RUST magazine: RUST#35

JB
REAL PEOPLE
REAL LIFE
Confession: I don’t like social media, I don’t even
like digital publishing. That makes me a dinosaur,
of course – and what am I doing in this job? –
but I can’t hide my feelings. I do value Facebook,
Messenger etc as a wonderful means of staying in touch with
friends who I can only see rarely, and it can work for day-to-day stuff like getting
messages from event organisers to participants very quickly, very easily. But all
this need to maintain a constant online communication, to post/tweet/blog/vlog
– however banal the message – is just so damn artificial.
Conversely a day spent competing in the Brechfa Rally brought home how much I
like people, doing real things in real places. Brechfa was an ordeal. The temperature
was sub-zero, the near-gale made it feel positively Siberian, and the saturated course
made riding a 200+ kilo adventure bike a real test. And yet everywhere I met happy
people. Stood on corners marshalling, directing traffic, pulling stricken bikes out of
bogs, pushing them up hills – all of them no doubt frozen to the bone. But smiling,
working, contributing, being there.
The guy I’ve pictured is Nathan Best. He saw me get towed in with my rear tyre
hanging off the rim and immediately set to help. Together we coordinated buying a
rim lock, sourcing a drill and bit, grabbing a mousse-changing platform, borrowing
a tube (from Mr KTM 950 Adventure S – thank you) and then Nathan set to. He
drilled the rim. He cut up the punctured tube to create a liner within the tyre (which
had suffered a half-inch rip) – a great old school trick – and together we put the
whole lot back on the bike.
It was freezing, snow would frequently blast into the barn where we worked, and of
course we worked with the minimum of tools. And as we worked I found out a little
about Nathan. How he’d suffered a work-related accident that had left him paralyzed
for months, but he’d managed to fight back to full health and was now keener than
ever to help the Dyfed Dirt Bike Club with its events, and to get back onto a bike
again soon, for himself. He was engaging in life. At the end, we simply shook hands
and Nathan was away to help the next guy.
What’s my point? Jeez, I should know. It’s probably about values. That we should
appreciate people who do real things, who make a real difference. That
we need to get over this selfie mentality that social media has instilled.
That we should kill off #TBT and #wheeliewednesday and step out of
the house and do real things for each other. Maybe that’s my point.
I don’t know. Thoughts and ideas have a habit of only part-forming
in my brain. Maybe ask me again later.
But to Dylan, Nathan and all the guys and girls at the Dyfed Dirt
Bike Club – thanks. It was real.
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