The Scariest car journey ever

I mentioned this in the lobby and said it was too complicated to explain in there and that I’d post a blog, so here goes.

I used to Live in Scotland, about 15 miles outside of Glasgow. They had a biker group there (I believe it was an offshoot of something started in SE England) called “The 59 club”. No dirty comments about numbers now, please.

These boys and girls were on call with their motor bikes to run blood from the blood banks to any hospital in their area as fast as possible. The usually had large, fast bikes. Had panniers to carry the refrigerated blood and went like hell down any road necessary to get the blood where it was needed in time to save lives. True Samaritans all. True heroes all.

That’s set the background. Now to the story.

My friend Colin (known as Hovis, please don’t ask why) was one of these riders. One night he left his girlfriend at her house having had a call and, having picked up the blood, headed off at high speed for a country hospital about 20 miles from the blood bank.

Unfortunately, his pannier attachments had rusted through and he ended up having to shove the reefer canisters inside his leathers.

All went well until the last turn before the hospital gates, when some complete idiot came round a right hand bend of Colin’s side of the road. Colin had no choice and turned into the ditch at the side of the road while doing about 60 MPH. As you can imagine, big accident, but in full view of the gatehouse of the hospital.

The guard calls the A&E and tells them to get out cause a biker’s just gone in the ditch, which they do.

This is where the comedy starts. Colin is actually fine, but he’s crushed the reefer packages so when they open his leathers there is about 4 pints of blood pouring out. Immediate panic and they try to cut his (very expensive) leathers off. Big mistake! It took him 15 minutes to convince them he was OK. All he had was a sprained wrist.

Having got this sorted out he asks one of the nurses to phone his girlfriend and tell her he’s OK. She does, but all she got a chance to say before the girlfriend went into panic mode was the name of the hospital and that they had Colin there after a road accident. You see the hospital was famed for brain surgery. Biker? Blood run? High speed? Brain hospital? You can see her thinking, can’t you?

She slams down the phone and screams to 2 guys and a girl sitting with her that Colin’s in this hospital and she has to get there.

The girlfriend, Rhona, only passed her driving test 3 weeks before, but she piles us all into her dad’s 3.5 litre Ford Capri (the UK members will remember that monster) and takes off across Glasgow on a wet, stormy Saturday evening at about 2200hrs, i.e. just as the pubs are chucking out.

She did 4 wheel drifts. She had the tail hanging out round various corners and as far as the trip down the little, unlit country roads to the hospital goes? Well I still have nightmares, lol.

She made it and never hit a thing…………..except Colin when she found out he wasn’t badly hurt.

Aren’t women strange?