Surrendering to the Darkness

Surrendering to the Darkness

I usually don’t credit people for giving me titles since I usually snatch unintended catch-phrases out of thin air and feel the person had no idea what they were saying. But this one is different. One of our intrepid motorcycle tour guides, Skip Mascorro, the founder of MotoDiscovery, gets the nod. I will fill in the details of the day in a bit, but as we were getting our final ride briefing at the exit from the ruins of Troy, Skip was worried that our long day might eclipse dusk before we got to the little seaside hotel we had booked. The prospect of seven AFMC riders with three pillions riding through the Turkish countryside in the dark was not comforting to this veteran motorcycle guide. We are age-ranged 61 to 84 with the average about 70. We only had one fall today, but it was in the first five minutes.

Skip advised us to “surrender to the darkness” if it overtook us. I guess he thought we might pull a Dylan Thomas and rage against the dying of the light. Those words, said mostly for reassurance and to fill in a solution for an unavoidable consequence, can mean so many things to me these days. The darkness can easily be construed in this moment as some troubling blend of politics and sociology-economic malaise that has accumulated to bother our kinder, gentler predispositions. The darkness can be the aging process that leads us into ponderings on retirement and obsessions with what to do with the rest of our lives. Some, including the money management firms trolling the airwaves for our business may like us to think that those are lighthearted issues, but most of us know they are anything but. And of course, as we age we encounter a growing list of friends less fortunate that need to face the ultimate darkness. To me, one of the worst darknesses would be to give up my love of motorcycling. I know it will come, but I don’t like to even think about it.

Let’s discuss our day today in the context of surrendering to the darkness. We got off to our usual start, on time, but not totally together with Bob taking an early spill in the garage at the up-sloping exit. Istanbul traffic at 7am was also a bit challenging, but the “every man for himself” approach worked as one would hope. The ferry across the Marmara Sea from Europe to Asia was two hours in a pre-assigned seat. The amusement came in the form of Edwina not recognizing that Mark’s social media picture of the ferry with the oddly shaped clouds (looking ever so much like the universal WiFi symbol) was a promotion on each and every tabletop, including the one in front of her. Off the ferry and into Bursa where we physically lost three of our group (Bruce, Kevin and a Karen) and psychologically lost Kim and Ann when they saw that their “Princess Van” was nothing more than a cramped yellow taxi. Being Kaz suddenly became a very dangerous job when the first rest stop unleashed the fury of two women scorned. We had lost all five (the taxi’s top speed was about 40kph) by the time we just made the ferry to the Gallipoli Peninsula. At least the dockside lunch was pleasant once the two busloads of Chinese tourists finished their lunch. At least the restaurant was out of fish-head soup by then.

We skittled down to the ANZAC Cove WWI Memorial where we admired the kind words of Ataturk in consoling the survivors of the brutal battle for the Dardanelles as disastrously coordinated by a young Winston Churchill. A very short ferry back again to the Asia side evidenced why the British ships couldn’t get far under the accurate and deadly Turkish artillery. We were reminded that in 1915 the Turk soldiers were defending their home soil. Those were certainly dark days for the young Australian and Kiwi soldiers under the direction of King and Empire.

Then we headed to the site of the ancient and mythological city of Troy. This city was made famous by Homer’s famous epic poem, The Iliad. It has all the great stories that make a place great. Greek Gods and Kings get aggressive over feminine pulchritude and launch a thousand ships into battle where the young Prince Paris shoots a demigod, Achilles, in his soft heel. Somewhere along the line the Greeks bear gifts via a wooden horse that holds a battle-ready surprise for the Trojans, who few took pity on due to their years of tolling the sea traffic through the Dardanelles. As if that was not enough darkness, the German entrepreneur who found the long-lost city and its treasure, spirited it off to Berlin for the Third Reich to march before its armies until the Russians pillaged it back from them and stuffed it in some obscure Moscow vault. I’m sure it was a very dark vault.

As we rushed the final 35 miles to our boutique hotel on the Aegean, just ahead of the march of darkness, we saw a magnificent sunset replete with cloud formations with more than a few silver linings. It had been a long day and we had not needed to surrender to the darkness. After a short rest, we all gathered for dinner on a balmy terrace that seemed nice enough, only to find Kevin and Jeanne scrapping with a gang of nasty ferrell kittens that were more demanding than expected.

Darkness can spring on you when you least expect it, and planning to embrace it, surrender to it or outrun it is not recommended. Sorry, Skip, the AFMC credo remains that we must rage against the darkness, not so much for the purpose of conquering it, but more because it scares the piss out of us.