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

[Biggles]

When the sun is at the correct angle, your shadow races next to you as you fly along. The dark shape is your own hair streaming a mobile portrait in the medium of light on asphalt. It's a peculiar sight, but the start it gives is not like when you catch yourself in a mirror. This one is almost someone else, mysterious, featureless, perhaps even fearless.
When everything is going just fine, you can raise your weight off the saddle by standing on the pegs and the air itself seems to carry you; the smells of countryside or suburb or industrial fief are immediately upon you, then gone. There are uncanny presences all around. Rotting pumpkins, manure, road salt, Spanish moss in humid wind, a scent like a million burning tires in the yellow sky over Newark, pine, oyster shells. Some will never get a name. Not half of them would reach you in a car, even with all the windows down. This weekend, for four miles, I had the odour of cigarette in my nostrils, from the lit end hanging out from the pickup truck ahead. Then again, some smells just tell you you are riding much too close behind.
The Perfect Vehicle  Melissa Pierson p232

[Biggles]

It is possible to feel more alone on a motorcycle than anywhere at rest. When you're sealed in your apartment, or even standing in a secret field halfway up a mountain, there is always the chance that someone could find you; someone could call, could spot you from a plane, could come walking up at any moment. Knowing where I can hide if necessary is always on my mind, and where else but on a bike is there somewhere truly safe to be? On a bike, there are people all around, in a car in the next lane not five feet away, but they can't get you. You may communicate with the friends who ride along by using signals, but you can't talk. You are spared the burden of words. There is so little privacy anywhere these days that this knowledge feels like the last available comfort, in the absence of knowing there is someplace left on earth not infected with Colonial brick houses or cut through by a new Wal-Mart's access road.
Your thoughts are pinned close to your head by the helmet, where they may exit only a fraction of an inch from your scalp but then stay to buzz around, thousands of little trapped sand flies.
The Perfect Vehicle  Melissa Pierson p233

[Biggles]

Cast aside those western notions of traffic, where cars queue with bovine patience and bicycles glide down neatly painted lanes. The chaotic, raging torrent that barges its way through Hanoi's narrow streets is a wholly different beast. This is traffic red in tooth and claw; a seething, surging, clamorous cavalcade of man and metal. Lissom girls weave through the melee on Honda mopeds, their faces and arms covered from the sun, high heels teetering on running boards, Taxis career in all directions, horns blasting. Girls riding large old-fashioned bicycles wobble insouciantly between the lanes, pedalling gracefully at the same unhurried speed. With their conical hats and flowing black hair, they seem to float rather than pedal, oblivious to the hooting machines that flow around them. Women in their traditional non la, palm leaf, hats stagger under back-breaking yokes of fruit and vegetables. Mopeds loaded with whole families, pigs, cupboards, washing machines and beds squeeze through non-existent gaps. And through the middle of it all pedestrians dash hopefully. It makes Pall Mall in rush hour look like a Cotswold backwater.
A Short Ride In The Jungle  Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent  p28-9

[Biggles]

There were other reasons behind my choice of vehicle. Firstly, I was a novice when it came to mechanics. It wasn't that I couldn't do it, it was just that I'd never applied myself to learning about the inner workings of an engine. In all my previous travels there had always been someone else to do that bit. My role had been filming, passing the odd spanner or sitting on the kerb smoking and offering verbal support. Marley had taught me some basics before I left home, such as how to tighten the brakes and chain, - despite Digby's confidence and my desire to learn - there might be times when I needed help. Cubs are simple machines to fix and, where I was going, most boys over the age of ten knew how to bash one back into shape. The same couldn't be said for a new-fangled BMW tourer.
Secondly, my route would pass through some of the poorest parts of Southeast Asia; mountainous tribal lands where the sight of a foreigner was still an extreme rarity. Some of the people still lived in near Stone Age conditions; in bamboo huts absent of schools, sanitation, electricity or material wealth. Me with my white face and motorbike gear were going enough of a shock. I hoped that riding a cheap, familiar bike might fractionally lessen the cultural chasm between us.
And finally, doing it on a proper dirt bike seemed too easy. There was infinitely more comedy value in attempting trundle up and over the Truong Son range on a twenty-five-year-old pink Honda Cub C90.
A Short Ride In The Jungle  Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent  p31

[Biggles]

A motorbike is the most dangerous mode of transport in the world. Fear of being killed or injured while riding one is entirely rational. In Vietnam, where ninety million people crowd the roads and around forty people die in traffic accidents every day, the risk is far higher than in England. Drink driving is de rigueur and traffic rules are routinely ignored. Yet bizarrely I wasn't afraid of this. Not a single thought regarding death or mutilation on the road crossed my mind. I realised that what I was afraid of was myself; of letting myself down, of my reactions to obstacles and solitude.
A few months earlier I'd read Christopher Hunt's book "Sparring With Charlie" about his one-man Minsk ride through Vietnam in the mid-nineties. Several times in the book, Hunt refers to the aching loneliness of the jungle. Would I feel the same? For almost two months I would be travelling alone. In Laos I might go for several days without seeing anyone. Lots of people had told me I was brave, but would I prove myself worthy of such a compliment? I wasn't feeling brave today. To be afraid of my own mind as opposed to the very real fire and metal of an accident was ridiculous. George and Ilza were right - the greatest danger was indeed myself.
A Short Ride In The Jungle  Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent  p51-2

