Keep your eyes on the back.

Some years back while checking my Boney before a Rally, I realised that the starter was stuffed, and that I would have to make other plans to get there. So I phoned around asking if anyone had space for a pillion and a sleeping bag. The only luck I had was in a car; with a chap I had made friends with at some biker jol.

He was a spindly fellow, with muscular dystrophy and a passion for talking. He has since passed away, and I mean no disrespect to him or his family in writing this.

As luck would have it, my best friend was also going in the same car, due to his Harley giving him uphill as well. So ‘John’ arrived promptly in morning with a jolly demeanour and a cubbyhole full of Mary Jane. I packed my stuff and off we went to collect my buddy. What was meant to be short drive became a bloody nightmare for me, and when we got to my friend’s house I was a wreck, man.

I’m just the worse kind of passenger. I’ve been in many accidents, and I therefore tend to be nervous as hell, especially in a car.
We picked my buddy up, and I asked if I could sit in the back. It was to get no better.

John had the annoying, and downright scary compulsion, of having to look at you while he was talking. Not so bad when you take the odd glimpse at your passenger, but when you look away from the road for sentences at a time, it becomes fuckin piss-in-the-pants goose fleshy. To make matters worse, he would do the same when talking to me. And I’m sitting in the back!

I asked him if he could please look in the mirror, if he absolutely had to look at me. He’d be okay for a minute or two, before resorting back to practically craning his neck to see me. To make matters worse he smoked Jay, while driving, so the more I ask him to chill out with the driving, the bigger joke it would become with him. Eventually I stripped my moer and asked him to pull over.

I walked around to his window and asked him to get out. He obliged, and I told him to get in the back. I drove the rest of the way and back after the Rally.

Thereafter, whenever John picked me up to go somewhere, he would get out of the car and let me drive. We became good friends and he was a great passenger; passing me a shorty, while I concentrated on the road.

Miss ya, buddy.