My big bike test

Last Sunday I rose early to go to Vietnam's equivalent of the DMV to take a driving test so that I might get a motorbike license. This particular morning was a damp cold grey, and I was ill-prepared. From all past experience with government agencies everywhere I should have known that this process would take far longer than I would like, but as I left my apartment I looked at my hat and warm jacket and decided against both, opting only for a windbreaker in case it started raining again. Later, as I walked my bike to the start of the obstacle course, I felt like kicking myself again, but I had been doing that for the past couple hours, mostly in a feeble attempt to keep warm, and my numb legs were having enough trouble with the walk that I didn't trust them to try kicking. Having a US drivers license, I was able to procure a Vietnamese equivalent with little hassle ($$ and a couple weeks of processing), and was also exempted from the written portion of the motorbiking testing process. All that was required of me was a short skills test—navigating a figure eight, driving in a straight line, slaloming a bit, and finally negotiating some very tame speed bumps. This was all handled on one go, and took a moderately skilled driver about a minute to complete. The course is marked by white lines in a parking lot, which on test day is lined by many soon to be licensees. The officials have a desk on one side of the lot, and as they call out the name of the examinees the prospectful participants walk their bikes up to the entrance to the figure eight, don a helmet, are reminded of the course's pattern, and are turned loose. The figure eight really is the only difficult part of the course and therefore is the only part that the judges pay attention to; once one biker has completed this portion another would begin so there were two bikes on the course at any given time. Except in my case. My bike wouldn't start. I wasn't the only one feeling cold. By the time I got the motor running I was all alone, and the audience was getting impatient. Oh right, I had an audience in all the other testees (two Es) and each's corresponding boy or girlfriend. And I was near the beginning of my test group (though I had mistakenly waited through the previous group's tests, which did nothing to conserve body heat). Most bike-test audiences were rather inattentive, unless some old lady or man kept running out of the lines and putting her or his feet down to catch the bike before it toppled, at which point there would be some snickering and the remainder of the ride would be watched a little more carefully in the hopes that something scandalous would happen further down the course. My performance, had I been an old man, would probably have drawn such snickers. But I was a foreigner, and so they laughed outright. And for good reason. I got my bike started but I was in no way prepared for this ride. I was shaking, first from the freezing cold, second from fatigue (I had gotten only 80 minutes of sleep the previous night), and third from the fear that I might make a complete fool of myself in front of all those people. Appropriately, my bike shook with fear as well. Vehicle and driver looked like they were being electrocuted throughout the whole ride around the ocho. That I managed to keep the bike within the lines and upright hardly mattered. I was the spectacle they had all been hoping for. Look at that clown! with his white face and oversized shoes and colored nose (if I had to guess, I would say it was blue), just look at him shiver. Oho! He won't last a second on these streeets. As the buffoon on the bike exited the circus ring and proceeded to complete with relative ease the rest of the run, the following exchange took place between one of the officiating officers and the nice lady from the ADRA office who took me to the test: Official: "Is he seriously going to be driving on the streets?" ADRA lady: "Oh no, he'll be driving a car. He's much better at that. It's only office policy for our workers to have both car and bike licenses." So I passed. Addendum: In defense of the poor soul who has been made out to be so incompetent, I must say that Espy and I, on a number of occasions previous to this incident, have taken the motorbikes out around town without mishap. Well, we still get lost some and end up down darkened, deadend alleys, but what I'm trying to say is that I haven't crashed or caused a crash yet, thankyouverymuch.