[Biggles]

Winter was still clinging to the north, and I shivered under my fleece and waterproofs as I rode south from Cam Thuy. Rain made wearing goggles impossible and water lashed my face, stinging my eyes and clogging my lashes. Soon my gloves were soaked through, and my hands froze around the handlebars. Travelling alone makes you acutely aware of the fluctuations of your emotions, intensified by the purity of solitude. This morning - cold, wet and homesick - my mood sank. Chastising myself, I remembered a Tim Cahill quote a friend had told me before I left, "An adventure is never an adventure when it's happening. An adventure is physical and emotional discomfort recollected in tranquility."
A Short Ride In The Jungle  Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent  p58

[Biggles]

That morning, among the pomp and thrill of religious fervour, my anxiety about the journey fell away. This was what it was all about, being immersed in the unpredictable ebb and flow of life on the other side of the world. Every day was going to be a dive into the unknown; every moment unpredictable.
How glorious.
Riding away from the church, I felt my shoulders drop and my face split into a smile. It was the kind of elation you only get from the freedom of the open road, meditation or drugs; a certain liberation of the mind. The kind of elation that makes you want to do a wheelie, whoop excitedly and wave at everyone you pass. I couldn't wait for whatever the Trail was going to throw at me. As if echoing my happiness, the first bit of sunshine I had seen all week elbowed its way through the clouds.
A Short Ride In The Jungle  Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent  p68

[Biggles]

Dressing in my floral shirt and best underwear for luck, I crept down the dark stairs. No one else was up and I quietly packed Panther and rode through the gates into the bracing dawn air. I'm not a morning person, but there's something magical about riding a motorbike at dawn as the world is just waking; the ghostly grey light suggestive of Other Worlds and Unseen Beings. Heading north west through the fairy tale landscape of Phong Nha Khe Ban National Park, I barely saw another human - unusual for Vietnam. High peaks of limestone karst rose imperiously out of the paddies, floating above a sea of mist, and to my far left were the sheer ramparts of the mountainous border.
At 7 a.m. I stopped to buy some bread - banh mi, pronounced bang me - from two women. They held up one finger, asking was I alone; laughing when I said yes. 
Urging Panther on, I reached a record speed of 35 miles per hour along the stretch of an old MiG runway before starting the slow climb into the mountains. A silvery vapour hung in the valleys and swirled around the jungle-clad slopes, occasional rays of sun flooding the scene with an ethereal light. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and again I felt that rush of exhilaration, that purity of solitude. I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else.
A Short Ride In The Jungle  Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent  p91-2

[Biggles]

I watched the jeeps rumble across then rode down a steep sandy bank towards the waiting canoe. The old man held the meagre vessel steady as I crept Panther forward to the bow, walking my legs along the foot-high sides for balance, only a few inches spare either side of my tyres. I heard two extra passengers squat down behind me and with a thrust and a wobble the aged pilot pushed us slowly off the bank. Thrust, wobble, thrust, wobble - I gritted my teeth and swore quietly as we lurched forward, my passengers laughing at my outburst.
"Think yogic, think yogic," I muttered to myself. "Just look straight ahead, balance and don't move." I knew if I panicked and moved, all of us would be in the water.
Gripping the handlebars, hardly daring to breathe, I watched the opposite bank inch closer noticing, out of the corner of my eye, a large green lizard paddle past, eyeing me with a beady yellow eye. Sweat and suncream ran down my face, stinging my eyes and collecting in small pools at the base of my neck.
Finally the canoe slid onto the opposite bank and I paid the toothless man 6,000 kip - about eighty pence - pulled the throttle and rode shakily away, Digby cackling as he filmed my escape. That definitely counted as a significant small victory.
A Short Ride In The Jungle  Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent  p115-6

[Biggles]

Panther lay on her side in a large puddle, her front basket bent and caked in mud. Shards of glass from the smashed left wing mirror glinted in the dirt. Hauling her upright, I saw her left foot peg was bent backwards and a section of paint had been scraped off. She no longer looked like the pristine pink city girl that had left Hanoi ten days earlier.
That'll teach me to go around waving at everyone like an imbecile, not looking where I'm going, I thought.
By now about ten people had gathered around, watching intently as I opened the top box and extracted the toolkit. No one spoke a single syllable of English, but it's amazing how far you can get with sign language and a smile. A young man in dirty blue overalls took my hammer, kneeling down to knock the basket and foot peg back in to shape while I unscrewed the useless wing mirror. To explain that I was from Ang – England - I handed out postcards of the Queen, Buckingham Palace and Big Ben. A little girl in a ripped, dirty orange dress poked Queen's face and said "Mama" delightedly, as if recognising her. I doubt they had ever heard of England, let alone ever seen Her Maj. An old man then pointed to the mountains, made thundery noises and shook his head sympathetically, as if saying "Don't worry, it's not your fault, it's the rain."
With a cheery wave and a throbbing shin I set off, leaving them to puzzle over their unexpected morning interlude. The incident reminded me that an adventure isn't an adventure until things go wrong. Falling in that puddle had forced me into a pleasant interaction with the villagers, which I hope had brightened their morning as well as mine. If I ever pass again, I hope to find the Queen's face still adorning several of the huts.
A Short Ride In The Jungle  Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent  p124-5

