DrGMIA
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2011
- Bikes
- Oldest 1931, newest 2016, numerous makes and models in between on several continents
[center:q5e4auxh]SCREAMING MONKEY - GOLDEN TRIANGLE MOTORCYCLIST TO PATTAYA[/center:q5e4auxh]
“Eccentric Elitist” was how one local motorcycle rider from the Golden Triangle dubbed me for not being a joiner in group rides. Another attempted to cyber-drag me into his putrid little frog pond by a possible drug induced cyber extrapolation or some psychedelic New Age voodoo parapsychology. I thought this keyboard-flagellator was portending I was in his group of “supposedly mature middle-aged” men, having a “need for attention” or more shamefully, a “very sad sick” man in need of therapy sessions with a form of psychotherapy, suggesting the poster had first-hand couch familiarity with that of psychologist Carl Jung. Another psychoanalytic hypothesis of the known Valium ingesting cyber-flogger was that he might have nicked me, albeit by his poorly aimed drug triggered ricochet after ricochet.
[center:q5e4auxh]“I have been flamed – yeeow!”[/center:q5e4auxh]
Generally these kinds of keyboard warrior shots are taken with a sangfroid attitude. However, as I rode in Joe Sauerborn’s sidecar, known as being the “ monkey,” screaming like a primate being ripped apart in the jaws of a hungry jungle tiger, I sounded the part as described by the cyber-flogger of a very “sad sick man.”
[center:q5e4auxh]The sidecar outfit where I was the monkey.[/center:q5e4auxh]
I also had a “need for attention,” as the cyber-swordsman had slashed. The attention was that of trying to get Sauerborn to throttle down to 50 kph versus the 130 kph he was maintaining.
I suppose for someone who has been described as “America’s #1 extreme adventure rider,” it was also shameful I was not living up to that public persona. Both gloved hands clutching my crotch while howling into the face shield with my head fully thrown back might better be a subject for Sigmund Freud versus his student Carl Jung. Both psychoanalysts could recognize my crazed choice to be a monkey in a sidecar instead of a motorcycle pilot, but Freud could better relate to the placement of my hands, a primitive need to protect maleness. I knew if the sidecar came to a sudden stop I would fly forward, hitting the front of the bucket and windscreen crotch high. “Ouch!”
And who could argue with the term “eccentricity” for choosing to ride in a sidecar for 1,800 kilometers, the only Kawasaki Vulcan 1500 Classic with a custom built sidecar in all of Southeast Asia? It was definitely an “elitist” choice of motorcycle, one that drew crowds whenever we stopped.
Finally, I would agree with the final description, that being of a “supposedly mature middle-aged man.” Having started piloting Indian Motocycles when the company name “Motocycle” did not include an “r,” I physically exceed the definition of young man, and hopefully did not fall into the category of an old man. As a follower of Saint Fermin, the “supposedly” part of my gray-linked reference I also accept. “Supposedly” and fools, like fellow followers of Saint Fermin, implies a motorcycle adventure rider manifestation of No Fear, possibly.
Sauerborn and I left Chiang Mai at 5:00 AM. The first 90 minutes I could not see much, the darkness masking my seat in the sidecar. As the orange sun came up we were on a four lane high speed highway south of Lampang. Here I realized I was nearly horizontal in the bucket of the sidecar, less than a foot above the ground, speeding along at 130 kph, with everything from car and truck tires taller than me.
That is when reality hit. A twitch from a truck driver jolting awake after his stay-awake drugs had worn off would find me flatter than a tourist who was unsuccessful trying to run between the legs of an elephant during the Elephant Festival at Surin. This was when I sat upright in the sidecar and started to scream at Sauerborn to “SLOW DOWN! WE’RE GONNA DIE!”
[center:q5e4auxh]I see death as the truck starts to pull right and the car tries to dodge onto us![/center:q5e4auxh]
There is a significant difference between a motorcycle driver to that of being a passenger in a sidecar. The biggest was when this passenger realized he was not in control. Like a sack of potatoes I was merely a load in the bucket. Try hard as I could, my feet found no brakes in the nose of the sidecar. My hands on the sides of the sidecar could not slow or speed up the rig.
