Rider Wait Allegory

A few people wanted access to the speech that I did at the celebration for my partners life. So here you go...

Just to introduce, clarify or confuse my bit you may be wondering why, on the Program for Celebration it says Rider Wait Allegory. To explain this, my partner and I threw a few great dinner parties over our many years together. On that very rare occasion, after a wee too many Cardonays, a poor unsuspecting guest might be very lucky to get one of my terrible tarot card readings. A friend, who is here today has been one of those poor, poor guests and will bemoaningly testify to this.
I have a Rider Waite Tarot Card pack. One of the cards in the pack is The Fool. It can symbolise lifes journey and that you never really know what is around the next corner but you march merrily on through it.
I first met my partner on a bicycle ride that another friend of mine who is here today, took me on back in 1985. Thanks fellow rider Soddy. Good things come to riders that wait. So now that's as clear as mud to you.......

Another Rider. Waite. Tarot card. Fools story. Starts. NOW! One of those huge, tassie, blue-day mornings, way back when, maybe 2nd or 3rd time you've done this. It was a nice cycle before. Would be nice to do it again! You charge the water bottle, make sure the tyres are hard, don the helmet, sunnies & lookin' pretty flash in those skin tight lycra shorts, knobbly knees blowin in the breeze, you take off down the streets. Air rushes past. Through the city, domain, govie house to the left and up to the bridge...

The future segue is Melbourne. You. The Rider. Waite. You share a house. You becomes we. We lives together in St Kildas. After a few years she becomes a well known potter. Going crazy with clay, she helps set up South Melbourne Gasworks Arts Centre. Always busy. The first few years of 26 good ones pass...
Back on that bridge, traffic whining, sun heats up the blacktop, you start peddling hard through those eastern sore suburbs...
We marry in Melbourne. Friends and family meet. The Mazda Capella blows its head gasket on the Geelong Freeway again! How the hell are we going to get to that lavish Queenscliffe honeymoon we spent our entire life savings on! The sky is falling!
A few minutes later, by some kind of divine intervention, our wedding photographer resident angel drives past and spies us on the verge. Shoulda put a few big ones on the ggs that day!..

Traffic dies, road winds up Grass Tree hill, down into low gear now, slowly climbing. Breath of Eucalypts. Stillness is broken by heartbeats thumping, drips of sweat. Black cockatoos cry and crows caw...
Another analogy. Another hill. Melbourne gets harder. She gets pregnant. A big mountain. Hobart looks like the summit. The rubber band snaps us back to Tassie and we move and buy 41 Louden St. Cheapest house in Hobart that year! Yeh and up near the tip!
Big & bigger from the beginning he is born and we. Become three...
Back on the hill, you've reached the summit. Gravity sucks. The wheels get the idea. Down, down, down towards Richmond you burn...
...She changes direction and does the day job. Supermum! You care for the lad, garden, make art and extend the house. Superdad. He starts school. Superboy. She stops the power towers in South Hobart and gets a masters degree to boot. We grow into our forties and share good times. I retrain and become a geek. We move to Arthur Street. Back in Sydney, her folks pass away. We buy a private forest reserve at Roaring Beach and start to make plans to be there until we are racing each other on our Zimmer frames. We move to the quiet of Roope street Newtown and spend nights listening to the dulcit tones of bogans burning up the Brooker.
The down hill run slows as you reach Malcolms Hut Road. Your in the flat of the Coal River Valley. You veer right and coast easily. Its an hour and half since you started.
It is the peek of day with the heat shimmering. The grass and sea breeze whisper their secrets, the journey cools...
She buys caravans and we spend a few years sharing weekends of paradise at Roaring beach.
We make more friends. She works for DPAC and we slowly design a house to build there. He grows taller than her - and then me. Rats! She turns fifty and we celebrate with many friends at a long table last supper down on the block...
You have now reached what is known as the Dulcot intersection. Your cup is half empty and the last hill is always the worst. You select the lowest gear and climb up and up steeply. It's a hard hill but you've shared such good times together. You are thinking about more you could share.
You see each other. See the smile and she gives you that look. That look! That look! Wah!
She waves as you pull off the road to the studio. The ride is over but the future and past come into being again.