checking cops straight in the eye and not even shaking a little bit, I ground race-track type scrapes into each side of my crank-case covers.
Five minutes later the exhausts also had that lekker racing ground-down look. The foot-pegs were a bit harder to get right because they kept springing up every-time I tried to get the angle-grinder in deep to cut the proper forty-five degree lean angle, but in the end they also got the race look.
I stood back and checked out my work. Other biker okes were not gonna sukkel with me anymore when they checked the quiet statement that my boney made. All I had to do now was fit the race-tyre I’d found at Moskays…
I got out my pump and the three special tyre levers that I always keep in their special place in my garage. Most okes don’t know what a tyre lever is and scheme that you’ve got to have one of those big tyre changing machines like they’ve got at Moskays to change a tyre, but I’ve been changing tyres for years with my three levers and know the story backwards.
The back tyre I had on still had a good mil and a half of tread left on it which would get me to the Buffalo Rally and back, so after I took it off the rim I hung it safely to one side and unwrapped my racing tyre carefully. Goose-pimples ran up and down my spine as I touched it.
I checked for the arrow on the side of the tyre that tunes you which way the tyre is supposed to turn and then put the Triumph’s rim down on it. Then I took my special slippery soap mixture and painted it round the rim and started levering the tyre into place. But, somehow, each time I had the tyre right on the one side, even with extensions on my tyre levers, I couldn’t get the wheel to slip lekker over onto the other side.
Race tyres were obviously much harder to put on than ordinary road tyres I decided and got the angle-grinder again and started grinding the rim a bit smaller to make it fit but still the rubber wouldn’t go on. One more time I looked carefully at the writing on the side of the wheel…
Hey, so how was I, with my eighteen-inch rim, supposed to know that these stupid new racing bonies all come out with seventeen-inch rims? Charley
Charley's Chat April 2007 (Bike SA)
Often when us okes from Da Cuzzins, our fearless biker gang, are sitting together in a pub having a beer or just tuning each other about biker stuff, a thing that Howie complains about a lot is that okes in cabbies never stop to help when we are stuck at the side of the road.
Now Howie has obviously gotten used to what we all look like and so doesn’t realize that okes in cars, even if they are the tough ones that live in Jo’burg, can get quite scared if they check okes like us out and wouldn’t stop to help us even if our bikes were on fire.
Normally I would of agreed with Howie, but then after what happened to me three weekends ago, I don’t ever want anybody to ever help me ever again no matter how broken my boney is.
The thing that changed my mind all happened when me and the other okes from our gang went to the Impala Rally just on the other side of Hartebeespoort Dam.
As we rode into the rally site in our usual way looking really tough and with lots of smoke and dust and revving coming from our bonies, I just happened to check this one lightie at the side of the road crying his eyes out. He had his engine out with the head off and the frame and wheels and chain and exhaust all lying in a big pile on the grass full of oil and grease and stuff.
I just smiled knowingly to myself as I remembered back to not so long ago when I was also a lightie and didn’t understand the inner deeper secrets of engines and stuff. As soon as I was parked and had gotten myself a six pack of Castles, I was gonna go help the okie.
Now I suppose the mistake I made was to go and park my bike behind the big white beer-tent where the rally okes had already been sitting and gorreling away since early on Thursday night.
Anyway, as soon as I got my six-pack, I shot over back to my boney to get all the stuff that I needed to go and help the lightie. I opened the Triumph’s seat and started digging around deep inside for all the special tools and things that I carry on the bike in case of emergencies just like the one the lightie was busy having.
My hand was still down behind my battery trying to loosen the wing-nuts that hold down the special bracket I’d made for keeping my home-made piston-ring squeezer and torque-wrench spanner in place, when suddenly from out of nowhere I check this oke who looked like he’d been living in the beer tent for the whole of his life, standing and staring at me.
There must also of been a strong wind blowing near where he was standing because I could check that he was battling to keep standing up straight and hold his dop steady at the same time. He narrowed his eyes, focussed on my boney’s open seat and asked me if I needed help.
Now an oke doesn’t just want to put off other okes who offer to help so long as they bring their own dop along, but when I tuned him that my bike was okay and that I was actually gonna help another oke, he staggered closer to get a better look at what was going on under my Triumph’s seat.
As soon as his eyes fell on what he saw he got all quiet and looked me straight in the eye and tuned that he could see exactly where my problem was and that I mustn’t be shy about having a broken boney and that he would help me fix it in no time.
So now I get all worried and also start looking down under my seat to see what it was that made him feel that there was something wrong with my boney. I checked down past the extra welding where I’d cut spaces into the battery plate so I could have a place to put my chain-breaker and then also at where I’d strengthened the frame to handle the extra torque that the Guzzi Pistons put out.
Then I checked at the bolt heads that I had ground down because they’d gotten in the way of the special air-scoop I’d made to scrape the hot gasses that come off the back tyre and force them back into the carb throats, but everything looked okay. This oke obviously didn’t know what he was talking about and I didn’t have time for his nonsense. I quickly grabbed the ring-squeezer and torque-wrench, slammed my seat down and ran off to where the okie with the broken boney was sitting and crying.
Five minutes later me and the lightie were sharing the six-pack and putting his boney back together again and then I remembered that I’d forgotten to bring the soldering iron which lives in my side-cover.
Even before I got back to my boney my heart sank. There the same old staggering oke was still at my bike, but now he had his buddies with him and some of them looked like they couldn’t stand at all. They already had my seat up and were checking down deep into the inner workings of my Triumph and pulling bits of stuff out faster than a computer mechanic doing a service on an oke’s hard-drive.
By the time I finally pushed my way through the bunch of them all armed with their own favourite special biker tools I could see that I was too late to save my bike. In my hands I still held my torque-wrench which in a desperate move to chase them all away, I waved at them in a big wild circle…
When their leader checked me out he got all the moer in and started tuning how stupid I was to go and spend money at a bike shop when his buddies knew more about bonies than any mechanic and tried to push me away again. I decided that there was no tuning with these okes and only one thing left to do. I tuned them all to follow me…
The next morning as I rode out of the rally site with my bike finally together again, the lightie was still sitting there crying at the side of the road, but at least the six okes lying passed out all around him had tried hard all night to get his bike on the road again. Sometimes an oke’s just got to sacrifice the weak… Charley