When I realized my life was in the hands of some drug crazed Thai truck driver or car driver sobering up on the way home after a night of binging on Chang beer or Mekong whiskey while Sauerborn skillfully dodged them at 130 kph, I screamed louder.
Nothing worked. Sauerborn was wearing a full-faced motorcycle helmet, being buffeted by 130 kph winds. He seemed not hear me. I screeched, shook the sidecar, and bounced up and down in the seat like a cadged horny male chimpanzee being shown an in-heat female chimpanzee.
Sauerborn appeared so focused on driving the sidecar outfit that when I managed to move my right hand from my crotch and slap his arm he merely turned, looked down at me and smiled, shaking his head up and down, as if saying, “Yeah, great fun ehhh!.”
[center:q5e4auxh]Sauerborn on his mission, very focused.[/center:q5e4auxh]
We had earlier decided to knock down the full 900 kilometers in one jump. With the extra large capacity of the gas tank we did not need to stop until we reached the outskirts of Bangkok, a first leg of 500 kilometers. By then I was a howled-out dish rag, lying limp in the bucket, tongue flopping out with dried spittle frosting my face shield.
I crawled out of the sidecar and limped across the parking lot to the toilet. My bowels had not let go but I could only walk bow-legged from the self-inflicted swelling due to tightly holding my agates, protecting them from the painful multi-colored swelling I had seen from other’s brushes with death. In the toilet urine dribbled onto my boots instead of the usual power stream on the porcelain back wall of the urinal. But I was alive.
At the 7/11 an ice cream bar followed by several bottles of M 150 power drink got my voice back. I croaked at Sauerborn, “Are we there yet?”
Sauerborn answered, as I started to fold myself back into the sidecar, “I can’t hear you. I’ve got a bad cold, my ears are plugged.”
He took off his helmet. It was then I realized he had not heeded my girly screams to slow down for the last 450 kilometers: he could not hear me. My psychotic howling had been for naught.
When he could hear, I asked, “Are we close now?”
“Yes, only from here the traffic gets slow.”
Thankful, I said, “Gee, that’s too bad.”
Then I saw a broken strap hanging from the front of the sidecar. I pointed at it. Sauerborn screwed up his face with a perplexed look and then said, “Ahhh, only the strap holding down the front of the sidecar bucket to the frame.”
“What the ….?” I thought.
Then the light of the ugly truth dawned. For 300 kilometers I had been screaming, trying to find foot brakes or shifters in the bucket while wildly bouncing up, down and sideways. I had shaken the bucket so hard the hold-down strap had broken, meaning only three or four bolts were all that kept me and the bucket from coming loose at 130 kph and sliding along the pavement surely to be squashed like one of the numerous flattened dogs we had seen on the road.
[center:q5e4auxh]Broken strap that held the front of the sidecar bucket down.[/center:q5e4auxh]
I started to sputter Spanish, German, French and English curse words.
Sauerborn tried to calm me by telling me how strong the remaining bolts were and that unless we hit a pothole or speed bump, the sidecar would remain on the platform. Anyone who has driven over Highway 1 to or from Bangkok knows there are 1,000’s of potholes and pavement patches, some the height of Mexican topes, or speed bumps nearly a foot high. I could have bounced the sidecar off the platform any one of those 1,000 times.
[center:q5e4auxh]Bumps and patches in the road, 1,000’s of them.[/center:q5e4auxh]
While he attached another hold-down strap, Sauerborn and I talked about how difficult it was to miss the potholes or patches with the sidecar. The distance between the wheels of the sidecar and the motorcycle was smaller than the wheels of trucks, buses or cars. Sauerborn, a very good sidecar driver, could miss the death bumps with either the motorcycle wheels or the sidecar wheel. I agreed the motorcycle and pilot were the more important of the two while silently starting to think about how much it would cost to flag down a Pattaya bound VIP bus and pay for the alternative way to arrive there.
Sauerborn tried further to mellow me with soothing words like, “Pattaya massage lady,” “cold beer,” and “traffic jams ahead.”
