General Order #1c
It had been too long since my last ride. Sixteen years, two kids and a future ex-wife, to be exact. Not that I was counting, but then counting is a local pastime here since you are either waiting to go home or waiting to go and see Allah. Most of us are here for three-hundred and sixty-five days. The rotations (military term for troops in Iraq) are built that way and the contractors generally follow suit. The tax advantages are significant once you hit 330 in-theater, so most folks stay at least that long.
I’ve been here twenty-nine months. There are others like me. The joke is that there are three kinds of people here in Iraq: Missionaries, mercenaries and misfits. Pick one. Pin a different label on me whenever you want because over the last two and a half years they have all been applicable at some point. The M-M-M crowd generally carries weapons, wear interesting-looking clothing and have been around the world. There is another “M” which very few of us share here in Baghdad: Motorcycle.
January, 2005: I arrive as an operations director for a small US contractor. I can’t talk about it. It was an interesting job and allowed me a great deal of freedom, of which I took a great deal of advantage. I was based part-time at Camp Victory (by the airport), part time downtown in the Sheraton and part-time in the Green Zone, at the Embassy complex. So I came and went often through the various checkpoints, and past the large Embassy parking lot, full of Hummer’s, Land Rovers, Suburbans, Opels, Mercedes 600 series armored cars and, today, a lime-green dirt bike. Holy shit.
Next to my MP5K it’s the most beautiful piece of equipment I’ve seen in a while. Scuffed up, dripping gas and oil, cracked hand-grips and no kick start lever to be seen. I look around, like a shoplifter checking for Bobby the stock boy. No Bobby. I climb on. Yes.
Better than sex. I knew it. Here in Iraq, General Order #1-A says: No alcohol. #2-A says No sex. There is no #1-C. I smile.
All the movies about time machines don’t come close. A broken and tired 41-year-old burnout became 25 again. I looked in the side mirror at my face. Tanned, a little pudgy, but grinning like a raccoon. I’m 25 and riding in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to Pour Richards Bar. I had just finished with college and finished with my sometime girlfriend. I was on a Suzuki 650; it was so cool it even had a gas gauge. I parked the bike on The Hill and went inside, met my future wife, gave her a ride on that bike and sixteen years later we were getting a divorce and I was in Baghdad, sitting on the lime-green time machine. Wow.
“Is that your bike?” some guy asked me. “Nope” I said, but I wished it was. “Well, since it’s not yours, and I know the owner, why don’t you hop off?” Shit. Busted by Bobby the stock boy after all. “Listen” I said to Bobby. “Give your buddy my number and tell him I’m sorry. Tell him I’d get gas and oil for the bike if I could ride it sometime, ok?” Bobby the stock boy took the paper I offered and took off towards all the trailers, M16 clanking on his cast-iron butt. Shit. Shit shit shit. Oh well. I did indeed enjoy the time warp.
The next day I’m downtown doing my thing and my phone rings. We all have cell phones here. The local network sucks but at least there IS one. “Hi, is this the guy who was on my bike yesterday?” Shit. “Yup. Sorry dude. I just really was missing riding and didn’t mean to piss anybody off.” “It’s ok man. I understand. Listen, I’m not supposed to have it” (General order # 1-c?) he continued, “and was wondering if you or somebody you knew wanted to buy it?’
Allah-hu-akbar. God is great. “Well, I’d certainly be more interested after a test ride and some basic information like, say, what the hell is it?” We both laughed. “It’s a 350, made by some Egyptian company. It was a police bike we found here on the palace grounds hidden in some weeds.”
After we met I drove it. I can’t tell you how it felt, and the transaction ($600) is a blur. No title, no papers, no insurance. A good helmet and a quart of 10-W-30 for the mix and I was off to nirvana. Or somewhere very close. Turns out the shift lever doubles as the kickstart (strange). Man, I was gone, gone, gone. The first day I was cautious. Sixteen years had passed since my marriage had begun and my riding days had ended. It struck me that a sane person would have, say, practiced. Oh well.
I rode mostly in second and third. There are a lot of checkpoints manned by Marines in the Green Zone, and they have some dicey speed bumps. After forgetting which way the fuel valve goes and learning to lean into turns again, I came back to the parking lot feeling like a baby having just put away his first bottle. Burp.
The next day work slowed to a crawl downtown. At the right time, my driver and guards took me down the stairs, out of the office building, into the crappy Japanese four-door car and through the bomb dogs, Kurdish checkpoints and into the Green Zone. I struggled not to run to where the bike (my bike!) was parked. Yup, still there. So cool. I hop on, ride around the block and park it. A short walk to my trailer and I open the fridge and pop a tall one. Yes. As a civilian, Order #1b is not strictly enforced………nice.
