Carol’s Column

Speed gets the adrenalin going

I THOUGHT a bomb had exploded, so tremendous was the noise.

“Are you OK, Ma?” asked my youngest son.

“Sure, sure, I’m fine. The shock has just given me a minor coronary. I’m deafened for life and I can’t stop shaking with fright. I’m just great.”

He grinned at me engagingly: “This is fun, isn’t it.”

“Fantastic!” The rest of my sentence was drowned out by the roar of motor bikes thundering down the track.

The man on my right shoved a beer under my right nostril. “Have a beer, little lady,” he growled into my eardrum. “It’ll calm your nerves.”

I did. It did.

When the experts tell you how to be a good mother, they stress the need of togetherness with your offspring. They also say that when you have a large family, it is essential to spend time alone with each child in turn.

Which is why Jamie and I were spending time alone with 3 000 other people, 20 or so bike riders plus the noisiest bikes you’ve ever heard in your life.

“Gee, I’d love to go to the Indoor Speedway racing,” said my youngest son. “It looks so exciting.”

“We’ll go tonight,” I promised him. I should only have known.

I wanted to look the part, so I siphoned my extensive derrière into a pair of jeans and borrowed my 15-year-old’s leather lummy.

“Ma, why are you walking in such a funny way?” observed my son as we made our way into the indoor stadium at Milner Park.

This wasn’t the time to tell him I felt as if I was incarcerated in a straight jacket because my jeans were crippling me. “Small steps are elegant,” I muttered.

Along with the other spectators, we were shown to our seats, right in the front row.

“You want a little bit of action?” the guy selling tickets had winked at me.

“Yes,” I’d replied, winking back.

“Well, I’ll put you in the front row,” he said winking again. It was only when I saw him selling tickets to my successors that I realised he had a permanent twitch. Ah well.

So there we were, in the front row, at the starting line almost on the track.

The crowd roared as the starter walked towards his post, a formidable man with a huge chin. In fact, when he turned, he knocked me sideways with his jaw.

Then out came the riders.

“Let’s give a big welcome to the English team!” yelled the commentator. Everyone clapped politely.

“And now let’s give OUR boys a cheer!” As the South African team appeared, the crowd went berserk, including my beer-drinking companion who waved his arms and sent me flying on to the lap of a bespectacled kipper of a man sitting two down.

“Do you come here often?” he asked as I extracted myself from his lap.

The riders mounted their bikes and sped along the sand track to the start.

“They’re off, Ma!” yelled Jamie. I couldn’t see for the cloud of dust that enveloped me. I couldn’t breathe either.

But that was nothing compared to the assault on my eardrums.

It was only when I emerged from under my seat that I realised the building had not exploded and that the extraordinary noise was the sound of untamed motor bikes revving hard.

Like lightning they rode, heads down, bright-coloured helmets flashing past.

“The bikes have no brakes, Ma, and only one gear,” said the mechanical expert on my right. “Keep watching, there’s bound to be a wipe out.”

Suddenly I was struck by gunfire. Good heavens, the revolution had come.

“Someone’s shooting me.” I was distressed.

“Relax, Ma, it’s only flying sand from the track.” Have you ever been struck by flying sand from a track?

The noise was deafening and the excitement uncontrollable as the bikes skidded around.

“Go on Noddy, kill him! Ride Denzil, shift your backside! Move it, move it!” I shouted along with the rest of them.

It’s tough being an active spectator.

“Ma, get off the track, you’ll get run over” or “Ma, you can’t punch a rider just because he beats a South African — it’s not sporting.”

Lights flashed, music blared and the commentator yelled above the constant roar. There were thrills, spills and wipe outs by the dozen and my son was besides himself with joy.

There’s something about speed, it gets the adrenalin going.

“Did you enjoy that, Ma?” asked Jamie afterwards as we whizzed along Jan Smuts Avenue, cornering on two wheels.

There wasn’t time to answer as we were flagged down by a traffic officer:

“Madam, do you realise you are breaking the speed limit?” he said aggressively, writing out a ticket. “Who do you think you are? Jody Scheckter?”

I smiled. The idea is appealing.

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