From the Library

[Biggles]

When things conspire - the traffic is thick and wild, the sun is leaving moment for moment, rain slicks the surface of the road - the rider best understands what can otherwise remain hidden: that a motorcyclist is both the happy passenger on an amusement park ride and its earnest operator. The rider  splits into two, navigating between vacation and dire responsibility.
Sons Of Thunder p24  Melissa Pierson

[Biggles]

The burble of my exhaust unwound like a long cord behind me. Soon my speed snapped it, and I heard only the cry of the wind which my battering head split and fended aside. The cry rose with my speed to a shriek: while the air's coldness streamed like two jets of iced water into my dissolving eyes. I screwed them to slits, and focused my sight two hundred yards ahead of me on the empty mosaic of the tar's gravelled undulations.
Like arrows the tiny flies pricked my cheeks: and sometimes a heavier body, some house-fly or beetle, would crash into face or lips like a spent bullet. A glance at the speedometer: seventy-eight. Boanerges is warming up. I pull the throttle right open, the top of the slope, and we swoop flying across the dip, and up-down up-down the switchback beyond: the weighty machine launching itself like a projectile with a whirr of wheels into the air at the take-off of each rise, to land lurchingly with such a snatch of the driving chain as jerks my spine like a rictus.
Sons Of Thunder p30  T. E. Lawrence

[Biggles]

Traffic this morning was mainly Morris Oxfords, doing their thirty up or down. Boa and myself were pioneers of the new order, which will do seventy or more between point and point. Like all pioneers we incurred odium. The Morris Oxfords were calculating on other traffic doing their own staid forty feet a second. Boa was doing 120. While they were thinking about swinging off the crown of the road to let him pass, he had leaped past them, a rattle and roar and glitter of polished nickel, with a blue button on top. They waved their arms wildly, or their sticks, in protest. Boa was round the next corner, or over the next-hill-but-two while they were spluttering. Never has Boa gone better. I kept on patting him, and opening his throttle, knowing all the while that in a month or two he will be someone else's, and myself in a land without roads or speed. If I were rich he should have a warm dry garage, and no work in his old age. An almost human machine, he is, a real prolongation of my own faculties: and so handsome and efficient. Never have I had anything like him.
Sons Of Thunder p35-6  T. E. Lawrence

[Biggles]

I had bought my motorbike soon after I was sixteen. It was a second-hand Ariel 500cc and it cost me twenty-two pounds. It was a wonderful big powerful machine and when I rode upon it, it gave me an amazing feeling of winged majesty and of independence that I had never known before. Wherever I wished to go, my mighty Ariel would take me. Up to then, I had either had to walk or bicycle or buy a ticket for a bus or a train and that was a slow business. But now all I had to do was sling one leg over the saddle, kick the starter and away I went. I got the same feeling a few years later when I flew single-seater fighter planes in the war.
Sons Of Thunder p41  Roald Dahl

[Biggles]

With my clarinet strapped behind me I got almost to Rochester to encounter the tail of what proved to be a six-mile queue. As carefully as one does in such circumstances, I rode past it all - and was dismayed by the anger and hostility of all those stationary motorists, blaring their horns or even waving fists at me. 
There was no way in which I could have been harming them, but the thought that I was going and they were not aroused furious jealousy. Even on a good motorcycle, the world can be a sad place.
Sons Of Thunder p52  L. J. K. Setright

[Biggles]

Down the Hoggar Massif, descending 1,000ft, skimming over sand dunes like surfing sea waves, we grappled drifts with high revs in low gear. It was like tackling hazards in a club trials event. Chiding each other several times about intentionally picking out every rock and rift and nearly having us both fall off, we kept rolling along. We fell about three feet over an unseen rim that put a strain on every nut and bolt. Bienk on the 'Moseley' rear mudguard pillion seat, came down just right to hold on to something, saving herself from being dumped. Dark patches of hard mineral ground were showing up through the sand here and there and between them were these treacherous hollows of powder-like sand. We pounced from one hard patch to another to skim across these sand-traps until they became longer, deeper and softer and eventually trapped our wheels. Everything was unloaded again, carried across and then the unladen combination coaxed through these dangerous sink holes, while we sung the oarsman's chant, 'One - two - PUSH!'
Sons Of Thunder p73  Theresa Wallach

[Biggles]

