Duel. A devil on wheels
Where reality surpasses fiction
This September 9th will be highlighted in my logbook as the worst day of this journey, by far; and in my personal calendar as one of those few pitiful dates life has in storage for us.
Last night has been a restless one. I had maximum two hours of poor quality, unsettled sleep; as if foreboding what I was doomed to undergo today. When, in the morning, I accepted my defeat versus insomnia, I packed, left the hotel room and hit the road, tired even before starting the day's journey. A bad beginning for a biker; a bad omen too — or is it the same thing?
From Daugavpils (that's Latvia), I had planned a route to Vilnius (Lithuania’s capital) along the by-roads bordering Belarus. As usual, I'd take the less busy ones. And indeed they were quiet: lonely and also —but how could I have known?— dangerous, because those are the regions where freely breeds, grows and dwells, wild and unchecked, predatorless, the savage truck driver. But more on that later.
The morning was overcast, showing signs of possible rain; but for the moment I didn't put on my coat.
Arriving at a construction stretch with traffic controlled by automatic lights was the first setback. While I was approaching it, light was green all the time, but it turned red just two seconds before I passed; so I stopped. Had I arrived one instant before, none of that day's unfortunate chain of mishaps would have occurred. But those two seconds were decisive.
The traffic-light cycle was twenty minutes, no less. So I had to stay ten endless minutes there, first on the increasingly long line of vehicles that arrived behind, waiting for the light to change. Meanwhile, I kept an eye on the clouds, checking for any sign of impending rain. When the light finally turned green, I started off, leading the caravan. Just a moment afterwards, when there was no escape, rain begun. The left lane, under construction, was totally impassable: craters and dunes, trenches and banks, giant caterpillars, concrete blocks, etcetera; and the right one —presumedly in good shape— wasn't much better: road metal, holes, stones, and loose soil quickly becoming mud with the rain. It had no shoulder, nor a side where to pull over, even as narrow as a motorcycle; so, I was trapped under the rain, unable to put on the waterproof pants, for I could not just force the whole caravan of upset drivers to stop behind me. Nor could I go much slower for trying to dodge the puddles, cobbles and boulders. I had to keep going until the end of that damned stretch.
When I finally got to the other end, my clothes already wet, I pulled over and put on the raincoat while the rest of the cars passed. The moment I rode on, rain stopped. Fate was fucking with me. And only a little further I met him, Devil himself, incarnated in a fiendish lorry driver.
The vehicle was two hundred meters ahead of me, pulled in to the shoulder, and when I was approaching it the driver abruptly pulled out the side without even bothering to switch the blinker. This didn't surprise me too much, since —as everyone knows around this region—Lithuanian drivers are wild. Fortunately, there weren't any cars coming in the opposite direction, for the dude, regardless of my priority and nearness, pulled out in such a way that the lorry even invaded the left lane, forcing me to pass him on the left shoulder. So, when I was passing by the cabin, I hooted; and then kept my ride, minding my own business.
But he didn't his; or — well — in a way he did… mind his business, as the reader will see.
Of course a powerful motorcycle is a lot faster than a lorry — or one should think; but I'm an easy biker: I like to ride slowly for better enjoying the road and the landscape. Therefore, no big surprise was to me to see the lorry in the view mirror, a few minutes later, slowly gaining ground. Were each of us to keep our own speed, he'd catch up with me in a short while. Then —I thought— he'll sure hoot back at me and overtake me the savage way; which I didn't want. So I sped up a bit, just enough —I pondered— for not being overtaken by him.
However, the cabin's white patch didn't get any smaller in my mirror, but quite on the contrary, it got bigger, which meant he had also sped up, more than me. So, I had to either increase another bit my speed or, rather, slow down to my usual one and let him pass, most likely hooting at me ‘in revenge’. I opted for this second option.
However, by then I had reached a town called Dükstas and, since a motorcycle is infinitely more agile than a lorry in urban traffic, I thought I’d steal a march and leave him definitely behind.
But again I was wrong: in the mirror I saw the beast jumping a light and wildly passing two cars, scaring pedestrians and other drivers. This is certainly a madman, I thought, and I'm not gaining any ground along this town; so, the more reason for slowing down and letting him pass. Therefore, after leaving Dükstas, I set my odometer back to my usual 90 km/h and waited for the lorry to reach me. It will be a matter of one minute: he’ll surely honk at me, probably push me to the shoulder, overtake and continue his stupid race all alone.
