Almost 10 years ago to the day I began posting excerpts from the many motorcycling books I have collected. They are mostly written by travellers who recount their most interesting encounters from all around the world. Some of you will have seen many of them before, but since so long has elapsed, you may have forgotten them. In any case, they are worth a re-read. I'll endeavour to post a new one every day.
The idea of traveling round the world had come to me one day in March that year, out of the blue. It came not as a vague thought or wish but as a fully formed conviction. The moment it struck me I knew it would be done and how I would do it. Why I thought immediately of a motorcycle I cannot say. I did not have a motorcycle, even a licence to ride one, yet it was obvious from the start that that was the way to go, and that I could solve the problems involved.
The worst problems were the silly ones, like finding a bike to take the driving test on. I resorted to shameless begging and deceit to borrow the small bike I needed. There was a particularly thrilling occasion when I turned up at the Yamaha factory on the outskirts of London to take a small 125-CC trail bike out "on test." I had my L plates hidden in my pocket, but first I had to get out of the factory gates looking as though I knew how the gears worked. Those were the first and some of the hardest yards, I ever rode; now it can be told.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 17
Good to see these back Mr Biggles. I was convinced you had stopped because you had exhausted the genre.
Nope- I have more to scan and edit. Currently 2.7Mb of plain text, and growing.
I might add, before we get underway, that the amount I excerpt from each book is regarded in the publishing industry to fall within reasonable use for review purposes under the Copyright provisions.
Thanks for kick starting this one again Biggles, great thread.
I carried out my first-ever major motorcycle overhaul in Alexandria. I found a cavernous garage near Ramilies Station, haggled bitterly over five piastres for the right to work there, and then received many times that amount back in tea, cigarettes, snacks and true friendship from the poor men who struggled to earn a livelihood in that place.
I took two days to do a job that might be done in two or three hours, but every move was fraught with danger. I dared not make a mistake. Already I knew that there would be no chance at all of getting spare parts in Egypt. Both pistons, I found, were deformed by heat, and I had only one spare piston with me (a piece of nonsense which inspired more waves of telepathic profanity to burn the ears of Meriden [UK Triumph company]). The pistons had seized their rings, and I put back the less distorted one after sculpting the slots with a razor blade. It seemed the only thing to do. I prayed that I was right. I had no real idea about what had caused the overheating after only four thousand miles, and felt rather gloomy about it.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 66
Trivia: As of today I have 2444 excerpts. At one per day, we're set for 6 years and 252 days (allowing for 2 Leap Years).
But I keep buying and reading...
Long Live Far Road! ;D
"Yes, yes, yes," they scream and, in a flurry of brown limbs, they fight with the Triumph up a gangplank, over a rail into a narrow gangway, through hatches, over sills and bollards, four hundred pounds of metal dragging, sliding, flying and dropping among roars and curses and pleas for divine aid, while I follow, helpless and resigned. Finally the bike is poised over the water between the two boats. The outstretched arms can only hold it, but they cannot move it, and it is supported, incredibly, by the foot brake pedal, which is caught on the ship's rail. Muscles are weakening. The pedal is bending and will soon slip, and my journey will end in the fathomless silt of Mother Nile. At this last moment, a rope descends miraculously from the sky dangling a hook, and the day is saved.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 73
It was plainly impossible to move the bike, so I began to unload it. I noticed immediately that my water bag was empty, the plastic perforated, the contents drained away. Well at least l had a litre of distilled water. With all the luggage off I glanced in the gas tank. Had it been possible at this stage to shock me, I would have been shocked. There was only a puddle of gasoline left, hardly a gallon. My fuel consumption was twice what it should have been, and when I thought about it, that was perfectly natural. Grinding along in second gear over a loose surface in such heat, it is what you would expect. Only I, of course, had not expected it.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 82
Scooping the sand out by hand took half an hour, but I managed to make a lane back to the firmer ground. There was a bit of brush growing on the dunes, and I paved my lane with twigs. Then, inch by inch, I was able to haul the bike back to where I wanted it. Again I had lost a lot of sweat, and I got the water bottle out. It was warm to the touch. I put it to my lips, and then spat vigorously on the ground, mustering as much of my own good saliva as I could. The bottle contained acid.
Battery acid.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 82
If falling were a competitive sporting event, I would be a champion. Sometimes, on deeply rutted tracks like the one between Gedaref and Metema, it was impossible to avoid a fall.
(Getting it up again) was an exhausting exercise because I could not lift the bike without unpacking everything first.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 92
I have had one more soft fall, but each jerk on the wheel pulls the muscle in my left shoulder and prevents it from healing. I feel no hunger, no thirst. I am absolutely wrapped up in this extraordinary experience, in the unremitting effort, in the marvellous fact that I am succeeding, that it is at all possible, that my worst fears are not just unrealized but contradicted. The bike, for all its load, is manageable. I seem to have, after all, the strength and stamina to get by, and my reserves seem to grow the more I draw upon them.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 95
Why you? Why were you chosen to ride through the desert while other men are going home from the office?
Chosen? I thought I chose myself. Were Odysseus and Jason, Columbus and Magellan chosen?
That is a very exalted company you have summoned up there. What have you got in common with Odysseus, for God's sake?
Well, we're all just acting out other people's fantasies, aren't we? Maybe we're not much good for anything else.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 96
The road to Gedaref is worse. Much worse. Worse than anything I imagined. At times, in fact, I believe it is impossible, and consider giving up. The corrugations are monstrous.
Six-inch ridges, two feet apart, all the way with monotonous, shattering regularity. Everything on the bike that can move does so. Every bone in every socket of my body rattles. Not even the most ingenious fairground proprietor could devise a more uncomfortable ride. I feel certain it must break the bike. I try riding very slowly, and it is worse than ever. Only at fifty miles an hour does the bike begin to fly over ridges, levelling out the vibration a little, but it is terribly risky. Between the ridges is much loose sand. Here and there are sudden hazards. The chances of falling are great, and I am afraid of serious damage to the bike.
Yet I feel I must fly, because I don't think the machine will survive eighty miles of this otherwise. It is hair-raising and then it becomes impossible again. The road swings to the west and the sun burns out my vision. I realize I must stop and make camp.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 100
Why don't the tires tear to shreds under all this punishment? Why no punctures? I think a puncture might finish me, I'm so beat. Why doesn't the Triumph just die? Unlike me, it has no need to go on. It protests and chatters. On one steep climb it even fainted, but after a rest it went to work again. I hate to think what havoc is being wrought inside those cylinders.
We have such a long way to go.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 102
It is clear that the bike can barely cope with the combination of load, work and heat. The road is scarred and ripped to rubble. It's like following the track of some stumbling monster of destruction. Halfway up a particularly hard climb, I lose momentum and the bike simply dies on me. I don't know what's happened, what to do. I wait awhile and kick it over. It starts and revs up fine in neutral, but when I engage the clutch it dies on me again. I am quite near the top of the hill, and I unload the heaviest boxes and carry them up myself. Then I ride the bike up, and load again. The plugs and timing are O.K. What else can I do but cross my fingers, and try to keep up momentum.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 106
The best trick in my repertoire was provided by a company called Schrader in Birmingham. They made a valve with a long tube which I could screw into the engine instead of a spark plug. As long as you had at least two cylinders, you could run the engine on one and the other piston would pump up your tire. So I was able to pump up my tube, and it seemed all right.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 129
I waved to him and he stopped beside me.
"Can you help me, I wonder..." I said.
"Absolutely," he said. "Most definitely. I see you are having trouble, isn't it. A spot of bother."
" Well, my tire's flat..." and I went on to explain.
"I will introduce you to Mr. Paul Kiviu," he burst out enthusiastically. "Definitely he is the very man of the moment. He is manager BP station Kibwezi Junction and he is my friend."
Mercifully the road was level at that point. As I pushed the loaded bike along on its flat tire, Pius bobbed around me like a butterfly, calling encouragement, imploring me to believe that my troubles would soon be over. His good nature was irresistible and I began to believe him. In any case I was happy that something was happening and I was in touch with people. At the time it seemed to me that what I wanted was to have my problem solved quickly and to get on my way. I had a boat to catch in Cape Town and the journey was still the main thing. What happened on the way, who I met, all that was incidental. I had not quite realized that the interruptions were the journey.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 130
My confidence in the Triumph has gone beyond surprise and gratitude. I now rely on it without question, and it seems past all coincidence that on this last day, the unseen fate working itself out in the cylinder barrel should manifest itself. It is not I who am looking for significance in these events. The significance declares itself unaided. Just beyond Trichardt, in the morning, the power suddenly falters and I hear, unmistakably, the sound of loose metal tinkling somewhere; but where? Although the power picks up again, I stop to look. The chain is very loose. Could it have been skipping the sprockets? I tighten the chain and drive on. Power fails rapidly and after about smell of burning. Is it the clutch? It seems to have seized, because even in neutral it won't move.
Two friendly Afrikaners in the postal service stop their car to supervise, and their presence irritates me and stops me thinking. I remove the chain case to look at the clutch, a good half hour's work. Nothing wrong, and then my folly hits me. I tightened the chain and forgot to adjust the brake. I've been riding with the rear brake on for four miles, and the shoes have seized on the drum. Apart from anything else, that is not the best way to treat a failing engine. I put everything together again and set off, but the engine noise is now very unhealthy. A loud metallic hammering from the cylinder barrel. A push rod? A valve? I'm so near Jo'burg, the temptation to struggle on is great. At Pietersburg I stop at a garage.
The engine oil has vanished.
"That's a bad noise there, hey!" says the white mechanic, and calls his foreman over.
"Can I go on like that?"
"As long as it's not too far. You'll use a lot of oil."
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 169
I spend two days at Naboomspruit working on the engine. The crankcase is full of broken metal. The con rod is scarred, the sump filter in pieces, the scavenge pipe knocked off centre. The sleeve of the bad cylinder is corrugated. I have kept the old piston from Alexandria, and put it back thinking it might get me as far as Jo'burg. With everything washed out and reassembled, the engine runs, but no oil returns from the crankcase.
The second day I spend on the lubrication system, picking pieces out of the oil pump. On Sunday, in bright sunshine, I set off again, for twenty blissful miles before all hell breaks loose. The knocking and rattling is now really terrible. I decide that I must have another look, and by the roadside I take the barrel off again and do some more work on the piston and put it back again. By now I am really adept and it takes me four hours.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels pp 169-170
Joe's Motorcycles on Market Street, as agents for Meriden, took the engine to pieces again and sent me off with a rebored barrel, two new pistons, a new con rod, main bearings, valves, idler gear and other bits and pieces. The broken metal had penetrated everywhere and again I was struck by the force of the coincidence that all this havoc had been wrought virtually within sight of Johannesburg. I was very susceptible to "messages" and wondered whether someone was trying to tell me something, like, for example, "I'll get you there, but don't count on it."
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 171
Calling at a gas station is an event, particularly on a motorcycle with a foreign number plate. In southern Africa everyone plays the number-plate game. You can tell instantly where each one comes from; C for Cape Province, J for Johannesburg, and so on. My plate begins with an X, a mystery all the deeper because some pump attendants belong to the Xhosa tribe. Peeling off damp layers of nylon and leather, unstrapping the tank bag to get to the filler cap, fighting to get at the money under my waterproof trousers which are shaped like a clown's, chest high with elastic braces, I wait for the ritual conversation to begin.
"Where does this plate come from, baas?" asks the man.
"From England."
A sharp intake of breath, exhaled with a howl of ecstasy. "From England? Is it? What a long one! The baas is coming on a boat?"
"No," I reply nonchalantly, knowing the lines by heart, relishing them rather. "On this. Overland."
Another gasp, followed by one or even two whoops of joy. The face is a perfect show of incredulity and admiration.
"On this one? No! Uh! I can't. You come on this one? Oh! It is too big."
I am learning, as I make my way through my first continent, that it is remarkably easy to do things, and much more frightening to contemplate them.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 176
The great freeways sweep me on past Stellenbosch and Belleville towards the ocean, into the suburbs of Cape Town, winding me down effortlessly and without error as though on an automatic flight path to the heart of the old city and setting me down in the plaza beside the ocean. My joy is almost hysterical as I park the bike, walk slowly over the paving towards a cafe table and sit down. I have just ridden that motorcycle 12,245 miles from London, and absolutely nobody here, watching me, knows it. As I think about it I have a sudden and quite extraordinary flash, something I never had before and am never able to recapture again. I see the whole of Africa in one single vision, as though illuminated by lightning. And that's it. I've done it. I'm at peace.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels pp 180-181
Mourning becomes electrics. Among the dunes and bushes of a camp site at La Plata, south of Buenos Aires, I searched for an electrical fault. I never found it, but when I put everything together again, furious and frustrated, the fault disappeared. Not an uncommon experience.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 267
I was particularly interested in Pete because he had just ridden a three-cylinder Kawasaki on almost the same route from Rio to Panama as I had taken.
"Remember that bridge coming into Ecuador?" he asked.
There was only one bridge he could have meant. It was built like a railroad track, but with planks instead of rails to take the wheels of cars. The sleepers were set about eighteen inches apart, and there was nothing between them but air, and only river beneath. It might not have been so bad if the planks had not kept changing direction, so that it was impossible to build up any momentum. I had fallen halfway across and was lucky not to have gone through into the river. Bob and Annie had also fallen on their Norton.
"Sure I do," I said. "I fell on it." He howled, and grabbed my hand.
"Me too, pal. Which way did you fall?"
"Into the middle."
"Jesus. I only fell against the side. Boy, that was some ride. I'm really glad I met you pal."
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 309
The bike is tired also, but that is only a figure of speech. I do not credit the bike with feelings. If it has a heart and soul of its own I have never found them. People I meet are often disappointed that the bike does not even have a name. They often suggest names ("The Bug" is top favorite) but none of them seem to do anything for the bike or for me. For me it remains a machine, and every attempt to turn it into something else strikes me as forced and silly.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 314
Suddenly I realize that I have wandered into the middle of the road, and look up to find a huge truck bearing down on me out of the rainstorm. It is far too late for me to react, and it is entirely by chance that the truck misses me, by a hair's breadth. As I realize what I did, how close I came to being literally wiped out, obliterated, I feel that fearful rush of heat and cold sweat that makes the heart nearly burst, and feel immensely grateful for the warning while wishing I knew to whom to be grateful. A God would come in useful at times like that.
I can count only two other times when I came so close to an end. I must be really tired at the back of my skull. I must be careful. I must never let that happen again.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 315
By the time l got to Mexico City one cylinder was smoking just as it had in Alexandria, but this time I was better prepared. I had two spare pistons with me, both oversize so that I could rebore if necessary. Was it necessary with only three thousand miles to go? This time though, a friendly Triumph agent was there with all the equipment and the will to help. It seemed silly not to take advantage. Friends of Bruno put me up; Mr. Cojuc, the agent, did the rebore; I put it together again in his workshop, if for no other reason than the close contact this gave me with Mexican workers made the experience worthwhile.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 316
The coast road north of Sydney is called the Pacific for 650 miles until it gets to Brisbane. Then it becomes the Bruce Highway. Another five hundred miles north is Rockhampton, right on the Tropic of Capricorn. I crossed the tropic (for the sixth time on my journey) four days before Christmas and headed on for Mackay.
Since Brisbane the arid summer of the south had been giving way slowly to the tropical rainy season of Queensland. In the southern droughts the cattle died of thirst. In the north they drowned and floated away on the floods. Australia runs to extremes.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 341
If the Nullarbor was not an ordeal, it was perhaps a last straw. Bouncing over it was too much for the spokes of the rear wheel. After all they had been through in two and a half years. I had been warned. In Melbourne and again in Adelaide I had replaced broken spokes, and I checked them every time I stopped for the day. At Eucla, where the dirt ended and the highway began they were still in order. The smooth tar enticed me to greater speed. After five hundred miles, just before Norseman, I noticed a growing vibration through the steering head. I stopped in the absolute nick of time.
Only four of the twenty spokes on one side of the wheel were left, and the rim was a terrible twisted shape. A few seconds more and it would certainly have collapsed. I shuddered to think of the mangled mess that that would have left. As it was, I spent one of the nastiest hours of the journey rebuilding the wheel in a twilight plagued by squadrons of vicious mosquitoes.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 363-4
The journey continued, as it always had, with this close inter-weaving of action and reflection. I ate, slept, cursed, smiled, rode, stopped for gas, argued, bargained, wrote and took pictures. I made friends with some Germans, and some English, and some Indians. I learned about mushrooms, potatoes, cabbages, golden nematodes, Indian farmers and elephants.
The thread connecting these random events was The Journey. For me it had a separate meaning and existence; it was the warp on which the experiences of each successive day were laid. For three years I had been weaving this single tapestry. I could still recall where I had been and slept and what I had done on every single day of travelling since The Journey began. There was an intensity and a luminosity about my life during those years which sometimes shocked me.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 406
And why else should I find myself now having my future told to me at a Rajput wedding?
"You are Jupiter," he said. Of all the gods in the pantheon, Jupiter is the one I fancy most. A lovely name, Jupiter, like cream and honey in the mouth. And a sense of great distance and closeness at the same time. He was a rainmaker, and I have definitely made my share of rain. I rained all over the Southern Hemisphere in unprecedented quantities. Then he was famous for his thunder, which is appropriate too for a god on a motorcycle, and (if it's fair to mix him up a bit with Zeus) then I like the idea of appearing in all those disguises. I have been changing my shape quite often as well. All in all I would quite like to be Jupiter, if it is not too late....
"You are Jupiter," he said, and for a flash I was, "but for seven years you have been having conflict with Mars." Of course. It was a misunderstanding. He was talking about the planet.
"This troubling influence will go on for two more years." His grip on my hand remained firm and convincing, and I did not resist. I wanted it to be important.
"During these two years, you will have two accidents. They will not be major accidents, but they will not be minor either." Really, I thought, that's stretching my credulity a bit. I hardly need a fortuneteller to predict accidents, with ten thousand miles still to ride. But he did say two. Not major? Not minor?
"After this period, when you are no longer influenced by Mars, it will be well. You will have great success and happiness."
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 421-2
I was carrying rice from Iran, raisins and dried mulberries from Afghanistan, tea from Assam, curry spices from Calcutta, stock cubes from Greece, halva from Turkey and some soya sauce from Penang.
In a polythene screw-top bottle bought from a shop in Kathmandu was the rest of the sesame-seed oil I had bought in Boddhgaya. The rice and raisins were in plastic boxes from Guatemala. My teapot was bought at Victoria Falls, and my enamel plates were made in China and inherited from Bruno at La Plata. A small box of henna leave leaves from Sudan, a vial of rose water from Peshawar and some silver ornaments from Ootacamund were all tucked into a Burmese lacquered bowl. This in turn sat inside a Russian samovar from Kabul. The tent and sleeping bag were original from London, but the bag had been refilled with down in San Francisco. I had a blanket from Peru and a hammock from Brazil. I was still wearing Lulu's silver necklace and an elephant-hair bracelet from Kenya. The Australian fishing rod was where the sword from Cairo had once sat, and an umbrella from Thailand replaced the one I had lost in Argentina.
By far the most valuable of all my things was a Kashmiri carpet, a lovely thing smothered in birds and animals to a Shiraz design, but it would have been hard to say which of my possessions was the most precious.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 443
[It was predicted Ted Simon would have an accident, "not major, not minor". He rode 60,000 around the world and it didn't happen. Then...]
In the South of France near Avignon, I came to a crossing. There were no traffic lights, and I was on the minor road. I stopped the bike completely and looked up and down the major road. I saw no traffic, and set out to cross it. I could hardly have been doing five miles an hour when I saw myself within yards of a big van coming straight for me very fast. It should have hit me side-on and I would undoubtedly have been killed if it had, but I braked and the driver didn't, and so his van was just past my front wheel when I hit it. The bike was torn away from underneath me, and the front end was smashed beyond repair. I fell on the tarmac with all the bones in my body shaken in their sockets, but otherwise unharmed.
The worst was having to face that I could look directly at a speeding van and not see it. My confidence was more shattered even than the bike. After all that I had done, with all the care I was taking, I could not explain how I could ride blindly into such a disaster. If ever an accident qualified as "not major and not minor" that was it.
Ted Simon. Jupiter's Travels p 446
Riding a motorcycle is technology's closest equivalent to being a cowboy. Our modern horse has two wheels instead of four, but its nervous system is appropriately rated in horsepower. Its reins are the handlebars, its stirrups the clutch and brake, its rider (hopefully) sufficiently experienced with the laws of nature to skillfully control his excitable steed.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p xi
One of the great advantages of the motorcycle is its ability to bring its rider close to the environment- winds, weather, roads, surroundings, nature.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p xi
And thus, within a few weeks, I found myself sitting astride two wheels, humming down the Dover road headed for what one of the motor-works heads had dubbed "a two-cylinder Odyssey." Not that I felt like any kind of Ulysses nor did I have visions of a modern Homer becoming my biographer. My feelings were a mixture of anxiety and boredom. The anxiety arose over the possibility that my mother and father might at any moment learn of my intended trek and take steps to intercede in the venture. The boredom came with contemplation of the thousand or so miles across Europe... I wanted real adventure- right away, a chance to use the bulky bundle of maps and all of the gadgets strapped so neatly to various sections of my motorcycle.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 14
It is perhaps paradoxical that he travels safest who travels alone. The solo traveller is much less apt to find trouble than when travelling in company. The logic behind this is as simple as the minds of the natives. When a native meets a stranger in his own kind among his own people, the normal reaction is that he has an advantage over that stranger. He has the upper hand and is the strongest, so he is willing to approach and talk matters over. The kind of reception he receives dictates his behaviour. If the stranger is belligerent, then native can declare war. If the greeting is friendly, then there is peace. Had I been travelling with a companion, what would have happened? The natives would have seen not a lone individual but two persons talking to each other: sufficient unto themselves. Why then talk to them? Why make move, except a move in self-defence if necessary. When this dawned upon me in its full significance there came a tremendous thrill in realizing that I was alone.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 30
The clutch had not behaved at all decently, jambing frequently as the dust penetrated the mechanism, making it practically impossible to stop... except by capsizing, and then a matter of running through the thick dirt with the heavy machine in gear to start it again. Needless to say I often found myself going in circles, back the way I came, in any direction just to keep going, while making up my mind.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 39
"You know," he said, "almost every week someone drives through here on some sort of expedition, some sort of tour, going some vague place or other. And they all think that I should give them tires and tubes. For publicity and advertising,' they call it. Apparently they never stop to think that I am here in this shop day after day, that I would like to go off adventuring too, and have my way paid. But you said you wanted to pay for the tube!"
"Certainly I do."
"Well, by Jove," his eyes gleamed, "I'll give it to you!"
Despite my protests he not only refused to accept my money, but took me home to meet his wife for tea and gave me some very sound advice.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 55
I thought of running. But where? I stood as if glued to the spot. Not until the big car came to a stop beside me, did I move. Five burly men tumbled out.
"What in hell?"
"Well, I'll be..."
"I'd like to know where in..."
One was an Englishman, a second a Persian, and the three remaining passengers were just plain Americans, the ones who didn't bother to restrain themselves. They were jabbering away at me with shouted questions before they'd touched the ground. We had a regular pow-wow and Old Home Week.
Good-naturedly they advised me that I was a fool, an idiot, and several other categories of mankind for trying to cross the desert by motorcycle. They had to cross in their motor car for business, but I was just doing it... for what?
They were generous in replenishing my water bottle and also filled my gas tank. They brought out sandwiches and fruit and we talked and munched and all was fine.
Here were businessmen, men of trade and barter. They travelled by automobiles, they wore occidental clothes and spoke a strange language but they were no different from the merchants who for centuries have travelled with the caravans trading two goats for a cow, rolls of silks for bags of wool.
The meeting was... marvellous. No other word describes it, for it buoyed my spirits and sent them soaring.
The time came to push on and one of the party who'd been doing business with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company stepped forward.
"Wait a minute young man," he said. "I'm interested in this trip of yours. When you come through Indianapolis look me up."
His card read, "Edward Herrington, President, Marmon-Herrington Motor Truck Company."
"That's interesting," I commented. Then I told him of my father's connection with the motor truck industry. The man almost exploded.
"What! You don't mean to tell me you're Bob Fulton's son? Why... why, I worked with him for years!"
He beamed, he glowed, he chortled and all but kissed me on both cheeks!