I took a quick shower, grabbed the helmet and made my way back through the trailers and embassy compound to the parking lot. Still there. Yum. A few kicks backwards on the shift/start lever and I take off, weaving in and out of the concrete blast barriers, through the Nepalese parking lot guards and out into the street.
There are roughly 12,000 Iraqis living in the Green Zone. Most of them are squatters and everyone knows it but what can you do. The Zone is big, housing all of those Iraqis, a lot of Coalition folks and the OGA (Other Governmental Agencies: spooks). I take the long way; there are three hours of daylight left and I have a full tank of green gas, spewing a trail of 20:1 smoke down the street. Down the road, around the roundabout, over the tank tread speed bumps and out the dirt track that leads to the Tigris River service road. On my right is the Green Zone, on my left the river, and across the river is the Sheraton hotel and Baghdad. The road is good now, paved, and lots of Iraqis and Coalition people are hanging out fishing and enjoying the sunset.
I ride all the way to the end of the road, to the last checkpoint, talk with the US guys who are blown away that I am on a bike, and I head back towards the palace. The bike is great. It’s got plenty of power as long as I stay out of last gear and corners ok. It starts to come back to me. I’m feeling pretty good, burning out of second into third, speed shifting, banking corners, dragging my feet. It’s hot and dry, but on the bike it feel like nothing I’ve felt for a long time. Sixteen years, I say to myself.
So I head back in towards the parking lot. I’m at the last checkpoint, stopped with one foot pegged and one on the pavement, showing my ID and my weapon to the Marines. I’ve been here a long time and they all know me but they’ve never seen me on the bike. “Pop a wheelie, Sir!” he says. I don’t even blink. The throttle opens up, the clutch goes out too fast, the nose goes up and my feet are suddenly on the ground, walking behind the bike. My right wrist rolls even farther back and the ass end of the bike gets away from me, and I hang on like an idiot cowpuncher bulldogging a calf. Cowboy and calf crash to the pavement. Right knuckles drag on the pavement under the throttle and grind down to the bone. I end up with one leg under the bike and one behind me somehow.
“Shit, Sir! Are you ok?” the Marine yells. “Yup! Just a flesh wound” I lie. The embarrassment of a combat veteran wiping out in front of seasoned Marines overrode the pain for just long enough for me to smile and wink at the kid, get back in the saddle and take off. I haven’t had a day like that in a long time. Sixteen years, two kids, and a future ex-wife, to be exact.
I’ve been here twenty-nine months. There are others like me. The joke is that there are three kinds of people here in Iraq: Missionaries, mercenaries and misfits. Pick one. Pin a different label on me whenever you want because over the last two and a half years they have all been applicable at some point. The M-M-M crowd generally carries weapons, wear interesting-looking clothing and have been around the world. There is another “M” which very few of us share here in Baghdad: Motorcycle.
January, 2005: I arrive as an operations director for a small US contractor. I can’t talk about it. It was an interesting job and allowed me a great deal of freedom, of which I took a great deal of advantage. I was based part-time at Camp Victory (by the airport), part time downtown in the Sheraton and part-time in the Green Zone, at the Embassy complex. So I came and went often through the various checkpoints, and past the large Embassy parking lot, full of Hummer’s, Land Rovers, Suburbans, Opels, Mercedes 600 series armored cars and, today, a lime-green dirt bike. Holy shit.
Next to my MP5K it’s the most beautiful piece of equipment I’ve seen in a while. Scuffed up, dripping gas and oil, cracked hand-grips and no kick start lever to be seen. I look around, like a shoplifter checking for Bobby the stock boy. No Bobby. I climb on. Yes.
Better than sex. I knew it. Here in Iraq, General Order #1-A says: No alcohol. #2-A says No sex. There is no #1-C. I smile.
All the movies about time machines don’t come close. A broken and tired 41-year-old burnout became 25 again. I looked in the side mirror at my face. Tanned, a little pudgy, but grinning like a raccoon. I’m 25 and riding in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to Pour Richards Bar. I had just finished with college and finished with my sometime girlfriend. I was on a Suzuki 650; it was so cool it even had a gas gauge. I parked the bike on The Hill and went inside, met my future wife, gave her a ride on that bike and sixteen years later we were getting a divorce and I was in Baghdad, sitting on the lime-green time machine. Wow.
“Is that your bike?” some guy asked me. “Nope” I said, but I wished it was. “Well, since it’s not yours, and I know the owner, why don’t you hop off?” Shit. Busted by Bobby the stock boy after all. “Listen” I said to Bobby. “Give your buddy my number and tell him I’m sorry. Tell him I’d get gas and oil for the bike if I could ride it sometime, ok?” Bobby the stock boy took the paper I offered and took off towards all the trailers, M16 clanking on his cast-iron butt. Shit. Shit shit shit. Oh well. I did indeed enjoy the time warp.
