From the Library

[Biggles]

My confidence on the bike was at an all-time high when I was out on the open road. Mile after mile of straight roads stretching ahead through empty places were an absolute breeze and a pleasure, embodying to my mind what motorcycle riding is all about. There was a constant sense of freedom that I had never experienced in any other walk of life; not even the expensive Ferraris or Aston Martins that I'd driven ever came close to the way a motorcycle made me feel.
It wasn't even a question of speed -I have paid the price for driving too fast in a car both in court fines and in personal injury. A good steady 70mph on my bike was more than sufficient, giving me the opportunity to focus on riding the machine well and concentrating on the road ahead, which cleared my mind. But every time I returned from the vast open spaces of the US to more populated areas my brain went into overload. I couldn't cope with the traffic signals, the other vehicles, or pedestrians and intersections. It completely fazed me, after eight hours on open roads, to be thrust back into everyday town traffic and have to locate the nearest motel. I forgot to look over my shoulder when overtaking, became a nervous twitchy mess and went back to riding like a beginner.
There And Back Again To See How Far It Is Tim Watson p180-1

[Biggles]

I am a bit of a sceptic at heart and have never felt inclined to give names to mechanical objects or refer to them as 'her' or 'him'. Nor did I believe all the stories about bonding with your motorcycle. Lots of people had told me about how attached they had become to their bikes for various reasons and how they could never, ever bear to sell them. I liked my bike very much the day I bought it, but I felt then that I could quite happily sell it for another. After all, it was just a motorcycle - a means of transport, albeit a fun, exciting and sometimes downright dangerous way of getting about.
But something strange was happening. I definitely looked at my bike in a different way in Idaho. I felt more comfortable and at ease with it now, with several thousand miles behind us. I knew its limitations and it clearly knew mine, it had taken me up mountains, across vast plains and through deserts and it had been 100% reliable.
There And Back Again To See How Far It Is Tim Watson p218-9

[Biggles]

There was a proper 'biker bar' in town called the Sage Brush, though, with darkened windows facing Vale's Main Street and motorcycle paraphernalia up on its walls. A number of motorcycles were parked outside. The bar was staffed by a friendly woman who appeared from a multitude of different doors every few seconds as she moved furniture around the bar, served drinks, cooked food and talked to everyone who came in. She insisted on giving me a ton of literature about local motorcycle enthusiast groups and bike rides; I didn't have the heart to tell her I had no intention of passing this way again for some considerable time.
There was nobody else in the bar except for a trio of motorcyclists from California, among them a loud, annoying woman who seemed very pleased with herself. She had spotted that our bikes were from California too and she started to interrogate me about what I was doing there, but she quickly lost interest in me when her meal arrived. She and her two male travelling buddies were to reappear after lunch as we rode alongside the beautiful Malheur River on Highway 20, overtaking Anne and me three times at crazy speeds as if to show they were extremely proficient motorcycle riders and we really should pay attention to them.
There And Back Again To See How Far It Is Tim Watson p226-7

[Biggles]

I have found that in my time riding in the US there are two clear groups of people. The first lot know nothing at all about motorcycles and, perhaps understandably, they don't need to know about them or even care about them. Then there is a second group of people who also seem to know nothing about bikes or riding apart from the fact that they do know of someone who was fatally injured, dismembered, suffered brain damage or had some truly frightful injury inflicted upon them because they chose to ride on two wheels. Not once has a single member of this latter group ever told me a great story about someone they knew who had a tremendous motorcycle 
ride across an empty desert, or rode up a lonely mountain road, or just went out for a ride and still came back with their limbs intact.
There And Back Again To See How Far It Is Tim Watson p234

[Biggles]

PCH was literally dug into the side of the California cliffs in the 1930s, and as well as hugging the coast it has some fantastic bridges spanning deep canyons that run into the ocean. It was extreme nature at its very best. I had never seen a road like it and it was certainly one of the best I had ever ridden - dramatic scenery, craggy shorelines, crashing ocean waves that are so close you feel you could reach out and touch them, and an empty, fast, twisting road that compelled you to ride faster and faster. It ticked all the bike-riding boxes for me and was a superb few hours of riding. I had to stop every 20 minutes to pull into lay-bys just to peer down at the Pacific Ocean and try and take in all this astonishing scenery. It really was nature gone wild.
There And Back Again To See How Far It Is Tim Watson p251