Suddenly the desert seemed like home, crowded with life and activity. In fact, even the sand had a positively friendly look.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 86
I was in Baghdad. I was approaching New Street, the main street of Baghdad. A turn to the right and then... CRASH! For an instant I didn't realize what had happened. I had stepped clear as the motorcycle went over. A little boy of eight or nine lay sprawled over the front wheel. He had dashed off the curb, directly into me and lay there screaming to heaven. The noise reassured my fast beating heart. They were screams of fright, rather than agony.
Two policemen, in their dusty faded uniforms, immediately appeared. The little boy scrambled to his feet. Through the grime on his hands and face and his bare legs I sought to find signs of cuts, of blood. There were none. Suddenly realizing the presence of the two policemen his mouth reopened. But instead of screaming he just left it open, rolled his eyes and then, as though propelled from a gun, disappeared from the scene, dodging between a cart and two trucks.
Dragging the machine to the side of the street, I kicked the starter. The engine roared, and still the policemen had said nothing. One even walked away. But the other stood there looking me over carefully.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 93
Bored and tired yet knowing this struggle had to go on for at least so long, my mind, as was most appropriate in India soon seemed to detach itself from my physical self and wandered to other subjects- until a thorny twig suddenly caught between my knee and the gasoline tank. The unexpected pain made me jump so high that I completely lost control of the machine, and in an instant, capsized in one of the ever-present washouts. I am sure that, at that point, I could have put any Indian magician to shame when it came to disappearing. The ditch was full of wild boar. In a few seconds I was so Far And Away that it was perfectly safe to look back. To my amazement- pigs were running almost as fast as I, but in the other direction.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 121
Many of the Indian railways are narrow gauge and the trestles are just wide enough to carry one track. Riding the motorcycle, it was possible to travel between the
rails and bump over the ties, meanwhile sliding one's feet along the rails on either side, thus keeping a precarious balance as the wheels bump-bump-bumped over the
sleepers. Sport? You can have your wild game tracking. Riding a trestle as high as a fifteen story building for three-quarters of a mile is every bit as thrilling as waiting for wild elephants to charge the guns. I negotiated four trestles which, for all their wood and steel, felt no wider and no safer than a tight rope stretched across top of a circus tent.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 132
The six thousand three hundred and seventy-second mile almost became the last for me. As I was sitting admiring the sign's impressive, glossy surface and wondering just who had counted off the miles, a sudden cloud darkened the sky: an automobile whirling around the bend from Gujranwala, and in an instant I was busily flying through space. Strange how quick thoughts can be. As I sat astride the machine, one leg on either side, and turned my head just in time to see the sky go dark, there was still time to realize that nothing short of a miracle could prevent breaking my leg, crushing it between car and motorcycle. Even before I finished rolling over in the dust, I was pulling and shaking it, hardly believing my eyes.
The motorcycle had only a broken carburetor dust-filter, quickly repairable at the next garage; and while the automobile awaited a wrecker to hoist it from its broken front axle, I drove away... soon to find the motorcycle's rear fork had been unnoticeably bent, but just enough to correct the Turkish "broken-bridge" calamity to the front fork, henceforth making the machine ride perfectly straight.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 133
But the greatest problem was that of fording the innumerable streams swollen by the recent rain. What otherwise might have been dry river courses were roaring torrents and, in several cases, they were more than a third of a mile wide.
The procedure was a ticklish one but from past necessity had already become a matter of routine. Leaving the machine on the bank I would start wading, knowing that at any time the water rose above the top of my boots it would drown the carburettor and end things then and there. The machine course, much too heavy to push through running water on a rocky river bottom. Sometimes it would take over an hour to find the ultimate ford. But by that time the machine would have cooled and so there was no danger of parts cracking from a sudden chill. Even with the smallest and shallowest streams there always had to be that wait to allow for this gradual cooling.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 237
The native had, of course, fled in despair, not even waiting to get his monkey. The end of the line, fastened to a stick, had caught in the dense foliage, and the animal was still up the tree. Amid much fighting, pulling, and screaming I finally got him down and took him with me for several days. He took to motorcycling like a circus bear, clinging to the luggage rack like dust. He liked everything about his new life, even liked to hunt in my hair after he had finished with his own. I was the first to get discouraged. I could see myself in everything he did and he could, within three days, do many of the things I did on the motorcycle. I had visions of him someday climbing aboard, tugging at the throttle and setting the machine loose or doing something equally serious. So I finally turned him loose in the jungle.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 253
On the road out of Batavia to Bandoeng I vividly encountered this middle-of- the-road policy. Descending a steep hill, at a corner I came upon two natives laden with a large straw house. The walls were of woven reeds, tied over a bamboo frame, and the entire structure was suspended between them on a long pole. Of course they were in the middle of the road. But at the sound of a machine they dashed for the ditch- unfortunately each choosing a different side. The house hung across the road, the front door stood open... there was no alternative. For an instant there was a tearing of reeds, a splintering of bamboo; and suddenly, the machine, looking like a haystack, emerged through the rear wall. The house rolled over and collapsed. As I pulled reeds from my hair and the wheel-spokes, they emerged terror-stricken from the ditch. They expected either a thrashing or jail. I expected a great cry from them for payment. When neither of the expected things happened, we grinned simultaneously. It was all a good joke. They had probably spent a month or two constructing the house . But what's a month or two to a Javanese?
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 255
The machine had no sooner rolled into a Kobe shop when surrounded by mechanics, some of whom spoke English and knew all about the trip. "We read it in our newspaper!" They were surprised that I did not know. The Japanese, even more so than the Americans, are a nation of newspaper readers, their principal papers having a daily circulation running into the millions. Word must have spread by a grapevine system from the machine shop where the new horn was being installed. Soon one motorcyclist after another drove up, to come in, examine the machine and ask questions, or merely bow a greeting. There was much intense telephone conversing, much coming and going of people and machines, much bustle around the shop, but there was no moment of laxity on the job and there could be no complaint regarding the service. Within an hour the horn was installed, tested and adjusted, the machine backing out of the shop.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 332
I was no sooner back at the Yadoya than a delegation of three young Japanese arrived. All spoke English. Would I do them the honour of informing when I was leaving Kobe? I said I was leaving next morning at about eight or nine.
"Would it be imposing if we, the representatives of the Kobe Motorcycle Club, asked for the honour of escorting you along the road to Osaka pointing out the most beautiful scenery in all Japan?"
"Not at all," I assured. They bowed and withdrew.
I rose at seven the next morning, shaved, and was just getting into my clothes when a din like that from a score of machine guns, roaring tractors and automobiles without cutouts, assailed my ears. I pushed aside a screen and looked out. Other guests were doing the same. The clatter was terrific. What I saw made me pull in my head a and try to hide. Not three motorcycles, as I had expected, were outside. There were thirty-three (I checked the count later), roaring salutations. Other
guests in the inn were starting to complain. The delegation of three sought vainly to hush the other club members by whispering their commands and jumping about frantically. Amid roaring and racing motors I checked-out and made a bee-line for my motorcycle before the other guests, so unceremoniously awakened, could start throwing things.
But before we could leave there had to be a speech and the presentation of a pennant bearing the insignia of the club. They tied it onto the windshield.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 333
"We will now escort you to see the fine, splendid scenery," the delegates announced. The leader raised his hand, the motors raced more madly. And off we went. We were out of Kobe and into the suburbs in one-minute-flat. The Kobe Motorcycle Club members did not believe in speed laws. Nor did they believe in allowing their visitor to find aught but a clear path before him. Every one of the thirty-three took it upon himself to be the pathfinder, with the result that I tagged along like a tired child after a day's trip to the country. They do say that the scenic route along the Inland Sea outside of Kobe is one of the really beautiful sights of Japan. I'll probably never know. The dust cloud raised by sixty-six whirling wheels was far too thick to see through. My escorts roared into Osaka, to come up with a flourish in one of the downtown squares. There they lined up and there again a speech was made.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p 333
Then late one afternoon I drove into the Avenue, a slicker buttoned about my mud-caked corduroys, and my boots took the splashing of the New York delivery wagons and shiny limousines alike. It was the day before Christmas.
As I lifted my foot over the saddle in the courtyard of an apartment building, I shed a surreptitious tear. The haughty doorman, watching from behind the grilled door, didn't see that tear. Or perhaps he thought it was rain on my face, if he thought anything other than that Mr. and Mrs. Fulton were having a strange visitor.
So from Christmas to New Year's the motorcycle stood in the courtyard. I looked at it when I came and went, but I did not touch it. And when I glanced down from the lofty windows it appeared forlorn, a small thing in a vast wilderness. It had looked that way when I strode out with the Commandant at dawn to start across the Syrian Desert- so small a thing in such a large place.
Robert Fulton. One Man Caravan p346
To my mother's horror, at age 12, my father suggested constructing a homebuilt, mini-scooter using an old lawn mower engine. The freedom and power of a motorized bike was like a match to gasoline for a troubled young rebel growing up in the 60s. A lifetime lust for adventure had been ignited. Fiercely independent and anti-authority, I was constantly rejecting the status quo, and that made me feel more alive. In high school, while others were elected most likely to succeed, my teachers often remarked that I would surely spend life behind bars, and I did - handlebars.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p5
After only a week on the road, my first casualty is a broken kick-stand. For increased ground clearance, this motorcycle was designed without a centre stand, a handy tool for raising the bike to change tires and lube the chain. Normally it's easy to tilt the bike over onto the kickstand high enough to sweep a rock underneath and then pull it upright to balance the rear wheel off the ground. It's a simple move on lighter bikes, but with 200 pounds of extra equipment and fuel, today the hollow support tube buckled.
A loud crack before the kickstand bent in half afforded the split-second needed to catch the bike before it tipped over. Now what?
Even simple problems in Japan are community affairs that require lengthy discussion considering all options. After leaning the motor-cycle against a tree, a conference begins, prompting the first of several long winded telephone calls. After the third, I ask, "So what did they say?" The answer: "Wrong number."
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p18
Since this was a small town, we felt safe and decided to use my one heavy-duty cable lock and Yasutomo's two chain locks to secure them to a tree outside our window. Not possible the cop declares, followed by motions indicating they would be stolen. They take us outside to show how other hotel visitors secured their vehicles at night, even removing their windshield wiper blades. They pointed to our mirrors and seat cushions and flicked open their hands demonstrating how they would disappear.
So far, everywhere in Russia we've been warned that our bikes or equipment would be in instant jeopardy if left unattended. It's nice to think the best of people, but we are finally convinced into wrangling our bikes down a narrow hallway to park them outside our room. It's been a long day in Friendly Russia.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p38
Exactly a half-hour later he appears with his private driver carrying a hardbound Russian road atlas. "A present for you my friends." Then he leads us back to the dirt-surfaced Trans-Siberian-Highway, and were off, kicking up pea gravel with spinning tires.
We've only had to stop for document checks three times a day, including when caught on radar for speeding. Each time we end up humouring the cops and posing for pictures.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p43
Occasionally we pass directly next to the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and, for a moment, catch glimpses of comfortable passengers in lighted railcars. I imagine them sipping wine and nibbling French cheeses in their steamy, warm carriages. Yasutomo must hate me at the moment. Before we left together, he'd asked about taking the train to Chita instead of riding.
My bellowing reply was, "Are we motorcyclists or what?" I wonder now, as we ride into the night, blue with uncontrolled shivering, if he regrets his decision.
Humming loudly inside my helmet is Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again" and I tell myself once more that it's good to be here.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p45
Gravel roads, although firmer than mud, cause mild wheel-wobbling, making the bike sway as though riding on flat tires. Cognizant of variances in surface conditions, especially when the front wheel twists off in unintended directions, we lack proper control and have to resist the urge to fight the handlebars. Like flying an aircraft, good motorcycling requires delicate steering. To stay relaxed, its best to control the handlebars by pinching the handgrips with your outside two fingers and use the other two for brakes and clutch. Caution is critical. If we slow abruptly the weight shifts forward, loading the front end and digging the front tire into the gravel instead of rolling over it.
This plowing effect can send the bike sideways into a horizontal slide.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p46
On a long journey, it takes a month of adjusting to erratic routines to find the rhythm of the road. There is a point where weary travellers either flee for the comforts of home or cross a magic line beyond which home is redefined. After four short weeks in Russia, the road is now home. Long, hard days end in rain-soaked tents, cheap hotels or on mouldy couches in the tiny apartments of newfound friends - temporary shelters that reveal the starkness of how the other side lives. A month is a year when travelling, and as each day passes, swinging through a forest of adventure, I release an old tree branch to grasp a new one, often dangling in the breeze, awaiting another life lesson.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p53
After they ask why I'm favouring a left shoulder, I relate the afternoon's events. They want to look at the bike; maybe they can fix it.
"Have at," I say, "but there is little we can do out here without tools."
At first, it confused me why they just laughed. But an hour later these surgeons from heaven were busy straightening the frame, welding steel fasteners and using superglue with duct tape to piece together the shattered windshield. Bundled metal water pipes served as a circular anvil to hammer round sections of the frame back into perfect shape. Within four hours, the Blue Beast was restored to health.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p57
Halfway through a can of sardines and stale bread, I am suddenly aware of a presence at my side. Looking down, I am startled to see a four-year-old girl staring up, holding an aluminium pail and porcelain bowl. A scan of the surrounding terrain reveals no sign of nomads or their Gers, and it's impossible to determine from where she came.
"Sain ban noo" I say. (Hello). Her smudged face is frozen in an emotionless gaze upward at the Martian someone her family sent her to assist. Because of their deep Buddhist belief in karma, it's in the nature of the nomads to feed and care for strangers. This is a training mission.
Accepting the pail and bowl, I pour myself a drink of hot, sweetened goat's milk. Finally, something I've been offered offer tastes good. "Bai ar laa" (Thank you).
Still no response, just little brown eyes of apprehension. Nothing moves her. Funny faces and wiggling fingers in my ear changes nothing; she never flinches.
After a second cup of milk, I hand back the containers, flip the bike ignition and beep the horn. Suddenly, she breaks into bright childish laughter. I see her in the mirror as she scurries back across the desert to where she came from, and when I turn to see her one last time she has disappeared. The sweet taste of goat's milk on my lips and a digital photo are my only confirmation that she ever existed.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p63
A quarter-mile sprint later, me following on my bike, we reach an ageing cement-block apartment complex where he pulls me by the arm upstairs, rambling out questions and answers in Russian. Hungry Jack points to himself and declares, "Sasha!"
Once inside his 10-by-10-foot kitchen, he flings open the antique refrigerator door with one hand and pitches jars of sweetened fruit with the other. Soon a steaming pot of tea and Russian ravioli arrive, with crackers and homemade raspberry jam. He points to everything in sight, asking if I want some. After force-feeding me whatever he can, we're off to the living room for home videos and invitations to accompany him and his wife to their dacha for a Russian banya. It's already nine o'clock, and, fearing an all-nighter, I decline and instead politely request a hotel.
Back on my bike with Sasha leaping ahead like an eager puppy, we reach the only hotel in the village. While I unlock the aluminium panniers, he grabs the nylon tote bags, stuffing whatever he can under his arms. After hauling my gear inside, he surveys the room as if searching for something written on the faded wallpaper. I assure him everything's fine and that I now just want to sleep. His farewell is a Russian bear hug, picking up my 210 pounds and shaking me like a rag doll.
Disappointed that we couldn't hang out more, he lopes back down the road, turning every few steps to wave.
I am going to miss Russian hospitality.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p67
Later, back in the storm, I realize it would have been wiser to quit at the one-hour mark when the shakes first started. Now there is nothing but freezing rain and fierce winds pounding the empty Siberian plain. By nightfall, when a small village appears, the stages of hypothermia have already hit and my thinking grows mushy.
Two federal marshals driving in off the roadway find me spinning my tires through muddy streets. They know something's wrong and pull alongside, displaying hand-signs asking me to follow. Six blocks later, we arrive at a grey cement hotel without lights. Before I can step off the bike, they grab me by the arms. Shivers had turned to uncontrolled shakes, and I'm unable to walk on my own. Inside the ageing hotel lobby, an overweight matronly desk clerk is bundled in sweaters and overcoats. So much for heat. I need to get warm immediately, so the marshals lead me next door to a warm, smoky cafe crowded with uniformed men playing cards. I'm uncertain if they are Tartars or Buryats, but they are friendly, bringing cups of steaming tea and huge metal bowls of vegetable soup. While I sit shivering, one of them pries off my helmet and motions me to remove my soggy riding suit. Siberians know the dangers of hypothermia, and they bring a heavy wool blanket and towel.
After gulping down hot liquids, the shakes subside enough for me to strip off the rest of my clothes.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p69
High-capacity fuel tanks provide extra-long-range riding when needed and can be left half-full when it's appropriate. That morning, I had deliberately filled mine only halfway, to help me maneuver through the slippery conditions ahead. Five gallons less means 40 pounds lighter, a significant plus when trying to wrangle a 600- pound bike through mud. Even when the low-fuel light blinks on, it still means that there's 120 miles left — provided the electronics are functioning.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p71
I always stash a set of spare keys on the bike where they are easy to access in emergencies. They are wrapped in soft duct tape and tucked up underneath the rubber boot on top of the gas tank, under the seat. But constant pounding and jarring from washboard roads disturbs everything, no matter how tightly packed. Pills turn to powder and even the foam padding in the rear top-box gets beaten into gum, sticking on the instruments it's intended to protect. Most items change shape after only a few days off-road. Even knowing this, I never imagined a set of hidden keys could cause such a problem.
About the time I started looking for a place to stop and get warm, without warning the motor quit. Not with a sputter- an abrupt cutoff. After a brief inspection, it becomes apparent that repeated attempts to restart will only lead to a dead battery. Bikes with carburettors are easy to fix. Even a motor mower can be cannibalized for enough parts to get home. New BMWs come with electronic fuel injection, a superior method of metering fuel and supposedly bulletproof, but it's also difficult to repair without tools. There's a nagging fear, wondering what to do if this system malfunctioned here or in Africa.
My brain overloads analyzing the problem. Is it a broken wire buried somewhere in the yards of electrical tubes? A burned-out circuit board? A malfunctioning computer? Chips gone haywire? How could I repair defective electronics out here? And what about that slowly expiring Russian visa?
---
Now, suspecting it's a dirty filter or a faulty fuel pump, I unbutton the tank-filler to discover the real problem- no gas! Inside the lid, my set of jangling spare keys had severed the wires connecting the low-fuel light, the reason there had been no warning my fuel was about to run out.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp72-3
As cowboys love their horses, riders love their motorcycles. We get to know each other through customizing and maintenance checks. From meticulous tinkering and studying specs, we memorize their features and weaknesses while constantly drooling over the latest gadgets. Forged steel and machined aluminium rolling on vulcanized rubber become sacred vehicles that we name.
My mighty Blue Beast, survivor of a rugged Tran-Siberian crossing and stained from the red clays of Mongolia, has earned its place as my faithful companion. Capable of taming the roughest terrain and gobbling up long stretches of highway, its reliability is important to the success of my journey. On top of all that, it goes fast! Russian police checkpoints, machine gun-toting guards stop me to point at flashing red numbers on radar guns. They don't seem angry so I laugh aloud- only 80 miles per hour? But they are more interested in where I'm going, and before they wave me on, I must recite a list of recent destinations. So far, Russian cops have been friendly to the "Amerikanski" from "Calleekfornia". Once, I'm even given the emblem off a police uniform, a souvenir from an otherwise forgotten moment in a distant land.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p74
A passing summer squall sets me squinting through my face shield at the glare from a setting sun glistening off slick black pavement. Twenty-one hundred miles to go - from Novosibirsk, it's a straight shot over the Urals to the onion domes of St. Basil's. After a loop around the Kremlin, I'll be off to the Middle East via Europe, but for now it's a ride into rapture. With a twist of the throttle, my iron steed snorts and stretches its legs, winding through the gears in a mechanical fury, flowing through the drive train to rushing asphalt below. Captured in the euphoria of rapid acceleration, as always, I can't imagine a better state of mind.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp74-5
Motorcyclists welcome motorcyclists on motorcycles. It's a sign of respect when I see a dozen bikes heading toward me in the rain outside a city, ready to escort me in. Actually, it's often easier to ride in alone, but it's also impressive to see the spirit of like-minded fanatics infected with the same fever. The first question from the diehards: "Did you ride the stretch between Chita and Khabarovsk or take the train?" A cheer erupts when I tell them I rode it. Even by Siberian standards, it's one of the toughest roads in the world. They are further impressed when they hear of my anticipated trip around the planet. For most motorcyclists, this is a fantasy ride.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p76
The Other Men, a local club from Omsk, come to greet me on motorcycles, guiding me back to their bike shop clubhouse. A few of the riders have casts on their legs, reminders of the price of our passion. No drunks either - they ride sober, in sharp contrast to the Russian truckers I met, sucking on vodka bottles at breakfast.
Until 10 years ago, the only machines available here were comical Soviet Urals, unreliable copies of '40s model BMWs. Now big, meaty imported Japanese sport bikes dominate. The locals have learned how to keep them running without access to the proper parts - they make their own on old, rusty lathes. When I discover another broken sub-frame bolt from my ride in Mongolia, they machine a new one from an otherwise useless chunk of steel. Drowning me in hospitality, they've taken to calling me the Siberian Viking.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp76-7
I've been warned that friendly country cops turn aggressive as you near Moscow, demanding money after flagging down speeding motorists. In preparation for foreigners, they've learned to make commands in English: pay up or else. No one wants to find out what "or else" means. The only way to know for sure would be to call their bluff. In 60,000 miles of Third World shakedowns, the most I've surrendered is a pair of scratched-up Korean sunglasses in Peru. Despite numerous Russian speed traps, I am determined to maintain that record.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p78
After the first straightaway, blowing off a string of lumbering big rigs, a lone highway cop holding a radar gun steps from the shoulder, pointing his red reflector paddle directly at me. I've been gambling all day, ignoring them, pretending not to notice, but my luck was sure to run out eventually. Although unarmed, the cops could have radios with them to notify comrades ahead of a belligerent speeder. This time there is no way around the man in the roadway - I rein the Beast to a halt.
As he fixates on the California license plate, I blurt out in rapid-fire English, "Howdy, how's it going? Can you tell me how to get to Poland from here?" He goes on the defensive.
"Ni panimah." I don't understand. I continue sputtering nonsense until he regains his footing, demanding "Documenkis!"
He points to the blinking red numbers on his radar gun and then growls at me. "You!"
Showing him my watch I say, "Oh how interesting, is that a clock like this?" He holds out his hand. Rubbing his thumb and index fingers together, he hisses, "Muneeeee."
More babbling about Poland and pointing to the sky taxes his patience as I refuse to admit understanding a single word. Exasperated and convinced a shakedown is futile, he says in Russian, "Never mind just get out of here and slow down."
I smile and say "Spa cee bah." (Thank you). His head whips around and with a glare of suspicion he says, "I thought you didn't speak Russian. I cover my tracks with a big stupid smile, "Pree vee et, pree vee et, spa cee bah, spa cee bah" (Hello, hello, thank you, thank you).
Aware he's been had, he reluctantly lets me go. His time is better spent squeezing speeding drivers of expensive German cars.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp78-9
Quote from: Biggles on Dec 02, 2022, 03:19 AMAfter the first straightaway, blowing off a string of lumbering big rigs, a lone highway cop holding a radar gun steps from the shoulder, pointing his red reflector paddle directly at me. I've been gambling all day, ignoring them, pretending not to notice, but my luck was sure to run out eventually. Although unarmed, the cops could have radios with them to notify comrades ahead of a belligerent speeder. This time there is no way around the man in the roadway - I rein the Beast to a halt.
As he fixates on the California license plate, I blurt out in rapid-fire English, "Howdy, how's it going? Can you tell me how to get to Poland from here?" He goes on the defensive.
"Ni panimah." I don't understand. I continue sputtering nonsense until he regains his footing, demanding "Documenkis!"
He points to the blinking red numbers on his radar gun and then growls at me. "You!"
Showing him my watch I say, "Oh how interesting, is that a clock like this?" He holds out his hand. Rubbing his thumb and index fingers together, he hisses, "Muneeeee."
More babbling about Poland and pointing to the sky taxes his patience as I refuse to admit understanding a single word. Exasperated and convinced a shakedown is futile, he says in Russian, "Never mind just get out of here and slow down."
I smile and say "Spa cee bah." (Thank you). His head whips around and with a glare of suspicion he says, "I thought you didn't speak Russian. I cover my tracks with a big stupid smile, "Pree vee et, pree vee et, spa cee bah, spa cee bah" (Hello, hello, thank you, thank you).
