Ride Like Hell and You'll Get There (6 page)

Break world record.

Get drunk.

Dr Colin Kestell stood under the open rollerdoor looking into the expansive mechanical engineering workshop with a coffee in his hand and a slightly distracted expression on his face. It turned into a smile as I stopped by his shoulder and punched him on the arm.

Two years ago, Colin and I had collaborated, along with his students spanning several graduating years, to build ‘Betty’ the bio-bike and get all the way around Australia on bio-diesel made from used cooking oil. Betty was a pig—a shuddering, painful death pig. She tried to kill me, she tried to shove her left handlebar up my arse, she put me in Longreach Hospital for four days with cracked ribs and a damaged rotator cup, she made me beg, but I loved her. She was built on a shoestring budget, a Frankenstein motorcycle running an 8-horsepower irrigation-pump engine that vibrated so violently I had residual nerve damage in my hands for three months after I completed the ride.

Betty spawned another bio-diesel monster, but this time there were no cute names, no making do, no irrigation-pump engines. This time we had a 1.7-litre, 90-kilowatt, 60-horsepower Holden Astra turbo diesel engine teamed with a five-speed Harley Davidson Dyna gearbox. The Bio Diesel Motorcycle Salt Lake Special was designed for one purpose only—to go fast on a salt lake in the middle of nowhere.

The BDM-SLS has a very wide frame, long wheelbase (more than 3 metres) and is made of steel. So it looks and sounds cumbersome and underpowered, but in fact this is what you need to get up to speed on the salt. Weight is essential to get the power down on the back wheel and avoid wheel spin, and it also aids stability on the salt, especially with crosswinds; the length will also help in these unique conditions.

No expense was spared—she was getting close to six figures. We had been working on this project for more than two years and this trip to Adelaide was the one I had been dreaming about for so long—the one where I get to ride her for the first time.

Just the thought of going to a place like Lake Gairdner had been exciting me, to fly across our great land, look down and see endless red and orange earth occasionally interspersed with sparkling white salt lakes. The lakes are so remote, so untouched. My nose pressed up against the perspex, I had been gazing at them on every flight to and from Brisbane for a long time, waiting for Speed Week to arrive, amazed at the beauty of the harsh inland. Our salt lake was 550 kilometres northwest of Adelaide, one of the most remote places in Australia.

With Speed Week starting on a Monday, I arrived on Saturday morning so we had the whole day to pack everything before leaving on Sunday for a week of intense salt-skimming balls-to-the-wall speed trials.

Saturday was mad. Colin had been in touch with the DLRA as there were concerns about the weather, the potential for rain being monitored diligently. I had mates arriving from Brisbane and Matt Bromley was also en route from Sydney, on a bike of course. The whole event pulsed a viable sense of purpose into everyone as we scurried about packing, re-packing, checking and double-checking everything twice. By lunchtime our gear was good to go, the bike was ready and sitting in her custom-made dual-axle trailer, two support vehicles were laden with fuel, bike spares, tools, tents, water, tarps, food, the list went on and on.

It was really exciting for me to have two of my close mates, Simon Hann and Howard Fletcher, joining me on this adventure. Both blokes have busy family lives and careers to juggle, being the good citizens they are these days. Of course, it wasn’t always so. Both Simon and Howard were oilfield men in the traditional sense, and by that I mean they used to be bad, medievally bad. They used to have their names on their shirts, they had tattoos, rode motorcycles fast, drank to get drunk, never went to the doctor and had a keen interest in self-destruction.

But that was the past. They had turned the successful corner, bent their ways and embraced the new environmentally friendly all-you-can-eat oilfield salad bar system, and now they are good. So good, in fact, that they are husbands and fathers, they exercise, watch their diet, have regular health checks, don’t smoke and only have the occasional drink. They got educated; they have lots of qualifications now and sometimes wear ties to work. Simon looks like he never battered a muppet in a bar fight. Howard looks like my accountant, except my accountant doesn’t know how to make napalm and never ran through the jungle naked with a large piece of burning toilet paper protruding from his clenched butt cheeks.

When Simon and Howard got out of the cab at the workshop, you would not see the oil men inside for the clean veneer of corporate respectability glistening in the sun, their respective halos twinkling.

‘You look like shit,’ Howard says, grinning.

There were man-hugs all round before I shoved them into a university car and we drove across Adelaide to pick up two fully kitted four-wheel-drive campers. There is very little accommodation on Lake Gairdner (the Mt Ive homestead nearby has some cabins and rooms but they’re just too far away from the action), so we opted for the motorhome option while on the salt.

Two hours later we all pulled up at the motel I’d booked in the middle of Adelaide’s main strip and general drunk-ridden vomit-slicked Hindley Street for Saturday night. The plan was to head out to the salt lake on Sunday morning then stay in the campervans. However, Speed Week coincides with the annual Clipsal 500 V8 car races so every hotel, motel, shitty flea-bag dump decided to triple their rates and demand full payment in advance. I didn’t realise that every available hotel room that was remotely decent had been booked months ago, so in my last-minute haste I only managed to get a shared room for three in an excuse for a motel.

‘Right, so, Mr Carter, that’s a room for three and parking for three vehicles for Saturday, 19 March.’ The lady sounded very nice on the phone.

‘Yes, all good,’ I said.

‘And in case you didn’t see our website, sir, we are gay-friendly here.’

‘Pardon?’ I said.

‘Our motel is very gay-friendly.’