The next day I’m downtown doing my thing and my phone rings. We all have cell phones here. The local network sucks but at least there IS one. “Hi, is this the guy who was on my bike yesterday?” Shit. “Yup. Sorry dude. I just really was missing riding and didn’t mean to piss anybody off.” “It’s ok man. I understand. Listen, I’m not supposed to have it” (General order # 1-c?) he continued, “and was wondering if you or somebody you knew wanted to buy it?’
Allah-hu-akbar. God is great. “Well, I’d certainly be more interested after a test ride and some basic information like, say, what the hell is it?” We both laughed. “It’s a 350, made by some Egyptian company. It was a police bike we found here on the palace grounds hidden in some weeds.”
After we met I drove it. I can’t tell you how it felt, and the transaction ($600) is a blur. No title, no papers, no insurance. A good helmet and a quart of 10-W-30 for the mix and I was off to nirvana. Or somewhere very close. Turns out the shift lever doubles as the kickstart (strange). Man, I was gone, gone, gone. The first day I was cautious. Sixteen years had passed since my marriage had begun and my riding days had ended. It struck me that a sane person would have, say, practiced. Oh well.
I rode mostly in second and third. There are a lot of checkpoints manned by Marines in the Green Zone, and they have some dicey speed bumps. After forgetting which way the fuel valve goes and learning to lean into turns again, I came back to the parking lot feeling like a baby having just put away his first bottle. Burp.
The next day work slowed to a crawl downtown. At the right time, my driver and guards took me down the stairs, out of the office building, into the crappy Japanese four-door car and through the bomb dogs, Kurdish checkpoints and into the Green Zone. I struggled not to run to where the bike (my bike!) was parked. Yup, still there. So cool. I hop on, ride around the block and park it. A short walk to my trailer and I open the fridge and pop a tall one. Yes. As a civilian, Order #1b is not strictly enforced………nice.
I took a quick shower, grabbed the helmet and made my way back through the trailers and embassy compound to the parking lot. Still there. Yum. A few kicks backwards on the shift/start lever and I take off, weaving in and out of the concrete blast barriers, through the Nepalese parking lot guards and out into the street.
There are roughly 12,000 Iraqis living in the Green Zone. Most of them are squatters and everyone knows it but what can you do. The Zone is big, housing all of those Iraqis, a lot of Coalition folks and the OGA (Other Governmental Agencies: spooks). I take the long way; there are three hours of daylight left and I have a full tank of green gas, spewing a trail of 20:1 smoke down the street. Down the road, around the roundabout, over the tank tread speed bumps and out the dirt track that leads to the Tigris River service road. On my right is the Green Zone, on my left the river, and across the river is the Sheraton hotel and Baghdad. The road is good now, paved, and lots of Iraqis and Coalition people are hanging out fishing and enjoying the sunset.
I ride all the way to the end of the road, to the last checkpoint, talk with the US guys who are blown away that I am on a bike, and I head back towards the palace. The bike is great. It’s got plenty of power as long as I stay out of last gear and corners ok. It starts to come back to me. I’m feeling pretty good, burning out of second into third, speed shifting, banking corners, dragging my feet. It’s hot and dry, but on the bike it feel like nothing I’ve felt for a long time. Sixteen years, I say to myself.
So I head back in towards the parking lot. I’m at the last checkpoint, stopped with one foot pegged and one on the pavement, showing my ID and my weapon to the Marines. I’ve been here a long time and they all know me but they’ve never seen me on the bike. “Pop a wheelie, Sir!” he says. I don’t even blink. The throttle opens up, the clutch goes out too fast, the nose goes up and my feet are suddenly on the ground, walking behind the bike. My right wrist rolls even farther back and the ass end of the bike gets away from me, and I hang on like an idiot cowpuncher bulldogging a calf. Cowboy and calf crash to the pavement. Right knuckles drag on the pavement under the throttle and grind down to the bone. I end up with one leg under the bike and one behind me somehow.
“Shit, Sir! Are you ok?” the Marine yells. “Yup! Just a flesh wound” I lie. The embarrassment of a combat veteran wiping out in front of seasoned Marines overrode the pain for just long enough for me to smile and wink at the kid, get back in the saddle and take off. I haven’t had a day like that in a long time. Sixteen years, two kids, and a future ex-wife, to be exact.
©2006
Tom Kinton, Baghdad, Iraq
Tom Kinton, Baghdad, Iraq
posted by tomk at 4:25 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home