Aware he's been had, he reluctantly lets me go. His time is better spent squeezing speeding drivers of expensive German cars.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp78-9
Real life experience with coppers overseas. I got sent to Zimbabwe to move the embassy to a new location. We hired a car and was driving out to the new place when out of a bus stop jumped a copper waving us down. We pull over and demanded an 'on the spot fine' for speeding. Problem was that the currency had been changed due to runaway inflation and he hadn't worked it out yet. So we gave him the equivalent of about $5 in the old money but he gave us back $20 in the new in change. Bonus. God bless him, he paid for dinner that night !!
The Czech Republic is a well-kept secret for motorcycling. Fresh asphalt roads slice through thick-forested scenery with plenty of quaint cafe stops for delicious local food at half the cost of most of Europe. Czechs cook like the French, organize like Germans and greet like Mexicans. Avoiding touristy Prague, I stop in a medieval stone block village just on the outskirts. Podebrady, population 15,000, is an orderly town plucked straight from the last century, with prices to match.
Twenty bucks a night for a mini-suite, color TV and a desktop computer with free high-speed Internet.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p86
A darkening overcast sky cools the landscape with mist as early evening fog creeps in mischievously to alter the odds for motorcycle riders. Against piercing headlight glare, streams of water droplets form sparkling cobwebs on my face shield, making me drowsy. Mesmerized by blinding smoky white, the second I forget caution, the looming back end of a big rig instantly zooms into view.
Stomping the brake and squeezing the hand lever almost hard enough to snap, the ABS kicks on with a klicketyy-klickety abrasive motion. Bright red lights approaching too fast is a familiar panic scenario for unfortunate motorcyclists in the sphincter-puckering moment before we know we're going down. Regrets flash as blazing neon- what was I doing out here at night? The rain-slicked road loses the battle of friction as the front wheel of the Blue Beast bites into the asphalt, barely tapping the steel fangs of the truck's undercarriage bar.
Spared without reason, I release a breath, fighting the shakes as the sinister square ghost chugs eerily back into the dark. With a shaky smile, I acknowledge the mercy of the Travel Gods once more and search for somewhere to sleep.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p99
It's been tricky coordinating the shock absorber rebuilding process. A repair kit had to be mailed from Sweden to the local Ohlins distributor, now a bike shop with tools was needed to remove the shock. After that it had to go out to another shop for rebuilding and yet another for spring compression. But because of days off for Ramadan, a half-day job stretched into two days. Strangers wrenching on my bike to access the shock was nerve-racking to watch, especially when the mechanic who reassembled it was different from the one who initially disassembled it. Finally, after bolting the Beast back together with pliers and vice-grips, the wires were reconnected and sealed with masking tape. Life is laid-back here, and nothing stops Turks from chain-smoking, not even gasoline pouring out onto the floor from severed fuel lines.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p104
Three flights down from my tiny hotel room, the Blue Beast waits patiently for the order to ride. The destination is not important. Today, settle for anywhere, as long as I am travelling on two wheels. At last, a warm autumn wind and rushing asphalt transmit the soothing relief of the open road as I roll beyond the Istanbul city limits, heading south. After crossing the channel to Bandirma, reaching the ancient Roman city of Ephesus is a four-hour sprint over the opposite mainland and into a thousand years of history. It's hot enough to ride without a jacket, but I recall my pledge, enjoying the sweltering heat. I imagine I'm absorbing the sun's energy like a recharging battery, storing it for the upcoming mountains. After a short search, I find a cozy hostel in Selcuk, a tree-shaded village nearly two miles beyond the best-preserved classical Roman city on the eastern Mediterranean. It's here where the apostle Paul is said to have written his profound epistle to the Ephesians.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p106
Odd noises can be deceiving when travelling through metal. Even when you use a stethoscope to pinpoint them, diagnosis is difficult. We couldn't hear the lower-end-whine at the repair center, but the BMW service manager in Istanbul decided it could be the water pump and installed a new one to be safe. Then, when the sound persisted, a new generator, hydraulic cam chain tensioner and starter were replaced. More shots in the dark. Because the grating was inconsistent and barely audible, mechanics had to regularly test ride the bike, attempting to identify the noise. After a final checkup at the shop, we determined the problem to be the small bearing in the transmission that wears prematurely when the chain is too tight. Only the bearing needed replacing, but the entire engine had to be disassembled- a three-day process. The good news was that since the bike had a record of maintenance by authorized dealers across Europe, BMW assumed responsibility and covered the cost under warranty.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p107
Three weeks trapped in any capital city will drive a traveller mad. It's worse for motorcyclists, as we constantly crave the soothing winds of the open road, with an alternating landscape to ignite our passions. Waiting with nothing to do only strangles our spirits. My motorcycle parts, ordered through Turkish distributors, are somewhere between the BMW warehouse in Munich and a complicated local customs procedure that is rife with delays. Even if they arrive next week, it will take three days to rebuild the machine, which means I'll be lucky to escape Istanbul by December.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p109
An empty, jagged mountainside of the rising Anatolian plateau turns into an eerie moonscape of frozen forests and white, powdery plains. As the altimeter climbs, temperatures plummet until chilling pain turns to numbness from my fingertips to my shoulders. An electric vest maintains my core heat but has no effect on a runny nose freezing to the inside of my helmet liner. Its going to be a long two days through a high-altitude glacial odyssey. Savage headwinds bite through thick nylon and five layer thermals, gnawing their way from my legs to my lower torso. The Pillsbury Doughboy under siege. Icy elements relentlessly hammer and tear, chipping away barriers to hypothermia. If I can keep organs warm, another hundred miles is possible, but with the sun behind the clouds, odds shift. At 45-minute intervals I must stop to stomp my feet and let the heated vest chase away shivers. Uncertainty re-emerges like a long-lost nemesis. The volatility of nature reinforces the idea of fate, I think to myself, as the ferocity of adventure returns, like plunging into a raging sea. With a wry smile, once again I hum Willie's tune "On the Road Again.'
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p112
The crossing from Turkey to Syria today only takes two hours. The cost is 40 dollars for insurance and road tax and 10 more to bribe fake immigration inspectors before being released into a flowing demolition derby. Turks are timid drivers compared to Syrians. The 30 mile terror ride in the dark to Aleppo is only a peek at what else is in store. There are too many near-death experiences to consider recounting.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p114
At a downtown restaurant, locals crowding around my table exchanging small talk was normal. And who would have suspected a diversion to block a line of sight to my bike, which was quietly being stripped of its vital driving lights? Because the danger factor increases tenfold after dark, I try not to ride at night. When poor timing dictates the need, auxiliary lights brighten inky nights, making a significant safety difference. But as I said yesterday when someone stole my water bottles and this morning when the chain lube disappeared- what the heck, turn the page. Let's only count the good times.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p115
When it come to adventure travel, you can't take a wrong turn- a thought shared simultaneously by both parties when I meet a young backpacking British woman touring the ruins of Petra. She, weary of advances from optimistic teenage Arab boys, and I, lonesome for a woman's touch, seem a good match. Neither of us requires convincing. Doubling-up on a motorcycle can be crowded, but Barbara's warm, little body fits perfectly between the small of my back and her rucksack strapped to the motorcycle tail rack. Because the load is awkward, it is understood that when we encounter pockets of deep sand she will climb off and walk while I spin through, wrestling to the other side.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p121-2
Each of the first ten checkpoints are five miles apart and require delays while soldiers radio behind and ahead, confirming I am continuing north. But the further from Luxor I get, the less authorities understand the situation. Finally, one soldier flatly insists I accept a military escort. It's useless to argue as armed men clamber aboard sputtering old pickup trucks, eager to protect me from whatever happened a few years ago.
A long-dreamed-about sunset on the Nile is reduced to a muddy glow through a translucent glaze of bug guts on my visor while I'm in a 30 mile-per-hour procession of wailing sirens and flashing blue lights. An hour later, I am delivered to a local hotel sealed off by soldiers and ordered not to leave. This time they are serious.
"Can I at least go out for Internet?"
An overcautious captain worries for my safety. "No, the manager has agreed to let you use his."
At sunrise, a new game ensues. At their pace, it will take days to reach Cairo, so when they assign new escorts at checkpoints, I quickly ditch them at traffic snarls. Freedom is brief but delicious. Annoyed by my antics but friendly to a fault, soldiers at the following road-blocks patiently plead that I wait for new escorts.
Recognizing the overkill, still, no one wants to accept responsibility for mishaps, so they all do as they are told. But even when they sometimes catch up with me, the sternest commanders break into toothy smiles when I pull off my helmet, laughing.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p130
The quickest way to meet fellow motorcyclists when you're travelling is to experience a problem. It seldom takes more than minutes for local riders on bikes or in cars to spot a brother down and stop to offer assistance. Flat tires and empty fuel tanks can occur anywhere, but bikers in distress don't wait long.
Drive chains and rear-wheel sprockets are high-wear items that eventually need replacement. If we pay attention, half-worn sprockets can be unbolted and reversed to extend their life. For unknown reasons, the teeth on mine went from starting-to-wear to full-blown fishhook-shapes in 100 miles.
Complications never occur when convenient- only in the rain or on a desert road after dark. In this case, it was both. Motorcyclists learn to constantly listen for unusual clinks, sputters or metallic grating noises that alert us to impending mechanical failure. There is usually a warning just prior to a final snap. So when my engine RPMs abruptly increased and the bike immediately slowed, it was obvious the rear chain had jumped off the worn-out sprocket teeth.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p152
Even with a discount on the brake pads and rear sprocket, the prices are outrageous. But Nadav says, "Don't worry, we'll handle maintenance on the house." With that, two technicians spend the next hour inspecting my bike for other potential problems. There are another 6,000 miles ahead through Pakistan, India and Nepal, where there are no parts or mechanics familiar with BMW. Nadav, concerned about this, gives me personal contact information in case I need help. Although long-riders don't take this kind of hospitality for granted, we're accustomed to the brotherhood of motorcycle riders. We may be from different countries and cultures, but when it comes to our passion, we all speak the same language. As others in the world bicker among themselves, those in the biking community are anxious to meet and lend a hand. One more reason to believe there is no better way to experience the world than on two wheels.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p153
Although India is supposed to be worse, there's no way to describe how bad driving is in southern Pakistan. At dusk, the road transforms from semi-organized double-lane pavement to a death-wish bumper-car ride to hell on a single strip of dirt and mud travelled in both directions simultaneously- with no one using their brakes. It's hard to believe what's happening. Riding on the out-skirts of Karachi had put me on edge, but now I can only gasp in apprehension. The last four hours have turned into a suicide ride by collision-seeking demons determined to meet Allah.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp169-170
Ignoring shouts from soldiers waving their arms, I rocket past flashing blue lights, looking straight ahead. Aware that capture is inevitable, nothing matters except this joyous dash from the chaos. I unleash the ponies anyway and soar onto the seamless tarmac of heaven, followed by crying sirens and highway police in hot pursuit. Troopers approach.
"From which country do you travel?"
"Hello my name is Glen, how are you? I come from California."
After accepting stupid-foreigner excuses for not seeing them, we engage in amiable debate why it's unsafe for motorcycles on a super-highway.
"We are responsible for your safety Mr. Glen and you must return to the small road." Realizing the flaws in their argument, we reach a compromise.
"We will please to honour you for tonight at our camp. You can sleep there. And as you wish, you may demand our service to you. We will prepare meals according to your satisfaction." Thirty minutes later, chicken and rice is served in a chilly but empty 20-bed dormitory, followed by photos and tea with the commander. In the morning, there is a timid knock at sunrise. The soft-eyed police sergeant from last night is holding a tray.
"We have prepared for you these boiled eggs and hope they are to your acceptance." The recital continues. "It gives us pleasure that you restored your sleep and we have prepared to escort you to the small road."
As for me, I am almost to the place to which I am going.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p172
The roads are as terrifying as promised but not as death-defying as the ride from Karachi. Warned of the touts and thieves in Delhi's motorcycle district, I've prepared for the worst.
Bargaining down prices for new driving lights from ten dollars to nine was easy, witnessing the installation was priceless. Preferring my own hands, one other than Jimmy or white-smocked BMW techs should touch the Beast. But how bad could someone err bolting on lights and attaching two wires? Determined to impress the foreigner, ten pairs of oily hands compete to tape connections and reroute electronics until neither the horn nor ignition function. Finally, one light shines up and the other straight down- "That's okay Mr. Glen, better to see the trees and watch the front tire."
It was useless trying to explain why wiring should be tucked away neatly; they were far too proud to be corrected. Everything could be reassembled later when no one was looking.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p178
Indians are the most curious people yet. Within moments of stopping, mobs of inquisitive black-haired natives gather for a lengthy interrogation. "From which country are you?" "What is your good name sir?" Scooter riders flatter, "Your motorbike is looking very graceful today." While testing the throttle and brakes, all the switches must be flipped by the crowd as they take turns trying on my helmet. The rest is standard talk about cost, speed, mileage, the number of gears and how long I've been on the road. None understand ABS brakes or a bike with electronic fuel injection. Strict protectionist Indian legislation prohibits imported cars. Foreign brands must be manufactured in India, so they are unaware of the latest technology. Few have even heard of BMW automobiles, let alone seen intergalactic-looking motorcycles with big aluminium boxes packed with unimagined items.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp179-180
It's usually best to wade in first with a long probing stick, but sunset was fast approaching. Tired of waiting for someone to appear who might know exactly where to cross, I rolled the dice.
Halfway across, the bottom was still visible until I abruptly hit a pothole, sinking the Blue Beast instantly to mid-tank level and over the top of the seat. A wet body is manageable; a wet intake manifold is not. Engine air snorkels on BMW Dakars are purposely set high for this reason, to facilitate river crossings in up to three feet of slow-moving water. Turning around midstream was not an option, and with fifty feet left there is no way for me to tell if the bottom dropped further or sloped up to a welcome climb out.
As chilly water gushed into my boots, I nudged the bike fast enough to stay upright yet slow enough to keep fluid from flowing into the snorkel. The strategy was complicated by the need to stay prepared to squeeze the clutch if the motor coughed. Sucking water into a running engine is a bad idea under any circumstances, but out here in the boondocks at sunset- it could be a big issue. To my relief, a gradual incline led to higher ground.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p189
I awakened to the tantalizing call of the mighty Himalayas. Formed by colliding tectonic plates 60 million years ago, the windswept, icy peaks are still on the rise, six inches a year.
That notion alone has me giddy with anticipation of soaring through mountain curves until sundown. The asphalt is wavy but smooth, and at long last empty straightaways provide welcome room for the Blue Beast to stretch its legs. Once I've overtaken convoys of tanker trucks, a steady spiral upwards from the Indian plains leads into forested foothills of Everest.
Boasting some of the best scenery in Asia, Nepal is home to 10 of the 14 highest mountains on earth.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p205
Covering a 30-mile shortcut to the main highway consumes four hours, but, from that junction, riding becomes an eardrum-popping soar into the mountainous mist of the towering Himalayas. Commercial traffic is confined to tightly packed, chugging convoys of diesel trucks, while speeding local motorcyclists haul colourfully dressed Nepali women sitting sidesaddle. Corroded electrical connections have rendered my GPS useless, and there is no English on the road signs. But after concerns that I'll be travelling past dark, the rust-tiled rooftops of Kathmandu soon poke upwards into the radiant skyline.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p208
And there is no forgetting the 20-year-old Dutch girl who had been backpacking solo across southern India when it struck her that two-wheels was more challenging.
Nine riding lessons later, she was en route to Kathmandu on her first motorcycle- alone. The last I saw of her, in a Thamel District backstreet hostel, she was double-checking her saddlebags, heading for Tibet.
World motorcycle travel is nothing new. Swilling down Indian beers in a Chitwan Park cafe, an 82-year-old Scotsman recounted his adventure of 1956, riding from Sri Lanka to London on a German- built 49CC one-half horsepower scooter- cruising at a thumping 22 miles per hour. His mesmerizing tale prompted obvious questions: "Tell me sir, do you ever miss the two-wheeled thrill?"
"Aye, that I do, I do. That's why I've rode 'ere now on me bicycle!"
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p216
At that time, big-bore bikes were illegal in Thailand, so I shipped a 1985 Yamaha V-Max from California to Penang, Malaysia, to sneak across the border along a notorious smuggling route. Off I rode, using gas station maps written in unfamiliar languages while gawking at road signs trying to memorize their mystifying symbols. A purple metal-flake helmet kept most of the wicked monsoon rains at bay, and a small set of throw-over nylon saddlebags held an extra set of dry clothes and canned food. Spare parts were unavailable.
Fast forward into the cyber-age, where long-riders can remain in constant contact with each other - ahead or behind, with hardly a week passing without an exchange of message of some kind. Using Internet connections in major cities, we can update each other on border problems, road conditions and civil disturbances. Yet even with the high-tech advantages, there're still enough unknowns to keep the journey challenging. Almost every developing nation is in turmoil and subject to sudden violence from rebels or governments. Bridges and roads still wash out, while earthquakes, typhoons or equipment failures always arrive when least expected. Still, alien cultures and fascinating traditions continue to dazzle even the most experienced wanderer.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp225-6
Several days past our last communication, while cutting through an arcade parking lot, a long-haired man with a Canadian accent steps in front of my bike. "Glen Heggstad! Striking Viking! It's me - Art Kernaghan!" We spent the next few hours like old friends, ranting about recent routes and adventures. I tried hard not laugh when I saw the $150 clunker he'd been riding from Saigon. Guided by the sympathetic hands of fate, this young man from Toronto had somehow passed through the twisting mountains of Laos into the Land of Smiles. Grinning with pride, he stood chest-out, displaying his smoking two-stroke 12 horsepower 125CC sputtering weed-whacker on two wheels. Motorcyclists call these wheezing rattletraps Rat Bikes.
On one side of the bike, village-made steel racks supported a plastic beer crate packed with tools and spare parts, while on the other, a backpack was held firm with overstretched bungee cords. Oil seeped from gaskets, a red taillight lens was taped on and a dimly lit headlight only functioned some of the time. He explained that most of the flickering electronics on the bike had been "sorted out" and that the dubiously thin cables should hold. In a grimy Vietnamese bike shop, one American dollar bought a new clutch, a few more to straighten bent forks and purchase two locally manufactured tires that might last if he kept the speed down.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp226-7
Depressed and alone, he'd thrown up his arms in defeat. And until stopping to speak with other Western travellers, he'd been headed back to Vietnam to fly home. But roving Australian strangers had provided much-needed inspiration. "Never give up mate - keep riding. You don't need anyone but yourself."
Art's destination is south and mine north, but we're having so much fun exploring the spices of Thai nightlife, we opt to zigzag together for a while. Side by side, we growl and sputter amid blue plumes of wing-ding-ding-ding through bustling city streets at a rampaging 20 miles per hour...
The fact that he made it this far is astounding; that he's continuing, oblivious to the potential mishaps is admirable. To Art Kernaghan, the glass is always half full. Defying the laws of physics, he bobs and weaves across Thailand with inspired determination and blind faith. He can make it because he believes he can.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp227-8
Next to painting the house, changing a motorcycle tire is the least pleasurable way to spend an afternoon. Yet the Travel Gods had smiled on me once more as a blowout occurred while white-lining through stalled border city traffic. Within seconds, a wobbling Blue Beast slowed to a graceful halt directly in front of a well-stocked motorcycle shop. Twenty minutes and four dollars later, we're back on the road with a new tube, a lubed drive chain and some new friends. Even the last hundred miles in the rain to Bangkok was uplifting. Motorcycle maintenance is a constant. For anything not welded solid, if there is a reason for it to wear under the bike's vibration, it will. Holding out until Singapore to avoid the high-priced imported parts in Thailand wasn't going to work, and recalling a recent raping at the hands of Bangkok motorcycle dealers, mercy was unlikely. Up until now, the local's unwritten rule of two-tier pricing for taxi rides and trinkets has had minimal effect on my travel expenditures. But doubled prices for foreigners on already expensive BMW replacement parts means budget bites in the hundreds of dollars.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p244
Slicing through Malaysian jungle terrain, a seamless asphalt corridor connecting the Thai border with Kuala Lumpur unravels for a straight 300 miles south. With First World infrastructure, toll stations and chain restaurants replace noodle stands and traffic-clogged small towns. Car drivers pay fees, but motorcyclists ride free in special lanes to the sides of toll booths. At my first gas stop, passive Malays welcome me with thumbs-up gestures and the usual question, "Where are you coming from?"
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p253
Without crossing any rivers, the trail appeared exactly where indicated, complete with a sign in three languages - "Road Closed " After verifying I had four gallons of fuel remaining, I reset the trip meter and switched on the GPS Breadcrumbs function to show a dotted line indicating the exact route I had just travelled. It's easy to get lost on the hundreds of forks and overrun trails throughout Borneo, but harnessing the technology of a half-dozen orbiting satellites evens the playing field. Yet this GPS is well-worn, and sometimes vibration shuts down the power connection, erasing recent tracks.
This could cause a problem on the way out. The first three hours' ride is over a mixture of wheel-wiggling, rocky adobe and sandy gravel - a persistent reminder of departing off the beaten path. At the 20-mile mark, a bulldozed raised barricade blocks the road. The emptiness beyond is marked by multi-shaded green mountains cursed by trackless miles of mud trails and landslides. As advised, the road has been abandoned, but has the jungle? Why has the logging company sealed the forest?
Indigenous people around the world resent international corporations raping their natural resources. Would the natives accept or reject a wandering Westerner violating their isolated wilderness on a shiny blue riding machine? Were tribal troubles ahead?
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp262-3
Through an early morning mist, the deteriorating trail grows thick with creeping vines and storm-eroded gullies. It was a pleasant ride dry, but after a solid rain, the return trip would be a miserable, perilous slide. How big a fool rides solo into an unforgiving rain forest hoping it will not rain? Yesterday, the decision came down to whether I would keep spinning my wheels in Kapit or spin them in the forest.
The objective was to ride in as deep as possible the first day and take two more getting out. There was no way to judge how far the road would hold - 10 miles or 100?
Just before sunset, after getting buried to my axles in sucking mud one last time, I mark a GPS waypoint and record odometer readings - 55 miles of delightful, challenging jungle track in eight exhausting hours. After setting up camp in the sweltering tropical heat, eating imported apples and canned sardines by the iridescent glow of a silvery rising moon served as the grand finale of an adventurous day.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp263-4
Often, the quality of an adventure can be measured by what went wrong. But this week's deviation into the rain forest's mystical gardens ends as smoothly as it began. No flat tires, engine failures or tumbles off precarious rocky ledges. Poisonous spiders and snakes kept to themselves, while evil spirits attacked only those who believed in them.
Back in Kapit, local wharf workers lent a hand loading the motorcycle on the first boat heading downriver. A pipe-smoking skipper, shirtless and sporting tattered, baggy shorts, was pleased to aid a man with wild dreams. As a penetrating tropical sun caked layers of red clay on my boots, dreams of expanding horizons glowed like red-hot embers. After this test run for the harsher conditions which reportedly existed on the other side of the island, I'm confident Kalimantan is passable.
My new challenge is laid out - to be the first person to circle the entire island of Borneo on two wheels.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p265
Over fried noodles and boiled eggs, Mr. Gkwa says he knows of a special machine shop that can make a new bushing and bolt for my crippled brake pedal. As one Chinese to another, a wave of his hand signals to the restaurant owner that breakfast is paid for, and we are off to solve my problems. The industrial zone winds through a 10-mile maze beyond Kota Kinabulu and into even rows of modern cement-block shops run by older men speaking only Chinese. The creative genius of any machinist is amazing, especially when working from enormous piles of rusting salvaged steel. Instead of using his lathe to make a separate new bushing and bolt, this confident artist insists that carving a complex one-piece part is best. Considering the odds of calculating such precise measurements correctly and certain that German engineers had done it right the first time, I reiterate, "No, please just make a separate bushing and bolt."
He laughs, "I make. You no likey you no pay."
Nothing goes to waste in developing countries, especially scrapped metal. Verifying his eyeball calculations with micrometer checks, Mr Wong carefully trims a rusted old hexagon-shaped crowbar on a spinning lathe, creating a part that, in the West, would take a team to design. The equivalent of five bucks solves problem one.
As a maintenance step, I should have replaced the rear-wheel inner bearings 10,000 miles ago, but procrastination prevailed. Mr Gkwa also knows of a bearing shop that might supply cross-referenced BMW parts. An afternoon passes puttering across town in his rattling old pickup truck being entertained by haggling Chinese merchants hunting down fresh wheel bearings. Mr Gkwa is the ultimate fix-it man, and we proceed to the next step. With critical parts now in hand, an ageing mechanic stares through coke-bottle glasses muttering, "Can do, can do."
