Marwood
Junior Member
- Messages
- 87
"You know how weird that makes you look?"
So said my lovely wife, watching me contentedly polish the cogs on my race bike. I pointed out how logos on the tyres (also cleaned) were now nicely aligned with the valves, adding that my vehicular OCD was a fairly benign affliction for a middle aged bloke, compared to say football, **** or breeding show fish. She took my point while suggesting that I would be sleeping alone for a while.
Having mounted the bike back on its display stand (also cleaned), I got to thinking about scuffs and scrapes and the philosophy therein.
Having got back from last week's Yorkshire blast I'd cleaned the GS and noted how chipped and scuffed it is up close: peppered nose, scrapes on the mirrors, dinks in the windscreen. The immediate impulse was to get it all fixed - spray, touch up, buff, whatever.
Then I thought about how the marks got there. Some are from trucks chucking up **** on tedious rainswept motorway hauls, to be sure. I also have an uncanny homing instinct for recently resurfaced roads. But most of the marks, so I like to imagine, were earned when the car is being driven properly: howled and hurled and thrapped and loved. Its not transport - we all know that. Its an event. So the scars are the tally of illicit morning raids and those 90 second sequences where you can't remember breathing. If I dropped a garden rake on the car - I'd be beyond furious. But if I dimple the rear spoiler having an epic drive down a country road...That's just a momento.
There's a scratch on the carbon of my race bike. I notice it every time I look at it. That scratch should annoy me like ****: its an affront to the perfection of this amazing machine. But it reminds me of the moment it happened - when my friend's bike, in front, flicked up a stone, when we were going down a 25km mountain decent in the Dolomites, on a stunning summer's evening: some of the most exciting, terrifying, absorbing few minutes of my life. That scratch is a badge of honour, so it can stay.
The question, of course, is how far does this philosophy go? Do I keep going until the GS looks like a Rat Rod? Or this guy's Miura?
http://www.petrolicious.com/show-cars-aren-t-limited-to-monterey-s-greens
That's one to ponder.
M
So said my lovely wife, watching me contentedly polish the cogs on my race bike. I pointed out how logos on the tyres (also cleaned) were now nicely aligned with the valves, adding that my vehicular OCD was a fairly benign affliction for a middle aged bloke, compared to say football, **** or breeding show fish. She took my point while suggesting that I would be sleeping alone for a while.
Having mounted the bike back on its display stand (also cleaned), I got to thinking about scuffs and scrapes and the philosophy therein.
Having got back from last week's Yorkshire blast I'd cleaned the GS and noted how chipped and scuffed it is up close: peppered nose, scrapes on the mirrors, dinks in the windscreen. The immediate impulse was to get it all fixed - spray, touch up, buff, whatever.
Then I thought about how the marks got there. Some are from trucks chucking up **** on tedious rainswept motorway hauls, to be sure. I also have an uncanny homing instinct for recently resurfaced roads. But most of the marks, so I like to imagine, were earned when the car is being driven properly: howled and hurled and thrapped and loved. Its not transport - we all know that. Its an event. So the scars are the tally of illicit morning raids and those 90 second sequences where you can't remember breathing. If I dropped a garden rake on the car - I'd be beyond furious. But if I dimple the rear spoiler having an epic drive down a country road...That's just a momento.
There's a scratch on the carbon of my race bike. I notice it every time I look at it. That scratch should annoy me like ****: its an affront to the perfection of this amazing machine. But it reminds me of the moment it happened - when my friend's bike, in front, flicked up a stone, when we were going down a 25km mountain decent in the Dolomites, on a stunning summer's evening: some of the most exciting, terrifying, absorbing few minutes of my life. That scratch is a badge of honour, so it can stay.
The question, of course, is how far does this philosophy go? Do I keep going until the GS looks like a Rat Rod? Or this guy's Miura?
http://www.petrolicious.com/show-cars-aren-t-limited-to-monterey-s-greens
That's one to ponder.
M