Now his band was just starting out, so this was a big deal to get a gig in a pub - even if it was a few hundred km's from the city! So my buddy Ted & I jumped into my beat-up old 1973 Mazda 1200, and off up the Hume Hwy we went. All was going well until a burning smell started to fill the cabin at a town named Yea, a good hour's drive from Mansfield. Yes, we had "cooked" the motor, but undeterred, we pushed on, leaving the car at the local RACV yard, we caught the local bus (after a few hour's wait)the rest of the way to Mansfield.
We then had to leg it into the hills outside of town, to find my friend's farm - both of us had only been there once before, and it was starting to get dark (& cold).
An hour or so later, we finally made it to the farm house, only to find that it had been deserted, but a note was left for us, telling us to meet them in Mansfield, and we'd all go to the gig together.
Now this was in the days before mobile phones - remember those days? The note was the only means of communicating with an absent friend back in the eighties. The note was everything - "Why didn't you leave me a note? I was worried sick!"
Faced with the prospect of hanging around the deserted farm house all night, waiting for our mates to return triumphantly after rocking the Merrijig pub, the temptation got the better of us, and our youthful enthusiasm convinced us to head back into town, meet our friends, and enjoy the gig as we'd intended.
As it had taken an hour to walk to the farm house from town, if we were going to make it, we figured that we had to find some alternative means of transport. A quick peruse around the farmhouse revealed a turn-of-the-century old push bike, with no tyres or brakes, but we figured it was good enough.
So, we set off into the inky blackness on board our tyreless old treadly - my mate pedaling furiously, and me propped very uncomfortably on the handle bars, and started the trip downhill to Mansfield.
Clearly, the principles of perpetual motion had not figured into our cunning travel plan, that was of course until we entered hyper-space about half way down the hill - my mate stopped pedaling, and I started praying.
Through some kind of miracle, the angle of our descent seemed to relax as we got closer to town, and we both started thinking that we'd actually make it without having gravel-rash applied to our faces, chins, arms & legs. Even the inky-darkness started to clear as Mansfield's street lights illuminated our way to what was going to be a triumphant entrance in town. Mind you, the G-Force we were still experiencing would have knocked out Neil Armstrong, but it would be well worth it. We were going to rock out to my mate's band - does it get any better than that?
But then we saw it - a thing that would put any normal cyclist on the alert, but would send a tyreless, brakeless cyclist into the realms of horror, anxiety & panic!
Road works.
Lots of gravel.
Steel "No Thoroughfare" signs.
We were SCREWED!
There was no way our downhill trip (reaching speeds Han Solo would have been proud of) would allow us to come to a gentle halt, and entering the construction zone was a suicide mission, so my embattled pilot steered the bike towards a car park located in the medium strip of the road. That was great, but like any car park, a gutter surrounded it, thus separating car parks from the medium strip, and some vegetation.
Vegetation?
We hit the curb doing about 40 km per hour, and were both flung into the bushes conveniently located along the edge of the car park. Once my head cleared, and I realised nothing was broken (or hanging off), I called out to Ted to make sure we were OK (he was). I was about to climb out of the bushes, when a bright light filled my eyes.
Was this a vision of God, reminding us that it was His will that we were both still alive?
No.
It was a member of the local constabulary, whom had witnessed our crash landing from his squad car parked not 10 metres from our landing point. How did we miss that? To this day I can only guess that it must have been the speed-haze blurring our vision.
Now, how does one begin to explain what had just transpired to a humorless country cop, whom thought all of his Xmases has come at once, as two long-haired city boys had flung themselves into his gaze, having been catapulted on a seemingly-stolen bike, with no tyres & no brakes?
You don't.
So, we missed the band, got a grilling from the cop, and then spent the next hour or so pushing the tyreless bike back up the hill to the farmhouse.
And when we tried to tell our friends the story on their return from the gig, they called us "Soft Cocks".
I never really liked my mate's band anyway...
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