From riding through storms and river crossings, hardened steel balls have rusted into shattered fragments that dribble out when the wheel is removed. A debate rages in Mandarin as expert fingers scrape away debris and tap in new bearings.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p268
So that was then and this is now, and what the hell am I doing back in the ring gagging for air in some tropical jungle? The word impossible has always been a challenge to me, even if there wasn't much to gain beyond bragging rights. If so many people hadn't claimed looping Borneo was impossible, I probably would be relaxing right now in a comfortable Kuching hotel. But as I am discovering, there are good reasons why no one else has done this. It has taken me five 12-hour days merely to cover the first thoroughly fatiguing 300 wheel-spinning miles. A Trans-Siberian crossing is a cakewalk compared to this. Muscling 600 pounds of motorcycle on a hard surface is tiring enough. In slick mud, sitting on the seat paddling with burning legs while pushing on the handlebars is exhausting. But to be honest, I would not have felt so alive without those familiar lung-burning gasps for air. If I can ride Borneo, I can ride anything.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p278
When clearing the last bog and asking a woodsman in sign language how much further this misery goes on, I am uncertain if he answered 10 miles or 10 minutes. On the edge of the equator, a relentless tropical sun boils a gallon of moisture from my flesh every eight hours. The fatigue is so intense I lack the strength to sit upright, let alone continue paddling with my legs and feet. But gazing ahead into the vibrant, forbidding jungle exhausted, stinking and hungry, I cannot recollect when I've felt more content. And thank god for those youngsters who twice lifted the bike off my leg while I was laying sideways. They seemed to enjoy following me, as they could walk faster than I could ride through the slop. At the point of total exhaustion, thinking it impossible to push through the mud any further, they suddenly rushed to my aid, shoving from behind. While I stand red-faced and gasping for air, the inspiring Dayak girl holding my helmet shocks me when urging in decent English, "Come on mister, you've got to try harder. I know you can do it."
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p279
The shock of the day came at the end while unsnapping my aluminium panniers in the hotel parking lot. Noticing an unusual gap between the fender and frame, I discovered that the false exhaust pipe containing 15 pounds of hard-to-replace vital spare parts had vanished. My ratchet tools, tire irons, patch kit and spare brake pads lay somewhere in the last 100 miles. Twelve hours a day of jack-hammering had taken its toll.
Double-nutted bolts supporting the stainless-steel tube had sheared in half. Because my last set of brake pads had cost me 180 bucks in Israel, I'd been waiting until they were completely shot to change them - now, front and rear were nearly worn down to bare metal. Because of their superior stopping power, I use sintered pads likely unavailable in Asia. Even in a major city, the typical customs-clearing delays to get express-mailed spares could take weeks, if they made it at all.
It's too early to know if the worst is over or just beginning, but I have come to accept that real adventure starts when things stop going as planned.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p282
Coal miner Mohammad Siah explained that with a Korean corporation covering his room and board, at the end of five years, even while supporting his parents, he could retire rich enough to buy a house and motorcycle- raising his status to most-desirable in the eyes of Indonesian girls looking for husbands.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p283
"Thanks for the offer, but I prefer a walk downtown to meet the people."
"No. you can only go out in the daytime, never at night."
"Why, is it dangerous?"
"Yes" he says, drawing his finger across his throat, "Dayaks."
"But you are Dayak."
"My mother is Dayak but my father is from Java, so I am only half-dangerous."
"Okay, can you tell me about the road to Sukamara?"
Waving his hand up and down through the air, he replies, "That is 500 kilometres from here and the road is like this. Travelling there by motorbike will take three days."
Pointing outside, at the pavement, I ask, "Is the road like that," then, indicating the dirt, "or like that?" Walking outside he selects a baseball -size rock and says, "No, it is mostly these."
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p288
But it's been five weeks since I left Kuching, and with unknown mileage to cover until the finish line, my growing frustration makes me ride faster than conditions allow and makes me continue when it is time to rest. We follow our own rules in life because experience teaches the consequences of breaking them. Sometimes lessons need to be repeated.
Going down on dirt is generally less damaging than colliding with asphalt, still the bike and body always suffer some harm. When I'm off the beaten path, more than mechanical failures, I fear a broken limb from a crash. Even minor tears in the flesh offer convenient pathways for toxic microbes and tropical diseases. In the event of serious injury, there is no way out of here. If I was found over-turned in some bottomless ravine or shivering with fever, who would know what to do?
Even on a lighter bike with knobby tires, motorcyclists are never in complete control riding in mud. Mud is the great equalizer. Using dual-purpose street tires while slinging 600 pounds of motorcycle adds negative factors to the equation. The numbers are simple, after 2,000 miles of mostly rugged dirt track complicated by mud, it is not a matter of if but when and how many times a rider does an over-handlebars face-plant. Until today, I had been lucky with only a few slow-moving spills where the main problem was developing enough traction for my boots while I tried to get the bike upright.
But today was payday for breaking the rules. Headlight filaments expire quicker under vibration and heat, but seldom do both go at once. My high beam had burned out last week, the low beam yesterday. Just before sunset, the best I could determine from quizzing a team of boar hunters, the next village was three hours away via the feeble glow of my remaining front-end parking lamp. Do I stop and camp or roll the dice?
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p293
After the sun dropped below treeline, seeing where damp clay turned slick was difficult, but my front wheel washing out sideways delivered the news. Over the handlebars and somehow landing on my knees, I ended up lying in the road assessing the damage. My chest had taken out the windshield and mirrors, while ramming into solid earth had torn loose the left side aluminium pannier. The impact snapped stainless-steel fasteners while bending the support frames - again. Except for a swelling left knee, my padded riding clothes absorbed enough of the impact to minimize the damage to me. But help is never Far And Away. While I use a hardwood tree branch to straighten the frame, a lone Dayak teenager on a motor-scooter putters over the hill, stopping to aid the alien. His surging headlight illuminated the scene enough for me to strap luggage pieces together to get moving again. Rami tells me it is another 25 miles to his village, but he will ride slowly to guide me. Attempting this journey in darkness stretches a three-hour ride into six. Peeking from behind silky veils of fluorescent clouds, a silvery full moon brightens the road barely enough to see shadows. Soon, I trail Rami into the night, trying to avoid dangers stuck in my mind but impossible to see.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p294
In daylight, this would be difficult, without lights at night, it's a panicky plunge into the unknown. All I can do is follow the weaving silhouette ahead and not look down. The darkness plays tricks. Did Rami swerve to avoid a mud puddle or finally disappear? I wasn't sure until I'm abruptly buried to the bike's axles, two feet under water, sinking and spinning my tires while the engine furiously pumps gas bubbles from a submerged exhaust. How could only two men free 600 pounds of rubber and steel from oozing mud? Wading to our hips in muck, Rami pushes from behind as I pull from the side, delicately feathering the clutch against the desperate gurgle of the laboring motor. Forty-five minutes of inching free of the bog underlined the grim realization that there would be five more hours of creeping through twilight shadows until we'd find shelter and sleep.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp294-5
In the Chinese language, negatives don't seem to exist as we understand them in the West. Whenever describing exactly what I have needed to the Chinese, their invariable one-word response is, "Can." Today was typical:
"Mr. Hoi, are you able to install these bearings?"
"Can."
"Are you sure Mr. Hoi, it requires careful removal of-"
Without bothering to look he interrupts, "Can."
"But what about the-"
"Can."
"And are you able to rebuild the-"
"Can."
Since the first major motorcycle center in Malaysia had just opened, its inexperienced shop manager in Kuala Lumpur could only order steering-head bearings exclusively from Germany. But Mr. Hoi, a few miles away, had those same hard-to-find bearings upstairs in his race-bike shop, and after soldering a few broken wires, he installed them for 20 dollars. From there, his assistant led me through the backstreets across Kuala Lumpur to have his cousin replace the foam cushion in my now hard-as-a-rock motorcycle seat.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p303
A super-organized, high-tech city state famous for laws so strict they prohibited chewing gum, the red tape required for entering with a motorcycle had made Singapore not worth the trouble of visiting. Even with a carnet de passage, the Federal Transportation Department still requires an endorsement by their Auto Club plus 36 dollars a day for insurance along with prepayment of expensive road tolls. But once we reached the official entry point, a quick passport stamping at immigration ended in two lines for customs inspection. Counting on being able to play Stupid Foreigner if caught, after acknowledging a nod from Murphy, I took a chance and followed the lane with a sign reading "Nothing to Declare." When I finished quickly flipping the lids on my panniers, a serious teenaged machine gun-wielding soldier waved us both through without asking for further paperwork. In bypassing the mandatory carnet de passage inspection, I became an illegal alien in a Utopian police state where electronic surveillance of its citizens is standard procedure. From remote-controlled traffic signals managed by distant observers to restricting certain vehicles from driving downtown, even the hallways of my budget hotel are monitored by closed-circuit TV. If border inspectors later asked for vehicle documents at the same checkpoint, getting out of Singapore was going to be interesting.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p304
As with America's Bible Belt, Third World life centers on God and family, with strong convictions concerning morality. Although no one ever mentions my religion, during typical roadside cafe chats, natives in every country constantly ask, "Where is your wife?" With eyes half-closed while waving my hands in holy gestures, solemnly I declare, "As a high priest in the Sacred Order of Confirmed Bachelors, I am forbidden to marry." Those listening nod with a knowing respect as I continue, patting the shiny blue tank of my faithful machine, and pronounce with utmost sincerity, "This is the only wife I am ever allowed to take."
Gasping as though a spiritual revelation has just occurred, the surrounding barefoot crowd dressed in shorts and T-shirts murmur among themselves, "Ah, the only wife to take, the only wife to take..."
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp326-7
Next to slapped-together palm leaf-covered noodle stands, the most common roadside business in Asia is tire repair. Highway shoulders used for dodging oncoming vehicles are minefields of debris popped off lumbering trucks and fragments of past collisions. Though bikers know to be vigilant inspecting their tires, we seldom find rusted steel shards until a faint hissing sound stops us to pry them out from between wounded treads. India and Indonesia have been the worst for punctures.
If not stopping to inspect an unmistakable rear-end wobble, I wouldn't have noticed sprays of engine oil dripping across the tank. Sidetracked by natives during a morning fluid check, I'd forgotten to secure the oil cap. For the previous hour, darkened oil splattering in the wind had also been coating the front of my jacket and pants. Sweating and cursing under shady banana trees on a stretch of road between towns, I did not have to wait long for assistance. At times, the locals can be annoying, firing the same questions I'd fielded from the last group only an hour before, but they also appear when most needed. Flat tires are always a hassle, but being stranded miles from a town compounds the problem. Temporary glue-on sticky rubber squares are unreliable patches and usually leak after tires warm up. A new tube is cheap enough, but if they're unavailable, the heat vulcanizing patches are best. And how to find a tire shop in unfamiliar territory?
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp327-8
Within minutes after parking and removing the rear wheel, two teams of eager volunteers on little flashy scooters surround the disabled alien. Passing motorists notice the swelling crowd competing to assist me and stop to investigate. They all volunteer to take my punctured tube to the nearest repair stand. For the job of courier, I chose the one man wearing a watch, and an hour later he returns in triumph with a 10-bike escort. After charging just one dollar for the patching, my angels of motorcycle mercy refuse to take tips for their efforts. Now if only there were decent restaurants.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p328
What guidebooks warned was a serious four-hour hike up to the summit became 20 minutes by motorcycle, twisting up jungle hair-pins to 9,000 feet. But by late afternoon, mild drizzle turning into a full-force storm meant becoming stranded at the top. The highest point in the region, Penanjakan Peak is also a base for remote radio towers and relay stations. While I stood drenched and staring though greying walls of falling water, the final light of the day faded into a solid fog.
In better times, the half-dozen boarded-up shacks near the lookout patio served as souvenir stands for winded trekkers, but after prying apart broken wooden slats, a hollow musty shell became this shivering solo traveller's twilight refuge. While waiting for rains to ease enough to retrieve camping gear from my bike, a middle-aged bearded man appeared from the darkening shadows. Draped in dripping green plastic trash bags and without speaking, he motioned with his hands to follow.
Unsure if I'd been busted for burglary or rescued from the elements, Agil Kurniawan's cramped five-by-eight-foot brick cubicle provided instant relief from biting winds. As exterior temperatures nose-dived, the orange glow of his electric cooking plate was warming enough to begin to dry my waterlogged riding clothes.
Cluttered with a nine-inch flickering TV, a few handheld transmitters and a rack of eating utensils on top of boxed clothing, there was barely room in here for one.
Folding away his makeshift rainsuit, Agil repeated familiar greetings, "Dart manna mistuh?" (You come from where sir?)
"Nama saya Glen. Saya orang Amereeka." (My name is Glen and I am original of America.) Using a dented metal cup to scoop a bowl of rice from his cooker, he asked, "Apa kabar? Mau makan?" (How are you? Do you want to eat?)
I nodded, and he sprinkled a plate with steaming white grains and chunks of smoked fish heads that were spicy enough to melt plastic. Sitting cross-legged, eating in silence, it was obvious this wandering alien was now trapped by the intensifying evening storm. Pointing to the raised plywood platform filling half the tiny room, said "Tidur desanah." (You sleep.) Waving away my objections, he rolled out a greasy horse blanket onto the cold concrete floor and insisted that I use his bed. Debate was useless, so we spent the next two hours studying my computer images of faces and scenes from distant cultures. While tracing my route around the globe, Agil smiled and stared as if he was hearing about life on Mars. Even explaining the other islands of Indonesia was difficult- he understood only Java.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp332-3
In the morning, crisp dawn air was locked in thick fog while I manhandled the Beast up the final steps to what should have been a perfect volcano photo shoot.
Bromo's elusive panorama was still obscured, but after coming this far I waited, hoping the sky would clear by noon. It did not, and I realized that if not leaving soon, another storm would surely cause me further delay. I was worried about complications airfreighting out of Bali next week as the regulations were rumoured to have changed. A quick island hop south was imperative.
After a long farewell handshake, I held forth a few rupiah, but like those befriending me before, he shook his head in annoyance, indicating by pointing that hospitality comes from the heart. Hooking leathered brown fingers together, he stumbled through what he had written down using my dictionary, "Mistuh Glan, we brother forever."
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p333
While I was standing in line transferring planes in Malaysia, an Indian Sikh sitting in cross-legged meditation suddenly opened his eyes to wave me closer. With his bulging head layered in a white linen turban, he radiated a sage's wisdom. From behind a scraggly beard framing a tan, wrinkled face, he stared directly into my eyes, uttering these simple words: "Many great things lie ahead of you." As abruptly as he surfaced, he cast down his gaze and retreated to where he had been journeying, and I, with no further apprehension, took a confident step toward the immensity of Africa.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p346
Arcing concrete slopes of elevated overpasses guide whizzing automobiles outwards into upscale suburbs of fenced-in security. If people were not driving on the opposite side of the road, this could be a European-tinted California churning with Southern hospitality. In restaurants or gas stations, everyone wants to chat with musical accents from 11 distinct languages blossoming into English. And even the roaming squads of beat cops seem reasonable.
The aggressive manoeuvres I'd learned navigating Asia prompted the traffic police to stop me a dozen times. Cowboy road tactics acceptable on chaotic Java are serious offences in the orderly West. Wrong direction rides on one-way streets or in between pillars on sidewalks are as shocking as parking in hotel lobbies- a common practice in developing countries.
Cyber-linked readers still follow my movements vicariously from computers around the world. Because of my online journal, Cape Town motorcyclists have emailed invitations to stay in their homes. South African generosity is overwhelming. But abiding by the traveller's three-nights-only rule, I swap Steve and Sharon's home-cooked meals and satellite TV for a return to the seclusion of a run-down backstreet hostel. Abandoning the ruggedness of the open road has made returning to civilization awkward, and there are blunt realities ahead to prepare for. Idling in the comfort of Western countries, seasoned travellers lose their edge. A sterile environment of relative safety dulls senses vital for a quick reaction. Survival reflexes and the smell of danger become clouded back in the cushy West, where little can go wrong.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p347
In rush-hour traffic, with belligerent commuters competing to get ahead, I should have been on high alert. Halfway into a multi-lane intersection, a speeding woman lost in her cell phone ignored the red light. A car-length ahead, the driver on her left snagged her front bumper with his, sending them both spinning sideways.
The sturdy hands of Thor slowed his rotation enough to abruptly come to a rest with the tip of his fog light tapping my front wheel. Another few feet and I would be dictating this from a body cast.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p347
National news is dominated by horrifying reports, yet no one has done anything outrageous to me except smile and wave. Meanwhile, deep, foaming seas are always an awesome way to change the pace. Day rides over twisting ribbons of coastal highway led to encounters with roving baboons guarding the Cape of Good Hope. South African cliff-side glides next to exploding breakers are the most spectacular on earth. Along strands of vanilla beaches, suntanned blonde bunnies with crystal blue eyes are as friendly as the local boys, asking the same questions as Indonesians. Without my quest to traverse this continent, this wayward spirit could easily be convinced to pause and linger.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp348-9
Had I not recently been smirking about the fact I'd seen no other cars or humans for the last 24 hours, a ruptured tire in the desert would have been more tolerable.
Yet, if that pattern continued, my trash sack containing drained water bottles and empty cans of food would become unwelcome reminders of the folly of travelling alone. What was a retired judo instructor doing in Africa anyway? Suddenly, California never looked so good.
Four hours flipping through mental files of dead-end solutions produced nothing. My carefully stored aluminium tire irons had been claimed by the mud holes of Borneo, yet two screwdrivers worked carefully with long-handled wrenches could substitute. Still, inserting the backup tube into a tire ripped this bad would be futile. Once re-inflated, the soft rubber would immediately bulge through the slit and burst. Anywhere else in the world, a rusted old pickup truck filled with locals would surely ramble along to the rescue. Here, in this isolated section of the Namib Desert, there weren't even birds or telephone poles. Yet, sooner or later, a cavalry arrives.
Remembering their names would be more polite, but at least I took their photo, a handsome young Italian couple out sightseeing in a rented four-by-four rolled up just before sunset- the most welcome sight all day. Discovering their tool kit contained a long handle tire iron was the inspiration I needed to contend with the approaching dusk.
There had been no traffic in the daylight, and there would certainly be none at night. Since abandoning the bike is never an option the possibility of sitting roadside for days had been my most recent fear.
The Italian couple's car tire iron worked well easing the casing off, and packing in a new tube was like any other repair. But how would I pinch and hold a gaping gash together enough to cover the 40 miles to the next campground and telephone? Nylon straps used when cinching down the bike for air transport would serve a second purpose. Trimmed to fit the circumference of the tire, I could tighten three of them enough to close the gap and keep the tube from popping out. A 10-inch strip cut from the old tube with the ends folded over and under the nylon straps should keep them from fraying on jagged gravel stones. After adding air from a 12-volt pump, followed by grateful hugs farewell, I was off into the uncertainty of a blackening desert night.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp352-3
Whatever the direction, once out of southern Africa, there is a 5,000 mile stretch to the Mediterranean in which spare parts do not exist for larger motorcycles. Since tires are double the price of anywhere else, to stay on budget, Antonie sent me a 50-dollar used one with a quarter of the tread life remaining. On my plan-of-no-plan, predicting wear patterns and estimating arrival dates makes coordinating international supply shipments a logistical challenge. With 2,000 miles left to Livingstone, Zambia, where fresh tires are scheduled for delivery, timing is going to be tight. Anyway, the newly paved double-lane Trans-Kalahari Highway beginning from the coast is easier on rubber than the previous long stretches of sharp gravel road.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p355
In off-road conditions, a set of sprockets and chains has been lasting 10,000 miles, but somehow my current ones made it to 15,000. Now, after crossing into Tanzania, worn to the limits, even riding slowly the chain is failing so quickly I had to stop every 100 miles to tighten the slack as overstretched sections slapped and cut into the metal frame. Short tugs under acceleration followed by increasing clacking suggested that some time during the next 500 miles to Dar es Salaam, lopping steel links could jump track, jamming into the engine cases. But, rolling across arid southern highlands, there was much more to think about.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p366
By five o'clock I had made my first Tanzanian friend, a tall, heavy, motorcyclist who, though a third-generation Indian, considers himself African. Preparing to meet his family for dinner, the unshaven Ali Hussein was closing his motorcycle workshop when hit with an unexpected vagabond's wish-list for repairs. Shiite Muslims are strict family men, and staying late to work on some distressed foreigner's faltering bike was the last thing on his mind. But once he'd heard my plea, he offered, "Since you are travelling such a long way, me and my men will work tonight." But wrenching in the dark leads to errors and lost parts, so we agreed to wait until sunrise.
In the morning, uncomfortable with his non-English-speaking crew, when an overly concerned Ali Hussein suggested disassembling the entire drive section for inspection and cleaning, I argued that the rest of the motorcycle is fine and all that was necessary was to unbolt the rear swing arm to replace a worn chain and sprockets- a one hour job with the correct tools. Fluent in Swahili, Hussein turned, yelling words to his men that made them laugh aloud.
Curious as to the joke, I asked, "What's so funny?"
"I told them you are afraid of their skin."
Embarrassed because he was right, I tried to deny it, "No that's not it, I just prefer not to take things apart unless absolutely necessary. You never know what can break or get misplaced in the process." Still, the truth was, I foolishly questioned their competency because they weren't Germans in white smocks.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p369
You worry that they won't remember how to put it all back together?"
More comments and more laughter. But Hussein is forceful, and to my dismay, wins our debate, directing two shoeless young black men with severely callused feet to disassemble the suspension mechanical arms for further inspection. An hour later they hand me two sets of rusted bearings- the same ones we had just replaced in Borneo. After riding the washed-away coast near Banda Aceh, saltwater from low-tide beach runs had leaked past protective rubber seals, corroding hardened steel balls and needles designed to spin freely. Had this damage gone unnoticed, they would have disintegrated and left me stranded on the most rugged section ahead in Africa. Hussein said, "See, you don't have to worry about my workers they know their job." Thirty minutes later, a winded errand boy returned with new bearings and fresh oil, while another prepared a homemade arc welder to remove a stripped-out drain plug. Annoyed at my constantly questioning each manoeuvre, Hussein took me by arm, "Come, lets get out of their way so they can make everything new for our travelling brother. You need to see my empire."
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p370
Importing a dozen shipping containers a month, outside of South Africa, Ali is the largest motorcycle parts distributor on the continent. This will be good news for Internet-linked international riders who, until now, have been unaware of his presence. In a developing country with limited industrial base, I am amazed to see a warehouse stocked with hundreds of tires and engine rebuild kits.
Yet skilled labour remained a question. A one-hour chain-and-sprocket swap had turned into eight with a lengthy list of replaced parts, but by the end of the day, a minor turned major repair was complete. Preparing for the worst, my meek request for the bill was met by Hussein's stern gaze. "There is no bill for you. My shop is absorbing the entire cost for our travelling brother."
He wasn't listening to my objections- even when insisting that I at least pay for parts only made him angry. "I have made up my mind, this is between Allah and me."
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p370
The mind-numbing jarring and bucking was so intense that more gas spilled through the tank breather-vents than was burned by the engine. Even sloshing battery water slapped high enough to drip from an overflow tube. And that was the good news. Normally, when shock absorber fluid begins seeping past worn seals, lack of oil shouldn't cause a compression lockdown. Treated liquids and pressurized gases regulate rebound action, and without them, handling deteriorates into a tolerable, bouncing pogo-stick ride. Although a blown shock should not remain compressed, mine did, resulting in zero vertical travel to relieve explosive jolting from a jagged road. Even at 10 miles per hour, the vertical forces generated were difficult to endure with the rear section kicking up and slamming back down. Ridges on a deep-cut washboard surface turned into spine-snapping slaps equally destructive to metal frame-welds. With nothing but thorn tree desert ahead, the only solution was a 10 mile retreat to the relieving shade of the last tribal outpost, with a hope that the natives were friendly.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p379
Unlike blazing desert days, midnight air was crisp and clean. The push of a button made the motorcycle grumble to life. But my confidence faded as yesterday's brutal jarring resumed even worse than I remembered. There would be no escape in a first-gear crawl, easing over every ridge and rock. With zero travel in a frozen shock, violent kicking and bucking made simply hanging on to the handlebars a challenge. At 10 miles per hour without rear suspension, I tried to calculate how many hours it would take to ride 300 miles. Maybe throttling up to 15 miles per hour would shave an hour or two. Either way, between robbers and vicious terrain, one of Africa's worst roads was ready to bang and test the limits of both my internal organs and a thoroughly abused motorcycle frame. At least riding slow allowed me a chance to evaluate which bumps and gullies to dodge to minimize impacts. Standing on the foot pegs with bent knees was temporary relief but became too tiring, requiring rest stops every 30 minutes. With fatigued arms and legs, a creeping desert dawn glowed into a bursting orange sunrise. Soon, wandering Masai camel herders emerged from the thicket with familiar demands. "Pay money! You give me money!" No matter what they were doing, young and old, the moment any tribesmen spotted a wandering foreigner they turned and sprinted forward waving and shouting "Money, money, money!"
