Chocolate Hash
1977 ish Saturday.Start off about lunchtime at the pub. Few beers, then on the bikes up to the Trade Fair, sort of an Easter Show. Someone pulls out some chocolate hash and hands it round.What a good day it was! Back to the pub for a few more beers. But by 9pm my 20yr old arse is on the pavement, sick as a dog. F this, gotta go home. On to the trusty Triumph and off the 25odd k's to Porirua. Hit the Hutt Road and turn off at Nauraunga.. Fark, Traffic cops in front of me, doing the speed limit, and Im in a hurry. aah its only a shitty Holden with a 253, theyll never catch me I thinks and blast past and up the Nauraunga Gorge. The gorge is pretty steep and 2 miles long so Im pretty sure I can leave them behind. I do but they werent gonna be far behind once up the top and on the straights, so I turn off into Johnsonville, aiming to take the back road that runs parallel with the motorway.
Not quite as easy to lose em as Id thought, so once on the dark back road I pull over into a lovers lane and kill the lights. The cops go shooting past, lights and siren ablazing, while some startled couples discover coitus interruptus...Once the cops are gone I jump back on and head back the other way. Take a liesurely ride back up to Johnsonville and onto the motorway north.
Get down the end of the first straight and the bike dies. Fuck. dark as and no lights. Used to not run a battery , replaced with a big capacitor, which meant the lights only went with the engine. So I'm expecting a cop to roll past and see me while Im trying to get this damn machine going...and theres no where to hide. Working by the lights of other cars going past I finally find that the center power wire has dropped off the zener diode. Back on it goes and Im off again, expecting to have the cops pull on to the motorway behind me at the next on ramp...the gods must have been smiling on me that night...got home without incident.