What Sauerborn did not tell me was when he would stop or idle along in the slow moving traffic around Bangkok my face would be level with exhaust pipes from trucks, buses and cars. For the next 450 kilometers I could neither scream nor yell. To breathe I had to keep a handkerchief pressed over my mouth and nose or pass out from the exhaust fumes.
[center:q5e4auxh]Sitting in the sidecar is like sucking on an exhaust pipe when breathing in traffic.[/center:q5e4auxh]
When we arrived in Pattaya, 11 hours after having left Chiang Mai, I was in no shape to party with the entertainment workers. I stumbled upstairs to my hotel room, turned the air conditioner on high, took a long shower, and then slept the sleep of the dead for the next 12 hours.
Pattaya was a fun town. To gain some of my male-mojo back after the roads from Chiang Mai had hammered it out of me, I rented a 125 cc Honda. I considered renting one of the 1,000 cc sport bikes but when I looked at the bent over riding position I could almost feel the gas tank pressure on my tender plums from the previous 900 kilometers of protective squeezing, so opted for less male-cool motorcycle image and chose the upright riding position of the step-through 125 cc.
A couple of weeks earlier I had seen a crashed motorcycle gas tank that had an eye-popping dent at family jewel level and suspected the driver and I could have a male-mojo conversation, him as a countertenor or sopranist and me with the raspy voice of a screamed-out humped over monkey in Pattaya.
I had photographs of the dented gas tank but honor my pledge to a bleating father not to publish them. An accomplished wordsmith could describe the dented gas tank, obviously at pubic point of impact, as “fist sized in depth and width, obviously resulting in purple, blue, red and black nuggets likely the size of tennis balls and bringing into question future propagation.”
My comment to the mechanics standing around when I first saw the dented gas tank from squashed family jewels was far simpler, being only, “Ouch!”
For the return trip to Chiang Mai I prepared. A stop at one of the many sidewalk vendors on Pattaya’s Beach Road hawking knock-off Harley-Davidson T-shirts was where I purchased a BMW GS Adventure Protective Codpiece. This unique motorcycle adventure riding accessory was hard to find because BMW does not offer the item in their motorcycle catalog so Chinese companies do not know to copy them.
I made a drawing on paper of what I wanted. My Thai vocabulary was limited to more mundane words like baht, ying, and ATM. With the drawing, a sketched BMW logo, and using some hand and leg motions, I was able to get my request translated to an understandable level.
The T-shirt vendor I found to fill my order was like many of the Pattaya Beach Road knock-off vendors when you ask for a Rolex or similar product. He told me I should come back in an hour while he hustled off to some backroom to find my product that was warehoused or stored away from the eyes of the trademark enforcement police. I shopped for some souvenirs of Pattaya, like a “Harley-Davidson Pattaya” T-shirt and some stickers for a friend that said, “Married – Game Over.”
[center:q5e4auxh]Knock-off BMW motorcycles seen on the street in Pattaya, the “Urban Adventure” model.[/center:q5e4auxh]
My hustler did a remarkable job of finding a BMW GS Adventure Protective Codpiece. An hour later he smilingly presented me an XXL jockstrap with a XXL plastic protective cup inserted on which he had pasted a BMW sticker. Perfect!
Next was a stop at a pharmacy. Again I overcame my lack of Thai words with hand movements to help the sales lady understand I did not want to purchase Viagra, Cialis or Ciproflaxen, apparently the most common requested pharmaceuticals requested by visitors to Pattaya. Instead I was seeking massive doses of aspirin, Ibuprofen and several bottles of cold cough syrup. I added 20 Actifed tablets to keep my sinus’ open for the sucking in of fumes from the exhaust pipes I remembered the sidecar sat next to when stopped or traveled through when we passed trucks and buses.
With the bag of medicine I again could be seen as meeting the earlier definition of the Valium-dependant-cyber-detractor portraying me as a “sad” and “sick” man. He was spot-on from his perspective: to a wannabe adventurist it would appear some couch time with a psychotherapist like his Jungian therapist might be in order. However, with the bag of medicines and having my man-mojo back, while protecting the sensitive marbles using the BMW GS Adventure Protective Codpiece, I was prepared for the flip-side of my Screaming Monkey adventure, retracing our previous route to the Golden Triangle and Chiang Mai.