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p381
In the afternoon, the moment I ventured outside Jey-Jey's, throngs of unkempt children crowded around me, yelling "Sweets, sweets, give me money, give me pens!"
Although it's clear that the foreigner's role in Africa is strictly for giving, all that I offer is bumpy rides on a limping motorcycle.
Having trained their children to beg, scowling parents glared as giggling youngsters abandoned rehearsed scam-lines and jumped with delight, lining up to be next for a spin through town. Sometimes you just have to let kids be kids. With one eager child on the front and two on the back, it still took a whole afternoon to appease them all. Following the Pied Piper back to Jey-Jey's, the trailing troops assured me they would stand guard as I swatted away the last of persistent horseflies and tried to forget the situation while spiralling into sleep.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p 383
Riding toward the border, there was little to see beyond a deep-cut corrugated road evaporating into the horizon. Endless ruts and jagged stones threatened to slice vulnerable rubber tires over thousands of flat square miles across evenly spread baseball-sized volcanic rocks. The scene ahead looked like photos broadcast from robot cameras on Mars.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p384
Tracking down and clearing three of four incoming supply packages through customs was like working a second job. There is still one to go, but that should be easy after spending three days convincing department heads that I don't live here and the new Ohlins shock absorber and Avon tires are not for resale. There is a constant stream of complications when riding the world, yet the overall experience is so rewarding that after mild grumbling, travellers only remember the good times. Still, while winding down this journey, a smoother landing would've been welcome. With 5,000 miles to go, it's hard not to dream about California, and the more I ponder returning, the bigger common hassles here seem to grow. I've been homeless with limited possessions for the last two years, so considerations of what to do first when returning to Palm Springs pile on top of my already considerable frustrations connected with developing-nation bureaucracies. And in the middle of Africa, for the first time in a while, concerns about the future over-ride living in the moment- a sure signal that it's time to return to a village.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp391-2
On the pine tree ridge of a 9000 foot mountain summit over-looking the brackish waters of Lake Chamo, the curious inhabitants of Dorze village rushed forward to greet this invading alien. At the end of a weekly market day, merchants and traders were busy with crystallized rock salt. At sunset, according to tradition, women shared dried pumpkin gourds of homemade beer as men stayed home guzzling bottles of local whiskey. But shy village children reacted the same as those in Kenya after the first was coaxed aboard my motorcycle for a ride among bulging banana-leafed huts. Giggling pandemonium erupted as they scrambled atop my flexing aluminium saddlebags and even stood on a buckling front fender. But the show was not to be stolen.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p393
Yet, the smaller the society, the stricter the codes of behaviour, and no one likes a thief. Even in Nairobi, if captured by fed-up crowds, a street criminal is sure to be beaten without mercy. Assault here appears common among them, but they do not attack visitors, and theft of any kind is rare. To show trust when visiting villages, without worry, I intentionally leave (but monitor) my camera and GPS left lying on top the motorcycle seat. That's why the surprise this morning when I noticed, while repacking my laptop, a set of dangling ignition keys had disappeared.
Like news of a death, waves of shame spread through the crowd in breathless murmuring as young and old approached with heads hung low, offering tearful apologies. A teenaged translator explained, "This is not our way and we are so sorry."
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p394
Although there were spare keys stashed under the motorcycle seat, the missing ones had no value and if an opportunity arose, were certain to be returned. After announcing that I must have dropped them earlier, villagers immediately appeared with candles and torches, combing surrounding grasses on hands and knees. But as the search turned fruitless, suspicion fell on the young translator who had earlier pleaded to work as my guide- if only I would stay. For all to save face, I needed an alternate explanation so that they might resurface. "After I dropped the keys, the children must have found them to play with. Please announce that I will give five dollars to whoever finds the keys."
At sunrise, I awoke to dozens of chattering villagers taking turns peering in through my tent's skylight screen. It was an African zoo in reverse. Unzipping my nylon flaps, I discovered a bag of bananas next to a scribbled apology note. Amidst worried frowns and hand wringing, the morning mood of sombre concern was soon interrupted by a parting crowd and shouts of delight. Four-year-old Jalcono Makurmno rushed forward waving a set of familiar shiny keys. Celebratory cheers led to shaking hands with hundreds of villagers and a triumphant one-motorcycle-parade for the newfound tiny hero. But it was still time to move on, and, as always, in the wake of a reluctant departure, another family of waving friends vanished into memory through the smudged glass of a vibrating rearview mirror.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp394-5
Long, thick thorns embedded in motorcycle tires and sharp volcanic rocks eventually took their toll, and yesterday I lost count after a dozen flats since dawn. Even in the countryside, whenever I stopped, crowds materialized from nowhere to assist. A stranger unpacking tools to remove a rear wheel ignites more interest than a lunar landing. Beginning at a polite distance but edging closer for better views, there was often a volunteer in Western clothes who spoke some English.
"Father, may we be of assistance to you?"
"Father where is the place of your country?"
"I come from California." Nearly as geographically challenged as U.S. college graduates, they reply, "Oh Father, you are English?"
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere p396
And finally, as they crowd close enough to block the sun, I rise, impatiently demanding that they all move back. But within minutes, kicked-up clouds of fine dust indicate they again feel the need to inspect up close the progress of patching a tube. No one wants to miss anything, and soon my wrenches and screwdrivers are buried beneath leathered feet and dirt rearranged by those pushing and shoving. Most just wanted to help but were killing me with kindness, and I considered hiring the biggest man to drive them away.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp396-7
(After weeks of negotiations and struggle, Glen managed to airfreight his crated bike out of Ethiopia to Germany and thence to Mexico where he rejoined it to ride home to California.)
Dodging infamous Mexico City traffic required that I get rolling before dawn. And in Centro Historico, just as the first rays of sunlight bounced off the commanding granite bell towers of a Spanish cathedral, I was riding past fast-walking office workers bundled in overcoats with upturned collars. Accustomed to the mild temperatures of Africa, it took me a moment to realize that riding into biting mountain air required foul-weather clothes and heavy gloves.
Passive old men on early morning strolls responded to my requests for directions with pats on my back accompanied by animations that rivalled Shakespearean players.
Unable to merely indicate the next corner where to turn, with waving arms they felt compelled to describe the building and its historical significance. Together we formulated an escape route from an awakening megatropolis whose commuters were soon to choke the boulevards leading to the open road. Against a background of dilapidated shantytowns and honking taxi horns, the exclusive skyscrapers of the glimmering commercial district were the final farewell as I headed northwest toward the Pacific Ocean.
Glen Heggstad One More Day Everywhere pp408-9
How the old buzzard came to be on the salt was difficult to comprehend. Under its quaintly old-fashioned fairing his machine was a battered heap, generations old and looking every day of it. He was in similar condition, an elderly codger wearing baggy suit pants that might have been fashionable once, with the cuffs tucked into his grubby socks, not-quite-worn-out tennis shoes and a weathered, black leather biker jacket. If you asked him a question he was likely to react with the kind of loud and guttural exclamation the aged and crusty use to indicate both deafness and indifference.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 11
How the old buzzard came to be on the salt was difficult to comprehend. Under its quaintly old-fashioned fairing his machine was a battered heap, generations old and looking every day of it. He was in similar condition, an elderly codger wearing baggy suit pants that might have been fashionable once, with the cuffs tucked into his grubby socks, not-quite-worn-out tennis shoes and a weathered, black leather biker jacket. If you asked him a question he was likely to react with the kind of loud and guttural exclamation the aged and crusty use to indicate both deafness and indifference.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 11
There was something spooky about the way he stood beside his red, goldfish-shaped machine, one hand resting on its dull flank as if it were alive and in need of reassurance.
And then he was climbing into it, or onto it, with his back sticking out the top like the goldfish's fin breaking the surface. A team of like-minded misfits was preparing to give him a push start while he yelled instructions at them in some incomprehensible patois. They should have known better than to encourage such stupidity. It was bound to end badly and when it did they would be at least partially responsible.
And then he was off, his helpers pushing like maniacs until the thing suddenly caught with an unholy racket and leapt away like the demented fish it so resembled, leaving one of the pushers sprawled flat on his face in the Bonneville salt.
The car full of officials was off after it, accelerating hard to catch up with the red machine until both car and bike settled at about ninety miles an hour, running smoothly across the shimmering salt. The machine was obviously a bit faster than might have been gathered by looking at it in repose. The officials nodded their Stetsons at one another and agreed that, surprisingly enough, everything seemed under control... when suddenly the red oval in front lurched while its rider groped about in its innards for something - a gear lever as it turned out - and changed up a cog.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 12
The machine slewed slightly as the rear tyre spat a shower of salt back at the following car, giving them a brief view through to the nose before it straightened up and hurled a further shovel load all over the car's windscreen. The salt landed with a solid thump that made the car's occupants duck, and the suddenly bellowing machine in front lit out for the horizon like a stone out of a slingshot. It simply disappeared.
There was no catching him, and that was the end of the story until they found him at the other end of the run, standing beside his streamliner, which once again had its little landing wheels extended.
Earl Flanders, the American Motorcycle Association (AMA) steward for Utah's legendary Speed Week, got out of the car and strolled over. The old guy was looking a bit flustered but, considering he must have been going over 140 miles an hour by Flanders' educated reckoning, that was hardly surprising. Flanders nodded at him with a puzzled smile that belied a certain new-found respect and which made him look a lot friendlier than he had when he first spied the ancient combination an hour or so earlier. He said something like, "The old girl seemed to run pretty good."
"You think so, Earl?" replied the old guy. He seemed as surprised as everybody else.
Earl Flanders nodded again. "She really took off when you changed into top!"
Once more the old guy looked puzzled. "Top," he repeated, shouting like the old deaf coot he was. "I never got her out of second."
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 12-3
What he loved most of all, however, was to run his Indian motorcycle. He'd bought it new in 1920 and tuned and rebuilt it ever since to go faster and faster, until he was sure that with 'just one good run' he could achieve at least 200 miles an hour.
What he did not like were high-speed accidents. He'd survived enough of those to last several lifetimes and he hated the sight of blood, especially his own. And the way his new streamline shell had encouraged the Indian to weave from side to side in the most violent and wayward manner as he approached 150 miles an hour had scared three kinds of crap out of him.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 14
Why anyone would want to take a 1920 Indian Scout, a fine machine in its day but no rocket, and turn it into an alcohol-burning fire-breather to attack international speed records almost half a century later, at speeds almost four times those it had been capable of when new, was not a question the old rider had ever bothered to exercise. He did what he did mainly because meeting the challenge gave him more satisfaction than anything else, with the possible exception of an encounter with a willing woman.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 17
McLean ... wheeled the Douglas out and showed Bert the brake, throttle, choke, fuel cock and starting technique. Douglases were easy to start and Bert soon had the hang of it. After a couple of loops of the circular driveway he was off down the road on the most exciting adventure life had yet granted him.
The day was warm and he could hear the drone of cicadas and smell the fresh scent of the roadside bracken as he gradually opened the throttle wider and wider. Soon he was flying along, the gentle blat of the Douglas's engine bouncing back at him whenever the road went through a cutting. He remembered McLean's warning not to speed through the several fords as the shock of the cold water could split the hot engine, and he eased the machine through the first with hardly a splash. Then it was back up to full speed, leaning the machine into the steeply banked corners and laughing out loud for the pure joy of it.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 43
Ever since his experience with the Douglas, Bert had dreamed of having another ride and his opportunity came at last when one of new friends offered him a spin on his almost brand-new silver Norton. He and another mate were going to a dance at a small country hall in Fortrose, about seventy kilometres out of town. If Bert was keen he could ride the Norton on the way up while the owner pillioned on his mate's Matchless. They would swap for the return journey, which would be in the dark and therefore somewhat more hazardous.
It was a generous offer and Bert was quick to accept. The ride up to Fortrose, a small country backwater, was a further revelation. The Matchless took off like a startled hare and Bert had to keep travelling faster than he would have thought possible and at every corner he expected the lovely Norton to slide onto its side.
But it tracked through the gravel with its front suspension jiggling up and down while Bert bounced in the saddle like a jockey on a trotter. As he banked the bike through the corners, the exhaust alternatively cackling and roaring, exhilaration flamed through his body. By the time they got to the dance he had made up his mind: he had to have a machine of his own.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 61-2
On the way home Bert was keeping company with yet another Munro, a distant uncle named Hugh, who was just a few years older than Bert. Hugh's New Imperial had developed a misfire and he was struggling to keep up. Bert fell back to make sure he made it home. From time to time he slowed right down to allow Hugh to catch up and amused himself by practising stunts. As they were clearing the foothills Hugh came around a corner to see his nephew wheeling briskly down a gentle incline with the bike in neutral, standing on the seat with his arms outstretched. Hugh nursed his ailing machine alongside and yelled at his grinning nephew, 'Who the hell do you think you are? Jesus Christ on a bloody motorcycle?'
Bert grinned, flipped him a smart salute and then fell off, landing heavily on top of his head. Certain that the fall must have broken Bert's neck, Hugh skidded to a stop, switched off, dumped the New Imperial on its side and scrambled back to the figure stretched out on the road. He vaguely heard the Clyno, which had rolled on for a considerable distance, finally crash over. Bert lay there as if fast asleep, his breathing deep and even. A careful examination revealed no blood or obvious injuries, so Hugh pulled him over onto the grass verge and rolled up his coat to make a pillow. The Clyno puttered away happily in the background until it finally coughed and stopped and the afternoon was suddenly awfully quiet.
There was little Hugh could do except to make himself comfortable and hope another vehicle came along. He retrieved both machines and placed them on their stands, grabbing a picnic blanket out of his saddlebag to cover Bert. Dusk began to fall and it was getting dark before Bert groaned and wearily sat up. His eyes slowly focused on the two machines standing in the gathering gloom. He gave a puzzled sigh and then suddenly noticed the worried Hugh. "Oh, hello Hugh," he said. "It was good of you to wait." He rubbed his head and then calmly stood up. "Well come on. We need to get home."
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 63-4
Bert enjoyed the Clyno but he was not besotted with it. It took another bike to give him a bad case of love at first sight. He was passing the Criterion Hotel car park and saw her sitting there. She was red but not an obvious red like the Clyno; a more subtle shade for a more seductive creature. The elegant script on the side of her shapely tank proclaimed her to be an Indian and at her heart was a neat and compact, narrow-angle V-twin.
Bert's eyes wandered all over her, noting the way the soft glint of nickel plate contrasted magically with that lustrous red paint. He patted the rich, tan leather seat, testing the spring and smiling as the saddle bounced back against his palm. His gaze lingered on the multiple leaf-spring suspension, admiring the simple and solid design, before he got down on one knee like a suitor to gaze upon the shape of her cast alloy primary case. Like everything about her it was beautifully executed.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 66
One of the best things about the job, other than the fact that it paid well at a time when this was rare, was that he got to ride the Indian to work. It was a good long haul over twisty roads and took several hours. He always made a point of detouring at speed along the front verandah of the Waimahaka store. There was a considerable drop at the end of the board verandah and Bert would sail over it, trying to extend his jump each time. Anyone lucky enough to witness Bert's passing enjoyed a free and quite spectacular show. For the storekeeper, however, the sudden burst of the engine and the thudding progress along his verandah was a constant irritation. He complained loudly that he could never catch the silly bugger who was bound to break his neck. By the time he bustled from the counter at the back of his shop to the door to give the bastard a piece of his mind, Bert was always disappearing around the next corner.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 85-6
The club had decided to change the start from one end of the course to the middle, a popular innovation with the spectators, who could now easily see the start-finish line and both turns. The crowd was kept off the track by heavy ropes strung along posts driven into the sand, although this didn't deter one man from wandering on to the course to fossick for toheroas, the highly prized shellfish that can be dug up at low tide.
The premier event of the day, the Ten Miles Open Championship, had been flagged away just a few minutes before and onlookers watched horrified as the three leading motorcycles bore down on the man who was now bending over with his back to the action, ignoring all the shouted warnings. The lead rider, who was mounted on a very rapid 350cc overhead-valve Velocette, veered to the left, missing the man by centimetres at something like one hundred miles an hour. A split second later the second machine, a big 1OOOcc Indian, screamed past on the man's right. Bert, who was thundering along in third place and whose vision was obscured by the two leading bikes, did not see him until the last moment. How he managed to avoid the man, who was now reeling about the beach from the shock of the first two near misses, was something spectators would talk about for some time. He seemed to almost lift the motorcycle sideways and then skate down the beach in a frightening series of full opposite-lock skids, until by some miracle he brought the machine back under control. The toheroa hunter scuttled back to the rope barrier without endangering the rest of the field which was now streaming past. Someone in the crowd gave him an almighty boot in the pants to the cheers of all who witnessed it.
They then turned back to the furious action on the beach.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 100
Casting something as complex as a cylinder head was ambitious for a number of reasons but Bert was cheerfully undeterred and forged ahead. First of all the negative image of the head needed to be established in a mould full of sand. This was complicated because a wooden copy, complete with cooling fins poking out at different angles, could not simply be pulled out without destroying the desired impression. In fact, the wooden pattern had to be made in a number of pieces so that each could be extracted without destroying the desired hollow. This hollow would eventually shape the molten cast iron Bert had elected to use for his heads. Second, the internal shape of the head needed to be established during the pour and this required two cores, one for the inlet tract and one for the exhaust port. These curved shapes were to be made in a core box, using sand held together with a bonding agent, after which they would be carefully positioned in the mould. If nothing moved during the pour a rough casting of the part would result, ready for the months of careful machining he estimated he'd need to finish it.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 111
At last the day came when his new engine was finished. The old frame had gone through a lot of hard road and race miles and Bert was concerned it might be suffering metal fatigue. When he saw a gorse fire raging on a hill on his way home from work one afternoon he had an idea that made him to rush back to his shed at even greater speed than normal. He grabbed the stripped bike frame and threw in into the Model T's trailer, then raced back to the scene of the fire where he hauled the frame through the gorse until he was as close as he could get to the flames and the choking, yellow smoke. After laying his burden down he staggered away from the intense heat, back to the safety of the road where he climbed into the Model T and drove home. The following afternoon, once again after work, he retrieved the frame from the now charred hillside, noting with satisfaction that the fire had completely stripped all the oil and paint from it. He had no doubt the heat of the burning gorse had been intense enough to anneal the metal, relieving any stress points that might have developed.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 113
Bert's trip through Europe was one of the best times of his life. He quickly hooked up with the tight-knit Australasian contingent competing at the TT, a tradition going back to the earliest days of the contest, relishing the easy camaraderie of the group. There were some among them aware of his achievements, which lent him a bona fide standing among the larger community of racers. He was invited to the official TT dinner dance and met all the stars of the day, exchanging notes with such luminaries as Geoff Duke.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 155-6
The smiling Lancastrian had been pleased to share his tips for riding flat out with Bert, who had been equally pleased to reciprocate. Duke had recently taken up one piece racing leathers and Bert was intrigued by the outfits. Duke assured him he would never race anything else and Bert had made him roar with laughter when he told him he entirely understood. "I have an old pair of sandshoes back home," he said, "that I always wear for record attempts."
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 156
One such incident occurred when Ashley arrived and found them about to start the Velocette. Bert suspected his back wheel was buckled and wanted to check it, so he mounted the machine on a block of wood that left the back wheel free to spin a few centimetres off the floor. Duncan was kneeling behind the machine about to start it by pulling the underside of the rear wheel towards him while the machine was in second gear. The bike fired up and Bert slipped it into top, all the better to detect a wobble should the wheel prove buckled. But when he revved the engine hard the machine jumped off the block, bellowing away and spinning its wheel on the floor. The handlebars were barely big enough for each hand so Ben's grip on the bucking machine was marginal, but he had at least managed to grab the front brake.
As the shed began to fill with smoke, Ashley, who had been standing beside the bike and now felt helpless to intervene, backed up against the bench to get as far away as possible while he awaited developments. They were not long in coming. Bert made the mistake of shutting the throttle. The tyre slowed, of course, but also suddenly found traction on the ageing linoleum, rocketing the bike forward on an arced course around Bert, who somehow kept a grip but was eventually dragged under the cluttered, all-purpose table. There was a tremendous crash and suddenly pots and pans were showering down while the engine kept booming away and the back wheel kept spinning, still gripping occasionally and throwing everything back in the air. Finally, Duncan managed to reach in and switch off the bike. He and Ashley dragged it from the wreckage to free Bert, who was unhurt. The bike too had sustained little damage. The three men looked at each other blankly for a few seconds and then laughed. Bert recovered his breath enough to ask Duncan if the wheel was in fact buckled.
Duncan shrugged. "Hell man, d'ya seriously expect me to notice with all that going on?"
Bert snorted. "Well of course I do. You could see I was busy!"
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 179-80
The road racing tyres Bert switched to were still far from ideal for the speeds he was now achieving, speeds that demanded proper, high-speed race tyres. But these were beyond his budget. He could use old road racing tyres because, of course, the first thing he did was remove the tread and smooth them off. Sometimes he went a little far, which was easy to do, and exposed the canvas. The scrutineer pointed at just such a patch and told Bert he could not run. Bert was quick to respond. He fixed the scrutineer with a look of cold determination.
"If I'm game to run on them, what's your damn problem?"
The hapless official looked at the patch of canvas and then back at Bert. He was clearly conflicted but in the end he relented. As he said later to a fellow scrutineer, "The old bugger's been riding on tyres like that for years. Who was I to tell him he had to change his ways?"
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 183
Ashley sometimes tested their bikes and on one occasion took Bert's for a blast up the beach after the engine had been carefully balanced in accordance with several pages of calculations Duncan had made. Once under way Ashley found the vibration disturbingly odd. It was not exactly unpleasant but it made the handlebar grips feel as if they were growing thicker and his vision began to blur. He returned to the two men waiting on the beach and switched off.
"How was it?" asked Duncan. "Good?"
"Not bad so far as the overall smoothness went, I suppose. There's just one problem. I seem to be going blind. Everything is going white. Bloody hell! Now I can't
see a damn thing!"
"Bugger!" exclaimed Duncan. "I'll have to start again."
"What about my eyes?" asked Ashley. "I'm completely blind."
Bert's voice boomed out of the white mist. "Hold your horses Ashley. Can't you see Duncan is thinking?"
It was only a temporary condition, and not all of Ashley's test runs ended so strangely.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 184
By the time the New Zealand Grand Prix rolled around again the Velocette was going very well indeed. Burt and Duncan decided to make an all out assault on the Rangiora Handicap. Duncan insisted Burt buy a new race spark plug for the occasion and although Burt grumbled he finally gave way and did so. The race started splendidly with Burt well to the fore and he was able to run in the top three or four places, lap after lap. As the end of the race approached it looked like Burt would manage a podium finish at the very least. But all such hopes were dashed when the Velocette suddenly gave up and coasted to a halt.
Once the dead bike had been retrieved Duncan set about performing his usual post mortem back at the pits. The first thing he found was that an old spark plug had been fitted. Seething with silent rage he replaced it with the new one and the bike ran faultlessly. He switched the machine off and turned to Burt, who suddenly remembered he had urgent business elsewhere. He had not gone five paces before he found Duncan barring the way, eyes flashing with genuine anger.
All over the pits, riders, mechanics, wives, girlfriends and assorted rubberneckers stopped to hear Duncan Meikle tell Burt Munro exactly what he thought of his stupid, idiotic, thick-headed, time-wasting, plain bloody perverse, mean as sin attitude, and to learn just what Burt Munro could, in Duncan's opinion, do with it.
This seemed to involve inserting a motorcycle inside himself, after first wrapping it in barbed wire and dunking it in battery acid.
Having made his point Duncan stormed off, leaving Burt to find his own way home. His old friend had once again stopped playing speaks. This went on for some months, by which time Burt was ready to catch a ship back to America. The day before he was due to leave, Duncan turned up and had a cup of tea and a gingernut as if nothing had happened. He wished Burt a good trip and quietly left. Burt was much relieved. It was bad enough when Duncan went off his head, but it was worse when he just went off.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 198-9
The start-finish line consisted of a narrow strip of concrete running across the track. Over the years it had become slightly proud of the asphalt, which had slumped about half a centimetre on either side. For some reason this was enough to send the Velocette into a horrendous tank-slapper from which there was no possible recovery. With the bike bucking and kicking toward the infield like a bronco with a burr under its saddle, Burt decided it was time to step off and roll into a ball. He was wearing his usual attire: sneakers, light T-shirt, battered ex-army trousers topped off with his ancient pudding-basin helmet - hardly the best rig for the occasion.