As we rounded a bend we ran into a drove of oxen, and I heard Ernesto call out in a slightly shaky voice, "The brake's gone!"
We were going downhill and we could see that the slope ended in a row of poplars some 400 yards ahead. The bike was still picking up speed, but in fact I felt no fear. Looking back on it now, knowing that a river ran behind the poplars, I reckon this could have been the end of the line for us. At the very least we might have broken a few bones. But all I did was tell Fuser to brake using the gears and run the bike into the hill.
With a degree of confidence quite unwarranted in an inexperienced driver, Ernesto got the bike into third, then into second, which reduced our speed considerably, and finally, with difficulty, he got it into first. At once, taking advantage of our slower speed, he aimed the bike straight at the bank. As I jumped off the back he spread his legs, and I saw him come off the seat just a fraction of a second before the front wheel hit the mountain. We ran to switch off the engine to prevent a fire, and then shook hands, happy still to be alive.
Sons Of Thunder p81-2  Alberto Granado

[Biggles]

There are moments on a motorcycle when all the glory of motion is distilled into one purposeful package. Chasing curves over a swelling landscape, a motorcycle enters the pure expression of physics and is bound to the road in a way no car will ever know. The rider and machine are literally balanced on the infinitely thin line where centripetal forces meet gravity. Despite this state of suspended disaster, the sensation of risk is largely a sensation; the motorcycle is in harmony with the road, and risk comes overwhelmingly from other drivers. Any moment of travel on a motorcycle is a light and essential moment, an agile rebuke to a life conducted in one place. The raw force of the engine is not hidden beneath a hood, but alternately purrs and growls a few inches from the knees, demanding consciousness of power. Sealed behind glass, insulated climate control systems and music, the driver of a car knows nothing about the directions of the wind, the lay of sunlight, the  small changes in temperature between a peak and a valley, the textured noise of differing asphalts, or the sweet and sour aromas of manured fields or passing pine forests. Engaged in all the senses and elements, balanced in the present tense, a rider on two wheels can taste moments of oneness with the road.
Sons Of Thunder p91  Patrick Symmes

[Biggles]

Driving out along the peninsula, the wind knocked me over twice more, sending me into knee-scraping mounds of pebbles. When the bike blew over the second time the windshield cracked. Gasoline leaked from the carburettors again; I watched the liquid evaporate from the stones in horror, quickly righting the bike each time but losing several pints that I could not afford to lose. Yesterday's trip to the north shore suddenly seemed a foolish waste of fuel. I hit the reserve tank with an hour still to go. Somehow I made it to the steep ridge of hills at the neck of the peninsula, but the motor began to cough and hesitate on the way up the last hill. 
I threw the petcock from Res. back to Auf and got one last burst of power that pushed me up to the crest : a wobbly five miles an hour. It was two paved miles from there to the gas station, but all downhill, and I eventually coasted into the little settlement of Puerto Piramides like some pathetic bicyclist. I mailed a postcard to my girlfriend and bought a vanilla milk shade and a full tank of gas, and then sat on a chair on the beach drinking the milk shake, watching the tide surge right past the No Parking signs, up and over the legs of the chair, and while I sipped my milk shake the water ran forth and back beneath me, chilling the aluminium. I said over and over to no one in particular that this was a very fine town indeed. Six days, and already I was talking to myself.
Sons Of Thunder p99  Patrick Symmes

[Biggles]

You could try to go coast to coast, but chances were you wouldn't make it, some vertical guys with pitchforks and shotguns living in Hicksville were bound to resent your freedom and try and drag you down. Let's face it, there is definitely an element of death-wish built into the motorbike. You have to enjoy the pain and the heartache. Better to go out with a bang than a phut.
Even though Alberto and Che and a whole generation of easy riders have gone up in exhaust smoke, the mystique of the long-distance biker lives on. A true nomad and wanderer on that endless ride into the sun, weaving in and out of lanes of gridlocked cars like a Brazilian winger going round plodding fullbacks. Two wheels good, four wheels bad.
Sons Of Thunder p104-5  Andy Martin

[Biggles]

The Grand Trunk Road again broadened out into a four-lane highway and we were going flat out just to keep pace with the local taxis and mini-buses - the Pathans seemingly even more addicted to speed than their Punjabi brethren. Then, beyond the garrison town of Nowshera, we ran into a series of road-works.
Even on this unmade surface the faster traffic, private cars and pick-ups converted into taxis, kept overtaking and cutting in at the last minute. I was trying to keep up with the pace, jockeying for position, when the road-works suddenly stopped and we bumped through a succession of muddy potholes and back onto a metalled surface.
I accelerated to get clear of the pack but there was no traction whatsoever between the rear tyre and the road. Instead of speeding up, the bike started to roll from side to side. I struggled to correct the steering, but the back end was swinging around, completely out of control. The next thing I knew the bike was on its side and my head was skidding along the tarmac. Somehow my helmet had got wedged between the handlebars and the road surface.
Sons Of Thunder p136 Jonathan Gregson

