johnny bravo and the texas files

A senseless short story…
by Pierre Martins

I’m fairly good at remembering faces, but about as inept as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest when it comes to remembering names.

It’s a character deficiency that’s caused me some real embarrassing moments at times, but then one day I read something somewhere along the lines that you’re more likely to remember names if you memorise them with humorous connotations and I must say I’ve actually enjoyed a fair amount of success with this system ever since. As a matter of fact I can still remember my first subject, a loudmouthed asshole with an ego the size of Texas. I promptly filed him as ‘Johnny Bravo’ in the back of my mind ‘cause he fitted the mould just right, both in looks and character. See, Johnny was a bodybuilder type that looked like he had contracted polio or something as a child, causing his lower body to stop growing at around the age of about 12 so he ended up looking a bit awkward with this huge muscle-bound upper body balancing precariously on tiny hips and pecker legs just like the cartoon character. There could not have been a more appropriate nickname for him other than - ‘Johnny Bravo’.

Did I mention that Johnny had an ego the size of Texas? 

Sure I did.  Mind you, I have an entire imaginary filing cabinet in the back of my mind dedicated to all the egotistical assholes I’ve met in my forty-something years on this here God’s green earth. I call them the “Texas Files”.  But please don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the fine people of the great state of Texas, it’s merely the size of Texas I’m referring to, okay?  So ya’ll can holster them pistols naw, ya hear? 

Anyway, ole Johnny Bravo earned an honorary place amongst the best of the best in the Texas Files right from the day our paths first crossed many moons ago at a local bike shop one sunny Saturday morning when I was having a new rear tyre fitted to my Kawasaki ZX7RR… He certainly knew how to talk the talk, this Johnny dude, telling me and about half a dozen other bikers about his track exploits, how intense riding a bike on a race track was compared to doing breakfast runs and emphasizing that a race track was the only place where you really learned to corner and ride properly and whatnot. Now, I hardly ever pay attention to his type so I wasn’t really listening and kinda drifted in and out of his ego trip until someone suggested something about doing a track day that Sunday. That got my attention so I put my name down against my better judgement. I figured what the hell, it was bound to be good fun and I may as well get one over on ole Johnny in front of his band of ignorant protégés whilst I’m at it, you know, just for shits and giggles…

The only remote problem was that up until then I had never ridden a bike on a race track, ever. I did have a few advanced driving courses in Audi’s and BMW’s under the belt though, and lots of people commented very favourably on my driving. In fact, on one occasion I was actually quicker than the instructor, so in my mind I was fairly proficient behind the wheel of a car on a race track and saw no reason why things shouldn’t be the same on a bike.  Besides, I had been riding bikes for donkey’s years with plenty canyon-carving miles under the belt and my buddies regarded me as the best rider in our group ‘cause on breakfast runs I was always the quickest dude and I knew how to pop decent wheelies.

So track riding should be a walk in the park, yes? Well, let’s just say I was quietly confident in my abilities as a rider, the proverbial dark horse, so to speak…

And so it came to pass that I found myself at a local race track that Sunday morning projecting my best ‘strong-but-quiet type’ pose. As expected Johnny Bravo was quite the opposite, the quintessential loudmouthed Texas Files role model, full-of-himself, strutting around the pits like a perky peacock preaching the basic commandments of piloting a superbike around a race track at a semi-decent pace like he was some kind of authority on the subject or something.  Next thing I knew we were out on track on the warm-up lap, weaving from side to side to get heat into the tyres like seasoned racers. Mind you, I’ve often wondered about the weaving thing to get heat into your tyres… Some people say it doesn’t really work, but my logic tells me that weaving produces lateral forces which in turn generates friction between the contact patches of the tyres and the track surface and I remember in grade-A they taught me that friction generated heat, so surely some of that heat must be retained in the tyres?  Besides, F1 drivers do it, so there’s gotta be something to it…

Well whatever. On this occasion everyone else was doing the weaving thing, so I just followed suit. Johnny Bravo and his band of protégés looked like characters from a superhero comic book in their pristine bright coloured leathers with the best riding boots money could buy and top quality helmets with blacked-out visors to hide the look of fear in their eyes. I must have looked quite stupid and out of place in jeans and my trusty old riding jacket that I’ve had so long my sweat stink had become permanently impregnated in the lining, generic riding boots that weren’t really intended for track use and my faithful old Foggy replica helmet that I got for a bargain at a stock clearance sale at a local bike shop.