“Eccentric Elitist” was how one local motorcycle rider from the Golden Triangle dubbed me for not being a joiner in group rides. Another attempted to cyber-drag me into his putrid little frog pond by a possible drug induced cyber extrapolation or some psychedelic New Age voodoo parapsychology. I thought this keyboard-flagellator was portending I was in his group of “supposedly mature middle-aged” men, having a “need for attention” or more shamefully, a “very sad sick” man in need of therapy sessions with a form of psychotherapy, suggesting the poster had first-hand couch familiarity with that of psychologist Carl Jung. Another psychoanalytic hypothesis of the known Valium ingesting cyber-flogger was that he might have nicked me, albeit by his poorly aimed drug triggered ricochet after ricochet.
[center:q5e4auxh]“I have been flamed – yeeow!”[/center:q5e4auxh]
Generally these kinds of keyboard warrior shots are taken with a sangfroid attitude. However, as I rode in Joe Sauerborn’s sidecar, known as being the “ monkey,” screaming like a primate being ripped apart in the jaws of a hungry jungle tiger, I sounded the part as described by the cyber-flogger of a very “sad sick man.”
[center:q5e4auxh]The sidecar outfit where I was the monkey.[/center:q5e4auxh]
I also had a “need for attention,” as the cyber-swordsman had slashed. The attention was that of trying to get Sauerborn to throttle down to 50 kph versus the 130 kph he was maintaining.
I suppose for someone who has been described as “America’s #1 extreme adventure rider,” it was also shameful I was not living up to that public persona. Both gloved hands clutching my crotch while howling into the face shield with my head fully thrown back might better be a subject for Sigmund Freud versus his student Carl Jung. Both psychoanalysts could recognize my crazed choice to be a monkey in a sidecar instead of a motorcycle pilot, but Freud could better relate to the placement of my hands, a primitive need to protect maleness. I knew if the sidecar came to a sudden stop I would fly forward, hitting the front of the bucket and windscreen crotch high. “Ouch!”
And who could argue with the term “eccentricity” for choosing to ride in a sidecar for 1,800 kilometers, the only Kawasaki Vulcan 1500 Classic with a custom built sidecar in all of Southeast Asia? It was definitely an “elitist” choice of motorcycle, one that drew crowds whenever we stopped.
Finally, I would agree with the final description, that being of a “supposedly mature middle-aged man.” Having started piloting Indian Motocycles when the company name “Motocycle” did not include an “r,” I physically exceed the definition of young man, and hopefully did not fall into the category of an old man. As a follower of Saint Fermin, the “supposedly” part of my gray-linked reference I also accept. “Supposedly” and fools, like fellow followers of Saint Fermin, implies a motorcycle adventure rider manifestation of No Fear, possibly.
Sauerborn and I left Chiang Mai at 5:00 AM. The first 90 minutes I could not see much, the darkness masking my seat in the sidecar. As the orange sun came up we were on a four lane high speed highway south of Lampang. Here I realized I was nearly horizontal in the bucket of the sidecar, less than a foot above the ground, speeding along at 130 kph, with everything from car and truck tires taller than me.
That is when reality hit. A twitch from a truck driver jolting awake after his stay-awake drugs had worn off would find me flatter than a tourist who was unsuccessful trying to run between the legs of an elephant during the Elephant Festival at Surin. This was when I sat upright in the sidecar and started to scream at Sauerborn to “SLOW DOWN! WE’RE GONNA DIE!”
[center:q5e4auxh]I see death as the truck starts to pull right and the car tries to dodge onto us![/center:q5e4auxh]
There is a significant difference between a motorcycle driver to that of being a passenger in a sidecar. The biggest was when this passenger realized he was not in control. Like a sack of potatoes I was merely a load in the bucket. Try hard as I could, my feet found no brakes in the nose of the sidecar. My hands on the sides of the sidecar could not slow or speed up the rig.
