The Moto Affair, Part I

After taking a year off, I have hereby re-acquired my capacity to make Bad Choices! To celebrate the occasion, I rented a motorbike from the shop down the road and set out to try to drive it.

Other than the fact that it's incredibly stupid to rent a piece of heavy machinery you have no idea how to operate, without owning a driver's licence, without possessing a crash helmet, and knowing that you will owe $850 if anything happens to it--other than that, it's probably not a good idea to drive a motorbike when you have the bodily control of a drunken retard who's been spinning in circles for the last 90 seconds.

I will be brutally honest about it: I suck at physical coordination. If it involves my body, I can't do it--I have painful distant memories of always being chosen last for every gym team, and recent memories of walking home in tears after a humiliating run-in with sword-fighting training. Don't even get me started on dance classes! I never learned Salsa beyond 123-/567- because my instructor gave up on me.

It just takes me longer to learn how to do physical things than most other people--I was about 6 or 7 by the time I learned to ride a bike (not overly late, but later than all of my friends). I learned only after having utterly failed onto the pavement for a year straight. I was about 9 by the time I learned to swim; I was about 26 when I learned to drive (I'd have learned sooner if I could have remembered to hit the break instead of the gas). And I never did learn how to play tennis, soccer, basketball, baseball, football, or even dodgeball.

I think you get the picture.

Given my utter lack of physical coordination, combined with a propensity to destroy whatever piece of technology I happen to be using, you can see why riding a motorbike is something I should probably not involve myself with.

But, having paid my friend Thearea's medical bill this Sunday, he is now in my debt. We've agreed--if he teaches me how to drive, I'll forgive his outstanding balance. So after I rented the moto, he drove me over to the Olympic Stadium. (LOL! You didn't think I was gonna drive there myself, did you?) The Stadium is huge, empty, and easy for me to try to get the feel of a motorbike without actually killing anyone.

Here is why I made such a big deal about physical coordination at the beginning--it takes an immense amount of coordination (in my opinion) to be able to drive it. You have to steer through very narrow areas, avoiding pedestrians, high-speed SUVs and other motorbikes, meanwhile adjusting the speed with your right hand, the gears with your left foot, and the break with your right--probably not something I will ever really be able to do.

It's sort of like a bicycle in that you have to balance side to side. It's sort of not like a bicycle in that it weighs at least 500 pounds and moves on its own. I kept trying to ride it as if it were a bicycle, and that just made it even harder. It's very difficult to control at slower speeds, and I was driving at a very slow speed because I was scared.

It's not quite like driving a car, either. With a car, there's no balance and far less "control" involved. Moreover, in a car, you have an experienced teacher sitting reassuringly next to you and a warning sign on the back that says "Student Driver". In my case, I was stuck figuring the motorbike out on my own, while everyone in the stadium watched me struggle, drive into trees, run over my own feet, and get terrified trying to turn a corner. Thearea ran along behind me, holding out his arms to catch me if I fell.

In the end, after two hour-long sessions, I managed to drive in crude figure 8s without crashing into things or freaking out...but it was a hard-won battle. I've got a sunburn, a blister on the inside of my hand, and two major charlie horses in my hip bones due to me sitting tensely in an unnatural position for two hours. I'm gonna be feeling this one tomorrow.

But I am GOING TO learn how to do it, even if it kills me--which it just might.

Day 27: Not Adventure

I told you I'd walk around town today, and take pictures of some stuff that I saw. Well, I did, and I did. It wasn't some sort of great adventure. Actually all I did was go out for lunch, so this entire entry is kind of lame.

Below, you see Norodom Boulevard, where I live. I look at this every day when I come out of the house. Usually there are more cars, though.

Every day, I pass by one of the banks that apparently isn't responsible for the current global financial crisis: Sacombank:

I walk down this street sometimes to get to one of four internet cafes that I patronize; also my favorite restaurant, The Blue Dolphin, is down here.

And thus I went to the Blue Dolphin for lunch. Always delicious, always at a reasonable price. I chose to buy Pumpkin Soup today, which is something new for me. And like everything else in the restaurant, it holds to a general level of awesomeness.

Pumpkin soup.

After that, I didn't want to go home, so I just kept walking. I walked straight through the red gate and into the pagoda (or monastery).

Normally, I have reservations about entering other people's religious property. This probably comes from my general upbringing as well as all the time I spent in the Emirates where it is illegal for a non-Muslim to so much as set foot in a mosque--or for that matter, touch the Qur'an. I find that the height of hypocrisy given the way most "Muslims" in that country behave...but I guess Cambodians are much more reasonable than those douchebags. I even saw monk robes hanging from the shutter:

On the other side of the pagoda is riverside. Shit, I had found myself on riverside.

If you're like me, you make it a rule never ever to go there, because you don't like being hunted down by tuk-tuk drivers, motodops, beggars, sunglasses vendors, small children, and prostitutes like a winter fox. But then, most people aren't like me.

Riverside

Riverside

Riverside

Sometimes, though, I like to sit on this bench that Sacombank put along the river, and I like to stare at nothing for a time. Actually, I like to watch them build that enormous building for the rich and powerful on the opposite side of the river, in the same place where I was going to put Washington DC once I gained godlike powers.

After brooding over the fact that Washington DC will never be next to Phnom Penh, I went home. Down this road which I take every day.

This is my favorite road ever!

And I got home in time to begin the search for a new apartment! Yay, eating lunch out on a Sunday afternoon!!

A Moving Adventure

Sometimes, in the construction of a house, people build staircases badly. My apartment building, for instance, happens to have these Evil Danger Steps which are steep, narrow, and uneven. You basically have to grip the metal railings on both sides if you don't want to die going up and down that particular flight of steps. Unfortunately, I (and other upper residents) must walk up and down them many times each day to get to our apartments.

Sometime over the last year, my landlady and her people realized that we were nearly killing ourselves each and every day. Consequently, the family decided to refurbish them.

I'm the only resident left in the apartment (literally, the only one). I feel the need to stay till January for reasons no one has yet told me, but which I am quite sure exist. So, in order to fix the flight of stairs and still let me remain sheltered, they moved me to the bottom floor apartment.

It's sort of basement-like (moldy; no windows) but it's quite posh in its own way. It's big. And it's cool in every sense of the word.

This is the entry way. It's the only window in the apartment.

It has stuff!

It has an upstairs!

It has stairs to get there!

I get to stay here for two weeks before resuming my old life on the top floor.

I think it's kind of cool.