by David Biggs
Several of my friends are enthusiastic followers of Formula One racing and drivers such as Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel are high on their lists of heroes.
I’ve never been much of a motor racing fan myself.
Televised races seem rather boring to me – round and round at high speed with occasion skids and crashes – not my idea of excitement, but everyone to his (or her) own, I guess.
I do have a few driving heroes but none of them occupy the cockpits of F1 cars.
I have enormous admiration for the skills of professional truck drivers.
Growing up on a farm I tried with limited success to master the art of reversing a tractor and trailer. You think it’s easy? Remember you have two sets of steerable wheels to control.
When you turn your steering wheel you’re not steering the rear wheels like you do in your car; you’re steering a middle set of wheels that, in turn, steer the back wheels. I drive to the Kommetjie Road municipal waste dump about once a fortnight to drop off garden refuse and I always take time to admire the skill of the truck drivers who go there to collect garden waste for the compost industry.
I recently marvelled at a driver who reversed a huge lorry with not one but two enormous trailers behind it. He backed the whole train with surgical precision into a loading bay only a metre or two wider than the vehicle.
Comparing the skills of Hamilton and Vettel to these truck drivers is like comparing the work of a blacksmith to that of a brain surgeon.
The racers thunder round the track with a relatively simple set of wheels. The truck drivers have to steer one set of wheels that controls another set of steerable wheels that steers a third steerable axle.
Hamilton and Vettel are hardly even steering. They’re aiming.
Give them a compost lorry and trailer and they’d crash at the first bend. When I want to see driving skill I follow the garbage train.
I’m a devoted fan.
Last Laugh
The teacher was interviewing a new pupil.
“What does your father do?” She asked.
“He’s a stage magician,” the child replied.
“That’s interesting. What kind of tricks does he do?”
“He saws people in half.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“Yes. A half brother and two half sisters.”
* "Tavern of the Seas" is a daily column written in the Cape Argus by David Biggs. Biggs can be contacted at [email protected]
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.