By Nico Prins
Motorbikes are a part of any backpacking adventure in South East Asia. They are the ultimate cheap way to get away from the buses you have been confined in for those countless hours and experience the freedom of the road. However, terrible headlights, flat tires, bumpy road and racing bus drivers makes any road trip a hair raising experience.
As I prepare for my mega road trip, I feel the need to share with you 10 of the things I hate most about riding on a motorbike. Hopefully, this rant will make mefeel better later on.
1) Exhaust fumes. Stop at a traffic light and I guarantee you will end up behind a bus pumping out black smoke and for a minute, with no place to go, you will be poisoned.
2) Breaks. Whoever invented the breaking system for a manual motorbike should be shot. There is simply no way most of us are going to remember that your break will stop working unless you change the gear down.
3) Headlights. They don’t work, they barely light up the road two meters in front of you. They are like Christmas lights – they look pretty, but are f@$king useless. So you drive with Dutch courage until you inevitably hit a…
4) Pot hole. While holes in the road are an inconvenience to cars and mash up the suspension, for anyone on a motorbike, these holes are just lethal. Seriously, if you are going to call it a road, but some tarmac on it and fill up those holes.
5) Bus Drivers. If you are driving a large vehicle, get the hell out of the fast lane. You shouldn’t drive fast, the vehicle can’t go fast, so just stop trying to do it because its bound to end up in a crash.
6) People Driving Too Slow. Look, it’s ok if you can’t drive fast, but for gods sake, please pull over occassionally to let people overtake. I’ve lost count of the number of times frustration has made me overtake a slow moving lorry on a blind corner and one day I know there will be something there.
7) Geting Soaked. It seems to be a form of entertainment if you’re in a car getting motorbike drivers soaked when it rains. Honestly, you wouldn’t be laughing if I threw a bucket of water over your head. Just slow down a bit and don’t accelerate through huge puddles.
8) Horns. Ok, I know horns serve a purpose, and the emergency services have special ones, but a normal cars really doesn’t need to be that loud. 20,000 decibel tuneful horns scare the crap out of people. Seriously just use the one that came with the car in the first place. Crazy…
9) Seat Padding. Get off a motorbike after more than an hour of driving it and you walk like a cowboy. Someone really needs to figure out how to put some extra padding into the seats.
10) Flat Tires. Well, there bound to happen, but it’s a pain in the ass when it happens in the middle of no where and you are forced to push your bike for half an hour.
Well, I’m glad I got that out of my system.
