Mechanic’s Salad

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Kevin Cameron has been writing about motorcycles for nearly 50 years, first for <em>Cycle magazine</em> and, since 1992, for <em>Cycle World</em>. (Robert Martin/)

At one time, spending long hours in a van driving to motorcycle races was a big part of my life. Some combinations of people could coexist well in that small sheet-metal space, and others could not. Ideally, one person drives while another sleeps, so problems are few. Back behind the seats, racebikes and all the impedimenta that travel with them are well-behaved companions.

But this time the equation was complicated by more people, notably a hip local counterculturist and his wife, plus another rider. As we glided through darkness toward distant Mosport Park (now known as the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park) in Ontario, Canada, someone announced that sandwiches had been brought and were in the cooler.

Van travel taught me to buy food along the way rather than to reach into a communal cooler. The ice melts, containers settle into rising water, and sandwiches suffer. The sandwich that pleases one may not please all. My mistake at that moment was to make what I thought was a light remark.

“Hope those sandwiches aren’t awful ham and cheese, with yellow ballpark mustard. The cheese, drying and cracking at the edges. The iridescence of the ham revealing its age.”

A glare from the wife made everything clear. She had made ham and cheese. Her look told me that my words, like an ICBM rising from its silo on a column of fire, could not be recalled.

Many hours later we rolled straight into Mosport sign-up and out to Saturday practice. And then it was evening again—time for dinner and long-postponed sleep. It was decided that as punishment the guilty pair who had cast a pall over the trip so far—the critic and the sandwich maker—would be sent into the supermarket together to do the shopping.

Side by side but staring straight ahead, she and I marched into the store…and a remarkable thing happened. Since each of us were married (albeit not to each other), we slipped easily into Grocery Store Mode. She turned to me and said, “What shall we make?” and I replied, “How about a big salad with tomatoes and chopped-up cold cuts and maybe some cheese?”

“Ham and cheese?” she said, raising her eyebrows and looking just a bit amused. “I’ll find the salad stuff and a couple kinds of dressing. You get things to chop into it. And we’ll need a bowl to make it in.”

Effortlessly, now without rancor, we fell into domesticity. The shopping was soon completed. The food was good, and it was a pleasant evening.

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