[Biggles]

Anne slammed on her motorcycle's brakes and I could hear her shouting in surprise as she slid towards the pavement, but she managed to bring her bike to a halt without hitting the Mercedes or some nearby pedestrians waiting at a crossing. It was a very close thing and I was incensed - so angry, in fact, that I went charging after the Mercedes driver. He whipped past me, back into the left-hand lane, and tried to get away. I began shouting profanities at him while chasing him up the road, and then the traffic lights turned to red and he had no option but to stop. He looked very sheepish, and was clearly trying to avoid eye contact with me, but he had left his passenger side window down.
"You idiot!" I shouted. "What the hell were you thinking? Didn't you see that motorcycle? Why did you pull out like that without looking?"
I was furious on two counts. First, because he had nearly knocked my wife off her motorcycle, but second, because we had spent the past few months riding through eight US states on some wickedly dangerous roads, covering many thousands of trouble-free miles (although I'd caused a few problems) only to get almost within sight of our house for something as stupid as this to happen.
There And Back Again To See How Far It Is Tim Watson p255

[Biggles]

The Mercedes driver was a young guy, about 30 years old. He looked across at me and said: "I'm really sorry, dude. I didn't mean to do that. I'm in a hurry and I am  really late. I am though really, really sorry. Please don't make this out to be a big deal."
I got a glimpse of myself in one of my bike's mirrors. I had six weeks' worth of beard, I was filthy dirty on a great big black Harley-Davidson and I looked very angry, even to me. Heck, I'd be sorry if I saw myself in my rear-view mirror coming up the road and shouting and cursing.
"Well it is a big deal," I said. "Use your frigging mirrors, man, if you are going to pull out like that. Just don't drive around without looking. You could have killed her."
There And Back Again To See How Far It Is Tim Watson p255-6

[Biggles]

If I'd been in a car I would never have seen some of these things or met some of the people we encountered along the way. From the saddle of my motorcycle I got to see, up close and personal, the real, raw beauty of the American landscape and it's far, far better and more diverse than anything you will ever see on film or in a photograph. I'll remember those broad horizons, staggeringly beautiful mountains and the silence of the deserts for the rest of my days.
I also learned to ride a motorcycle just a little better. If I could just get those right-hand corners sorted I might find I'd stop going round and round in left-hand circles all the time. As I pushed my bike back into my garage in Santa Ana, California, at the end of the final leg of our journey, I stopped for a second to take a look at it.
It was really dirty. It was absolutely covered in layers of road grime and dead insects. And so was I. In the twilight of that Californian evening I started to think to myself that I could do that road trip, every single mile of it, all over again, beginning tomorrow morning.
There And Back Again To See How Far It Is Tim Watson p257-8

[Biggles]

The road over the Andes doesn't disappoint. Around every corner (and there are plenty of them) there's a vista that takes our breath way. Brian is thriving on it and there's no chatter between us. Brian is at one with the bike and I relax into the groove.
Brian: This magnificent piece of road is as I imagined it would be. The road surface is just about perfect. The bike's handling the tight corners so well I forget that we're fully loaded and would probably tip the scales about 500 kilos.
There's snow on the peaks that tower above us as we take on the 50 or more switchback corners. Looking back down into the valley the trucks look like toys, slowly making their way up the Andes. It is truly amazing. As we head higher and higher the temperature drops from mid 30°C down to a comfortable 21°C.
The Cristo Redentor Tunnel that takes us to the border between Chile and Argentina is 3,080 metres long. At the Los Andes Paseo Libertadores, the mountain pass, we're more than three kilometres high, remarkable when you think Mt Kosciusko, Australia's highest peak, is about 2,228 metres.
Circle To Circle  Shirley & Brian Rix  p15

[Biggles]

Last night the wind howled across the desert but just as dawn breaks there's an eerie silence, as if Mother Nature is taking a break. Today will be tough so we want to hit the road early. Just as we're getting dressed, the wind picks up again and keeps getting stronger. I soften the front suspension dampening, which will hopefully make the bike soak up the corrugations. I also let some air out of the tyres to allow them to grip a little more.
The wind is gusting and continually tries to push the bike into the loose stones. You get used to the front end skipping sideways. I try pick my way through as best I can but get caught out every now and then. We pass a tip truck, its trailer blown over onto its roof. We take a break and rest behind the only poor excuse for a tree we've seen for over 250 km, have a bite to eat and get back on the bike. Just standing in the wind is tiring so we might as well push on.
Circle To Circle  Shirley & Brian Rix  p28

