Don’t get Sidetracked
by Malc
I like Motorbikes. The faster they go, the better I like them. Especially Superbikes, MotoGP bikes - I love it all. When I was a bit younger, I once took my bike, on a very long and straight road, up to way over the speed limit. If I did that now at the age I am, it would scare the pants off me. But when I think of those top racers taking bends at that kind of speed…. wow, so exciting!
Any officers of the law reading this can relax as, sadly, the bike is no more – it got smashed in a crash in later years, when a foolish driver decided she could get right across me and two lanes of traffic when the lights were against her. She didn’t make it, and man and machine in perfect harmony flew over the top of her silly little car and landed in a heap on the other side. I got a bit broken but not as badly as my bike. Thanks very much!
I used to go to speedway meetings as a kid and that fuelled my love of bikes and of speed and what began my interest in motorbikes in general and later led me to buy my first bike – a Honda 250. Not a big bike by today’s standards but in those days, you could jump on one of those things with just a provisional driving license (without the need to pass a bike test.) I stripped the nasty metallic bronze paint off that bike and painted it Daytona Yellow and added a smoked, half fairing. Much better.
I remember our daughter loved to help me working on the bike in the garage although she never graduated to bikes herself (disappointing) and stuck with cars. But bikes helped me to get about until I had to exchange bikes for cars as the family grew. And bikes had to take a back seat for a few years until I got my CB650 (the one which is now in that great race track in the sky.)
When our grandson was old enough to appreciate bikes, and on his birthday, I decided to take him to Silverstone to watch the MotoGP. We drove to the circuit and parked the car and excitedly made our way trackside.
We walked all around the circuit that day, watching the bikes from every angle we could (yep, we sneaked up into the grandstands too when we saw the stewards looking the other way.) We had a great day and as it was the birthday boy’s day, I had promised to buy him a team jacket. Cal Crutchlow was his favourite rider so I got him the Tech 3 Yamaha jacket he wanted. He looked really cool in that I have to say.
When we were done (and my grandson's little legs were just about done) we started to make our way back to the car. But where did I leave it? There are a lot of car parks at that circuit. I think they are numbered, but I just took a vague note (in my excitement) that it was the car park opposite that main grandstand. Duh! There are plenty of grandstands too.
To say it took a while to find that car is an understatement. But the circuit staff and stewards were fantastic and amazingly helpful. We described the surface of the car park, (there are some concrete, some gravel, some tarmac) and what time we arrived at the circuit and they actually worked out which car park our car had to be in – and it was. By the time we reached the car, my little legs were done in too. The Lord helped us to find the car by using those stewards and we finally sat down with a sigh, ready for the drive home.
As Christians, we are given a kind of set of directions – a road map, when we come to Jesus, and it puts us on the road that leads to everlasting life.
Sometimes we don’t see everything ahead of us, we might panic and wonder if we are still on the right road or if we have turned off onto a side road. We are unable to see too far down the road (sometimes no further than the end of our own nose.) But that’s where Jesus comes in and directs us and puts us back in the right direction. And like me, and my grandson, the Lord led us to the car and got us safely home.
Do you have a safe journey mapped out for you leading to your eternal home? You can have.