[Biggles]

At Ban Dong I stopped for a Vietnamese coffee- rocket fuel laced with viscous condensed milk. As I drank it, a small Vietnamese woman pulled up beside Panther on a moped. Or at least I think it was a moped, for it was piled with such a peculiar paraphernalia of objects you could barely see the wheels. The woman was perched on an inch of seat in front of a muddle of fishing nets, cooking pans and pink plastic bonsai trees. Either side of her, panniers made of chicken wire and wood bulged with flip flops, sandals, packets of instant noodles and more cooking utensils. Another basket attached to the handlebars contained plastic helicopters, spotted headbands, T-shirts and tracksuits. Somewhere in there she probably had an inflatable shark, a kitchen sink and an antique hatstand.
A Short Ride In The Jungle  Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent  p156

[Biggles]

The farther I went, the harder it became: steep hills, horizontal slabs of slate-grey rock, deep ruts and that nefarious orange mud. We bumped and slid down, revved and clanked up. Panther's poor little engine strained and wheezed and her tyres spun in the mud, struggling for hold. Several slopes were so steep and rocky I paused at the top, wondering how on earth I would do it. Resting Panther on her side stand I walked ahead, picking out the best path, usually a narrow strip of harder mud right at the edge. Wedging my right boot on the back brake, holding the front one on with my right hand and dragging my left boot in the mud for extra braking and stability, we would jolt down. Go too slowly and I'd lose balance, too fast and I'd lose control and risk going over the edge.
On the hardest, rockiest inclines I put both feet down, took weight off the seat and heaved her up with all my strength, the engine struggling in first gear.
It was the toughest riding I had done yet. Keep buggering on, I told myself, and metre by metre, mile by mile we nosed forwards. All I could think about was that moment, those rocks, that deep rut, which gear I was in - nothing else mattered except that place and that instant in time. As hard as it was I felt fully engaged, spurred on by the same fire of determination that had ignited in me on the road from Ban Laboy.
A Short Ride In The Jungle  Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent  p172-3

[Biggles]

Panther, it seemed, was less keen. Numerous attempts at her kick-start produced no more than a loud pop, then ominous silence. I had seemingly done the impossible; I'd killed my C90. Dialling Cuong's number, I explained her symptoms and asked his advice.
"It sounds like the cam chain," he diagnosed. "You'll never find decent mechanic in Kaleum- get the bike on a truck to Sekong and find a Vietnamese mechanic there. Whatever you do, find a Vietnamese mechanic, Lao ones no good."
Sekong was the provincial capital, about fifty miles from here. Getting a truck would be expensive. Digby called back a few minutes later.
"Look, if the worst comes to the worst we can always send you a new engine. There are worse places to be holed up for a few days than Sekong."
Strangely, instead of worry, I felt a frisson of excitement. Seemingly disastrous situations like this often lead to memorable incidents. Or as motorcycling legend Ted Simon was fond of saying: "The interruptions ARE the journey." Whatever my immediate future, it would likely be interesting.
Watched by the one-eyed cook and the transvestite from the hotel, I pondered my predicament beside the stricken Panther. Almost instantaneously, a man walked up to me and said in faltering English, "You need mechanic? I'm Vietnam. There's Vietnam mechanic just up the road."
A Short Ride In The Jungle  Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent  p192

[Biggles]

I took a few photos and kicked Panther into action. But the lever slipped uselessly between first, second and third. The gear mechanism had gone. Without gears I couldn't move an inch. Flicking to 'Chapter-1: Engine and Gearbox' in the Haynes Manual, I was confronted with a terrifying-looking exploded diagram of the inner workings of a C90 gear system. Since the geary bits are inside the enginey bits, it meant taking apart the whole engine to see what the problem was. I'd become pretty good at basic tweaking but I feared this was beyond me.
Crouching in the dust, I fiddled with my spanner set and peered at the diagrams. Several overloaded pick-up trucks rattled by, the drivers and passengers all hanging out to shout, "Pai Sai?"
"Attapeu!" I shouted back hopefully, not wanting to ask for help yet.
They laughed and burnt past without taking their feet off the gas, engulfing me in a storm of dust. So much for chivalry in Laos.
A Short Ride In The Jungle  Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent  p225