From the Library

[Biggles]

Since I come from a family that found anything more technical than changing light bulbs a job for experts, my love of motorcycles is not mainly based on the engineering miracles that send others into raptures. And although I feel a fascination born of both envy and the exotic appeal of foreignness for those mechanically oriented souls who are fearless in the face of exploded diagrams and who have obviously divined the mysteries of tools, always in possession of the proper implement for any job, my kind of admiration starts from outside.
Thus, to me, some of today's Japanese crotch rockets look a bit too much like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to command high aesthetic respect, not to mention the fact that they call up in me the vestiges of a vague childhood fear of toy robots. The genesis of their design can be traced back to Astro Boy; the mammoth tanks over which riders stretch like figures clinging to missiles, the impossibly wide rear tires, the squashed, biomorphic tails remind me of a sight from which I always recoil- the over-pumped, steroidal practitioners of obsessive bodybuilding. But they are a hell of a lot of fun to ride.
The Perfect Vehicle  Melissa Pierson p216