Potholes begone - don’t touch me on my scooter!

Hetty was sweet, so-o-o sweet. I had just spent a few grand on sorting out a few glitches and the GS wizard had delivered her on a magic carpet.

Until the gronk struck! On Tuesday I am grooving along cautiously, poer-poering down the old R102 past Lavender Blue approaching that skadonky bridge over the Quinera River.

It was raining, midafternoon, grey, sloshy. Is it ever any other way these-a-days? Edgy for sure but I had it in the bag.

I know the potholes of this road so well. After the bridge, I keep left, to avoid flakedoff tar. Today all I see in the dip immediately after the bridge is a sheet of rusty gunmetal water.

A car ahead of me hits this sheet and it’s like teenager-forever Kelly Slater doing a moerse air reverse, just all spray.

What is this! Now the tar is exposed, and there is the evil eye! BCM sorcery! A paletteshaped shimmering moonstone, a rabbit hole of unknown depth.

I could go down, or u-u-u-p and away — like that Mary Poppins oke from Seavale who hung onto his stoep during the Monday hurricane and went up with it and over, landing with a giant metallic crash on the other side, apparently only injuring a shoulder.

Bliksem! I leap onto the pegs — that is bum off the seat, push down on the front forks and heave the 1200 GSA beast up and ... KEEERASH! The sound no bike should ever make, every piece of plastic, wiring, frame, masjienery, being bliksemed by a pothole shock wave.

But the front wheel is still on and I too am still on the bike! Small mercies. I limp home so the bliksem-in.

Last time I was in a four-legs and hit a famous pothole on the Schafli Road, the front wheel caved in, the computer chip fritzed and later I was told the whole front engine of the car was replaced.

I make it home, stop and — Hetty gives up the ghost and dies. Try to swing her ... gidda-gidda-gidda ... the motor comes to life, and dies, dies, dies.

I am so filthy with rage and despair I decide to go into my dank lair, surrounded by days of old laundry and muddy floors, and sleep on the problem. Well, I have to because it’s bloody load-shedding!

I calm myself dreaming of skanking to reggae on a beach at Samui but end up bingeing on aimless movies, Bruce Willis and some Spanish doctor and a crack crew of gun-studded GI Joes in Africa fighting off a murderous Nigerian army hell-bent on ethnic cleansing.

And Bruce, that icon of squint-eyed American manliness, is saving Africa from Africa ... Why am I watching this?

Ah yes, BCM broke my bike. My children are big, I don’t really have a dog, my mad cat is yowling and hunting in the hills of Salem, so I have these bikes ...

I am weak. Days in bed from suspected sewage infection at Orient Beach have left me fatigued.

I was just getting better, I was on the bike, air flowing through my brain, I had an amazing ride to Cefani, Chintsa East Deli — a hip lekker place — a weekend at Buccaneers Lodge in the calming corner Kamanga room in the Tree House block.

On Saturday afternoon, Sean Price rigged a lekker big TV in their Buccs dining room with the best view in the Eastern Cape and we watched the Boks stutter their way to victory, only discovering we have the best backline in the world in the last minutes.

Then tea and rusks with the former John Wayne of Port St Johns, that quiet NSRI hero, photographer and author John Costello; who is living in a weirdly developed suburb with few houses overlooking the ocean nearby.

Finally, Sparg’s Sunday lunch with the daughter, who makes Jamie Oliver’s apple crumble.

All that lightness and love ended by one sad, loveless, bad-ass pothole. And always, climate breakdown.

Yah, where are we going with all this squelching rain, and hurricanes and droughts and no railway line and taxis and truckers ruling our lives, and politicians beaming on stages while stabbing each other in the shadows backstage ...

And in this traffic maelstrom, these ginormous craters appearing like sinkholes in the slurry, when people are smashing up nature reserves and swimming while dronk during spring tides at Nahoon, where I ask are our road and traffic authorities?

You will find them every Sunday and often on weekdays in two or three places: All jammed together behind their moneyscanner at roadblocks at the entrance of Gonubie or in Bonza Bay road or near the Guild Theatre.

I imagine I own a CIA drone which can give you an executive body cell scan from outer space, and I lift off above these twisted, disgraceful tax collectors at their road blocks and I tell this space warship to scan in concentric circles for potholes, broken road edges, faded traffic markings, blackeyed robots, and see how many red lights go on to mark these failures to ensure public safety.

It is amazing how they can check for taxes while their dereliction of duties spreads like streptococcus infection all around them.

Now I am not alone. There must be scores of broken cars taken, like I was, by that shimmering pothole.

To ease my pain, I asked my colleague, the climate hack, to send BCM’s hired spokesperson and information keeper of the gate, Sam Ngwenya, to enlighten us about potholes.

Here is the email. I await his reply. Hello,

A Saturday Dispatch columnist by the name of Delores Koan (DK) has come to me saying she knows I have a great working relationship with you.

Would you mind answering these questions for her next column which will be written by the end of work today?

The weather has unleashed mayhem on BCM roads.

Potholes, old and new, have appeared and seem to be growing larger by the day.

DK assumes you have leapt onto the problem and have scheduled a rapid repair emergency programme for the real craters down to the smallest hole. Is this so?

In the meantime, the columnist says suggestions are pouring in, like the rain in most of our homes, for an emergency warning system for motorists.

It has been suggested that signage goes up immediately, and, using a bit of a crib of the SA Weather Service’s early warning disaster system, BCM uses the following system to try to gain public attention.

So many of those hazy billboard advertising deals are standing forlorn and empty — could you please use them to publish a map of the city showing all the major to minor potholes?

You could start with that billboard outside Old Selbornians but there are many others, such as the one hanging over the bridge on the NEX. Delores thinks the public will go with that one.

We suggest innovative, eye-catching signs on poles as motorists approach these dangerous holes in the tar — you could start with a simple outline of a Hart pot, but then move onto the shape of a supersized Windmill pizza (Windmill might even pay for the sign!)

Or you could do a mini-billboard “sign post” outdoor advertising deal.

From there the possibilities are endless: you could match the shape and size of the pothole to other popular items, such as a Weber braai, a zinc bath, or even a Victorian four-legged tub.

No doubt your creative department can come up with more local, highly recognisable items which can be printed on the posts.

Another suggestion is to write a local history of our potholes, which seem to live in a never-ending Groundhog Day story of repair and unrepair!

We could name them, and list all the people whose cars have been broken by them, and tell their stories of daring do — how they tried to avoid them but could not.

What do you think? Delores looks forward to publishing your answers, but if you cannot make the deadline, we will — at the very least — publish the questions.