If I Should Fall To The Field

 This time of year usually sees me getting my kit ready for the annual pilgrimage to the Island for the Classic TT/Manx GP, unfortunately during these strange times that’s not happening this year. So, after a particularly sad week in which I lost another dear friend to a motorcycle accident I started to question if this obsession is indeed worth the heartache. I put off riding for four days, not wishing out of respect or perhaps fear of putting my loved ones through the same feelings of loss that my friends family are going through at this time. 

 I can’t articulate the sensation of riding a motorcycle, many more talented people have tried before, it is, without wanting to sound like a walking [riding] cliche something that if you have never experienced it you really wouldn’t understand, [told you] 

 We are basically a big soft bag of muscle, tissue and blood, it’s not speed that kills it’s stopping abruptly, usually through hitting an inanimate object. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve played out this scenario in my head, both consciously and in my dreams, is this my ultimate destiny? Some stranger turning across my path? [‘I didn’t see him’] our lives intertwined by fate, perhaps a misjudgment as I enter a bend, a trail of diesel from a careless trucker over filling his tank? The track day where circumstances go against us? The ‘racing incident?’  I don’t know, no one ever really knows, we have two important dates in life, the one when we are born and the one when we finally shuffle off this mortal coil. 

   What I will say though is that I’d rather continue to experience the feelings that I get riding my motorcycles, whatever the risk, than succumb to the humdrum, boring, tartan blanket wearing existence that non-riders have. Richard ‘Nobby’ Newbold. Love you mate.