From the Library

[Biggles]

He walked right past my table without looking at me and went to the counter.  "Coffee," he said.  The waitress started to ask if that was for here or to take out but something in his voice made her think the better of it.  She quickly set out a large white Styrofoam cup with a plastic lid.  Jim paid and walked over to my table. 
He sat down heavily, without speaking, and peeled the lid from his cup with a hand like a claw.  He took a drink and looked darkly into the cup.  I feared for a moment that he might dump the stuff over his head, or at least pour it down his boot.  But he just warmed his hands over the steaming cup and looked at me, raising one eyebrow in a sudden show of levity.
"Been here long?" he asked.
"Can't tell yet."
Jim looked out the window. "Lovely weather. It looks like midnight."
"Supposed to snow."  Jim nodded.
"We better warm up and head for home.  I don't want to spend the winter in this place."  He looked around. "Even it if is warm."
Leanings  Peter Egan p50

[Biggles]

The rear was an ancient K-70 Dunlop, and the front carried no identification at ail except the single word, "Riken", which I took to be either a brand name or a misspelled assessment of the tire's road- holding qualities.  Both tires were worn perfectly square across the bottom, leaving a heeled-over footprint about the thickness of a dime.  The mildest lean caused the bike to handle very oddly, cornering in swoops and dips, like a playful otter chasing trout.  Also, the rear tire tried to slide a quick 180 into every turn, which was no fun at all.  So I went down to the cycle shop and bought a pair of Universal tires, legendary for their low price and for cutting down on sparks and noise by keeping your rims off the pavement.  They were a vast improvement.
Leanings  Peter Egan p62

[Biggles]

Universal shod, I rode off into town to show people my new bike.  The Honda 150 Benly drew mixed reviews that first day.  Everyone had an opinion; no one was neutral.  A friend of mine said it was "a bike only a pimp could love," and a man at a stoplight told me it was the "best damned bike I ever had."  The child across the street, who just recently learned to talk, described it as "a funny motorcycle."  People who knew absolutely nothing about motorcycles thought it was "very pretty," or even "beautiful."  Those more acquainted with the breed rolled their eyes back in their heads and snorted, or merely chuckled quietly.  Then, when they settled down to examine the old bike, their eyes took on a vague, faraway look and I knew that they were being transported back to something or someplace.
Leanings  Peter Egan p62-3

[Biggles]

We got under way early on a Saturday morning, heading north out of Madison toward a town called Sauk City.  The first 15 miles of highway were crowded and busy.  The 150 felt smooth and crisp in the cool morning air, but just couldn't push two people and a windscreen through the air at anything over 50 mph.  We got passed by everything on the road; funeral processions, farm implements, three nuns in a station wagon- everything but a homecoming float and the Tijuana Marching Guitar Band.   
Most people seemed to sense we were working with some kind of power deficit and gave us waves of encouragement.
Leanings  Peter Egan p63

[Biggles]

We went back to the village and I took the Triumph for a test ride.  Everything was loose, but the bike ran fine.  So after a moment of silence for my life's savings I swallowed hard and wrote out a check. We were only 25 miles from the city, so I decided to live dangerously and ride the Bonneville home.  Barb drove our Volkswagen, "Follow me, but keep your distance," I advised.  "Watch for falling parts and blink your lights if run over anything."
Leanings  Peter Egan p73

[Biggles]

The brakes were terrible, but every time I dived into a corner at unchecked, suicidal speed I discovered there was no cause for alarm; the Triumph heeled over into an easy arc and came out of the corner without flinching.  The hand and foot controls felt crude and antique after the velvet-and-Teflon smoothness of those on my Japanese Four, yet the performance of the bike was anything but antique.  The speedometer needle touched a surprisingly easy 105 mph as I moved out to put some distance on a gravel-tossing milk tanker.
The Bonneville tracked down the road with an uncanny, almost gyroscopic stability at that speed, encouraging you to go faster than 12-year-old maladjusted engines full of dirty old oil ought to.  I got a firm grip on my enthusiasm, slowed down, and made it home without blowing the thing up.
Leanings  Peter Egan p74

[Biggles]

We gave up the search and headed out of town to the Interstate, where we found a motel and a nearby restaurant staffed by some high school girls who seemed to be getting the most out of their grape gum.  We had a dinner of enchiladas out of a can sprinkled with a kind of cheese product.  The enchiladas were cold, but were served with hot lettuce; proof that lettuce heats faster in a microwave oven.
The number of people in the restaurant business who can't cook to save their lives is staggering.  If they were plumbers our houses would all be flooded.  If they worked for the government things would be just as they are now.
Leanings  Peter Egan p89

[Biggles]

Beneath the relaxed magic of the sun and palm trees is a special tension that keeps people alert, their eyes moving.  Daytona is full of famous people, at least if you follow motorcycle racing.  At the hotel coffee shop you hear the rapid ups and downs of a British accent and turn to see Mike Hailwood sitting at the next table with a friend.  He is engrossed in conversation, fortunately, and doesn't notice the forkful of grits and melted butter you've just dumped on your lap.
At a crosswalk on Beach Boulevard a van pulls up and its driver turns out to be, on second take, Gary Nixon.  While dining on sweet and sour shrimp at the Hawaiian Inn that night our perfect view of four hula dancers doing a floor show is interrupted by the entire Yoshimura family filing in, led by Pops himself.  Wes Cooley joins them a few minutes later and Rich Schlachter drops by to say hello, or whatever very fast, famous guys say to one another.
Leanings  Peter Egan p98

[Biggles]

