THE BEST OF RACE FACE
Words Scott Bishop
I’m on holiday. Call it long-service leave if you like so, instead of doing another column, I thought I would just toss out a best of Race Face to fill in my contractual obligations and keep my legion of fans (even my parents don’t read this) happy.
So, without further ado, here are a couple of highlights from my column over the past 180-odd issues. Now, I’m headed back to Disneyland for day three of princesses, rides and being the complete tourist.
YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE?
Do you know what I hate? I hate it when the guy in front of me at the ATM does 17 transactions and then still walks away with no money. Hey “Mr. Wall Street”, heard of a bank teller or online banking? Take your transactions and your dodgy keycard somewhere else, I have things to do and one of them isn’t watching you take 35 minutes to get a balance of $3.57.
I also hate that I somehow follow the same guy into Subway for lunch. I am starving and could eat the arse of a dead horse when he orders 14 subs, all on different bread, every meat and salad on the planet and a range of sauces that is just downright ridiculous. Hey “Chunky Butt”, you ain’t fooling nobody, that 158 inches of salad roll with sauce is for you and when it’s that big, it ain’t healthy for nobody. And then he buys a Diet Coke and tries to pay for it with his keycard!
MY CAREER PROSPECTS
So, then I thought about doing an old man’s sport, like V8 Supercars, but my Dad doesn’t own a team. I can steer a HiAce around a drive-thru like no other, but apparently there isn’t a HiAce class and no drive-thru on any track in Australia. No wonder that sport is going nowhere. As if Jamie Whincup could wrestle an overloaded HiAce down the Gateway Arterial in Brisbane with a German Shepherd in the back while talking on the phone, changing a CD and sipping on a can of Rockstar. I do that daily and, still, there is no gig for me in a tin top?
I could have played cricket for Australia, but my Indian book maker couldn’t pull the right strings. I could have joined the Chinese female swim team, but my testosterone count was too low and my shoulders were too narrow to qualify. I thought about playing soccer, but I didn’t do arts and drama for faking death on the field so I was underqualified. I could have played golf, in fact I do, but throwing clubs in anger is frowned upon in golf circles and I have since found out that Happy Gilmore wasn’t a fly-on-the-wall documentary.
HOW TO BE ANNOYING AT MX
When you are next in a bike shop, grab a helmet from the shelf, jump on a bike and start to make motor noises while fanning the clutch and stabbing the brakes. When the sales guy walks up and asks you what you are doing, answer, “Just taking it for a test ride!”
While you are there, enquire about the price of nearly every bike in the shop. Then, when you hear the price, give that “oh that’s expensive whistle” and move on to another bike. When you are out of dirt bikes, ask if there are any Harleys in the shop as they make a great motocross bike.
Be that guy that relates a long-winded story about the time his PE175 got stuck in powerband, sped off across a paddock nailing two goats, taking down a wire fence all before coming to a halt as you smash into Uncle Ted’s chook shed. Every 40-year-old, western-suburbs “bogan” has one of those stories.
Relate to everyone in the area that time you raced some Moto hero and whipped him. Of course, the story doesn’t need to be true, and 100 per cent aren’t, but it usually winds up the current racers when a name-dropping yobbo starts mouthing off about things back in the day.
Then, ask a current rider if they have heard of some riders of your era. Make up a heap of bogus names that didn’t exist and then, as the current rider denies any knowledge, shake your head and announce loudly, “That’s the problem with kids of today, they just don’t understand the history and heritage in our sport.”
Walk into a team transporter and start a bike. Actually, don’t do that or you will cop a punch in the head and find yourself trying to tap out of a figure-four leg lock after team staff bounce on you like bouncers at a night club.
MY HIACE
I got it with 143,000 on it, just a baby in diesel terms and with it my career took off. We were a great team, I put diesel in it and it went. What more could you ask for? At 460,000ks, I thought I would give him his first service. I ripped out the oil and it looked like black Vaseline. I changed the oil filter on his well, with thoughts I would pump up the horsepower significantly with the new slippery stuff and a filter that actually worked.
Then, to really get him cranking, I decided to wash the airfilter…. In petrol. Now, my suggestion to anyone thinking about washing a diesel airfilter in petrol is … DON’T. Here is what happens. Once the motor is fired, the petrol gets sucked off the filter and the motor instantly revs like its re-entering earth’s atmosphere.
I did this in my street, so when the HiAce started revving like a whipper snipper and a white cloud of smoke poured out the back of it like I just knocked down a high-rise building, the neighbours were onto me. I then shut the key off and that did nothing. The thing just revved and the smoke machine continued out the back. Once the entire street was outside and looking at my diesel smoke machine chainsaw redline for a minute, I came to the conclusion that the van was about to explode and my best option was to run like buggery.
