From the Library

[Biggles]

Anyway, with all that, it was already about 3:00 before I turned off into the mountains, taking a different road than we did, but I still thought I might make it by, say, 7:00. Fool that I am. Washed-out and potholed, endless second and third-gear twists and turns with patches of loose gravel, villages with thousands of topes (speedbumps), often unmarked, trucks and buses to get around, dodging pigs, dogs, chickens, cows, horses, and burros. All the good stuff.
And soon, it started to get dark. Oh man, was I freaking! The first time on this whole long journey I've travelled at night, and of all places: in the mountains of Oaxaca. In addition to the obvious hazards to life and limb, apparently the "bandido" threat is very active these days on the roads of Oaxaca, even along the coast, and Lonely Planet warns, "the best defence is not to travel at night". But I didn't know what else to do; there wasn't a Best Western anywhere to be seen, and camping at the roadside didn't seem a particularly clever option either.
Ghost Rider  Neil Peart p208-9

[Biggles]

In truth, I think Keith kind of sympathized with my bachelor-with-a vengeance stance, for I had half-jokingly mentioned that I was thinking of putting my Ducati 916 (one of the most beautiful of motorcycles) in the living room, and when I got back from Mexico, I laughed to see it sitting in the front window, flagrantly shiny, red, and so unfeminine.
Ghost Rider  Neil Peart p236

[Biggles]

Some mornings I would wake up freaking and sad and lonely and desperate, but as soon as I got on the bike, the world would first contract, to the size of the machine which carried me and everything I needed and then it would expand, to the wide new world of highway, landscape, and wildlife coming at me. Once I started getting out and hiking in the woods and mountains, I found the same benefits applied. It wasn't about the beautiful scenery or the peace and serenity of Nature; it wasn't the looking that mattered, it was the moving. To be on the road, or on the march, that was the thing.
Ghost Rider  Neil Peart p250

[Biggles]

The wispy Palo Verde trees carried an array of tiny yellow blossoms; the spindly arms of the ocotillo cactus were studded with vibrant red; a host of small plants and bushes displayed their subtle jewellery, and the mesquite, cholla, and giant saguaro cactus wore their full-dress greens. The wind blew fierce and steady from the west, raising dust clouds along the roadside, and it was a "quartering" wind against me and the motorcycle. Bad enough riding against a headwind that buffeted my helmet around and drove stubbornly back against the bike and my body, but trying to steer the bike into a wall of wind that was slightly off-center like that was even worse, combining the wind of my passage at 80 mph against the 40 mph wind vectoring in at me.
Ghost Rider  Neil Peart p318

[Biggles]

You know I prefer the back roads, the empty two-lane blacktop thrill-rides of the West, but there is still something special about a long, relentless journey, even on the "Superslab"; Brutus and I did a couple of cross-country marathons during the Rush tour (Virginia to Frisco in four days, Toronto to L.A. in five) and we got to like the way you just keep humming along, stopping only for gas and "biological breaks", with a mental jukebox dredging up every song you ever knew and playing it back to you. Sure you get stiff and sore, and maybe cold and wet, but that's the price of admission.
Ghost Rider  Neil Peart p344

[Biggles]

Yesterday morning I was setting off early from the Four Seasons to my folks' place in Severn Bridge for breakfast, but when I brought my bike up from the parking lot, I found the rear tire was flat. Nothing else to do- I got out my repair kit, located a big nail sticking out of the tire, removed it, and plugged the hole, as I've had to do several times before, in various exotic locations. And here's where a real hotel shows its mettle: instead of "boging out" about having me there lowering the tone of their front entrance- leather-clad Scooter Trash sitting on the ground behind his dirty old motorcycle with tools spread around- bellman ran off to get the hotel's electric compressor to help me fill the tire, and the doorman brought me a bottle of Evian and a towel- because of course it was sweltering hot in the city yesterday, even at 7:00 a.m.
So that was pretty nice, for a bummer situation.
Ghost Rider  Neil Peart p366-7

[Biggles]

When the bike was parked in my garage, I was enjoying my well- earned glass of Macallan at the kitchen counter, and started to smile about it, thinking, "You know, that was a real adventure today."
And so it had been- both the good and the bad. For of course it could have been much worse, in many ways, and those ways had been avoided in large part by the "kindness of strangers". At the end of the day I was left feeling a little better about the world, and about life- for I also had to smile at a thought that sometimes crosses my mind at the end of a long, perilous day. "I have cheated death again."
Ghost Rider  Neil Peart p368-9

[Biggles]

Some lovely vistas of blue ocean, surfswept stretches of beach, giant teeth of rock sticking up, conifers shaped to leeward by the wind, tall stands of Douglas fir, and all like that, certainly makes a beautiful sight. However, once you've seen it one or two times from the end of a line of traffic backed up and crawling behind a big fat RV towing a sport-ute, or a double-trailer dumptruck. Or, just as the road finally opened up a little south of Coos Bay (nice name that), a bitter fog rolled in, hiding the road, the traffic, and the scenery. And making it 47°F outside.
Ghost Rider  Neil Peart p428

[Biggles]

I was just thinking about how some of those other biker-guys give the rest of us a bad name, you know? This morning at the Ahwanee I woke at about 6:30, windows open and chilly, pine-scented air keeping me under the covers for awhile, and while I enjoyed that first smoke, I heard an open-piped Harley exploding, one cylinder at a time, trying with repeated blats and concussions and finally igniting into a pulsing roar of potato-potato on fast idle, then rumbling off through the woods like a flathead Ford with a broken muffler (pretty good analogy, actually).
Ghost Rider  Neil Peart p448-9