When I realized my life was in the hands of some drug crazed Thai truck driver or car driver sobering up on the way home after a night of binging on Chang beer or Mekong whiskey while Sauerborn skillfully dodged them at 130 kph, I screamed louder.
Nothing worked. Sauerborn was wearing a full-faced motorcycle helmet, being buffeted by 130 kph winds. He seemed not hear me. I screeched, shook the sidecar, and bounced up and down in the seat like a cadged horny male chimpanzee being shown an in-heat female chimpanzee.
Sauerborn appeared so focused on driving the sidecar outfit that when I managed to move my right hand from my crotch and slap his arm he merely turned, looked down at me and smiled, shaking his head up and down, as if saying, “Yeah, great fun ehhh!.”
[center:q5e4auxh]Sauerborn on his mission, very focused.[/center:q5e4auxh]
We had earlier decided to knock down the full 900 kilometers in one jump. With the extra large capacity of the gas tank we did not need to stop until we reached the outskirts of Bangkok, a first leg of 500 kilometers. By then I was a howled-out dish rag, lying limp in the bucket, tongue flopping out with dried spittle frosting my face shield.
I crawled out of the sidecar and limped across the parking lot to the toilet. My bowels had not let go but I could only walk bow-legged from the self-inflicted swelling due to tightly holding my agates, protecting them from the painful multi-colored swelling I had seen from other’s brushes with death. In the toilet urine dribbled onto my boots instead of the usual power stream on the porcelain back wall of the urinal. But I was alive.
At the 7/11 an ice cream bar followed by several bottles of M 150 power drink got my voice back. I croaked at Sauerborn, “Are we there yet?”
Sauerborn answered, as I started to fold myself back into the sidecar, “I can’t hear you. I’ve got a bad cold, my ears are plugged.”
He took off his helmet. It was then I realized he had not heeded my girly screams to slow down for the last 450 kilometers: he could not hear me. My psychotic howling had been for naught.
When he could hear, I asked, “Are we close now?”
“Yes, only from here the traffic gets slow.”
Thankful, I said, “Gee, that’s too bad.”
Then I saw a broken strap hanging from the front of the sidecar. I pointed at it. Sauerborn screwed up his face with a perplexed look and then said, “Ahhh, only the strap holding down the front of the sidecar bucket to the frame.”
“What the ….?” I thought.
Then the light of the ugly truth dawned. For 300 kilometers I had been screaming, trying to find foot brakes or shifters in the bucket while wildly bouncing up, down and sideways. I had shaken the bucket so hard the hold-down strap had broken, meaning only three or four bolts were all that kept me and the bucket from coming loose at 130 kph and sliding along the pavement surely to be squashed like one of the numerous flattened dogs we had seen on the road.
[center:q5e4auxh]Broken strap that held the front of the sidecar bucket down.[/center:q5e4auxh]I started to sputter Spanish, German, French and English curse words.
Sauerborn tried to calm me by telling me how strong the remaining bolts were and that unless we hit a pothole or speed bump, the sidecar would remain on the platform. Anyone who has driven over Highway 1 to or from Bangkok knows there are 1,000’s of potholes and pavement patches, some the height of Mexican topes, or speed bumps nearly a foot high. I could have bounced the sidecar off the platform any one of those 1,000 times.
[center:q5e4auxh]Bumps and patches in the road, 1,000’s of them.[/center:q5e4auxh]While he attached another hold-down strap, Sauerborn and I talked about how difficult it was to miss the potholes or patches with the sidecar. The distance between the wheels of the sidecar and the motorcycle was smaller than the wheels of trucks, buses or cars. Sauerborn, a very good sidecar driver, could miss the death bumps with either the motorcycle wheels or the sidecar wheel. I agreed the motorcycle and pilot were the more important of the two while silently starting to think about how much it would cost to flag down a Pattaya bound VIP bus and pay for the alternative way to arrive there.
Sauerborn tried further to mellow me with soothing words like, “Pattaya massage lady,” “cold beer,” and “traffic jams ahead.”
What Sauerborn did not tell me was when he would stop or idle along in the slow moving traffic around Bangkok my face would be level with exhaust pipes from trucks, buses and cars. For the next 450 kilometers I could neither scream nor yell. To breathe I had to keep a handkerchief pressed over my mouth and nose or pass out from the exhaust fumes.
