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Vlad and the irony of lunch
Lunching with the Lemmings Motorcycle Club
has some unusual risks
(Written circa 2006, published Dec 2023, Guy 'Guido'
Allen)
Vladimir Yarets Alexovich, a
native of Belarus, Russia, was cruising through
Melbourne on his beaten-up F650 Bimm – the one with the
bright yellow Samsonite full airline
we’re-on-hols-for-a-year bags firmly bolted to its
formerly slim sides. They looked like two blocks of
council flats on a bicycle.
Morley, a fellow Lemmings MC
(motto – death before courtesy) member, spotted
him in traffic and somehow knew they were to meet again
later that day, at the Friday Lemmings lunch.
The latter has become something
of a local institution. It happens in Little Saigon, in
sunny Melb, where host Sandy (ringmistress of the Minh
Minh restaurant) rules with an iron corkscrew. She has
had the misfortune of dealing with us for around 15
years – it’s hard to say exactly how long. But I’m
confident our modest weekly bill has put a whole
generation of Sandy offspring through school, and now
we’re funding university. It’s money well-spent, which
is unusual for us.
Vlad et al somehow gravitated
to the lunch – which backs up my theory that the event
is a black hole of stupidity. It has a gravitational
pull that defies normal rules of physics. We get lots of
travelers through, along with assorted bike journos and
the odd bike industry bod. Sometimes very odd, and
they’re often not thankful.
Meanwhile Vlad is a deaf mute.
His ambition, after five years on the road, is to be
recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as the
most-travelled motorcycling deaf-mute. Call me psychic,
but I suspect he’s a shoo-in.
Communication with a Russian
deaf-mute over lunch can be challenging when it comes to
the finer points of world politics. We think the Nazi
salutes may have referred to Germans, but then again it
could have been George Bush. No matter – a man who’s
reportedly over 60 years of age and been on the road for
several, can eat. Quickly. And with determination.
There were some uncomfortable
moments. Vlad ain’t exactly an oil painting, so the
middle-aged, middle-class, well-polished woman who was
dragooned into taking photos of the Lemmings at lunch
may still need counseling. Vlad is living proof that
words are superfluous, when herding and vehement hand
gestures from a gnome who clearly has nothing left to
fear are far more effective.
The next week, we were graced
with the company of Shoemark the PR bloke, who by his
own admission is not deaf and certainly not mute. In
fact, he has been known to wear out telephones in a
single conversation. He dropped in to celebrate his
return to motorcycling with the purchase of a 400
scooter and was mistaken by Sandy for Vlad.
While Shoemark is roughly
Vlad-shaped, this is like mistaking Joseph Goebbels for
Mahatma Ghandi.
It got worse. Kingsbury, associate
professor of things Indonesian, and the owner of a tasty
Priller, also dropped in and somehow the conversation
turned to (as is inevitable at motorcycle lunches) who
would win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Kingsbury was fresh from an ABC
radio discussion over his edgy negotiation of peace in
Aceh (Indonesia). Shoemark, who had heard it, but didn’t
know the prof (his neighbor at the Sandy trough) from a
can of chain lube, turned to his lunch partner and
opined, “I think that Kingleberry bloke who sorted Aceh
should get it, what do you reckon?” Kingsbury blushed
and gave me one of those “what the hell have I got
myself into this time, again?” looks.
Desert at Minh Minh
traditionally consists of the entire squid population of
Bass Strait deep fried and laid out on a platter. It was
over this comfortable horizon that we had to explain to
Sandy that Shoemark was not Vlad, and therefore should
be allowed to speak; And to Shoemark that ‘Kingleberry’
deserved the Nobel but would have to settle for fried
squid until he gets proper recognition.
More Travels with Guido columns
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