Drinking too much during a war, a Scottish wedding, another crashed Honda CBX550, some broken bones and a phone call from jail
Jimmy got away with $65,000 from the bank robbery. I was overlanding through Central America, and as mentioned in my last column ended up in Nicaragua dealing money on the black market. Having hitchhiked and ridden buses from Belize, through Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, by the time I made it to Nicaragua I was down to my last $110. After negotiating some early morning fire fights in the hills, someone taking a shot at me on the border, and finally hitting a flea bag hotel in Managua, I needed to take stock to plot my next move. Of course, being alerted to a lucrative black market where you could change a dollar for 500 Cordovas (Nicaraguan currency) where the official exchange rate was 28-1, I immediately went to the pub. A fellow traveler from Alaska said, “Drink up, happy hour’s over in 30 days,” (the length of our entry permits) and he wasn’t wrong. Between the war, the black market, sharing a hotel bathroom with a gun and drug smuggler who was seeking political asylum, and the lack of eligible males in the local discos, I actually didn’t give it much thought until a few weeks later when a little incident brought it front and center.
I had moved to a small town in the south called León with my friend Eligio, met travel author Shelby Tucker and drank my way through who knows how many thousands of traded Cordovas when it all came unglued. Actually, it all came flying out. I have no idea how long I laid on the bathroom floor, slowly dehydrating and unable to move, but when I didn’t show up for a lunch appointment a day or two later, Shelby came looking for me. It wasn’t hard to find a long-haired gringo in León as there weren’t too many around with the war on.
A quick trip to the hospital, some pills that might have been elephant tranquilizers, and a couple of days later I was riding a box car back Managua feeling very peelie wallie (Scottish for sick as a dog). Now down to under a hundred dollars, I had some big decisions to make. I could try and overland through Central America and Mexico to get back to America, find a job and make some money, or use my credit card and remaining funds to make it home to England. It was just a few days till my sister was getting married in Scotland, so I decided to give it a go by plane as I felt compelled to be there.
I had no idea if I had a big enough limit on the credit card, but when they put it through the machine thingy that took multiple sheets of tracing paper and imprinted the card it all seemed good, so off to Miami I went. Now the sweat began as I had no idea if the card would get me to London, and my $90 certainly wasn’t going to help much. Firstly, I had a small delay with a charming lady in uniform, who made my mother on a bad day look like Mother Theresa. After a lot of small talk (interrogation in immigration-speak) she seemed to warm to the idea I was looking forward to visiting America and kindly stamped my passport with a 6-month visa. I was covering my bases in case the credit card didn’t work.
Landing in London in the middle of winter, after a couple of months in the tropics, I was almost wishing I hadn’t as I had no warm clothes left. With my sister’s wedding a few days away though, I had to get my skates on. So I hitchhiked to my mother’s house in my hometown, deftly found a way into her house through the bathroom window as she was already in Scotland, and borrowed her car (I never heard the end of that one). I made immediately to visit my friend Dickie (you might remember him for his “legal prowess” when I crashed my Honda CBX550 a few columns ago). As a good friend of the family, he had a flight ticket booked to go to the wedding in my place, as no one had heard from me in a couple of months.
Surprise is a word that comes to mind when he opened his flat door.
Two days later we were flying up the Kingsteington Bypass on his BMW K100 in subzero temperatures in our wafer-thin leathers, when his jacket popped open and all his money blew out. I was flat broke, he was now completely broke, but thankfully we had bought my ticket earlier so pressed on. Of course, it was quite the shocker for my mother and sister at the airport when we came strolling off in our matching black leathers, as no one was expecting me.
The wedding went well, I think. My mother spent most of the time having a conniption as I wore my leather jeans and a knitted sweater. Never mind I’d just come half way round the world, was now in debt with no money, no job and nowhere to live so I could be with my sister. I wasn’t dressed properly. It then went from bad to worse, as a very well-endowed young lady in a red dress decided to take pity on me and take me home to show me her etchings. So when I didn’t show up for a couple of days after the wedding was over, my mother moved into some sort of manic hysteria.
An ad for the 1983 Honda CBX550 back in the day.
Life has a way of sorting itself out though and somehow, we all made it back to England. My mother got back to her usual high-pitched soprano from the wedding-induced contralto, and life carried on. Dickie loaned me his CBX550 so I could get around, and just when things were beginning to pick up another little faux pas was about to happen. It’s all a bit vague, but somehow Dickie’s brother Simon was in the car behind with the girls. We were headed to a party so I decided I’d give the ladies a stunt show to pass the arduous 11-minute drive to the party. Sailing down the road on Dickie’s CBX, standing on the seat, arms extended as I had done many times before, I made a mistake. I let the speed go too low, the front wheel went into a wobble, and as I dropped onto the seat to try and save it, the bike slid out under me, hit the pavement and flipped back on top of me, the handlebar center-punching my breastbone. The bike actually came pre-crashed, but now it had no mirrors on either side and I was having trouble breathing. Simon and girls got the bike up, he got it started, and as there was a party to attend, left me to ride home. With no mirrors and no ability to turn my head, it was a horrible experience. I felt cold, could hardly get any breath and I guess from some internal bleeding was a little pale when I made it back to my mother’s.
Not in a good state, physically or mentally.
Of course, this then became one of our most painfully, tragic family dramas I can remember as my mother missed a lot of sleep that night and we never heard the end of it. The suffering, the pain, the arduous 5-mile drive to the emergency room. I have no idea how she survived, suffice to say she was still complaining about it years later. I was kept in the hospital overnight. I’d snapped my sternum, a jaggedy bit responsible for the internal bleeding, done a bunch of ribs, and ended up with my hip looking like a bit of hamburger meat. Of course, it meant I had to go back to Mom’s place for rehab as I couldn’t do much for a few weeks. Then it happened. Laying around in a narcotic haze, the phone rang. It was a long-distance call from Jimmy in the Manatee County Jail. He been caught, was getting ready to go to trial and wanted to know if I was interested in coming back to Florida. He even told me he could get me a job. Well, lying on my mother’s couch, coughing blood and swallowing narcotics, broke with no job, no running motorcycle, the idea of some Florida sun and adventure seemed extremely exciting. Jimmy just neglected to fill me in on a few minor issues that had arisen from the robbery, but we’ll have to get to that next time as I’m out of words.
Neale
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