The first impact was so terrific Burt was sure it had killed him. He felt he was hanging in the air a long time before he hit the deck again with another tremendous thump, tearing more chunks of flesh off his frame. One massive crack on the head knocked him out completely but his flailing body carried on, losing more flesh every time it ricocheted off the hard track, one impact breaking an arm, another splitting his helmet and grinding his watch face flat while his light clothing was reduced to strips of rag. In the meantime the bike tore off into the rough ground and launched itself nine metres in the air before smashing back to earth and dismantling itself as it cartwheeled into the infield. When finally it came to rest it had shed the back wheel and much of its body, leaving parts all along its violent course.
Burt finally flopped to a halt, covered in blood with his arm at a strange angle, lying horribly still. Ossie and Trevor were at his side immediately, both terrified that Old Burt, as everyone called him by now, had finally cashed in his chips. To their tremendous relief he was still breathing and soon came to.
"Beat you young buggers then," he said as Ossie and Trevor swam into focus. They confirmed that he had and he tried to sit up, gasping as his moved his arm. "Gee, that hurts," he said, before asking anxiously where his bike was.
Ossie gave him the direct answer. "It's scattered all over Teretonga Park, Burt."
Burt rested for a moment as he considered the situation. "Right. You two can pick up all the bits and put them on your truck and I'll get them back when I can."
His eyes flicked to Duncan who was now kneeling at his side. "And you can take me to the bloody hospital."
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 207-8
There was time for a final run out at Ryal Bush Road. Burt towed his long red fish there on its new trailer behind the Vauxhall with Ashley and Duncan on board.
With Burt ensconced in the cockpit, which was snug but not too tight, Duncan and Ashley began to push. The streamliner was naturally geared for a theoretical top speed in excess of two hundred miles an hour, a figure Burt increasingly attracted to, and the two pushers had to run at a flat-out sprint before Burt judged the engine would turn over fast enough to fire when he would drop the decompression lever.
With Burt's encouraging shouts of "Faster, faster," they were soon up to speed, hands stretched out on the machine's low rump. Burt dropped the lever, accelerating away as soon as the engine caught. Of course, Duncan and Ashley found themselves at a full sprint, bent forward with nothing to lean on. As they picked themselves off the road Duncan waved his fist at the rapidly diminishing red dot. "You bloody old bastard. You gave your word you would never do that again!"
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 216
Burt's idea of appropriate gear for speed record attempts was clearly very different to the inspectors', although he at least had a decent crash helmet. His old suit pants, check shirt, worn-out sandshoes and battered leather jacket were the subject of a heated exchange, with Burt insisting that he wore the gear because it was comfortable and therefore safer. The argument went back and forth until the senior inspector finally said exasperatedly, "Look Mr Munro, none of this stuff has a fire rating or offers any real protection if you crash. We just can't let you run like this."
Burt fixed the man with a hard stare. "I got married in these pants and they are high quality, pure wool. Everybody knows wool is great for resisting flame. And I wear the sandshoes because otherwise I can't fit in. Besides, it's my flaming skin and bones, so what's your bloody problem?"
By now many of the friends Burt had made over the years of attending Speed Week had gathered around and there were murmurs of support for Burt's stand. He pressed home his advantage.
"Show me the rule that says I can't wear what I like!" The inspector glared back.
"All right, you do what you want. But don't blame me when they take you away in a box!"
Burt grinned. "If that happens I'll put in a word of recommendation for you with the old fellow down below! I'll tell him you're just the sort of bloke he's looking for."
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 237
Burt slipped the clutch until the bike was doing about fifty miles an hour, then he let it out and gave the bike its head. At ninety miles an hour he reached down and slipped the gear lever into second, winding the power back on and rejoicing as the speed built up. At about 100 miles an hour the weaving began again. As the bike accelerated up to about 140 he began to wonder if he might have to button off and abort the mission. At 145 miles an hour he slipped the gear lever into top.
The bike was seriously unbalanced now and it took every bit of skill Burt had, from nearly a century of riding flat out, to keep it from swinging sideways and flipping down the salt. He kept the throttle wide open, desperately hoping the weave might go away at higher speed. It did not, he continued to accelerate. It no longer seemed to be getting worse. Bugger it, he thought. It's all or nothing.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 241
Inside the machine Burt Munro was fighting for his life, but he did it with the throttle jammed against the stop. He no longer had any idea where he was. He was simply determined to run until the bike broke or crashed. After what felt like many miles the engine faltered and dropped on to one cylinder, but still he kept going, not knowing if he was heading into the vast emptiness of the salt flats or aiming straight at a trailer home. When the bike finally ran out of fuel Burt somehow remembered to deploy his landing gear and the bike slowly coasted to a halt, the diminishing sound of salt crunching under the tyres the only noise to break the perfect silence. Utterly exhausted he pushed his goggles up and once more looked about at a glaring, empty landscape. "Jesus," he croaked. "Don't tell me I'm lost again."
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 244
They loaded the bike onto the trailer and headed back to the start-finish line where the Indian had to be available to ensure it met the capacity requirements for its class, should it have broken a record. Burt revealed that he had been blinded on the first run by fried rubber coming off the front tyre, which had grown with the centrifugal force caused by running at three times the speed it was designed for, rubbing on the leaf spring suspension. He had decided to make the return run on the basis that the small amount of rubber in contact with the suspension had probably burned off on the first run. He had been wrong, and his second blind charge into the desert had been the result.
Back at the start area a beaming Earl Flanders told Burt that his bike would have to be measured because his average over two matching miles had been 178.971, a new national speed record. Burt slumped back against the Nash and let the news sink in. He was a champion; he'd set a record and it was bloody fast by anyone's standards, let alone a geriatric on a middle-aged motorcycle.
"If that's the case," he said, wincing at the pain in his leg, "I'm never coming back here again."
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 245-6
He ground off the single wide cam from the cam drive shaft and made two very narrow cams, one for the inlet valves and one the exhaust valves. To make the cams he first created a cam grinder, using an old washing machine motor. Prior to this Burt had always shaped his cams by hand with hacksaws and files, demonstrating a remarkable facility with the simplest tools. His new machine worked well and saved a lot of time and effort, even though most who saw it were hard pressed to decipher how exactly the thing worked. The two new narrow cams ran side by side on the cam drive shaft and activated appropriately narrow cam followers.
He carved the four L-shaped cam followers from high-tensile steel, each forked at the cam end to take a twenty-millimetre needle bearing roller, just six millimetres wide. When the cams were finished he drilled a hole through them so they slipped over the cam drive shaft. Once he had the timing right a high tensile bolt was screwed through the cam wheel via a six millimetre threaded hole, locking the cam on the shaft. He organised a healthy supply of oil to keep the cams and followers well lubricated by mounting an oil pump from a 1933 Indian, which also supplied the big ends and main bearings. The work took approximately 800 hours of 16-hour days and when it was done the valve set up was capable of sustaining high revs without any real problems. Burt had created another unique engineering solution to a complicated problem without drawing a line on a piece of paper.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 265-6
Back in Wendover Burt was full of confidence that he could not only set the record he wanted, but also shatter the 200 mile an hour barrier. But the God of Speed is a capricious fellow. During his qualifying run Burt was horrified to discover the streamliner was again shaking and weaving, even at his comparatively modest qualifying speed of 172 miles an hour. The next day he lined up to take his first serious run with frayed nerves and a sense of dread. Neither Marty nor Rollie had made it to Speed Week that year and Burt missed them both. He still had the small but dedicated band of helpers that had formed over the years, always designating whatever car Burt was driving as Team Indian HQ. They even had Team Indian T-shirts printed. They treated Burt like a guru and could not do enough for him. Like Rollie, they were convinced he was from another planet where the normal rules of ageing did not hold. Even so, as they pushed him off, Burt could not shake his anxiety. But Burt always found confidence once he was under way. He took the bike up to about 180 miles an hour in spite of the snaking and weaving. It was an heroic effort, and far more than most mortals would have attempted. Still the God of Speed wanted more. As he approached the timed sections Burt had a split second to make his choice. Did he back off and hope he could slow the bike down without crashing, or did he go for it and hope it became more stable in the mysterious world that waited behind the door?
It was never really an issue. He kept the throttle wound hard against the stop. As he hit the timed miles the bike was going faster than it ever had before. At over 200 miles an hour, the first quarter mile - clearly marked because it was used in setting qualifying times - went past in just four seconds.
But the bike was not becoming more stable. Far from it. Burt knew he was rapidly losing control and a fatal crash was just seconds away. He had used every bit of his skill to keep it on track but the vibrations were now so bad he was beginning to grey out. In desperation he did the only thing he could do - he sat up. The terrific slipstream immediately tore his goggles off and tried to rip the helmet off his head, strangling him with the chinstrap. Blinded by the 200 mile an hour blast and by stinging salt flying off the front wheel, Burt lost track and the streamliner veered off into the salt flats, heading like a guided missile for a steel pylon standing all by itself in the distance.
The bike missed it - and certain destruction - by just twenty centimetres, streaking into the distance with Burt riding completely blind. It seemed to take forever to slow but he finally was at a speed where he could put the landing gear down. Burt was so dazed by this stage, however, that he could not locate the handle to drop the little wheels. When the bike stopped it just flopped on its side, badly tearing his shoulder muscles.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 276-7
It was now clear that he could not really develop his engines further without a dynamometer, which would allow him to methodically test his improvements to the bikes without the complicating variables that racing introduced.
He had talked with a number of people over the years about building such a machine, and he now set out to do it. It was a fearsome looking device when finished, with two flat thirty-five by twenty-centimetre plywood paddles, driven by a long chain from the engine running though exhaust pipe to stop it flying off the sprockets at either end. When the dynamometer was in use both the bike, with its rear wheel removed, and the paddles were mounted securely to a heavy steel frame.
Burt had also made an electric starter (using an old Ford starter motor) with handles on either side that fitted over the drive side mainshaft nut on both the Indian and the Velocette. He had first seen such a thing when a local grass track hotshot named Earl Bryan built one. Earl was asthmatic and had trouble push-starting his speedway JAP. There were a number of copies about that Burt would borrow, until their various owners decided he could build his own, which he finally did. He could now start the bike while it was hooked up to the dynamometer and run his tests.
Burt persuaded Norman Hayes to help with the first trial something Norman, who had followed the construction of the machine, was reluctant to do. Burt kept at him until he relented and Burt soon had the paddles whizzing around creating what to Norman felt like a hurricane in the confines of Burt's little shed. He was relieved when the engine refused to run properly and the trial was aborted.
The bike might not have performed but Burt was happy with his dynamometer. The only further equipment he needed was a hand-held rev counter to ensure the one on the bike was accurate, and without which he could not accurately calculate the horsepower the engine was developing. Luckily a friend named Vern Russell had just such a thing, which worked by holding it over the end of the crankshaft, and he agreed to help Burt. He soon regretted it.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 291
Having operated the starter motor to get the engine running, Vern held the rev counter over the end of the crankshaft and Burt slipped the bike into second gear.
As he let the clutch out, the unshielded paddles began to revolve, horribly close to where Vern was crouched beside the bike. Burt opened the throttle until the paddles were spinning at about 2000 revs, at which point the din from the open megaphones on the bike combined with the clatter of the chain in the pipes and the roar of the wind generated by the paddles was enough to daunt the stoutest heart. Papers and dust were flying around the workshop and just as Vern thought matter could not possibly become any more unpleasant, the bike slipped out of gear, the revs went through the roof, and motorcycle engine blew up. Vern was shaking violently as Burt calmly leaned over to have a look at the damage and announced, "That's the first time that has happened in the history of this church!"
Although he would thereafter allow Burt to borrow the rev counter whenever he asked for it, Vern was always too busy to help out in person. Duncan and Ashley had also heard enough to avoid being roped into a session, and Burt was forced to recruit others.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 292
He was forced to admit that those who had told him the magneto was faulty were probably right. Arriving back at Bainfield Road a month later he immediately began to work to replace the magneto. Years before, Joe Hunt, American specialist, had given him a Bosch magneto. The item was probably from a BMW and Burt had been dissuaded from fitting it because it ran the wrong way. Once he'd decided to use it, however, he quickly solved the problem by dispensing with the two idler pinions in the gear train driving the magneto. He replaced these with a single large cam gear mounted on an eccentric shaft, to allow an accurate meshing of the gears. He had to move the magneto closer to the gear and to do this he cut about four millimetres off the base of the magneto and about the same amount off the crankcase mounting. He drilled and tapped new holes to mount the magneto. Because it was designed to fire a flat four-cylinder engine, rather than a forty-two V-twin, he next made a new brass cam ring and a set of cams to work the points. The latter he created from old ball race that he annealed before filing it to the correct shape to achieve the timing he needed. Once he'd annealed it again it was ready.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 299- 300
Burt's tenth and final visit to Bonneville was in July 1971. He was disgusted to learn that the rules had been changed and that all streamliners now had to have separate engine compartments. The year before had seen a flurry of activity as three contenders chased the all-out motorcycle land speed record. Don Vesco had fired his twin engined 700cc, two-stroke Yamaha, feet-forward streamliner across the salt to take the record with an average of 251.6 miles an hour. A month later his good friend Cal Rayborn broke it again with a speed of 265.5. Rayborn's head-first streamliner, powered by a 1480cc Harley Davidson twin, had been a handful to drive and he had a few high-speed slides before he got the hang of it.
Less fortunate had been the third contender Robert Leppan, who had set a time one-way of 266 miles an hour in his twin Triumph 650cc powered streamliner Gyronaut X-1. On his return run the streamliner had become airborne at about 280 miles an hour, finally sliding for about 2.5 kilometres with a badly injured Leppan in the cockpit. The high speeds had prompted the new safety rules, but they effectively ended any participation by streamlined machines that were conventionally ridden.
Burt was allowed to make a few half-hearted passes in the streamliner for the Aardvark cameraman, probably the most frustrating thing he had ever done in his life. He was also allowed to run his bike without the shell, but the gearing was far too high for him to do well.
On the way back to Los Angeles, alone once again, an axle broke on his old trailer which then collapsed. He had to lash a tree branch underneath it, dragging it for miles until he found a truck stop and some assistance to slide the streamliner into the back of the $90 Pontiac station-wagon he had bought for the trip. Once back in Los Angeles he spent time with Marty and Jackie at their home in Thousand Oaks. Rollie came over and they talked about old times, each of them facing the reality that Burt's record-chasing days really were over. It was a sad farewell.
Back home Burt was soon in the thick or it again. He and Duncan still thought nothing of driving 600 kilometres to compete in a speed trial near Christchurch, then home again for a trial the next day. At a quarter-mile sprint along School Road in Invercargill, he kept the power on too long for his feeble brakes to pull him up, yelling as he careered down the road for someone to pull the traffic barrier out of the way. Just in time it was whisked away, and Burt hurtled past. Then he turned right around and lined up for another run. He was seventy-three years old.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 302-3
He suffered a heart attack but made a good recovery, teasing the nurses with all his youthful enthusiasm, and returned to his little house where he spent his days in a comfortable chair with a two-bar electric heater always going. He had rigged up a special wire holder on the heater for his teapot, and the many visitors were always offered a cup. His tea no longer tasted metallic.
With the sun streaming into his cosy little house, he would sit in his old armchair, close his eyes and find himself back on the salt. The Indian would be humming along, everything operating in perfect harmony. The black line would be flickering under the bike as it hurtled along, rock steady at maximum revs in top, doing well over 200 miles an hour. He would raise his head just a bit against the pressure of the slipstream and lift his eyes to take in the cobalt sky. As he drifted into sleep his perfect run would slowly fade, until there was nothing but the glittering white plain and the distant purple hills and perfect, eternal silence.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 305-6
Three days after the funeral, Margaret was cleaning out her father's house when she came across an address book. She flicked through it and stopped at the letter I, which contained a single word, 'Indian', and an American phone number. On a whim she called it. A man answered, his voice reverberating slightly. "Indian Motorcycles. Can I help you?"
For a moment Margaret was silent, then remembered the purpose of her call. "Hello, my name is Margaret. I'm Burt Munro's daughter and I am calling to tell you that he has died peacefully at home."
"I'm really pleased to hear that, Margaret." The unexpected sentiment hung in the air for a moment, somewhere near the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, that came out wrong. I'm real sad to hear Burt's gone and everybody else round here will be too when I tell them. We already miss him. It's just that we figured he would be awfully lucky to go peacefully. I'm so glad he did." There was another pause. "I would like you to know that he made all of here at Indian Motorcycles proud. Real proud."
As Margaret hung up, her eyes were drawn to the glittering trophies, waiting to be packed in boxes. She was struck by how much more there had been to the life they represented. Her father, she thought, had always been a true individual and, like all true individuals, he had always been himself.
It was enough, she thought, more than enough.
One Good Run Tim Hanna p 306-7
A long-distance motorcycle rally requires the same time-management skills as a SaddleSore, along with a few more. It's essentially a scavenger hunt, with bonuses worth different point values depending on the degree of difficulty to get to the location either in terms of distance or road quality. Each rally is run by a Rally Master who plans, advertises, and oversees the entire event. They take great pride in creating interesting routes, along twisty mountain roads filled with animals at night, blistering deserts in the heat of the day, busy cities at rush hour, or small towns with excruciatingly slow speed limits- anything to make the ride challenging. The goal of a rally is to figure out the best way to get the most points while also, at least in the Utah 1088, riding the minimum number of miles to be classified as a finisher.
Two-Up Lynda Lahman p 32
The final few miles! Turning west on I-80 towards the hotel, Terry said that because we had deviated from the main route, we might not have covered enough miles to be considered finishers. The possibility that we might be short on miles had never come up. We were well over what I thought was required, and I couldn't make any sense of his words. All I heard was, "We need to ride a billion miles past our exit, blah blah blah, then turn around and come on back". If I'd had the strength to strangle him, I would have. He later told me he could feel ice forming on the intercom wires from the sudden chill in my mood. I was in a state of utter disbelief, but Terry was insistent. I reluctantly agreed to go another twenty miles farther before turning around. I was not a happy camper when we passed by our exit and I could see the hotel from the interstate.
Two-Up Lynda Lahman p 39
Then another rider, Greg Marbach, appeared, jumped off his bike, took the required photo, and engaged us in a brief conversation. He hopped back on his bike and headed east down the mountain pass to the valley below. I turned to Terry and asked him if he thought Greg was doing OK, if he seemed tired, and if we should we have said or done something.
Not knowing Greg well, we weren't sure if he would successfully monitor himself. Feeling slightly uncomfortable, but also freezing cold and wanting to re-hook up our electrics, we got back on the bike and took off in the same easterly direction. Barely half a mile later we saw a bike on the side of the road and my heart skipped a beat. I quickly realized the bike was on its side stand, and Greg was sleeping next to it on the hillside. Later he told us cars kept stopping to see if he was OK, and he finally had to continue further down the road to find a better place to nap where he wouldn't be constantly awakened by well-meaning drivers.
Two-Up Lynda Lahman p 87
An elderly man wandered over to chat while Terry moved the equipment to different locations on the bike. The man asked about the bike and where we were from. I don't think I've ever spoken with anyone who talked as slowly, pausing in-between every word for what seemed like minutes. I could tell Terry wanted to focus on fixing the bike, so I kept answering the man's questions, diverting his attention, trying to be friendly and engaging.
He had never been more than a few miles from his home in his entire life, and was struggling to believe that we could have come over 3000 miles in only three days. He drew the words out, over and over, "Three thousand miles in three days!" as if the constant repetition would suddenly make it more comprehensible. It was the kind of moment, unplanned and memorable, that happened often when we were on the bike. Somehow, people were more willing to approach us, a couple sharing a single motorcycle, and pepper us with questions that they might never ask if we were in a car.
Two-Up Lynda Lahman p 113-4
But now we were far ahead of schedule. It was only 10am and Livermore was a short 150 miles away. We took off down the mountain with fingers crossed that we'd find an open fire station. The instructions for the fire station were as follows: "Take a picture of the Centennial Light, the oldest continually burning bulb in the world, on since 1901. You will need to go into the Fire Station and ask to see the light. Go to the door and ring the bell. You MUST also sign the guest book as we will be monitoring it! If the fire personnel are out on a call, you must wait for their return."
We arrived to find an empty station. Not sure what to do or how long to wait, Terry took a short nap. I studied our maps to see if there were other bonuses we could add if we stayed ahead of the clock. I called Bob to chat and help keep me alert. Thirty minutes passed. I was pacing the parking lot, unsure what to do, when a fire truck pulled into the driveway. I shook Terry out of his slumber and ran over to the crew to say hello.
"Bet you've had quite a few people stopping by today," I said. A firefighter looked at me oddly as he climbed down from the truck.
"Um, I'm not sure what you're talking about. This isn't our station. We're just here for a minute dropping off some supplies and taking off again."
"Would it be OK if you let us in to get a picture of the light bulb?" I asked as they were unloading boxes.
"What light bulb?" My heart stopped. How could it be a famous landmark and a local crew not know about it? What if they couldn't find it? What if it required a special key?"
"Oh, is this it?" he called as the bay doors opened, revealing a tiny wire attached to the ceiling with a small bulb dangling at the end. I breathed a sigh of relief.
Had I been sleeping along with Terry the truck would have come and gone, no one the wiser. We took our photo, with Terry lying on the floor to get me, the flag, and the light in the picture. We signed the guest book, thanked the crew for letting us in, and waved goodbye as we rode off.
Two-Up Lynda Lahman p 170-1
The fleece neck gaiter I was wearing for warmth had gotten twisted inside my jacket and was bothering me. "Can you tuck this back in for me?" I asked Terry. "I can't reach the back to do it myself."
"I can't," Terry said. "My hands are dirty." He held them out for me to see. I stared at him incredulously.
"Seriously? Do you really think I care?" Neither of us had showered since the hotel in San Jose, three days ago. Our stop in Fort Collins had only been for sleep, and we had spent two nights on picnic benches in our gear and our helmets. Dirt was the least of my worries. We laughed at the absurdity of what he had just said and what we were doing- standing at a gas pump in the middle of the night, filthy, stinky, and having the time of our lives.
Two-Up Lynda Lahman p 196
One rider quoted Helen Keller's description of life as a daring adventure. The quotation has always been a favourite of mine, and helps explain how these riders justify the risks to which they willingly expose themselves:
"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of humankind as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing at all."
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 46
Just after midnight, some 130 miles south of Salt Lake City, I became sleepy and checked into the Iron Butt Motel at Fillmore. This time the Iron Butt Motel was the parking lot of a convenience store. The Iron Butt Motel is the term endurance riders use for sleeping on one's motorcycle. Some riders do it by leaning forward, using their tank bags as a pillow. I was most comfortable leaning back. Anyone who has difficulty believing that it's possible to sleep on a motorcycle just hasn't been that tired. The Iron Butt Motel has a lot to recommend it. It's easy to find, the rates are great, there's always a vacancy, and there's no problem about having to park your motorcycle out of your sight while you sleep. And you don't have to awaken a clerk if you want to check in at 4:00 a.m. There are a few disadvantages, too. You never seem to be able to find one when it's raining, and there generally isn't a shower nearby unless it's raining. They are some of the dirtiest places going. There's no service to speak of. Security isn't great.
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 78-9
Around midnight Charles was north of Los Angeles, dead tired and wanting an opportunity to stop to rest. But his concern about being able to make it through the traffic in Los Angeles to reach San Diego on time caused him to try to get through Los Angeles before stopping. Thinking that he had missed a turnoff to stay on I-5, he tried to cheat the highway by crossing the white demarcation lines, hit an unknown obstacle, and went airborne. The short flight and abrupt landing awakened him enough to realize that he was heading in the wrong direction on I-5. When he exited the freeway to examine the damage to the motorcycle, he entered an area that he described as a "war zone", replete with refugees, burned out hulks of automobiles, and abandoned buildings. He quickly returned to the interstate. When he stopped at a gasoline station a little farther on, the attendant was sitting in a bulletproof cage. As he dismounted he heard the voices of several youths running in his direction from a half a block away. Leaving the refuelling for later, he jumped back on the motorcycle and once again returned to the interstate.
