Let's Not Go Touring This Summer

Let's Not Go Touring This Summer

EVE WHITE

SPRING. AND THF. CYCLE which has nestled gently in the cellar all winter, will be brought out any day now. How I dread that day! Frightening memories of previous summers begin to haunt me, as I hear the engine being kicked into life. Any moment now I shall hear the first hark of the engine, and my husband’s first glad cry, “Where shall we go this summer?”

To start with there will be the pannier bags, two in number; “One each,” he says, “so don’t try taking too many clothes.” After a short delay he will repack my neatly assembled pannier bag to make room for his overboot waders, waterproofs, spares and tools. I will sadly decide I must wear everything I want to take, so I set off looking like a glorified junk shop.

He scorns the use of a map. and says we will take the most interesting roads. This had led us into a variety of charming places including a cattle-dip, a sewage disposal plant, and a beautiful stretch of scenic road which brought us right to our back door. Perhaps he’ll take a map this time. Perhaps!

You must have heard of back seat drivers. While I am on the pillion, complete silence is the rule so he can concentrate on the great task in hand. The less he knows I’m there, the better he likes it. But when I threaten to stop my perpetual vigilance for radar and police cars, he may eventually say T can take her for a while. Then it’s, “Stop, look out, turn, first gear now. red light, dead dog. car overtaking, swing in, swing out,” til I am finally reduced to begging for a quiet time on the pillion again.

The camera actually belongs to me, but who always hogs the picture? That’s rieht. and the shots I plan to show the solitary grandeur of the mountains will be blotted out by a grinning spectre, all teeth and goggles. All the pictures he takes must show only the lovely scenery, so when we get home I might just as well have stayed there for all the pictorial record of me there is in the album.

I can out-forecast anv weather expert for the period of our holiday ... it will rain. It has gotten to the state where we have to warn farmers, resort operators and the local Indian rain makers that we are coming. We have been known to end sixmonth-long droughts. We have restored areas of dry, brown grass to green verdure again. We have caused forest fire danger warnings to be cancelled. In fact we could almost sell our services to any areas you know of which could do with a thorough drenching.

Mind you. I’m not against rain if I am safely indoors, but when he rides with his feet crossed on top of the tank to keep them dry, I am then soaked in front w'ith water from the front wheel and at the back with w'ater from the back ditto, which always throws up fiendish iets of water (when it’s not spraying oil). Of course. T don’t need waterproofs. He says he gets all the soaking as I am protected by his manly form.

I know he will buy food to cook on the way. After hours of hungry searching we will find a roadside camp site. He knows all about barbecues, except how to light them, how to keep them going and how to stop them smoking. When our weiners are finally reduced to charred wreckage, he will condescend to buy me a ci:p of coffee to keep me going, and he hands out the dime as if he were the Income Tax Officer giving a refund.

Just before dusk we shall sec the most delightful motels and cabins, by little lakes or with private swimming pools. I shall think longingly of a warm shower and some attention to my sun-burn, windburn and the place where he burned me with the exhaust pipe. He will want to. “Push on a bit more.” Immediately, as dusk falls, all cabins and motels will be removed from our route, or suddenly and miraculously display "No Vacancies.” Almost dropping from weariness, we at last will see a welcoming light. It will be a cabin, under dripping trees, next to a truck diner, filled with spiders, crickets, moths and other unthought-of horrors, and it’s this way to the cold shower under the pump.

At last, the ocean! My aching bones cry out for a rest on that soft, white sand. But suddenly the mantle of Johnson falls on his shoulders, and he’s out there trying to put up new speed records, and all I can rest on are the rocks, or the dunes where that horrible spiky grass grows.

Then just as the weather starts to break, as the sun gets out from the drenching clouds, it will be time to start home again. Can you guess which way the rain clouds are travelling? And what will be the first thing the neighbors say when we get home? “We’ve had beautiful weather while you were away.”

Let’s not go touring this summer! Let’s sit quietly on the patio. Let’s . . . Oh, no! He’s said it! “Fve, let’s go touring this summer.” •