Chapter 8

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I buy, therefore I am. I am certain that this would sound better if it were in Latin and it is not like I didn't do a fair old Google to find out what the phrase might be in Latin. Never mind. What it means is that if I feel I want to do something or be something then I will purchase the paraphernalia associated with said thing. If I want to feel like I am a better keyboard player than I am, I will buy a keyboard. If I want to be a guitarist I will buy a guitar, and then an affects unit, and then and amp before I even think about a lesson. Then there is Mel's favourite example. Before I got my motorcycle licence and before I even knew I wanted to ever ride a motorbike I bought a helmet, a jacket, some jeans with Kevlar inserts and some very serious boots. I bought the gear so, in my mind, I was already 80% the motorcyclist. Thankfully, I purchased a scooter (much loved) about a year after that so most of the gear came in handy. With the glaring exception of the boots which would have looked out of place on a 600cc tourer let alone a 150cc scooter traveling around Melbourne's CBD.

Of course, the purchase of motorcycle safety gear goes hand in hand with my risk averseness, or rather my awareness of things that can go wrong. I remember being around the age of eight or ten and reading a sealed section of a Wheels car magazine in Australia. It covered road safety and the sealed section was required as it had photographs of what could happen when the roads weren't so safe. I recall one photo vividly showing one perfectly formed - if bloody - leg and the other leg which was the source of the blood. A motorcyclist had come off and the bone of leg that hit the ground had been sheered out of the leg so that the leg's skin and bone was attached to the cyclist's hip, but below that they were separate. I would rather do what I can to avoid that.

Which brings me full circle as to why I got my motorcycle licence in the first place. On my previous occasion the Greek Islands I couldn't help but think that getting around the Islands on a scooter would be both exciting and convenient. Of course, my awareness of what could go wrong meant that I was hesitant to hire a scooter. I had no experience on a motored-bike other than the BMX I attached a lawn mower motor to (long story: another time) and, remember, I did not have the associated gear so I could not have been ready for it. It is all about the gear. When I returned to Melbourne I fairly promptly booked in for lessons at Honda's HART centre at Tullamarine and in due course got my licence.

Before Mel, who also has a motorcycle licence, and I had left for this particular trip to the Islands we discussed whether we would be riding scooters at our destination. Given my safety concerns and the limited packing room available in our commendably small bags we decided that we would not.

On arrival, the allure of the scooter-hire was immediate and powerful. Mel, particularly, felt a strong pull. But Mel is that sort of girl. She went skydiving and laughed all the way down. She abseiled down a 15 story building in the City of London and complained it was boring. She is the opposite of me in this area - she has a complete unawareness of what can go wrong. Either that or she has a strong ability to ignore it.

Admittedly, I too was interested in this forbidden fruit and as soon as I gave Mel a whiff of that interest she had me inside a rental garage and had her credit card and licence out. Based on a previous positive experience in Hawaii, she opted for a quad bike.

Quad bikes are an odd thing. Logic says that four wheels on the ground must be more stable than two. However, logic also says that a quad bike does not lean and is quite tall in comparison to the width and length of the footprint its four wheels make. That is a long winded way of saying that quad bikes are inherently unstable. This inherent instability, along with a complete lack of safety gear, was at the forefront of my mind as Mel drove us via the backroads to the beautiful city of Io, to the south of Santorini. Yet even in my highly stressed state - and I can say that even when I am not so highly stressed that I am relatively highly stressed - I could not ignore the wonderful scenery along the way.

How we came to take the backroads to Io is a story worth telling. Early on in the journey, Mel and I stopped at a petrol station still well within Thira. Old school style, a pump attendant came out, took the cap off the petrol tank, peered inside and told us we would only need €3 to fill the tank instead of the €5 we had asked him to put in. Nice of him, really. Then we asked him the way to Io. At first, he pointed us down the main road, which was well signed as being the route to Io. Then, just as we were about to leave he gave us the local tip for a better route to Io, via the coast. His English was not great, but a wave here and a 'Ella ... ella ... ' there put us in the right direction. I really appreciated his effort and left him a tip. And I can tell you it was not the kind of tip that I gave to the dodgy mini-cab driver that took us to Gatwick. Back to the most unstable road trip.

The trip to Io was, surprisingly, without incident. Sure, Mel turned off the wrong way once and we ended up doing the kind of all-terraining that quad bikes are designed to do. But traffic was light and the roads - perhaps due in part to acceptance into the EU - were quite good and we arrived in Io in one piece (if you have ever seen the move that Tom Arnold makes in True Lies, where he takes cover from machine gun fire behind a pole and then check to see all of his bodily parts are still attached you will get some idea of how I was feeling when we arrived at Io).

Io looks great. Its buildings are beautiful and authentic in the Greek style. But it is not as old a city as first appears. In the 1950's, Io was ravaged by an earthquake. This is not surprising, of course, as Santorini is built on a volcano. Io was rebuilt, thankfully, in the traditional style leaving us with the beautiful village we were seeing on this day. If you have received a postcard depicting a blue-roofed, white church on a Greek Island then the chances are that the photo was taken in Io. It is difficult to take a picture in Io that does not look like a postcard. This is not an exaggeration. It is often said that the sunsets in Io better even those in Thira, though I have not experienced this first hand. It is on my to-do list.

Mel and I spent the day taking photographs - or postcards, if you will - and ambling about. We made a few enquiries about accommodation and were pleasantly surprised by how much cheaper it was compared to similar accommodation in Thira. Certainly, if I am on Santorini again I will opt for accommodation in Io.

After I used up my second 1/2 hour of internet access at a surprisingly located EasyInternet spot we headed up to a roof-top cafe for lunch. This was my only unpleasant experience of the day. We ordered four things from the menu, but several more items arrived at our table that we were ultimately charged for. I could have made a fuss, but I could not see how I would prevail. Besides, it was quite pleasant looking out into the caldera from this new (for me) vantage point and I did not want to ruin it by getting into an argument with the locals. Still, beware of this tactic should you find yourself in the area.

All photo'd out, it was time to get on the quad bike - aka, The Hog - and to get those wheels a'turnin'. We were headed for the black beach of Perissa.