Failed Ride, Uncle Ho Visitation, Teenage Marching Brigade and more.
Ok, It’s been a long time between posts, so I think I owe you an apology, but instead, HERE’S A TISSUE!
Let’s start off with some wisdom from TISM.
The guy who slagged the football team – Those yobs were not for him
Turns into a real estate agent who believes in discipline;
That guy who’s the first to use cocaine, The wild boy breaking free,
Ends up in a court of law as a prosecuting QC;
Remember the school captain? – Success was a matter of time;
I can hear her now as she screams, ‘Greg! You missed the stop sign!’Forget Snoop Doggy Dogg – Forget ol’ Ice T
The true word out on the street – Is produced by the TAC
What good’s the use of striving? As life’s road in front unravels
We get to do the driving but don’t choose the direction we travel.
Do your homework, or wag for weeks – And graffiti the Dandenong line;
It don’t matter when you hear that scream:
‘Greg! You missed the stop sign!’
Ok, now we’ve cleared that up, let’s start off where we left off shall we? The Honda 67 club ride. Here’s the story.
I spent 3 days fairly solidly fixing up ol’ Maria (my motorcycles’ name) and was fairly impressed with the bike’s performance and reliability.
She had brand new oil, new rear rim, hub, drum brakes and a general going over which rendered her in tip top condition for the 120klm round trip to Pho Ly, south of Hanoi.
The plan was, to get going in the afternoon when we heard word from the Saigon ‘67 club, letting us know they were going to make it. It was touch and go and I got word to heard to the Opera House at 6pm and we’ll await word.
I got an sms at 4pm saying “We’re on. Leaving at 5pm from the Opera House”. GREAT! I’m working on my bike at this point tweaking the brakes and doing a final check. My clutch cable was a little loose so I thought I’d tighten it up a bit as it was still a fairly new cable and stretching was part of it’s natural life before it broke in completely.
I started the routine exercise of tightening the nut on the thread that goes through the the clutch holder, and PING!!!!!!!!! The sound of fail.
I had failed to notice, that one of the many mechanics who had worked on my bike since I last did this job, that they’d put a lock nut on the other side of the clutch holder, which meant when I tightened the nut, I was putting fairly big torque on a piece of steel that isn’t meant for it, and then physics took care of the rest.
20 minutes before I’m to leave for the ride, the bike is inoperable and disabled. No ride for me. Was a fairly dark afternoon in my house, lemme tell you!
Long story short (not really) I got it welded back on and no problems now. Will have to wait for the next ride, unfortunately.
Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum
Well, thank fuck for spell check, otherwise I’d never be able to write Mausoleum. What a ridiculous word. But the Mausoleum, in real life (smirk) is friggin’ awesome! After finding the fairly elusive entrance, and possibly going through a VIP entrance marked “Entrance for visitors with prior appointment” and after going through the metal detectors and confiscating all my Nerf guns, silly string, lolbombs and disco-grenades. Rose beeped through the metal detector when she went through, but they didn’t check her. wtf.
They confiscate your cameras and phones and you can’t wear glasses inside the Mossie. They’re fairly keen to stop people photographing him. As they say in FMJ, “Charles’ really got his shit together”.
After being jammed into the line half-way for some reason, and shuffling for 300 meters through this line, we got into the big marble fridge they call the Mausoleum where Uncle Ho lies. I nearly got in wearing sunnies, but a guy with a rifle convinced me it was a bad idea. Not a bad way to convince me either.
You shuffle through some stairs, with guards feverishly looking you up and down. My solution was to do the exact same thing to each and every guard inside. Made a couple of them feel a bit funny I think, so give it a shot if you’re ever in there. Finding ways to fuck with police, guards and other armed forces without giving grounds for arrest, is the only real aspiration for anyone worth anything in this world. Tom Green, I salute you.
We got to the area where you walk past Ho, and I was thoroughly impressed with how surreal and spooky it was. He lays on a covered bed bathed with strange orange light, like the light emitted from an HPS lamp.
He was surrounded by 4 armed guards, who looked fairly determined to fuck you up if anything was even said, although if you stood on the rail, and lept really quickly I reckon you could give him a cuddle. Although I don’t recommend it. I don’t even recommend typing that from a Vietnamese IP block.
When we first saw Ho Chi Minh, laying there looking all rubbery, Rose grabbed my arm quickly, yet silently. Within about 45ms of her doing this, a guard had grabbed her arm, and said “shhhh”.
Classic. Rose told me when we left, and an instant urge to go back, and look at the guard and inhale, like you’re about to say something, and continue to do it everytime he shooshed you, then dramatically pretend like you’re about to sneeze and then nearly drop some pots n pans or basically, continually, yet silently have the imminent threat of enormous noise. You’d get your blurter bashed in before you got 10 seconds into the gag mind you, but it’d be worth it.
Ok, this post is too long, and I’ll write about the battalion of cute Vietnamese school girls marching past me in the park and giggling when I put my arms up in surrender later, but I’ve gotta give you the hot tip, it was of the coolest experiences of my life.
We have our first 1 on 2 Vietnamese lesson tonight, our tutor comes Tuesdays and Thursdays for 1.5 hours. Gunna be interesting.
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