Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Australia is Sooooo Big…

How big is it? So big, motorcycle gangs travel by plane.

I wish this were a joke, but it isn’t. A few days ago, rival biker gangs clashed at the Sydney airport, smacking each other with those metal poles that the velvet ropes go between. The melee spread over two floors. This sounds absurd, and it is, but someone did die, so it’s not really funny.

There are many unanswered questions regarding this incident, some of which probably only bother me. For one thing, how did the one gang find the other? As I’ve mentioned before, you can’t just meet people at the gate anymore in most places, and I would have thought Australia was one of those places.

Secondly, what was the biker gang doing on a plane? Australia, which has sunny weather and wide-open roads, is probably the ideal place to ride motorcycles. Why in the world didn’t they make a road trip of it? I know, I know, the distances between Australian cities can be huge, but they’re bikies (to use the Australian slang I just learned). What else did they have to do this week?

It’s hard to even imagine a biker on a plane. Real rebels don’t put their seats in the full upright position just because the man tells them to, and they certainly aren’t going to extinguish their smoking materials. And how did they get through the metal detector? There are many things I don’t understand about this strange and troubling gang incident, and I can’t believe I’m about to go halfway around the world to find the kind of senseless violence that exists right in the Bay Area.

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