The human brain is a marvellous thing and on my long lonely nights in countries that barely rate the title I had spent a lot of time pondering questions like how does the human brain remember things that it was taught years before ... and why can't we just do a brain dump now and again and start fresh?
Where does it store that information and why do we keep acting on that information long after the need to do so has passed?
Many years ago, during my transition from a foot slogger to something else I was taught to know what was going on around me ... and most importantly, what's going on behind me. Is someone getting ready to shoot me? Is someone about to knife me you? Is someone trying to follow me?
And there is simply no excuse for not knowing what's going on behind you when you're driving a car ... even if it's many years since you have had to rely on knowing what everyone behind you is doing ... because cars have rear view mirrors that can give you lots of information.
So it wasn't a premonition that made me spot the motorcycle in the rear-view mirror and it wasn't a stroke of luck. It was sheer repetition drilled into my head by some long-forgotten instructor who knew firsthand that your life often depends on knowing what is going on behind you.
I had spotted the motorcycle not long after turning onto the Barton Highway as we headed back into Canberra. I wasn't sure what it was that made me wary of the motorcycle three or four cars back but something rang some alarm bells. From the little I could see it seemed to be your average Rice Rocket with a driver and a passenger on board but what bothered me was that it was always three or four cars back.
When the traffic in the outside lane sped up it almost seemed to back off until a few cars from the lane I was in had slipped in front of it. When I slowed down just to see what it might do it slowed down too. When I suddenly darted up the cycle lane and changed back to the middle lane it sped up too and darted between the cars in both lanes.
At the Gundaroo roundabout I waited till the last possible moment and suddenly veered left down Gundaroo Drive. I was in the clear but the sound of screeching brakes and honking horns told me that the bike had tried to make the turn too with a little less success.
"This isn't the way home Steve," Angela sounded a little nervous but not alarmed.
"I know, I thought that there were two guys on a motorcycle following us."
"Following us? Don't be ..." she screamed as I put the pedal to the metal and hurled the Bug around a convenient roundabout and sent it hurtling back down Gundaroo Drive in the direction we had just come from.
"Oh, I see it!" she gasped. It seemed that they had succeeded in making the first turn and were now heading in the opposite direction to us.
"Yeah, hold on cause this is going to ..." my words were lost in the scream of the Porsche engine as I ripped it back into third and the honking horns of cars as I hit the Gundaroo roundabout at full speed and somehow found a gap between two cars that let me out into the outside lane of the Barton Highway with about 100 metres of clear space in front of us.
A quick glance over my left shoulder and I spotted the motorcycle racing down the cycle lane just finding enough room between the edge of the road and the cars to get by. He had turned on the same roundabout that we had used and followed us back onto the Barton Highway.
That was a shit, in about 150 metres I wanted to turn left ... oh well, hard left into the closing gap next to us, stamp on the brakes, shoot across to the edge of the lane as if I was going into the cycle lane, reef the steering wheel to the right and suddenly the motorcycle was hurtling past me, smashing through the wire fence of the Canberra Pony Club and cartwheeling through the paddock.
I caught a glimpse of the rider somersaulting through the grass while the passenger had disappeared.
"Holy shit!" Angela shouted, "what did you just do?"
I took a deep breath as we turned left onto the Federal Highway and slowed to a more sedate speed. "I just decided that I needed that bit of the road more than he did." I kept heading in the general direction of Angela's house and wasn't surprised to see police and emergency vehicles running under lights and sirens pass us as they headed in the opposite direction.
What did begin to bother me was the police van that passed us travelling in the same direction. I was expecting him to pull us over but he didn't even slow down as went by. Perhaps it was too soon for the police to know what type of vehicle they were looking for ... perhaps we might actually make it to Angela's place without being stopped.
But then did we really want to head for her house? Why were those two guys so obviously following us and who were they? I knew that I didn't have enough information to make any sort of decision but there was no guarantee that Angela's house would be a safe haven so what should I do?
Another motorcycle made the decision for me.
We had just turned right onto Northbourne Avenue and were heading into the older part of Canberra when I saw it in the rear-view mirror. Another Rice Rocket with two people on board and it was sitting back just like the other one had done.
We had just passed a service road to the left when I saw the bike start to accelerate so down went the pedal and away we went again.
