i'm missing you too

nearly a year ago, i was hit by a car while riding my bike back from meeting with dick & dom about putting on a live stage-show of 'da bungalow'. it was a day that quickly went from awesome to rrrrruuuuubbish in one foul sweep of a silver mercedes. my beautiful bike was destroyed. i loved this bike. it was my first. my first real bike that looked after me and took me galavanting up and down the country on missions of love and adventure.
i remember packing her up with ridiculous amounts of stuff on the christmas run down to my parents one year. in the freezing, blustery cold i overloaded her and expected her to carry me 2 hours down the motorway. and she did. like a queen forced to carry her own luggage across the wide-open vistas of siberia.
i remember her carrying me and my girlfriend through the night in bleak mid-winter. two hamster-like balls, barely recognisable as human perched upon her wrapped in pyjamas and coats and windcheaters and fleeces and gloves and scarves and multiple ski-socks and waterproofs and helmets and hundreds of t-shirts. desperately fighting the sub-zero temperatures as if our life depended on it. which it kinda did. by this time in our relationship she was on her way out, gearbox slowly eating itself inactive, steering losing it's bearings, engine gasping for air. but did she stop?
no, onward she fought. through the frost and darkness, fields and plains passing by looking on with hostile indifference.she took me anywhere i wanted to go, in any conditions with no complaint. even though she was getting on a bit and slowly eroding away faster than my wallet could cope with at that time.
until an idiot in a mercedes decided to drive on us.
and so she's been sat in front of my house under a tarpaulin since last april. a pile of scrap metal, chrome slowly fading away, joints ceasing, slumping on arthiritic suspension. the insurance company had paid me off, mercedes idiot taking full blame. so there she rested, rust working it's way across her wasted engine block...

but last week a man offered me money for her. a sizeable amount of money. especially considering the insurance people had paid over and above her true value. so i shook hands and said goodbye, wishing her bon voyage as she sped off into another winter night on the back of a trailer. off to be reborn as something new.

i've had another bike since last june. a bike i love. a bike that carries me though the cold winter nights with no complaint. twice as fast as the old girl ever went, and in infinitely more comfort. but i shed a tear when the dulled chrome disappeared into the folds of night, i don't mind telling you. she was a good girl. maybe our paths will cross again. until then, get some rest, get rid of some rust and dream of those sun-bleached open roads.