[Biggles]

It's a normal work day so Avenue 9 de Julio is teeming with traffic. Negotiating it and the city's system of by-passes, freeways and tollways is a little tricky and stressful. We get bamboozled, even with the GPS, and end up going on and off the tollway and then back on again when we miss a turn.
Eventually we find Dakar Motos in a tiny, leafy street in the suburbs. Plenty of travellers begin or end their South American odysseys here. Javier is big, powerful man who's ridden many of the roads we're travelling. Sandra, his very glamorous Mrs Fix-It wife, helps travellers through the bureaucratic maze of shipping bikes in and out of the country. They even offer a bed and a hot shower. Their generosity to total strangers is a lesson to us all.
There's no rushing to get things done here. Everything works on Argentinean time. There are breaks to chat with friends, or sip on a Mate (pronounced mar-tay), the herbal tea concoction that so many constantly drink in this part of the world. It's an acquired taste that we don't acquire.
Javier changes the tyre by hand, using the side stand of another bike to break the bead, then three tyre levers. Putting the tyre on is a real struggle, and it takes Javier, his son and I wrestling tyre levers to get it mounted in the correct position.
Circle To Circle  Shirley & Brian Rix  p58

[Biggles]

Negotiating the border with the motorcycle is easy. After the obligatory photo at the Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay border we head to the border post. It's a drive-through - just like McDonalds.
Within minutes we're riding across the bridge spanning the Iguazu River. The border is in the middle: one side is painted with the Argentinean national colours of blue and white; the other side is in the Brazilian national colours of yellow and green. Theoretically you shouldn't stop in the no man's land between borders but we can't resist this majestic river and the multi-coloured bridge.
Now we're in Brazil the only map we have is the one in the Lonely Planet's guidebook. Luckily our hostel is in the same street as the Paraguayan Consulate so I manage to get there without a hiccup.
Circle To Circle  Shirley & Brian Rix  p76

[Biggles]

We know we're high in the mountains but we're not sure how high. This is altitude sickness for sure. The pass over the Andes to Mendoza was about 3,500 metres and we both handled that well. This must be higher.
In the restaurant we meet Pepe and Valentina who are riding their single-cylinder BMW 650. They don't speak much English but we work out they're locals taking a short break to Machu Picchu. I notice they don't seem to be having any trouble with the altitude and let us in on their secret - coca leaves. Valentina kindly gives me some and shows me how to roll up a leaf and put it under my tongue. You don't chew it or swallow it. Your saliva breaks down the leaf and you swallow that.
Circle To Circle  Shirley & Brian Rix  p86

[Biggles]

The road to Bolivia takes us into the foothills of the Andes and back through the valleys to the coast. It twists and turns and requires some concentration. I love these roads.
Back on the coast we get to Arica and find the on-site parking promised by the hotel is actually in a building site on the corner. I just stand back and let Shirl take on the staff in her monosyllabic Spanish.
"Parque aqui," (parking here) she says determinedly. "No, parque esquinal." (No, parking on the corner) is the reply. She's not going to back down. Finally the owner is called and organises for the bike to spend the night at a parking area across the road that'll be locked at dusk. I'm impressed with her negotiating skills, considering it was all done in Spanish.
Circle To Circle  Shirley & Brian Rix  p94

[Biggles]

A lone black dog trots along the side of the road, his matted fur covered in snow. He doesn't seem to notice. My left hand is so cold I can't feel my fingers. The right one is constantly on and off the throttle so the blood's still circulating. It stays like this for a good 50 kilometres and there's nowhere to stop under shelter, so we push on.
The front of the bike slides out on an oil patch on the slippery road. I save it, but strain my back. I guess a strained back is better than sliding down the road.
A bit further on I dodge a pothole big enough to do some real damage to the front wheel by crossing onto the wrong side of the road in a hurry and we slip again. One thing about the riding here, there's never a dull moment.
Circle To Circle  Shirley & Brian Rix  p113