Foggy.., remember him? Now there’s a guy who fitted the Texas Files mould like a glove. I never really liked him. Egotistical prick, but in the same sentence I’d be the first to admit that he was probably one of the most worthy Superbike champions of all time and an excellent rider to boot. The man certainly possessed the tenacity of a honey-badger, no questions about that.  Remember the golden years of SBK?  Man that was such a special era - Back in the day when Keith Huewen and Julian Ryder were commentators for Sky Sports. Those two certainly knew how to capture an audience and keep you nailed to the edge of your seat with your eyes glued to the screen!  Hell, I wish we could get that kind of quality commentary over here in South African motorsport. Sometimes we really do have some piss-poor commentary that’s about as exciting as listening to a bunch of monotonous geriatric old farts in a doctor’s waiting room, but that’s a rant for another time… 

Where was I…?  Oh yeah, I was telling you about my warm-up lap with Johnny Bravo. My strategy was sweet and simple – Spend a lap or two getting my tyres up to operating temperatures and proceed to make assholes out of everyone by passing the lot of them, Johnny Bravo included, in one foul sweep and clearing off in the distance, easy peezy… Yeah right.  Even if the tyres gripped like three day old dog shit gone hard in a soft wool blanket it would have been of no consequence. I never got anywhere near the limits of traction. I never got anywhere near Johnny Bravo either. He was riding up front doing the ‘let-me-show-you-the-lines’ thing for the first couple of laps but got bored with the ultra slow pace and cleared off at his own pace leaving me with the rest of the sorry assholes tip-toeing around the track, shitting ourselves every inch of the way…

Strange new experience that was, to say the least. Very different to what I expected. In a car you’re surrounded by steel and you’re strapped in feeling cosy and safe at speed. It feels almost ‘natural’ to go fast in a car, but on a bike your body surrounds the steel and you’re out there in the open, the sensation of speed is multiplied exponentially and believe you me, it’s a helluva lot more intense than it looks on TV, I shit you not…!

And of course, back in the pits Johnny Bravo strutted his stuff with that ‘I-told-you-so’ smirking grin on his dial. I felt like kicking him right in the family jewels, but fortunately I was humbled enough by the experience to know that I was out of my depth by a country mile. It was one of those profound moments in life when you find that you actually sucked at something you thought you’d be good at and what grated my guts more than anything is the fact Johnny Bravo managed to lap me not once, but twice during that initial thirty minute session. He made it look like I was looking for parking and if that wasn’t enough a bunch of snot-noses on pisswilly little 125cc two-strokes came along to rub salt in my wounded ego by passing me around the outside in the hairpin at the end of the back straight…

And that was that. My confidence took a massive dive into the depths of despair and I really felt like finding a private corner somewhere where I could sit quietly and wank myself into a coma, but sometimes you just have to put your pride in your back pocket and be man enough to admit defeat, so I told Johnny Bravo how impressed I was with his riding skills, but to stop being such a schmuck and help me, which is something I didn’t really like doing because I hate asking people I don’t like for help or advice. Actually, I don’t think ole Johnny was liked by most of his so-called protégés either, as most of them upped and ducked after that initial session citing family commitments and a whole host of other bullshit excuses as to why they shouldn’t and/or couldn’t continue riding on the track for the rest of the day. Methinks the real reason they left was because Johnny insinuated that they were just a bunch of posers who preferred swanking with their top-dollar latest and greatest Superbikes on breakfast runs to the local News Cafe every other Sunday and that they were not real riders…  But that’s besides the point.

I stayed on though, along with one or two other hardcore enthusiasts and surprise-surprise, ole Johnny suddenly changed his tune and turned out to be pretty helpful by providing some very good grassroots coaching throughout the rest of the day, starting with basic issues like looking through the corners instead of at the corners and planning your lines through the corners before you actually go out on the track and whatnot. For me it certainly was an insightful day, a day that got me started on an obsessive quest to hone and refine my track riding skills to a razor sharp margin over the next six months, up to a point where I was ready to cut my teeth in our local regional Superbike Championship.

By then I had progressed to become a much better and quicker track rider than Johnny Bravo ever was and gave him a clean pair of heels on numerous occasions, yet I struggled to make it into the top ten in regional Superbike races and I don’t think I would have ever made it to the podium without some degree of divine intervention that caused most of the faster riders ahead of me to crash out or succumb to that other act of God by running out of fuel on the last lap.  See, this is how the hierarchy works in this sport - Most of your local track day heroes might be blisteringly quick amongst their Texas Files peers in the novice and intermediate classes at track days and Superbike schools, but they would generally struggle their asses off to run midfield in regional races and in turn most regional racers would probably not even smell the pace of experienced riders at national level. To compete at international level you would probably need superhuman skills and I’m sorry to hint at the cold hard facts here, but I wonder how many of our famed national riders would even qualify for a MotoGP race where they have those freaks of nature like Valentino Rossi setting the pace?   By the way, when last did we have a MotoGP hopeful?  Or better yet, is there one in the making?  Man, I would love to see a South African in MotoGP…!

But why am I telling you all this nonsense?  Well actually, I don’t really know. I was bored and just felt like writing some shit to see where it would take me, but since you’re still here reading this I guess I’d better invent a moral for this story now, eh?

Hmm sorry, I’m fresh out of ideas so leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you when I come up with an ending, he-he-he…

Cheers,
Pierre.