Fun days

Many years ago I owned a Honda 125 CB motorcycle. Hardly a ‘hog’, it would never get me membership of the local chapter of the Hells Angels but it allowed me to get to work cheaply and we were saving for our first home. I brought it on a Saturday and drove it to work from Holsworthy to Chatswood on Monday and that must be about 25 or 30 miles of Sydney peak hour traffic. In the intervening days I had to learn how to ride the thing. All my lifeI have suffered from an indominable self-confidence that when confonted with something new always has me thinking …It can’t be too hard – others do it. This mentality has got me into a lot of trouble over the years but I did master a lot of skills….eventually…after some bad starts. On my first try of my “teach yourself how to ride a bike” program I treed the honda and myself in a shrub in the front yard. The bike ended up on it’s side putting victoriously, the kids quickly went from wide eyed to wet eyed as they laughed their little irreverant heads off, but what hurt most was my wife’s uncontrolled mirth. I eventually learnt to control the bike and avoid all those hazards of Sydney traffic except one. The big black labrador. On Sunday mornings I would mount the bike and drive like the Wild One up to the local store to buy the papers, milk and bread. Along the way lived a cranky old labrador who always came out barking at any trespassers in his territory, which in his mind included the road, and frightening the living bejeesus out of them. Employing the Infantry tactic of “when in doubt attack first”I thought I would settle the road access arguement once and for all and as he came out to attack I balanced myself and gave him an almighty kick in the ribs delivered at 25 mph plus whatever velocity my swinging leg added. No shoes…broke my toe….lots of pain….kill the mongrel. It’s very hard to adopt a feotal crouch at that speed but it’s all I wanted to do. I eventually slowed the bike down with the handbrake and could finally grab my toe and roll around in pain in a manner most unbecoming of an Infantry Sergeant, uttering threats to the dog, who by now had accepted defeat on the road access issue. From that day on he associated moving objects on the road with extreme pain and let them pass unmolested. From that day on I decided to be more mature about arguing with animals while improperly dressed. We both learnt. This little incident in my past was brought to mind by a comment over at Tim Blair’s in a thread that included Labradors and squirrels. One reader left a link to a bikie having an altercation with a squirrel. Go read, it’s funny.