Thai Enduro Tours

Start at Chapter One

Chapter Nine

We all look human and civilized again. Big last-night dinner, this year without the over-sweet desert. Nagging Bill gets misty and thanks all the other guys for putting up with him.

We walk down to the Spotlight, get hold of mama-san to organize bar stools and drinks for us. Bavarian wheat beer for everybody. There is a boring Formula One race on one of the TV monitors, a football match on the other, but everybody is watching the Thai boxing match on monitor three from Lumphini stadium in Bangkok.

It's the third round, and Nong Tum, the famous transvestite Thai boxer, demolishes his opponent with a high jump and an elbow to the top of the spine. I met him years ago when we built the website for Lanna Muay Thai, the Thai boxing camp in Chiang Mai where he trained. Very clever guy.... and now he's a girl, of sorts!

Attention swings back to the local talent in swimsuits on stage, mostly shuffling lazily around chrome bars admiring themselves in the tinted mirrors, some of them checking their wristwatches every few minutes.

I drink the delicious Bavarian beer, light one of my Cubans and blow the smoke into the extractor fan above me. Funny to see the guys sitting here, talking to each other.

When I look at Squirrelly Bob, I can still see the scene where he keeled over in a rut, but somehow managed to get himself pinned between the steep side of the hill and the bike, face down, and the bike effectively holding him to the ground until we got it off him.

Or Handsome Martin, he and the girl at the gas station, looking across that cultural divide deeply into each other's eyes, until the other girls start laughing and shouting about the gasoline. I bet he still dreams about those oriental eyes.

And Nagging Bill, down in the ravine, holding on to that tree. Little did he know that we deal with these things all the time, especially on our Thai Sunday rides.

It has been a great tour, and they all had the time of their life. If we had done a "soft enduro tour" they wouldn't have been satisfied.

It will be another year until most of them will see each other, most likely here in northern Thailand, for another "six days of mayhem on and off your dirt bikes".... In the morning they're off to Australia and England and Scotland on different planes. Some continue to the Gulf of Thailand, for a week on the beach.

Fixing the bikes will take quite a couple of days - normal maintenance, plus several cracked headlights and taillights, some plastics have to get welded, some seat covers redone.

Almost all of the handgrips are torn, one throttle tube needs to be replaced, seals changed on one fork. No severe damage, these bikes are incredibly strong. Pretty much all of the rear tyres, which were brand new 900 km ago, are now only good for one or two day-rides, then they are history too.

It's time to say goodbye to the guys. They all thank me for providing them with such a great holiday, and I'm sure at least five of them will come back next year, hopefully without Nagging Bill.

Slowly I drive back home in the 4WD Toyota Tiger, enjoying the smooth ride and the solid punch from the big 3-litre commonrail turbo. I love that truck! I'll ride our enduro tours as long as I can, until I'm sixty or more, and then I'll drive the 4WD truck. That's very good fun, too, but only when you're old enough....

Tomorrow is Sunday, and I'm looking forward to some playtime with my little daughter, then after lunch a serious five-hour trial ride up and down the steep side of the mountain with my trial group.