‘Well, ah, okay, that’s good to know, but I’m not gay.’

‘Of course, you’re not, Mr Carter, I just thought I would mention that our motel is—’

I cut her off. ‘Yes, I know, very gay-friendly.’

As we pulled up at the motel looking for the parking spaces I’d also paid for in advance, the horror started to set in. The directions basically had us parked in a real rapetastic overgrown lot off a seedy alleyway at the rear of what looked like a derelict building. I phoned to make sure we had the right place. Yep, this was our gay-friendly motel.

They’d slapped me with a $490 per night bill for a horrid little toilet of a room. Simon walked in and looked like I’d just crapped in his latte. ‘Fuckin’ hell, Pauli, this is the best you could do? I wouldn’t let my dog kip in this dump—and they think we’re gay.’

Howard set to work fixing the aircon unit that looked older than me. It groaned then sparked a bit before shuddering to life, shaking the room and making the whole experience feel like a railroad boxcar on the way to the annual gay festival in gay town.

We went out that night full of excitement and anticipation. Colin was set to meet us for dinner, but he was running a bit late. While I was standing outside the bar next to the restaurant on Hindley Street enjoying the rabble of perpetual wallopingly drunk teenagers all on a full-blown binge-drinking exercise in liver demolition, he called me and as soon as I heard his tone I knew it was bad.

‘I’m so sorry, mate, but Speed Week just got cancelled,’ he said.

Colin explained that the DLRA officials had arrived at Lake Gairdner and discovered two things: it was raining hard, and the entrance from the land to the salt was badly damaged. There’s a special rubber ramp that you’re supposed to use when you take your vehicle onto the salt, otherwise the salt gets damaged. It’s simple, really—the ramp’s right there, you just need to set it up and off you go. But there’s always an exception, some selfish idiot. Just prior to the DLRA’s arrival, a TV commercial was shot on the salt involving a four-wheel-drive cruising about on the salt and making pretty circles with its wheels, revealed at the end of the ad via a chopper shot—wow, how clever. They didn’t bother to use the ramp, though, and fucked up the entrance. That severely upset the Indigenous community and the DLRA. Mother Nature then decided to turn Lake Gairdner back into a lake, raining heavily over the past two days. Even though the lake had been known to dry up rapidly, the DLRA made the call to cancel the event.

I was floored with disappointment. All the work, the planning, everything—this was our shot and it just got taken away.

Colin arrived at the pub soon after and we all sat down and stared at the floor. None of us it took it well. Colin was philosophical, of course, but I could tell he was crushed. The other Speed Week crews were equally subdued; it was like we’d gone from a buck’s party to a wake.

‘All that gear and the vehicles are non-refundable,’ I moaned into my beer. I’d just spent eight grand for nothing. What now?

Well, we did what motivated, capable, intelligent, educated men do in these situations and got drunk.

At some point between beer and whiskey o’clock, Colin came up with a brilliant idea and suggested we depart for the test track in the morning and at least ride the bike. Then he jumped on the phone to wake someone up and organise it. Simon booked himself the first available flight back to Brisbane—I was sorry to see him go but he does have a whole drilling division of a major multinational to run, so he was packed and out of our shitty gay motel before we could convince him to have another Bloody Mary. Howard stayed on. ‘I want to see it run, mate,’ he said, grinning.

Speed Week may have been officially cancelled, but there’s no stopping a bunch of lunatics with a fast bike and a test track.

EAGLES

SUNDAY MORNING
, first light, grey impending clouds collided overhead rumbling a death rattle that hammered back the fact that Speed Week was cancelled. The dank mood that hung in the air mixed with our hungover beer breath as we quietly and painfully pulled out of Adelaide. The drive was silent—Colin, Howard, Ed and Steve, one of the mechanics from the uni, all sat deep in post-beer thought.

Two hours later we pulled off the highway into Tailem Bend test track, 100 kilometres southeast of Adelaide. A former Nissan facility, the test track was now privately owned. It had a 1.4-kilometre straight that I was about to point the bike down and hopefully she would give me the good news.

The rain kicked in closely followed by powerful gusts running left to right across the track. We all paused as if to silently ask,‘Should we stop and wait for the weather to change?’ But we all knew it was only going to get worse.

The bike slowly rolled out the rear doors of its giant trailer and sat there in the rain on the tarmac, looking for a fight.

We set about prepping her for the first run. The rear fairing was removed, bolts checked and marked, chain checked and lubed, diesel poured into her small tank while I peeled on my body armour: a leather racing suit, boots, helmet and finally gloves.

My mouth went dry as I threw my leg over her massive bulk and settled into the seat. Her frame had been built around mine—it was like putting on a tailored smoking jacket in a gentleman’s club for sociopaths. But I had no fear of consequences, none at all.

Steve strapped the red emergency stop cord to my wrist and flipped up the three bright red switch covers concealing the fuel pump start, fuel management module and the engine start button. He primed the throttle and flicked the first two switches and the bike whirred, the digital instrument cluster blinking to life, tiny bulbs glowing green and needles jumping to indicate fuel and oil pressure, battery levels, engine temp, oil temp, engine revs and speed. He looked directly at me, grabbing the sides of my helmet: ‘Push it.’

I nodded, looked down over the metre-wide front end surrounded by a massive green fairing, inside a cockpit of lights, gauges and switches. Fear suddenly rose up into my throat. Before it reached my head I pushed the engine start button and she barked, shuddering alive with that unmistakeable diesel rumble.