Jacksons
‘Jackson’ is a very useful word coined by our incomparable friend, Austin Vince. He has ridden a motorbike round the world twice so he knows his shit when it comes to life on the road. www.mondoenduro.com
Jackson – a noun and a verb. Definition: a random human being.
That’s it. A random human being. I had the pleasure of hearing Austin using the word in Moab, Utah, when we were looking for someone to take a photo of the four of us (with Lois, his wife) and he said “let’s ask this Jackson here” and pointed to a guy at a nearby drive-thru cash machine (which is a blog entry in itself, but not now…)
The reason that I bring this up is that ARGENTINA IS FULL OF JACKSONS. I love the place, don’t get me wrong, but they really really love the bike. Every single time we stop – to get petrol, to get directions, to ask about a hotel – the Jacksons SWARM. Mike left me to buy a bottle of water a couple of days ago and when he came back, there were 15 people around me. Amazing. “De donde vienen?” is always the opener (where are you from? – though with badly spelt Spanish) then it gets on to ‘where are you going?’, ‘how many cylinders is the engine?’ (these Jacksons know their shit) and ‘what brand is this?’. All of which, I have finely polished answers to in Spanish.
The intransitive verb use is “to be Jacksoned”. Mike will sometimes get back from paying for petrol or whatever, and say “sorry you got so Jacksoned”.On the whole, Mike gets really stressed out by the Jacksons whereas I tend to suffer fools (Jacksons) gladly so end up being the one who answers the endlessly identical questions. Such is marriage, folks, each one has their role…