[Biggles]

We were splayed out across the middle of the Grand Trunk Road. All I could think about was the line of trucks coming up behind us, ready to crush us beneath their huge tyres.
"Get out of here," I shouted to Sarah, but her leg was trapped beneath the weight of the bike. She was yelling at me, something about a bus coming. With my head pinned to the tarmac I couldn't see much. But she could look backwards and what she saw was a bus bearing down on us.
 We were saved by the driver of a private car who deliberately swerved, placing his vehicle in between us and the heavy traffic The bus' tyres came into my line of vision. I felt the vibration in my bones, waited for the sickening crunch. Nothing came. The bus driver must have swerved to avoid the car, and in doing so he also steered clear of the fallen bike.
Sons Of Thunder p137 Jonathan Gregson

[Biggles]

It was only when I removed my own helmet that I realised how lucky I'd been. The chin guard was deeply scoured. If I hadn't been wearing a full-face helmet I'd have lost half my jaw. I reached for a cigarette when the man who'd stopped his car to help us shouted something. Petrol. The bloody stuff had leaked out over the road. I put back my lighter and examined the fuel tank. Strange, nothing seemed to be leaking. Then the car driver pointed down the road. "Benzine," he shouted.
 The whole surface was covered with an amalgam of mud and diesel fuel. A tanker or lorry must have spilled some of its load coming through the bumpy section before rejoining the asphalt road, which would explain why it had felt like a skating rink when I opened up the throttle.
Sons Of Thunder p137-8  Jonathan Gregson

[Biggles]

The road south from Lubango to the border had been almost destroyed by the sixteen years of fighting. What was marked on my map as a smooth-surfaced road had been turned by bombs, landmines and strafing jets into a battleground of rubble and craters. At times even the suggestion of an asphalt surface was gone. A thick layer of mud, pocked with deep pot-holes, was all that remained of the only route south. It was agonizingly slow work weaving around the craters, like trying to stay on the ridges of a honeycomb. At times I missed the line completely, plunging myself into ankle-deep water, and once I was thrown off-balance by a particularly large hole and forced off the road down a steep bank to a boggy marsh below. I held my breath while I scrambled the bike back up to the track.
"Oh ja, there's still plenty of active mines out there," Rolf, one of the Afrikaner truck drivers I'd seen coming from Namibe, had happily informed me in a restaurant the previous evening, "so be sure to stick to the tracks. Only three days ago I saw a cow get it. Blew the feckin' thing sky high." He had laughed maniacally at the memory and slapped his hand on the frail table. He told me the drivers had christened it Desolation Road.
Sons Of Thunder p147  Jonny Bealby

[Biggles]

Eventually I saw it: a road sign marked CA-1. Oh joy! Thank you, thank you, God of Motorcycling, get me out of this labyrinth of grot! But relief soon gave way to dread when felt a strange sense of deja vu creeping up on me. Hadn't I passed that building with the fountains before? And that gas station looks awfully familiar... 
but weren't they on the other side of the road last time I saw them? My sense of direction had become so utterly addled that although I was indeed heading out of the city on the CA-1, it was back the way I'd come in. Now I had to start the nightmare all over again! I pulled into the petrol station and looked up the word for 'lost' in my dictionary, completely frazzled by my geographical disorder.
 "Zona 1, very dangerous, do not go there," warned the gas station attendant, in response to my plea for directions.
"Yes," I replied wearily, "I've just spent an hour riding around there, now please, can you tell me- "
"Six people killed every day in Guatemala City," he interrupted in earnest tones.
"Yes, yes, jolly good," I said impatiently, "but I'm actually looking to get out of here- "
"They stop you, they want money, and bang bang!" he said, imitating a gun held up against his head.
"Yeah, I can believe it!" I replied.
The shelves of the little shop were crammed with bottles of oil, exhaust repair bandage and lots of other bits and bobs for the Guatemalan boy racer. But there was a distinct lack of maps. Yet another idea, along with road signs and ring roads, that hadn't caught on in this neck of the woods.
Sons Of Thunder p163-4 Lois Pryce