Indeed, a few minutes later he was again behind me, approaching quite fast. But despite having a long straight stretch with good visibility and no traffic, when he got some ten metres close, instead of overtaking he kept his distance, annoyingly flashed all the lorry's headlamps (low and high beams, fog lights and even those 'hunting torches' on top of the cabin) and, like a wild holler, like the bellow of a wounded buffalo, he let go, in a deafening and prolonged honk blast out his twin horns, all the fury and anger of his lorry-ish dignity.
All right, man; you've releaved yourself; now what are you waiting for? Go and overtake, if you're in such a hurry. The way is clear; nothing hampers you.
Well — apparently he wasn't still avenged. After the hoot, he got yet closer to me, perhaps a car's length (the huge cabin totally filled my view mirrors), and blew the horn again. The roar shrouded me in like a liner’s typhoon. I couldn't check myself any longer and, lifted my left hand, gave him the finger. Only then he started overtaking.
While cabin and trailer were passing by my side, I was watchful waiting for him to push me to the shoulder. Surprisingly he didn't. And when finally the lorry passed completely, I sighed in relief: game over. Well, that was it; you've let me know your rage and now you've got the road all for yoursel. Get out and smash someone your size. But for the nth time I was mistaken: right when he was ahead of me, he abruptly stepped on the brakes, making me almost crash against his jumper. The message was clear: he wanted to body-fight the quarrel. The moment for iron cudgels had come; the moment of lying on the ditch head-crushed by a brainless truck driver.
The picture didn't appeal to me. I ought to get out of there right now; overtake him promptly and quickly, by surprise, and run away. However, since I was barely two metres behind the trailer and didn't have any visibility, I first tried overtaking him along the shoulder; but the cunning motherfucker, realizing my move, had the time to turn right and close that escape. Then I quickly turned left and, entrusting myself to the gods —for I didn’t see if there was traffic coming the other way— accelerated at maximum. Luckily no vehicles were coming; but my enemy, with an abrupt turn of the wheel, wandered fully into the left lane for trying to check again my escape. I managed to pass, albeit very tightly, driving on the left edge of the left shoulder. Phew!
Now, as I was getting away, I did a quick mental review of the situation. And I had the strong presentiment—almost a certitude— that he was coming after me from the beginning; that when I first saw the lorry pulled in to the shoulder, he was already awaiting me. That's why he abruptly pulled out, no blinkers, wandering into the left lane. Sure, my honking stirred him up, and my latter cocking a snook totally pissed him off; but that fiend had already decided to haunt me before that, and his rush and dangerous driving had no other point than me. That was his business from the get go. It's not — as I had thought for a while — that he was in a hurry to get to the nearest road brothel, nor was it about urgently delivering a freight: as a matter of fact, there could not be any cargo in the trailer, because a loaded lorry can't accelerate, manoeuvre nor —most of all— brake so suddenly as that one did. He was simply a mad driver who'd taken it out on me, go figure why. Maybe his wife was cheating him with a motorcycler? Go figure. And yet, the most puzzling question for me was: how could he have been waiting for me at first, since we hadn’t crossed paths before? Unless...
I didn't have the time to finish this train of thought: my pursuer was again approaching me at all the speed his turbocharged Diesel engine permitted and, ahead of me on the road, there was a small, slow truck painfully climbing a long slope. Overtaking was prohibited in that stretch. Now it's when — I thought. If I don't get out of here immediately that jackass will squash me against this truck. Instinct urged me, then, to ignore the prohibition and overtake the small truck in a blink, which I did. This time at least, luck was with me, for there came two cars in the opposite direction which would force Madman to reduce to turtle-speed, wait for them to go past, then accelerate and overtake the truck up the slope; all of which would give me the definitive head over him.
Well — nothing like that: once more I underrated my enemy's boldness. Without in the least reducing his momentum, he wandered again into the left lane and passed the other truck, not giving a shit for the fate of the cars comming, which were forced to dangerously pull over to their shoulder. It was only then that I took full conscience of the true magnitude of the problem madly rolling behind me: the driver of that five axles could be no other than the Devil, the one in the famous, blood-curling first movie by Spielberg, Duel; a spirit of evil firmly determined to chase me no matter what; and nothing was to stop him; nothing, even if he had to leave a bloody trail of accidents behind.
(To be continued in the next chapter.)