[Biggles]

"Uncle Bill" is my Dad's brother and at that time was a Louisiana State Trooper, a motorcycle trooper! Of course, the huge Police machine complete with siren, radio and red lights was a "don't touch" item, but no one said I couldn't look at it for hours and idolize every bolt on it. Any opportunity to do just that was taken, because that motorcycle was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.
One particular weekend, Uncle Bill and my Aunt Evelyn invited over to spend the night and acceptance was immediate. On that beautiful Saturday morning after breakfast, my Uncle was washing and polishing the huge, white bike on the sidewalk that led from the front door. He allowed me to help him dry it and I was ecstatic. 
As the bike sat there and glistened in the morning sun, Uncle Bill cranked it up and asked a question that would forever shape the rest of my life, "You want to go for a ride?" As I remember it, that moment was almost holy and to this very day forms an indelible picture in my mind along with a warm gratitude for the Uncle that lovingly and unknowingly flipped the switch that made me the insatiable fanatic that authors this book.
Shiny Side Up  Michael Abadie p xii

[Biggles]

As far as I'm concerned, grand prix is by far a greater mix of thrill-a-minute, white-knuckle,  adrenaline drenched racing. While watching an Italian race recently, I was amazed time and again to see those crotch rocket jockeys wring them out. One hundred eighty or so in the straights, do a stand up on both brakes and then dump the bikes into a series of turns so tight that there was about an inch of clearance between the track and the riders' ELBOW! I didn't say his knee, I said HIS ELBOW! 
Riding like that makes even non-bikers want to stand up and do a hallelujah jig! I rode like that one time; a very short distance. After waking up in the weeds against a chain link fence with pieces of my skin smeared into the asphalt, the realization occurred that I had made a serious miscalculation.
All of the motorcycles in the race were of the same class and virtually same type of construction with very similar horsepower. The difference in the winner and all of the "also rans" was the rider. The winner evidently had more courage and more confidence in his abilities and the potential of his machine. The fastest, most agile motorcycle in the world can't win a race with a rider full of fear and doubt. No chicken men are allowed in the eagle's nest!
Shiny Side Up  Michael Abadie p28

[Biggles]

Hour after hour, day after day, multiplied thousands of motorcyclists zip up and down the roads in our country, some at breakneck speeds, without ever questioning the mechanical capabilities of the machine between their legs. Truly the faith of the average motorcycle rider is to be highly respected. Having built and rebuilt a few scooters myself over the years, I've seen the hundreds of intricate parts that make up the puzzle of the average motorcycle. All of the parts from the tiniest bearing, bushing or circlip, to the tank, forks, swingarm and everything in between, must perform in flawless concert to make the bike carry our carcasses from point A to point B. If a critical one of those parts decides to give up the ghost, the whole thing either sputters, stops, blows up or flies apart Sometimes the truth is just plain ugly, ain't it? However, most of us just climb on, crank it up and blast down the interstate three feet from an 18 wheel behemoth without ever giving a second thought. That, brothers, is faith in action! If the rider's attention was continually centered on what could possibly go wrong, then all the great benefits of riding would be wiped out. Getting on bike would become a masochistic exercise in terror that no one in his right mind would want. But we, because we have biker faith, ride joyously and terror free trusting in and relying on our faithful scooters to take us through all of life's great poker runs.
Shiny Side Up  Michael Abadie p30-1

[Biggles]

My riding buddies and I are chewing at the handle bars in anticipation of the eastbound scoot to join with a zillion of our comrades for the frolic in the sunshine state. As an added treat, there is a dinner and get together for the Iron Butt Association that should prove to be a lot of fun for those of us who are truly smitten with the afflictive disposition for extreme long distance riding.
With the re-emergence of motorcycle season that is now once again upon us, we will all be coming back into contact with friends and acquaintances we haven't seen in awhile. Familiar faces and the renewal relationships usually results in the nice, groovy feelings of the warm fuzzy variety. Some of those old faces are mighty fuzzy too! After a year has lapsed, a considerable amount of water has passed beneath the proverbial bridge; some good and some not so good.
Shiny Side Up  Michael Abadie p79-80

[Biggles]

And how many of us have had to listen to the never ending cries? My Aunt Harriet's third cousin's wife bought a bike and on her first ride somebody ran a red light and ripped off both her lips with the tie rod end of a Mercedes.  You'd  better  quit riding those death machines! Isn't it strange that to some, it's always the fault of the motorcycle? That old chick's permanent smile could have just as easily happened while strutting across the street on foot, but most non-bikers never think of that. The poor old bike always gets the blame, no matter what. But, no matter what, I'm going to enjoy my scooting days while I've got them and I'm not going to allow one of society's fear mongers to steal my joy. So there! If our riding was dependent on public opinions, I'd probably never leave the garage. Those who don't ride don't understand.
Shiny Side Up  Michael Abadie p95

[Biggles]

I'd miss our regular motorcycle-maintenance and beer-drinking sessions and blats into the hills. Dave was a motorcycle journalist. We'd met years earlier. For a long time I'd thought motorcyclists in Sydney were a really friendly bunch; every time I was off the rig and belting around the eastern suburbs on my bike I'd get a wave during rush hour on the big lane split into Bondi. Turned out it was Dave every time, just on a different bike each month. When we finally stopped one day in the same place he explained he'd been waving to me for ages.
"Mate, I always had on the same helmet." I hadn't noticed.
Is That Thing Diesel?  Paul Carter p6