[center:q5e4auxh]Sitting in the sidecar is like sucking on an exhaust pipe when breathing in traffic.[/center:q5e4auxh]When we arrived in Pattaya, 11 hours after having left Chiang Mai, I was in no shape to party with the entertainment workers. I stumbled upstairs to my hotel room, turned the air conditioner on high, took a long shower, and then slept the sleep of the dead for the next 12 hours.
Pattaya was a fun town. To gain some of my male-mojo back after the roads from Chiang Mai had hammered it out of me, I rented a 125 cc Honda. I considered renting one of the 1,000 cc sport bikes but when I looked at the bent over riding position I could almost feel the gas tank pressure on my tender plums from the previous 900 kilometers of protective squeezing, so opted for less male-cool motorcycle image and chose the upright riding position of the step-through 125 cc.
A couple of weeks earlier I had seen a crashed motorcycle gas tank that had an eye-popping dent at family jewel level and suspected the driver and I could have a male-mojo conversation, him as a countertenor or sopranist and me with the raspy voice of a screamed-out humped over monkey in Pattaya.
I had photographs of the dented gas tank but honor my pledge to a bleating father not to publish them. An accomplished wordsmith could describe the dented gas tank, obviously at pubic point of impact, as “fist sized in depth and width, obviously resulting in purple, blue, red and black nuggets likely the size of tennis balls and bringing into question future propagation.”
My comment to the mechanics standing around when I first saw the dented gas tank from squashed family jewels was far simpler, being only, “Ouch!”
For the return trip to Chiang Mai I prepared. A stop at one of the many sidewalk vendors on Pattaya’s Beach Road hawking knock-off Harley-Davidson T-shirts was where I purchased a BMW GS Adventure Protective Codpiece. This unique motorcycle adventure riding accessory was hard to find because BMW does not offer the item in their motorcycle catalog so Chinese companies do not know to copy them.
I made a drawing on paper of what I wanted. My Thai vocabulary was limited to more mundane words like baht, ying, and ATM. With the drawing, a sketched BMW logo, and using some hand and leg motions, I was able to get my request translated to an understandable level.
The T-shirt vendor I found to fill my order was like many of the Pattaya Beach Road knock-off vendors when you ask for a Rolex or similar product. He told me I should come back in an hour while he hustled off to some backroom to find my product that was warehoused or stored away from the eyes of the trademark enforcement police. I shopped for some souvenirs of Pattaya, like a “Harley-Davidson Pattaya” T-shirt and some stickers for a friend that said, “Married – Game Over.”
[center:q5e4auxh]Knock-off BMW motorcycles seen on the street in Pattaya, the “Urban Adventure” model.[/center:q5e4auxh]My hustler did a remarkable job of finding a BMW GS Adventure Protective Codpiece. An hour later he smilingly presented me an XXL jockstrap with a XXL plastic protective cup inserted on which he had pasted a BMW sticker. Perfect!
Next was a stop at a pharmacy. Again I overcame my lack of Thai words with hand movements to help the sales lady understand I did not want to purchase Viagra, Cialis or Ciproflaxen, apparently the most common requested pharmaceuticals requested by visitors to Pattaya. Instead I was seeking massive doses of aspirin, Ibuprofen and several bottles of cold cough syrup. I added 20 Actifed tablets to keep my sinus’ open for the sucking in of fumes from the exhaust pipes I remembered the sidecar sat next to when stopped or traveled through when we passed trucks and buses.
With the bag of medicine I again could be seen as meeting the earlier definition of the Valium-dependant-cyber-detractor portraying me as a “sad” and “sick” man. He was spot-on from his perspective: to a wannabe adventurist it would appear some couch time with a psychotherapist like his Jungian therapist might be in order. However, with the bag of medicines and having my man-mojo back, while protecting the sensitive marbles using the BMW GS Adventure Protective Codpiece, I was prepared for the flip-side of my Screaming Monkey adventure, retracing our previous route to the Golden Triangle and Chiang Mai.
