“Could you be looooved, and be loved?” 

They were idling at an intersection in Da Nang and had been doing so for approximately 1 minute and 45 seconds. 

The eyes of a hundred local riders rested from time to time on the conspicuous kiwis in their midst as they all sat and waited for a gigantic truck and trailer up ahead to clear the intersection. The redundant traffic lights had turned from green to red and back at least 3 times already. More than just their exotic backpacks-on-wheels aesthetic, what was drawing the locals’ attention their way was the soundtrack for the traffic impasse being provided by the UE boom bungeed to Anthony’s bags. As the crowd sat patiently, 80 decibells of Bob Marley’s entreating voice reverberated into the otherwise stillness of the mid-afternoon. 

“Say something!” 

Jared watched Ants’ head bop in time to the beat as the truck tried for the 5^th time in a row to navigate out of an intersection, by rights, never designed for this kind of carry on. 

They’d made it to their first city without a scratch. Spirits were high and guards down. After doing a couple of laps of Hoi An to make sure they – or anything else – weren’t about to fall off their bikes, their charismatic motorcycle agents had waved them off, Mr Skinny Jeans yelling something vague at Cordelle about her scooter’s insurance policy. 

And from there it had been smiles for miles. 

Now at their first major city intersection, the gang were getting their first taste of many hold ups to come.

“Could ya be – could ya be – could ya be loved?” 

“Could he be loved?” Jaimie grinned to Jared’s left, nodding at the truck driver, face tomato-red with the strain as a policeman, attempting to wave him through the maneuverer, screamed up at him from the road. 

“Don’t let them fool ya – or even try to school ya!” 

“Oh, no!” Matt piped in with the music from where he and Jonelle sat up ahead. 

Seizing a chance to capture the chaos, Jared turned round on his seat to video with his phone the patient sea of motorcyclists. 

The engines ahead of him began to buzz… 

The corners of Jared’s eyes crinkled as he peered at the screen of his phone. The ‘low battery’ notification it showed suggested that the video hadn’t been recorded. 

Vroom, VROOOM! 

The heat was coming off the tarmac in waves and as he straightened in his seat to stretch, he felt a single bead of sweat run down his back.  

“Stupid thing”

He slouched over his phone once more and tried to hit the record button. In response to his posture, the sunglasses perched on his nose slipped through the open visor and bounced on the highway. 

As he reached down, he noticed movement in his peripheries and became aware with a jolt of the bikes passing around him. He glanced sharply upward; his street-market Ray Bans forgotten at once. 

The truck was gone! 

Shit! 

Jared scrambled to put the bike in gear, realized with a lurch that the engine had stopped running and immediately began pumping the kickstart, the engine dying before each kick could complete its arc. 

The throng of bikes all around him closed in, engines roaring like beasts unleashed as they raced to make up for the lost time the truck’s manoeuvring had cost them. They passed Jared without a second glance: a lone white blood cell left to fend for himself.  

Breaking into a cold sweat, Jared thought he spied through the kaleidoscope of traffic ahead a worried-looking Jaimie looking over his shoulder and yelling something out as he was lost from view. The rest of the gang had already vanished. 

Jared thought wildly of Simba and the stampede. 

“C’mon you rust bucket!” he grunted, opening the throttle all the way. With an almighty punt, the engine roared into being. 

VROOOOM! He careened to one side with the sudden motion, almost toppling onto the elderly Vietnamese woman passing meagrely on his right before overcorrecting and rimming his wheels against the curb. 

Scrrrnch! 

Holy macaroni. Just change to second! CHAAANGE TO SECOND!!! The guiding inner voice of Obi Wan Kenobi took on Jaimie’s urgent drawl as the gearshift clicked into place and Jared found his mojo once more. A space began opening for him in the crowd, now that he’d earned it. 

Where were they?! 

Travelling for another couple of kilometres among the crowded but now freely flowing traffic, he decided he wasn’t going to find his friends this way. It’s too dangerous for them to stop with everything this busy he thought hopelessly. Had they turned around for him? Or were they waiting at the far edge of the 12,000 square kilometre city, from where they’d planned to make for Hai Van Pass? 

Grasping at the phone in his jacket pocket, he pulled it out and noted with mounting dread the black screen and empty battery icon. 

Goodgoodgoodgoodgood. Good. 

Standing up straight now on his pegs, Jared searched one last time for a trace of his friends, but found only an oncoming offramp, leading up to a 6-lane roundabout suspended in the sky above the main route. 

He had no time to think. He gunned it for the exit, thinking this way he would at least have the chance to turn back and wait where he’d last seen them. 

His eyes bulged as the oncoming roundabout came into view. 6 lanes of ducking and weaving trucks, cars and scooters all jostled for position in a symphony of smoke and blearing horns, 15 metres above the ground.  

It looked like the Arc De Triomphe if there had been a scooter sale on in Paris. 

First, he had to get onto the roundabout. He dreaded changing gears in case he stalled in the midst of the amorphous traffic so instead he slowed to a crawl as he approached, then hit the first gap he could spot. 

Madness. 

A Mack truck hurtled by on his left, its side draft hurling him into a motorbike-full of Vietnamese family, the toddler squished between the parents gazing open-mouthed as his father yanked them out of harm’s way. The out-of-his-depth gringo fighting for control of his bike barely had time for a breath before the driver of a sleeper bus leaned on his horn in earnest, alerting him in the nick of time to turn and allow the 10 tonnes of wheeled metal to WHOOSH over the boundaries of all three lanes to Jared’s immediate right, in an attempt to cross the roundabout in a straight line.

BIIICYCLE. BIIICYCLE.  

Returning his bike to equilibrium a full half hour before his heartbeat would do the same, Jared thought madly about what to do as he completed his third orbit of the roundabout. The odds of his friends waiting further up the road forever were unlikely. It seemed to him that a scout – probably Jamie – would be sent back to his rescue. I’ve got to get back to Truck-and-Trailer Junction he decided. Could he trust himself to drive his bike over Hai Van Pass to wherever the gang stayed tonight, if they didn’t come? He still hadn’t figured out how to start his bike without either stalling or hurtling into innocent bystanders…An image of Mr Skinny Jeans swam in his mind’s eye as cash rained down about his grinning noggin: 

Great bike sir, the best bike… 

His resolve strengthened as the exit drew near. Learning from his previous mistake, he glanced around for rogue busses and even revved his engine once or twice to show he knew what he was doing. A passing woman raised her eye brows at the black smoke this performance emmited and Jared waved, hoping he looked more confident than he felt. Keeping the bike in third gear for fear of stalling, he didn’t so much rocket as meander off the roundabout like a drunken satellite leaving orbit on a Friday night. 

‘And if no one comes for me, I will goddamn stop and start my way up to Hanoi alone’ he thought, picking up speed as he rejoined the highway.

If he’d still had his sunglasses, he would have slid them on in slow-mo like The Terminator. 

But he didn’t, so he didn’t.

Jared raced off alone in the direction he’d come, in a city he didn’t know.