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 82-3
Morris Kruemcke surprised riders when he arrived in Salt Lake City without the black "Stealth Bike" that had been such an attraction at the Iron Butt Pizza Party in Daytona, Florida the previous March. Morris's Stealth Bike started as a wrecked Gold Wing but no longer had much in common with the production version. The bullet-shaped vehicle, enveloped in a jet-black carbon-fibre skin, looked as if it belonged either on the salt flats of Bonneville or in a James Bond flick. Mounted inside, the cockpit surrounded the rider and included such space-age instrumentation as a digital fuel flow readout as well as the more pedestrian tachometer and speedometer. Some sort of backrest had been modified to support the rider's chest as he leaned forward to stay below the wind stream. This reduced rider fatigue and increased mileage at the same time. And yes, this bike was also equipped with the "Morris Kruemcke Pee-Tube".
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 85
Michael Stockton had a more pleasant experience on U.S. 49 twelve hours earlier. He was stopped by a Mississippi State Trooper. Usually, being stopped for speeding isn't pleasant, but when Michael handed over his driver's license, he noticed that the trooper wore a college ring from the University of Mississippi. A good friend of Michael's, now a doctor in Oklahoma City, had attended the same university. When Michael mentioned this, the trooper acknowledged with surprise that she and Michael's friend had been best friends in high school and college.
"Did you have a big, black Harley Dresser in the mid '80s?" she asked.
"Yes," Michael replied. "Well, your friend told me about you. She suggested that you and I meet some time, because I ride motorcycles too."
After talking for half an hour, Michael explained the Iron Butt.
"Well, let me help you make up some time," she suggested, "I'll escort you out of the State of Mississippi." So Michael received a high-speed escort to the Alabama state line.
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 108-9
Gary Eagan's experience the previous evening may have been a unique one. As he pulled into a gasoline station near Hoxie, Arkansas, lightning was flashing in all directions. He was surrounded by clouds, could smell the rain in the air, and felt the wind blowing in strong, sustained gusts. Half an hour later, trucks started blinking their lights as they went by in the opposite direction. Gary believed the trucks were trying to warn him of a trooper, but he wasn't exceeding the speed limit at the time.
"A massive gust of wind pushed me off the road, across the shoulder, and into a field," Gary reported. "I didn't know what hit me. The field was muddy, but not yet so bad that I couldn't get back on the road. As I looked to the northeast, I could see a small funnel cloud. It scared the hell out of me."
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 110
So Martin decided to make his first visit to the Iron Butt Motel. He pulled the motorcycle under an overpass, as far out of the way as he could manage, laid his head on the tank bag, and spread his arms across the fairing. Despite the pounding rain-storm, he fell asleep immediately. About three hours later, startled awake by a truck roaring past, he thought he had momentarily fallen asleep while riding and was about to smash into the concrete bridge abutment a short distance before him. He tried to execute an emergency swerve, nearly toppling himself and the motorcycle to the pavement. "The emergency braking got my adrenaline flowing and I headed off relatively refreshed," Martin related.
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 111
While preparing to grab a few hours of sleep, Suzy Johnson looked on as members of the Christian Motorcycle Association repaired her motorcycle. She had encountered some rough roads in Louisiana and broken part of the exhaust system. The Christian volunteers were on hand at the checkpoint to help with the repairs. Suzy hadn't been in bed since Arizona and wanted to sleep, but the Christian bikers wanted to talk. So Suzy talked until midnight, when the repairs were complete.
Then she checked into a motel and collapsed for the evening.
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 117
I was in the middle of a giant traffic jam leading through Washington to the horizon. I decided to do what had worked well for me in other places in the rally and began splitting lanes. This worked for several miles until I found myself between a semi and a truck that was pulling a mobile home. I could see the semi driver's face in his rear view mirrors, so I knew that he had seen me.
The driver began to pull over, smashing me into the mobile home. I was attempting to maintain my speed to keep the motorcycle upright as I was being held against the side of the moving mobile home. When the semi finally began to fall back, the lug nuts of the truck's front axle sheared the right cover off my motorcycle's engine guard.
When I managed to finally clear the semi, I jumped the motorcycle onto the sidewalk and stopped to examine the damage and to give my knees an opportunity to stop shaking. In addition to the damage caused to the motorcycle, my left leg, which had been pinned against the side of the mobile home, wracked with pain. I decided that weeping wouldn't help anything. The semi was gone, so I continued on my way to West Virginia. This was the last time that I practiced lane-splitting in the United States. (report of Martin Hildebrand)
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 123
Finally, I spotted a fuel station from the interstate, took the exit, and turned into the parking area. I felt that I had entered some "end of time" scenario. The station wasn't very old, but was damaged with signs dangling and people hanging out. All the pumps except one were occupied. I parked at this pump and found that two of the three handles were unusable. One had a hand-printed sign, 'out of orda,' hanging on it, and the other had been cut. Apparently, someone had tried to set it on fire.
I tried to use the remaining handle, but found that I had to enter the station to pay for the purchase before the pump would function. On entering the station and having an opportunity to inspect my surroundings, I began to understand why prepayment was required. The cashier was surrounded by bulletproof glass and there were several signs stating that the station would not accept bills over $20. One sign stated, "In No Case Is There More Than $50 Cash Here." As I stepped from the cashier's window, I detected at least 20 pairs of eyes locked on me. Although all pumps were occupied, I didn't see any vehicle taking fuel while I was there. All vehicles were at least ten years old, and all had some major body damage. After quickly taking a gallon of fuel, I departed. I was careful to not make eye contact with anyone. I had the impression that the small package that I saw being exchanged with the driver of one of the parked cars was not containing vitamin pills.
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 124
A little after 11:00pm, I entered the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and headed across the dark 17.6 mile expanse of water connecting the Delmarva Peninsula with the Virginia coast. I knew about this engineering marvel, the world's largest bridge-tunnel complex, but had never had the opportunity to see it.
This structure, acclaimed as one of the "Seven Wonders of the Modern World", begins as a bridge where it leaves the mainland at Virginia Beach. A restaurant, gift shop, and fishing pier are located on the southernmost of the four man-made islands. Several miles from shore the highway disappears into a tunnel beneath the ocean. After about a mile, the highway rises to the surface and continues once again as a bridge. All I could see was water- the Chesapeake Bay to one side of the highway and the Atlantic Ocean to the other.
After another five miles the highway again descends beneath the ocean and continues through a second tunnel for another mile before rising one final time as a bridge, ending at Cape Charles, Virginia. I enjoyed the crossing and only wished I had been able to make the trip during daylight.
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 129
Murf could tell us all something about the crappy roads in this part of the country. As he was circling the nation's capital in the fourth lane of the five-lane beltway, a jarring encounter with a pothole caused his motorcycle to suddenly and unexpectedly stop running. As with my flameout in Jacksonville the previous day, Murf's occurred in the middle of heavy traffic. A trucker noticed his plight, understood what was going on, and signalled him to head for the shoulder. The driver used his 18 wheeler to block traffic as Murf made his way to the side of the road. Murf's motorcycle has a sensor to detect if the motorcycle leans too far to the side. The sensor, a pendulum suspended in oil, closes an electrical circuit if the pendulum touches the inner edge of a retaining ring. Theoretically, such an occurrence means the motorcycle has fallen. When the circuit closes, the engine stops running. In Murf's case, the shock of hitting the pothole generated enough motion in the device to trigger the shutdown. The sensor recycles after the ignition switch is turned off and then back on.
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 133
By this time, I realized that my previous thoughts about surviving a fall from the bridge were stupid. If I was blown off, I was dead. The impact of hitting the water after such a long fall would surely knock me out, and it was stupid to think about surviving the freezing water. I had swum in Lake Michigan in August and knew how cold it was at this time of year. The correct plan was not to be blown off. As I headed for the bridge and worked my way through the gears, I felt that this was a strange bridge, different from others I had crossed. The guard rail seemed only knee-high. An optical illusion? I remained in the center.
It was too dark to see the Great Lakes below- Lake Michigan on my left and Lake Huron on my right. Shoals, heavy fog and high seas in the highly navigated waters between the two Great Lakes contributed to the loss of many ships in the area.
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 159
I was a few hours behind Gary Eagan, whose experience in crossing the bridge had been much different from mine. He ascended the bridge as the sun was setting to his left, over Lake Michigan. The sky was filled with spectacular shades of red. Half of the sun was visible as it sank slowly below the horizon. And at that instant, a full moon, appearing half the size of the sun, was rising to his right, shining brightly above Lake Huron. After the rally, Gary documented his experience while crossing the bridge:
"It was like the sun and moon were perfectly balanced on a teeter-totter. It was surreal- so incredibly beautiful that I wanted to stop the bike and just watch it.
But not on that bridge.
"I guess that event probably happens one or two times a year there, when the sun is far enough north and the moon is full. It's impossible to describe how wonderful that was. I yelled and shouted halfway to Manistique on Highway 2. It was just what I needed to rejuvenate me and ease the disappointment of the problems I believed had cost me a shot at winning the Iron Butt.
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 160
It's amazing that riders will continue to ride for hours in great discomfort to avoid stopping. They'll tolerate an enlarged bladder to minimize nature breaks, put up with a growling stomach or parched throat to postpone a food stop, ride in wet clothing to avoid the interruption of donning a rainsuit, or permit a headache to develop as a result of incessant wind noise rather than stop to insert earplugs. At one time or another I've been guilty of all of these quirks.
Mike included advice in his long-distance riding tips about "stopping to go farther". His advice was offered because the phenomenon described above is so prevalent, even among riders who should know better. Stopping at appropriate intervals for meal breaks and rest doesn't cost the endurance rider time. It actually makes it possible to spend more time in the saddle.
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 161
I fought the "nods" more than at any time since the rally began. I tried every trick I knew. I opened the face shield to my helmet and stood upright on the pegs to let fresh air blast directly into my face, unobstructed by the motorcycle's windshield. I unzipped the front of the Aerostich to let air blow into the suit. I performed deep knee-bends while standing on the pegs, hoping that increasing my circulation would help me remain alert. I sat back down and shook my head vigorously from side to side. I changed my position on the motorcycle dramatically, trying to make myself as uncomfortable as possible. I ate a Snickers and drank a Mountain Dew. I sat on the passenger seat with my feet on the passenger pegs, my back pressed the duffel bags, and my arms stretched forward on the controls. I sang, cursed, and shouted commands to myself to stay awake.
"Stay awake until sunrise, damn it! You can last until sunrise! Don't surrender now! Don't be such a damn wimp! After sunrise, things will be OK!" I believed things would be OK if I could last until daylight. No matter how tired I get, I always become re-energized when I see sunshine. When I start a ride before daylight, I'm usually sluggish and drowsy, even after a good night's sleep. When the sun comes up, things improve.
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 168-9
Chuck walked to me. Neither of us spoke a word as we embraced and exchanged hugs that were more than only sincere. We felt the same honest happiness that two brothers feel after a separation of 20 years. Bystanders appeared puzzled. I'm 6'-2" and Chuck is as large. We both had full and filthy beards and were in dirty and stinking motorcycle clothes.
Neither of us was bothered by that. In one sense, I and this man didn't know much about each other. I've never seen his home and he hasn't seen mine. We hadn't spoken more than a few dozen words to each other before we left Salt Lake City. But now, 11 days later, we know that we share an experience that can't be bought at any shop. We've seen the same ghosts in the same nights. We both fought them and beat them. This isn't something many people can tell about each other.
This poignant scene captures the feeling that many riders were experiencing during the final days of the rally.
Against The Wind Ron Ayers p 176-7
Mike and Jo Hannan live on the Gold Coast of Queensland
I'm not sure about this, but I do know that there are those who get bikes and those who don't. Those who don't are usually the folk who ask, "What's it worth?" When you tell them the retail price, they respond, "You could buy a good car for that," as though a motorbike could only be a cheap alternative to a car. Those who get bikes love the way they work and the relationship between the bike and the rider. They love the way bikes make you feel; the sheer exhilaration of it. Besides, as we were about to find out, riding a bike can teach you some useful lessons about life, if you care to learn them.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p17
This became the first test for our rig at high speed and we had some misgivings about its stability. The manufacturer recommended a top speed of 140 km/h with the full luggage-fit and since the freeway speed was 130, we thought this would be fine. And it would have been, except that no one drove at the speed limit. We joined the flow and I gradually increased our speed as confidence in the stability of the rig grew. Soon enough we were belting along with the crowd in the not-so-fast-lane while the fast cars and Honda ST1300s blasted past us in the proper fast lane. We were still making very good time. It was 250 kilometres to the overnight stop in Brive. 250 divided by 140 equals... a quick trip to town!
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 37
Needing to make about even-time (averaging 100 km/h) for the trip, we paid our money on the motorway and opened up the throttle. It wasn't long before Jo was explaining exponential equations as we watched the fuel gauge expire before our eyes. 15 percent more speed was costing us a 40 percent penalty in fuel. At 140 km/h you could almost see the fuel gauge move as you glanced at it. Clearly we had the aerodynamics of a barn door. At home, a day of mixed riding would get an easy 500 kilometres from the 30 litre tank. With this load on board we got about 400 to a tank on the motorway if we kept the cruise at 120. Over 140, the little 'feed me now' light came on at about 280 kilometres. The problem with this was that 95-octane petrol cost about US$2.50 per litre, or better than US$50 every time we filled the tank! The only saving grace was that at high speed you would run out of country after a couple of days. We had a tight budget for this trip, however, and we didn't want to miss out on a decent bistro meal for the sake of a quicker trip up the motorway.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 45
Interestingly, we didn't see many fast sports bikes on motorways but there were a few big, fast super-tourers. The Honda ST1300s, BMW GTs and Yamaha XJR 1300s generally had a couple on board in matching leathers and helmets with full and very neat luggage fit. They slid by at about 150 tucked in behind the big fairings.
We watched them go with a wave and told ourselves that the decision to bring the BMW GSA would pay off later when the roads got bad and the distances got longer.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 46
We were not entirely new to the way things are done in this part of the world so, as soon as the ferry docked, we hustled the Elephant into the melee around the Border Police post. We paid a generous "tip" to get to the front of the queue and have the paperwork tor the bike sorted, and rolled out onto the streets of Tangier in about 15 minutes. A quick stop to get fuel and change some money took only a few minutes more, then we were off up the hill and into the thick of the Tangier traffic. Just like in other parts of North Africa and the Middle East where we have travelled, it is chaos in slow motion: folks wander across the road without any regulation, cars and trucks drift across "lanes" and no-one ever looks at their rear view mirrors. The unwritten rule is always "if I am in front, I have right of way". The bikes here are mostly tiny mopeds and the cars are small and low-powered so it all has a surreal feel for us. There is nothing of the lethal intensity of our own traffic with many more vehicles and ballistic speeds. Best of all, it happens with good humour and the traffic manages to flow despite the best efforts of everyone.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 90
It was during our stay in Agadir that the registration of the Elephant expired. Our solution to this was to pay the renewal over the net and have the label recovered from our redirected mail by Jo's sister Pauline. The replacement label was then scanned and mailed through to us along with the registration paper itself.
At a photographic shop I had the scan printed to scale on photographic paper, trimmed the image and had it laminated. The completed facsimile was then fitted to the label holder and was so good I left it there until renewal time. We had found a good hotel at a reasonable price with secure parking for the Elephant so we stayed on in Agadir until Jo's back was in fair shape for travel.
Each day we walked a little further to give her some exercise. A few days we overdid it and had a set back, but her improvement was steady. Once she was walking three or four kilometres we knew our medical crisis had been averted and it was time to go. We finished our stay at Agadir with a New Year's Eve dinner and a bottle of Moroccan wine followed by a walk along the crowded waterfront for an ice cream. It was 34 years since the New Year's Eve we had met in Sydney and I had given Jo her first pillion ride on a bike. A lot had changed in the intervening years, but not so much as you might think.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 105
Although the road surface was often treacherous, with gravel on almost every corner, the riding was a pleasure. There were stunning sights at every turn that kept us interested and kept drawing my eyes away from the challenge of the road. As we climbed higher through the valleys we found many kasbahs. Some were ancient and crumbling back to the earth. Others were still in use. All were spectacularly sited in commanding hilltop positions. On days like this we felt the freedom of the road as a real and powerful force in our lives. The idea of being out on the road, free to go in any direction, with no deadline or agenda, had always been a romantic notion and a little adolescent and silly. A day of riding in the Moroccan mountains, even on a cold day, was enough to make us feel like we were teenagers again, off on a road trip when everything was new and exciting.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 108
The wind that had brought rain and snow to the mountains blew itself out across the desert creating a sand storm that limited visibility to less than 100 metres. We had never been in a sand storm on a bike before and life became difficult in new and interesting ways. We kept our helmet visors down to keep out as much dust as possible but they became coated with dust inside and out. To get them clean and return some visibility, we were forced to stop and wipe down the inside of the visors every twenty minutes or so. The fine dust got in everywhere and we kept all of the vents on our suits closed up to keep it out. Unfortunately this also kept out the cooling air with obvious consequences. By the time we got to The Palmeraie Hotel at Zagora we were keen to get out of the sand-blast and get ourselves and the bike indoors. Like many older hotels, The Palmeraie was happy for me to park the Elephant in its foyer. The Palmeraie was also like other old hotels in other ways. The windows didn't seal and our room was covered with a film of gritty dust. When the gusts of wind hit our second storey room, the windows shook and banged as though they were about to be blown in and the dust was so thick in the air in the poorly-lit hallways that it hampered visibility. Not that any of this was too much of a problem for us. We had Elephant secured and an acceptably comfortable room, and we managed to find a cold beer and some very tasty food. In our simple world view, things were just fine.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 111-112
In El-Kelaa M'Gouna, we shared our overnight stop with a group of about 16 bike riders from the UK who were spending a week riding dirt bikes in Morocco and following the Paris-Dakar Rally which was scheduled to pass through Morocco not far to the east. They had only been in the country for one day and one rider already had an arm in a sling with little likelihood that he would remount his bike. They were all heartily disillusioned because they had just heard the announcement that the rally had been cancelled for 2007 after three French tourists were shot by terrorists in Senegal.
The Elephant wasn't interested in their skinny-bummed KTMs, so in the morning we left them to it and continued to the east and into the mountain gorges.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 116
The proprietor of the Oasis Hotel had kindly let us park Elephant in the storeroom and had come around to open the door when we returned from exploring the mountains. With our limited French and his limited English we struck up a conversation.
"Why are you in Morocco?" he asked.
"Oh, we're just looking around," came the reply.
"Oui, touristic."
"Oui touristic."
"So, where have you been?" We opened our maps and pointed to the pink highlighted line and date annotations that showed our travels. He studied it closely and asked questions about places and towns.
"Amazing," he said. "You have seen more of Maroc than me! Where will you go next?" We looked at each other, realising we had not yet discussed our next destination.
"Perhaps we will go to the south. Another rider we met in Agadir is down there and he says it is very cheap and there are no tourists," I said, and looked back over at Jo, who shrugged. "Or," I continued, we might go north to the Riff and look at the Atlantic Coast" He considered this lack of certainty for a few moments then gave a broad smile.
"I think I understand," he said. "You are not tourists, you are voyageurs!" His words hit us like a bolt of lightning and made us grin from ear to ear.
"Yes!" we blurted out in unison. "We are voyageurs!"
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 117
While we ate we chatted to Daniele and heard about his adventure over many of the roads we had ridden ourselves. As was often the case when we met fellow adventure riders, a bond formed quickly. In some ways these conversations were very soothing for us. Riders never ask each other the standard round of questions that non-riders need to give them a context for the relationship. Much of the experience is already understood and the motivation taken for granted. We had no accommodation organised for Marrakech and neither did Daniele so we exchanged global roaming numbers before he roared off down the mountain and we demolished the rest of our lamb.
Looking up from our plates, we saw a group of eight Honda Transalps cruising past, gleaming clean and carrying no luggage; their leader setting a conservative pace up front. We finished our tea, paid a few dollar for our lunch and set off after them.
It seemed like no time at all before we were slipping by the shiny Transalps. We waved to each one as Elephant rumbled by; a behemoth among the spindly Hondas. We imagined most of the riders would have rather tucked in behind Elephant's broad arse and come along for a proper ride in the mountains. That, after all, is what riding in Morocco is about. That, and barbecued lamb chops by the side of the road!
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 120
Through all of this, we had been rubbing along pretty well with our Tunisian hosts. Big bikes like ours were very uncommon in Tunisia, so we certainly got noticed wherever we went. I am surprised that Jos' arm didn't fall off as she spent so much time waving to folks of all ages as we passed through the countryside. When we stopped, young fellows would come over to look at the numbers on the speedo. I didn't have the heart to tell them how optimistic they were with our big luggage fit.
The guys always asked how big the motor was and the answer of 1150cc left them with a stunned look on their faces.
With our riding suits, helmets, incomprehensible language, GPS and communications setup, we might as well have been space travellers in some remote villages. Here, even more so than in Morocco, we were a curiosity. We were, however, clearly strangers and clearly on a grand journey, something easily understood by these desert peoples with their long tradition of respect for travellers.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 142-3
In Le Kef, I needed to do some repairs to our helmet wiring looms. These were the cables that linked the speakers and microphones in our helmets with the intercom system on the bike. We had worn out a set each because of the constant flexing of the main cable where it exited the helmet. I went to a little hardware store and explained the problem to the owner with an engineering drawing and a few words of French. He and his assistant went to work finding parts that I might adapt to my needs and after 30 minutes and several revised drawings assembled the selection of bits.
When I asked him how much, he handed me the parts and with a broad smile, said there was no charge and welcome to Tunisia. We smiled back our most thankful smiles and shook everyone's hand before taking our paper bag of bits back to the hotel to start work on the helmet repair.
It was through small kindnesses such as these that North Africa became the place where we started to understand something of the transaction we were involved in each time we interacted with local people. We started to say that we were pushed on by the kindness of strangers, and this was certainly true, but it was not the whole story. We found that each transaction involved an exchange. We would offer our story; the story of strangers and an odyssey, and in return they would offer kindness and their hopes for the success of our journey. In the final part of the transaction, we would take their wishes and add them to the others we carried with us.
Each time we told the story of our journey in return for a favour done, we carried forward the expectations of yet another soul. For it seemed that the idea of the journey transcended culture and that there was a universal belief that to journey among strangers is an honourable thing; a thing worth doing for its own sake.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 143-4
In late January 2008, on a rainy Tuesday, we stopped at a busy, muddy intersection at a small market town in the south of the Riff Mountains. The policeman on duty saw us stop and check the road in both directions obviously considering which way to go. He left his post and walked over to us and signalled the question "Can I help?" We confirmed the direction we needed to take. He then indicated the broader question, "Where are you going?" We told him our story in a few mixed words of English, French and Arabic, together with a lot of sign language. A huge smile came over his face: "So, you and your wife go on your bike. You go to all the world's countries and see all the world's peoples. Good luck! Good luck!"
Perhaps that night, I said to Jo, he went home to his little daughter and said something along the lines of: "You will never guess what happened today. A man and a woman came to our town. They were wearing space suits and riding on a puny elephant with spindly legs and a funny snout. They told me they were going to see all of the world's peoples and all of their places. I gave them gift. I gave them a smile and a wish, and they said that they would carry it over the Riff, over the high mountains, across the endless wheat plains and through the forest of the bear. And they said that they would take it to the warm Pacific and cast it into the air and it would float back to me."
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 144-5
With rugged mountains plunging straight into the sea, it was like riding your favourite bike road every day without rounding the same corner twice. Some of it was challenging. West of Sparta the mountain road clambered up through dozens of impossible switchbacks but, with the long winter in the Moroccan mountains behind us, Elephant's hairpin technique was close to faultless. We found ourselves swaying through the hills as though we were performing a kind of swooping dance; a mechanical ballet with an Elephant in a tutu.