The crowd in Daytona is truly international.  The British arrive in droves, escaping the same lousy weather as the Americans from the north or the eastern seaboard.   
Lots of French; in the hotel lobby a French reporter with a fistful of notes is shouting a race report long distance to Paris or somewhere ("C'est Cooo-leee!  Non, non Cooo-leee!") while a blonde woman who somehow escaped from a designer jeans commercial clings to his arm and pouts and generally looks French.  Canadians are everywhere, with plenty of red maple leaves on their luggage so no one mistakes them for Americans.  At the International House of Pancakes a group of Italian men wearing Meccanica Ducati T-shirts argue among themselves over the meaning of Cheese Blintz or Buckwheat Strawberry Delight and a man behind us in line says, "By God, this really is an International House of Pancakes."
Leanings  Peter Egan p98-9

[Biggles]

At the bike factory the stamping and machining of gears, shafts, etc. is mostly automated, but the final assembly line is handwork and the most interesting to see.   
There's something strange about watching bare frames come down from the ceiling on hooks at one end of the assembly line while at the other end, just a few hundred feet away, completed machines are started up and ridden away.  Last time I restored a bike and assembled it from parts it took me about six months, and starting the rebuilt engine for the first time was a dramatic event to rival the first manned flight.  Yamaha was turning out a new living, breathing 550 Vision about every 30 seconds, fully expecting each one to start and work just fine.
Leanings  Peter Egan p108-9

[Biggles]

The most exciting bit of assembly line technology for the visiting journalists, because so many of us have spent time chasing ball bearings under workbenches, was the installation of steering head bearings.  The workman was dipping a ring-shaped vacuum attachment into a huge keg of ball bearings, shoving them into the grease of the steering head cups, and then releasing the vacuum.  We watched in amazement. "So that's how they do it," said Editor Larry Works, "they have a bearing Hoover."
Leanings  Peter Egan p109

[Biggles]

If Federico Fellini ever gets a little farther out and wants to film a truly bizarre spectacle taken from real life, he should bring his camera crew and sound men into the cargo bay of the Isle of Man ferry on a night when approximately 500 motorcycles are being cranked over or kick started all at once, packed together in a steel room about the size of a small gymnasium and lighted by a dim row of 40 watt light bulbs.
The microphones would pick up an ear-splitting confusion of shrieking RDs, high-revving unmuffled Fours, and the general chest-pounding thunder of Ducati 900s, Norton 850s and 750s, Harleys, Triumphs, BSAs, BMWs, and piston-slapping British 500 Singles, all of it bouncing off the walls in an incredible rising and falling wail.  The camera crews would get footage of several hundred leather-clad people flipping down face shields and punching starter buttons, with others in the mob of bikes heaving up and down on kickstarters like erratic pistons in some kind of insane smoke machine, headlights flaring on to make a blanket of brilliance and flashing chrome at the bottom layer of the smoke cloud.  They could catch the bikes launching themselves row by row up the ramp into the dark night, people spinning their tires on the oil-slick steel ramp or catching traction and disappearing in half-controlled wheelies.
What no film could capture is the mixed smell of Castrol R, several brands of two-stroke oil, and all the other choking thick exhaust fumes, or the instant, furnace-like heat given off by hundreds of motorcycles lighting their engines in a confined space.  Also, they'd have to film it through the distorted starburst pattern of a really scratched yellow face shield, just to get the last effect of profound unreality.  You wouldn't want to witness this scene if you'd been smoking anything funny or you might just go mad and never recover.
Leanings  Peter Egan p116-7

[Biggles]

The crowd is generally polite, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic.  Even with all the drinking and pub-crawling at night there never seems to be any ugliness; none of the usual fistfights, throwing up kerbside, or shouting clever things at passing women.  Even the roughest-looking characters never seem to get publicly drunk or nasty.  People stand around in groups of friends, pints of Guinness in hand, looking at bikes and talking about racing.  I've never seen so many people drink so much and have such a good time without anyone getting out of control.  They could obviously use some Mean and Stupid lessons from race fans in other parts of the world.
It probably goes back to the cost and commitment of getting to the island.  In order to get there you have to (a) love motorcycles and (b) be smart enough to read a steamship schedule, both severe obstacles to a large part of the human race.  The Isle of Man crowd is a fun collection of people.
Leanings  Peter Egan p118-9

[Biggles]

Briefly, the circuit is a 37.7-mile rectangle that looks as though its been shipped parcel post through the U.S. Mail (crushed and dented in spots), running up one side of the island and back down the other.  Most of the narrow pavement runs through villages, farms, and wooded glens in gently rolling countryside, but at the north end of the island it climbs the side of Mt. Snaefel and then descends in great sweeping stretches all the way to the start/finish line in Douglas.
There are only about a dozen slow corners on the course, so the rest the circuit can be taken about as fast as memory and icy nerve allow.  If you can remember what's around the next blind corner or over the brow of the next blind hill (and most people can't) you can ride large sections of the course flat out.  If your memory isn't so good there are a lot of walls, churches, houses, and other fine examples of picturesque stonemasonry waiting to turn you into an ex-motorcyclist.
Leanings  Peter Egan p119

[Biggles]

The next day was Mad Sunday, when the track is open to the public and the Police and their radar guns look the other way.  Barb and I joined a stream of speeding bikes for a quick lap.  Most of the riders were relatively sane, under the circumstances.  The only hairy part was the downhill off the mountain.  Every time we came up behind some slow vintage bike, like a smoking Scott Flying Squirrel, I'd check the mirrors and find we were being passed by a Honda 900F going 90 being passed by a Guzzi Le Mans going 100 being overtaken by a Bimota Kawasaki going flat out.  This telescoping speed range can make things exciting on Mad Sunday.
Leanings  Peter Egan p123