My kingdom for a bike.

After a hard days walking around the inner city of Shanghai I realised two important things. One; its best to ignore vendors in shady apparel accosting you with a myriad of Rolex’s and Cartier watches and two; it’s a good idea to leave the city before rush hour and the inevitable taxi drought that ensues in the chaos. I was guilty on both counts and not only haggled with a number of toothless wonders but also found myself deep in the city as the minions of Mount Pudong snatched every taxi within 1000km of me. As I stood on the pavement gravely considering my fate a genial young man with a smile on his face beckoned me to follow him. At first I thought he was another haggler ready to relieve me of what money I had but then I realised he was wearing a 1950’s style fighter pilots helmet on his head and not an elaborate scarf. So I followed. After about 3 seconds we stopped and he pointed at a motorcycle lying on the floor. This was not good. Clearly this man was insane and I was in very great peril. He had all the hallmarks of a deranged beggar off his nut on a cocktail of rice wine and vanilla coke. However, as we stood there I started to piece together his elaborate mime work. This man was trying to give me a ride on the back of his motorised horse.

Now, I am pretty open to most things but riding on the back of what can only be described as a fuel tank with wheels was a bridge too far and so I immediately thanked him and jumped on the back. It took a millionth of a second to realise this was a bad idea and it had nothing to do with his riding. In fact he hadn’t even started the bike. The problem was the helmet which he was attempting to hammer onto my bulbous skull with his fist. Unfortunately it didn’t fit, this didn’t stop him or the hammering though and so after many expletives it eventually covered the hair on my head. This meant I was riding a fuel tank with wheels at rush hour, semi blind and with a massive headache. Oh joy! He then clambered on and before I could give him any destination we were off. Now, I thought that helmet had been some kind of novelty item, a piece of decor or hip fashion he enjoyed wearing. Well it wasn’t. I think he believed himself to be a fighter pilot because as we slid round the first corner he shut the infra-red visor down while mouthing the sound of a machine gun firing. Now I have no problems with this kind of role play, in fact I often enjoy a bit of car Star Wars or helicopter Vietnam but this was different. He was in the zone, I don’t know what zone that was but it was a very frightening one. Another more pressing concern was the darkness of his actual visor which from my perspective was a completely non-see through material. This meant that he was in his zone blind! Now the zone I talk of is the one where we attempt as many near misses as possible while firing all our imaginary machineguns. It’s a terrifying game but luckily for me seemed to be one he took very seriously. So seriously in fact that he often had to mount the curb in order to acquire new more challenging targets, be it pedestrians or lamp posts.

And so for almost 50 minutes I was co-pilot to one of the maddest men I have ever had the pleasure of almost dying repeatedly with. Only when my house was in sight did I begin to relax my grip from the back of his leather jacket, little did I know he had one last coupe de grace to thrill me with. A women ahead of us was just beginning to cross the road when I heard the tell tale sounds of our guns warming up. He was about to attempt a very risky manoeuvre between a taxi and a woman, I braced for impact. What actually happened was rather unexpected, we hit her. Now I say unexpected because I assumed we would miss as we did every other thing every other time. The women noticeably alarmed by the fact she had just been pole axed leapt to her feet and began shouting wildly at my deranged ace. He nonchalantly slid his visor open and stared at the women, increased the throttle and sped off; as he did this he looked round at me and laughed the kind of laugh you would only expect to hear in a crack den. I grinned and as abruptly as the laugh had begun it ended, his visor was down and we were strafing another taxi. When we arrived he asked for 200RMB in payment for the ride. I gave him 60, which was about what he deserved. So what’s the moral of the story? If a guy is wearing a bomber jacket and fighter helmet don’t get on the back of his bike? Nope, get on, it’ll be worth every cent! I had more fun on that bike than all the fun times I have had in taxis put together.