We spent hours riding in first, second and third gear (we had 6) entering the corners wide and deep, turning late and hard when I could see the exit then keeping plenty of power going to the back wheel to keep it planted firmly (you have to think about the physics sometimes). This is the classic bike cornering technique designed to give the rider options and traction and to keep the bike coming out of the corners on the safe side of the road. Failure to master this simple method has killed more good men and women than the plague.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 163
I have never minded riding in the rain, or riding in gusty cross-winds, or riding challenging mountain roads, but all three together is different matter. The road twisted itself into a tortured knot of switchback corners and the rain thundered down turning the hairpins into rivers and covering them in debris. The lightning seemed to strike on top of us and the thunder hit us with a wave of energy that shook us to the core. We climbed on. The storm wind ripped down the valleys and hit Elephant with a hammer-blow each time we were exposed from the lee of a spur. High in the mountains it started to hail. Big clumps of ice smashed into our helmets and arms and Elephant struggled to keep a steady grip on the marble road. My arms and shoulders started to ache and I realised that I was gripping the controls too tightly trying to make each input smooth. I tried to relax by shaking my shoulders consciously to release the knotted muscles and I found myself talking to Elephant, murmuring soothing, wooing sounds, steadying nerves.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 167-8
The day was also eventful in other ways. During the two days, the Elephant sat in the hotel's front garden under its cover. Unfortunately it also sat with its parking lights on as I had inadvertently turned the key one click too far before removal. It was a silly mistake that left our battery so flat it wouldn't run the GPS much less spark the ignition. As has often happened in tight situations, a friendly local went of his way to assist us. A delivery driver was having coffee when I went back into the hotel. He brought his van around and parked in close. We didn't have a set of jumper cables, but we found two lengths of 10 amp electrical cable. From (bitter) experience I knew that these would not provide the power to crank the engine so we connected the cables and let the Elephant draw some power from the van for about 15 minutes, resisting the temptation to press the starter and smoke the cables. When there was enough power in Elephant's battery to give a bright ignition light, we unloaded the luggage and Jo and the van-man gave a big, running push while I jump-started the beast in 3rd gear. The engine fired easily and we were away!
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 183-4
We often felt isolated by our complete inability to understand the Russian language and script but this was seldom a domestic problem. Despite our complete lack of language, we always managed to find a bed and get fed, get repairs done on the bike, and negotiate our way through police checkpoints and border crossings. We each had our areas of responsibility for the administrative tasks we collectively called hunting and gathering. Jo was responsible for negotiating the accommodation while I parked the bike and kept it safe. As she explained it, if she walked into a hotel or guesthouse, she probably wasn't there to buy bread. All that was required was to determine if a room was available, look at the room, signal acceptance, and negotiate the price using numbers written on a scrap of paper.
A similar pantomime was played out in cafes and restaurants. We would often walk around the tables and identify what looked good on other diners' plates then signal to the waiter that this was the dish we wanted. It was a simple system and, if executed with a little good humour, generally got a good laugh from the locals and often an endorsement for our choice from the other diner. In supermarkets Jo always stood back and let me make a fool of myself gesturing and smiling. She had noticed that the women who inevitably served behind the counter were apt to find the foolishness of a bloke amusing, if not charming, but were not so well disposed towards charades by a female.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 229
Throughout our 12,000 kilometre ride across this stunning land we had rubbed along with the ordinary Russians going about their lives. In the remote areas the only foreigners we met were other adventure riders. The locals were friendly, amazingly helpful, curious, cheerful and pleased that we had made the effort to come to their town. We had often said that we were propelled on our way by the kindness of strangers, but nowhere was this more so than in the Russian Far East.
Although there was always the risk that Elephant would miss-step and put us onto the road, we were confident that the Russians would stop and offer genuine assistance. It was just that kind of place.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 253
We found, as we travelled, that the idea of the journey had a deep cultural significance that was probably universal. To journey far among strangers was seen as an honourable thing, worth doing for its own sake. Our arrival on Elephant underscored the challenge of our journey; its difficulties and, therefore, its specialness.
We learned to tell the story of our journey quickly and efficiently and use it as a kind of currency. We used a map with graphics to show where we had come from without the need for language. We ended our explanation by saying, or indicating, "And now we are here!" This usually elicited a broad smile. The personality of Elephant was the final element in the transaction.
Elephant was so distinctive that a small fan club formed wherever we parked. People waved as we rode by and grown men asked to sit in the rider's seat to have their photo taken. People often said to us, "That's my dream, too," and we often spent a half-hour or more answering questions and posing for photos and videos when we stopped in the street. We spent the time willingly even when we were filthy, exhausted and hot, because we understood that this was our part of the transaction.
And, for their part, people were kind to us, and true to their own belief in the idea of the great journey. With these thoughts sloshing about in our heads we rolled on towards Vladivostok, looking forward to our arrival and the symbolic end of our odyssey; the end of our easterly journey; the chimera at the end of a continent.
The Elephant's Tale Mike Hannan p 255-6
It is indeed a vague measure of time. In my case, the pointless wandering comprised an eleven year sleep of motorcyclelessness. When I woke, I was in a dark hallway, stumbling forward with hopeful hands held out. Then I saw a slice of light. Closer, and I could see the title on the door from under which it spilled: "Bikes Here. Enter and Be Saved." Inside was such strangeness: Everything has changed! At least on the surface- the great increase of riders, numbered in hundreds of thousands; the armored gear; the digitized, the carbon-fibered, the ABSed and GPSed, the piled-up complications of parts and pumps and suspensions; the listservs and forums ever-blossoming to encompass billions of words and countless thousands of clever avatars behind which masks were people who rode faster and braked better and knew more about more minutiae than was ever conceived of a decade earlier. I reeled back. For a moment. Then, in the very center of the swirling din, I saw that what was elemental had not changed. For it never could. The joy. The need. The familial bond of blood. The erotics of risk.
Finally, the realization that this all begins with miles. And the consumption thereof.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing Melissa Pierson p x
He had not yet fully become what some small, potent seed in him had long ago foreordained he would be: a rider of singular talent and drive, one of the top long-distance endurance riders in the world. He would soon shatter the record on a frightful, 5,645-mile journey on some of the most difficult roadways in North America, and he would do it so fast (a blistering 86.5 hours, ten fewer than his predecessor) that no one could name the person who could have kept him in even distant sight ahead. When he finishes this ride, the first thing he does will be to conceive of something harder to do next. There are other people like him, who live to ride the ever more challenging ride. But few of them think they might like to become the first person to ride upwards of two hundred thousand miles in a year; few of them are as truly strange as to think they could sit in the saddle for an average of 550 miles every day of the year, Christmas and New Year's not excepted. John Ryan is thus alone-far and away alone- at the head of a small group, the rabid mile-eaters, that is hidden in plain sight near the very heart of motorcycling.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing Melissa Pierson p 2-3
And so it is that long-distance riding can be seen as a proxy for the daily life-or-death struggle we were kitted out for as forest-dwelling hunters. In its absence, we feel a need to find pursuits that exercise the same mental and physical capacities. Or else they start to itch. We want to feel fully alive, and fully ourselves.
In this way, riding to extremes takes humans home again. The incomprehensibly extraordinary endeavour is nowhere better captured than in G. K. Chesterton's phrase "the immense act". Its undertaking is "human and excusable" due to the fact that "the thing was perfectly useless to everybody, including the person who did it".
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing Melissa Pierson p 9
In order to do this, to be unlike anyone else in the world, he has cleared the decks of all the ropes and anchors the rest of humanity laboriously collects in order to feel safe, or in order to trip over. By his own account, he has "no career, savings, or health insurance, because I have chosen to ride instead of responsibly chasing my tail like everyone else." He does not have a car, or a house, or a wife, or children. What he does have, as of the end of that first Bun Burner Gold, is a calling. The allusion to sacred ordination is more than apt: Ryan often refers to a special class, that of devout motorcyclist.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing Melissa Pierson p 15
The people, and there are many, who simply don't get LD riding seeing it in a place it does not belong: the standard motorcycling paradigm. "Bikes take us to beautiful places (or adventuresome which in their difficulties are beautiful to a rider) that are experienced through the senses that touch the external world- sight, smell, sensation." But the way you must see this melodic variation on the motorcyclist theme is that the adventure is internal. It aims itself toward the mountainous passes and river crossings of the mental and emotional landscape, as brutal and awe-inspiring and challenging as any route outside. This inner country is rarely explored comprehensively, for the simple reason that the common structure of life has no quarter for it. But engage the peculiar mechanics of deep time on a machine that focuses the mind like a laser at the same time it frees the bonds of the physical, and you go, fast, into infinite slowness. Here is the lovely electrical charge of paradox; motorcycling taps deep into it.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing Melissa Pierson p 26
We talk, of course. They are heading to Hyder, Alaska, and back. From Florida. In two weeks. They met six weeks earlier, he says, referring to her as his fiancee. That is how I come to think of them as Jack Sprat and his wife, for she is as round as he is lean.
Two weeks- for somewhere around 7,400 miles? This means they will have to keep a pace of 525 mile days, every day. They will become intimately acquainted with every rest area and gas station, but not much else, along a route that will certainly be slab all the way. This they referred to as their vacation. The man has done this kind of riding for a long time; it is the only kind of riding he does. He has read all the books related to Iron Butt rides, but he has never documented his own; he has never bothered with the membership card.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing Melissa Pierson p 110
Gary Orr rode coast-to-coast non-stop, 2,232 miles, without ever putting a foot down- from San Diego to Madison, Florida- using a trailer hauling gas for his BMW K1200LT. A November 2008 Rider magazine squib on the feat was titled "Depends?"
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing Melissa Pierson p 115
This was what I felt awakening in me, after my eleven-year sleep: the desire to feel again. All that sensation- a throwing of self into a pile of leaves, game of tennis, pillow fight- is an animal expression of exuberance. And exuberance is the lifeblood of childhood, the time we first understand and collect sensation. To be exuberant, to ride, is to return to the best part of life; not to remember, but to re-live. Hiding, in its physicality, connected me back with life, which itself is essentially and only physical- the body in space, the body feeling things. Thus it connected me to my mortality, because at some point I would no longer be able to ride.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing Melissa Pierson p 142
Next Mike pulled out another certificate and held it up for all to see- even though they couldn't, the room was so large. They knew what it said, in recognition of an incredible eighty-six hours and thirty-one minutes for a ride of 5,645 miles. "We have our secret clubs," he intoned, "and you, John Ryan, will forever be in the secret UCC club." As Ryan moved to leave his seat to receive due, Kneebone started tearing the certificate into tiny bits that fell like snow to the floor. He then reached down to pull out another, this one saying only, "under four days," a mathematical vagueness.
Ryan, who had retreated, now got up again and this time took hold of an acknowledgment, in the only form the Iron Butt Association would give. Those who knew the rest of the story, the one that would remain written only in wind on the slate of the memory, stood up in a body to give Ryan, standing by the podium with a shy, proud smile, a standing ovation. A moment of effusion, and then they sat down.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing Melissa Pierson p 177
Ed Otto, who finished in tenth place on a touring motorcycle in 1993, entered the 1995 rally riding a 250cc and finished in twenty-second place, ahead of 17 modern, full- sized motorcycles! This gives weight to IBA President Mike Kneebone's feeling that it is the rider that determines how well one finishes in the IBR, not the motorcycle. The rider has to keep a clear head and be able to discern the best route from all of the available bonus locations. The rider has to cope with bad weather, bad food, bad health, bad roads, and the other trials and tribulations of an eleven-day rally. The rider has to be constantly sorting through options as the physical and mental stresses of the rally wear away at their soul.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 40
Why commit to riding in the most demanding motorcycle challenge in the world? Why spend the substantial amount of money that the IBR requires as an entry fee as well as the funds needed to ready our motorcycles for the rally? There is also a fair financial investment in the ride itself in terms of fuel, tires, oil, lodging, tolls, etc. Then there is the investment of time. Time spent riding in advance of the IBR to make sure that the motorcycle and rider are ready for the challenge and time spent riding in the rally. The rally lasts eleven days, registration takes two days, and getting to and from the rally takes even more time. I was lucky that the start was only two hours from my home. However, the finish would be in Spokane, Washington, and it would take me two days to cover the 2,655 miles to get back home. After two hours of talking we came to the understanding that we do this because we love it. We love having the stories to tell about surreal riding, of overcoming miserable weather conditions, motorcycle failures, and a host of other concerns. Not every story ends in happiness or success but they all end with us learning a bit more about ourselves.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 61
The IBR folk sometimes put a bonus with a large point they do this so that the new riders can learn quickly what is needed to successfully score a bonus, and so that they would be able to shoot video of the riders for a movie called Hard Miles Two. I really think that they do it for their own amusement; they can watch the pandemonium of 101 riders trying grab the same bonus at the same time.
The first bonus in 2007 was the scene of much hullabaloo at the Gateway Arch in Saint Louis, which was less than a half hour from the start. That bonus required parking in a parking deck, and hiking two hundred yards in 98 degree heat and 100% humidity to take a photo in the visitors' museum under the Gateway Arch. It also required passing through a metal detector. I and other riders were told at the entrance to the museum (in the leg of the Arch) that we could not enter with our pocket knives, so we had to return to the parking lot to stow them away and then hike back to the Arch. Meanwhile, almost all of the riders waited in a long line at the Arch's entrance closest to the parking lot. Several of us figured out that the entrance at the other leg of the Arch didn't have a line and were able to get in and out in just a few minutes.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 72
There was humor in the BMW bonus. The rally theme in this year is the scene-of-the-crime and quite a few BMW riders in the past decade have been stopped hard in their tracks when the final drive that connects the transmission to the rear wheel on their motorcycle failed with no warning. This failure seems to happen more often to long-distance riders than to folks who ride a few thousand miles a year.
Typically, a mere moment before a failure occurs the rider feels as if there is some looseness in the rear wheel and then they are sidelined by the failure of the main drive bearing as it disintegrates. A number of riders have had this happen two, three, or even four times, and some riders think that it is a crime that BMW doesn't make a reliable motorcycle any longer. As a matter of fact, three of the top riders who have a very real chance to win this event have taken precautions against final-drive failures on their BMWs. Two of them are carrying a spare, thirty-five pound, $1,200 final-drive unit in their kit. This is the equivalent of a car driver carrying a spare rear axle and differential in the back seat just-in-case. The other rider has changed motorcycle brands from BMW to Honda. My R60 has an older design for its final drive and failures are nearly unheard of.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 73
Here's my bonus routine. I stop so that the BMW is in front of the bonus and place my rally flag over the motorcycle or in front of the bonus itself. The flag is given to each rider at the banquet and is specially made for each IBR. It has the rider number, in my case number "three", and a unique design and color. Since the flag has to be in virtually every picture, the IBR staff are assured that the rider visited the bonus location during the rally. Losing the flag means losing bonus points at the finish as well as having to have the rider's face in each bonus photo. I then snap the picture, after which I re-read the bonus instructions to make sure I've done exactly what the organizers require, and return the camera and the flag to the inside pocket where they stay for the entire rally. The camera and flag are both clipped to the pocket with small carabineers.
Finally, I write the date, time, and mileage information on the rally sheet. If any of the information is missing or incorrect or if the picture is not correct the bonus points will be denied. Stories abound of riders who have ridden thousands of miles for a bonus and then been denied the points because they forgot to include their rally flag, or photographed the wrong sign, or left off a bit of documentation.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 78-9
In order to certify the Four Corners Tour the rider has to visit four remote corners of the U.S. They are San Ysidro, California; Blaine, Washington; Madawaska, Maine; and Key West, Florida, and finish within three weeks. They can do it in any order and they document the visit with a post card and photograph. For most motorcyclists this is done in a circle around the country and is a monumental, once-in-a-lifetime achievement. McQueeney rode from his home in California to San Ysidro and then returned home. He changed motorcycles and rolled on to Blaine and then home again. On a third motorcycle he went to Madawaska and home yet again.
On a fourth motorcycle he rode to Key West and then home. He did all of this within the time limit by staying in the saddle hour-after-hour and completing sixteen 1,000 mile days in a row. I stand in awe of riders like Dave.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 103-4
The ability to puzzle out the rally packet and successfully ride your plan leads to the highest point score and that is what determines the standings. Riding a 1976 motorcycle with a top speed approaching some of the speed limits on western roads has given me an insight into making miles. It is the ability to stay in the saddle and ride that makes miles add up. Fast gas stops, bathroom stops, and food stops equate to more time riding. Eric Jewell, who was riding his fourth IBR, once told me that going through the drive-thru at a burger restaurant makes for the fastest meal breaks. I tried his tip during this rally and it worked well. I would pull up to the serving window and get a couple of hamburgers, unwrap them, and place them in the dog-dish that rests on top of my fairing. It was sometimes messy but always quick.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 111
Every minute of every day the IBR rider is focused on time, distance, and speed. Every bonus, every checkpoint, every rest stop is based on this focus. I was constantly running the numbers in my mind. Could I stay with my plan? Would I have to drop a bonus? Could I add a bonus? This is not just a process of worry or uncertainty. This is "the" process of succeeding in the IBR- constantly tweaking the plan, or not. I just simply can't describe how this constant re-figuring can wreak havoc with one's normal way of doing every action, fuel stop, rest break, bonus confirmation, and meal revolved around the rally. I did this constantly while awake and bet that I did it in my dreams. It becomes second-nature to be counting down the time left for a meal break as I ate, to curse a slow gas pump, or feel great that a road could be traveled more quickly than I'd thought.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 122-3
As I rode I remembered one of the reasons for my DNF in 2007 was dehydration and I was making sure that I was sucking down water. I carried a gallon water jug which I filled at each stop. I made it a point to drink a few long pulls on the bite-valve every ten minutes whether I felt like drinking or not. At the next stop I followed the advice I'd been given by quite a few long-distance riders and sealed up my riding suit. Yes, it's counter-intuitive to close all the openings on clothing in the desert heat, but it worked very well. I zipped up the jacket and closed all of the vents in the jacket and pants except for a small one on my back. I even closed the sleeve vents and my helmet visor and this made the ride considerably more bearable. Not pleasant by any means, but tolerable.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 133-4
I can fall asleep on a picnic table or on the sidewalk. However, I do sleep lightly and every time that I would hear a noise I would wake up. I guess that is a good survival trait but it's lousy when it comes to getting several hours of needed sleep. I made up my mind that for the 2009 IBR I would spend the money to stay at motels every day for sleeping. While this led to better, uninterrupted sleep, it did chew a bit into the rally clock. It also chapped me to spend $85.00 for a four hour stay. Motels and hotels make a lot of noise about their amenities. Cable TV, Wi-Fi, great bedding, sterilized TV remote controls, and continental breakfasts to name but a few. Usually all I wanted was to stumble into a quiet room and sleep for four hours. Once I didn't even get out of my riding suit before falling asleep. Every second in the room not spent sleeping was a second that I would regret the next day. I had a bag on the bike that I would carry into the room. It had the chargers for my cell phone and laptop, alarm clock, sticky notes, and a pen. I would write myself a note on my location and wake-up time, plug in the chargers, and be asleep within five minutes. This night, I grabbed a full, five hours of sleep. It may not sound like much, but I was thankful for every minute of it.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 170-1
My goal here was to get my photo and leave before one of the unhappy denizens next door realized that there was a lone biker out front. Conversely, I was laughing quietly to myself because I was trying to be incognito while standing in the middle of a deserted street taking flash photos of a post office building in order to get one that I thought would satisfy the IBR scoring staff. I finally got a photo exposure that showed the information I needed and rode back out of town.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 178-9
This was a cool stop for me. It combined hard-to-find gravel roads and strange roads, mystery, fear, and one heck of a challenge to get to and from. This one bonus emotionally paid for the entire rally. I was standing at an interesting place that I would never have visited if it were not for the Iron Butt Rally. There was a strange-but-true story attached to the bonus that was both frightening and bizarre.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 184
I had read about the biological attack when it was in the news, and even though the cult was long gone, it was an interesting feeling knowing that I was standing where the plan was hatched. I asked the other rider to take a picture of me holding my rally flag, and then entered the bonus information in the rally packet.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 184-5
However, this was a good gravel road and I eventually got up to a whopping forty-five miles an hour. This is painfully slow by most standards of riding but light-speed fast for me, until I had to make a sharp left curve and the bike wanted to go straight. The handlebars started to slam back-and-forth from one steering lock to the other in what is referred to as a tank-slapper and I was headed for the two foot deep ditch on the right side of the road. At the last possible, second I remembered some advice I'd been offered about riding in gravel. I'd been told to stay off of the brakes and give the bike full throttle in order to power through the bad stuff. I desperately opened the throttle wide and as the R60's fifty horsepower came on-line the front wheel snapped to the straight forward position and I just motored to the left and around that curve. I was now absolutely wide-awake and full of adrenalin. By the way, that curve had a bright yellow motorcycle fender resting at the bottom of the ditch.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 186
The first things Roger looked over were my receipts and he compared them to what I'd entered on my gas-log. On the third receipt he said that I had entered an eight on my log, whereas I should have entered a zero. I broke out in a cold sweat as I assured him that the number he was looking at on the computer generated receipt was an eight and not a zero with a bar through the center. To my absolute freaking horror Roger then pulled out a magnifying glass. Not a little pocket magnifying glass, but a large round glass with a large black handle. The IBR folk take scoring seriously. The rules for scoring have been explained again and again to the riders. No matter what happens, the rider must not get upset or be disrespectful to the scoring staff. The staff volunteers their time and they are tasked with scoring black and white basis. The bonus meets all requirements exactly or it is denied. Being rude to a scorer is grounds for disqualification from the rally. I began to seriously wonder if it would be considered disrespectful if I became violently ill.
Roger held the receipt up to the light as he looked at it with the magnifying glass like Sherlock Holmes studying a fragment of bone and said "No, look at this eight here and this zero over here and you can see that there is a slight angle to the zero cross bar but no angle at all on the crossbar on the eight." I looked through the magnifying glass and he was right. By a few ten-thousandths of an inch there was a difference. It was definitely a zero when studied on the subatomic level and one hundred and twenty-five points disappeared in a mist of cheap dot-matrix ink.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 197
When he got to 60th place and read my name he added that I had finished with over 523,000 miles on the R60 and there was a standing ovation that lasted until I got back to my seat.
This reaction to my finish from this group of hard-riders stunned me. I shook Bob's hand and Mike Kneebone's hand as I received my plaque and license plate-back which states "Iron Butt Rally 11 Days 11,000 miles". I had officially covered 10,554 miles in the eleven days and had done it on a motorcycle that was a third of a century old and a half-million miles worn. My final score was 81,106 points. I was also realizing that this rally had been fun. Other than the glitches with the side-stand and saddlebag I had a good time. Sure, I was relentlessly weary at times, but in 2007 there were several times each day that I wondered why I was doing what I was doing, and that sense of despair never happened during this rally. Not once!
Instead of cursing the rain or the traffic or the clock or the heat or the distance, I had looked at these things as challenges and I was digging the ride. It was fun. I certainly wasn't as good at figuring out the bonus puzzle as the fifty-nine riders who finished ahead of me, but I did remarkably better than I had in 2007. I was a happy camper!
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 201
At 5:30 a.m. we left the hotel parking lot and stopped at a gas station a few block away. The station was closed but the pumps were powered up and we filled up at different islands. After I put the nozzle back on the pump I realized that the printer on the pump was out of paper and I wasn't going to get a receipt. I started fussing loudly about the damned receipt and having to take a picture and document the station. I was irate and cussing like a sailor as in a split second I had tripped from happy-go-lucky to pissed-off.
Then, from the other gas island I heard Bill yell "The rally is over." "It's over." "You - don't - need - a - receipt."
He was laughing so hard he could barely get the words out. He was right of course. But, after years of training, setting a regular routine for fuelling, and just ending the IBR where a receipt can make or break you, it is truly hard to return to the everyday. I grinned at Bill, climbed on the R60, and we headed east.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 203-4
Getting over the rally took time. Just like the angst I felt when I didn't get a receipt for gas in Spokane, I had tuned myself for the rally and the training took quite a while to wear off. It was over a month before I stopped waking up in the middle of the night in a panic thinking that I had overslept and needed to get to a bonus. Several times I was out of bed and half-dressed before I realized that Susie was telling me that "The rally is over and you are home." Sometimes she had to say it a few times because I was busy dressing, trying to remember where I was back down to go to sleep again while still convincing myself that I really was at home and not having a dream during the rally.
I was worried about everyday things like how long it took me to eat lunch since I was used to a three-minute-meal. Sitting in a restaurant to eat was a long luxury that made me flat-out nervous. It was December before life returned to normal.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 207
A comparison that comes up when explaining the IBR is that more people have climbed to the top of Mount Everest in a single year than have finished the Iron Butt Rally in its entire history. Four hundred and twenty-three climbers made it to the summit of Mount Everest in 2009. Four hundred and three riders have finished the IBR since its inception in 1984.
The first day I was at work after the Rally I was talking about the ride to several folks and one asked me how I had done. I told him that I had finished. He asked where I had finished in the standings and I said 59th to which he exclaimed, "You spent all of that money and time just to finish 59th?"
I was going to explain that a person climbing Everest didn't care whether they were the first person at the summit that season or the last as they were standing on the top of the world. I was going to emphasize the grand adventure I had been on. I was going to speak to the challenge of covering eleven thousand miles in eleven days. Instead, I just looked at him, grinned, and said "Yes." Bill Thweatt was correct when he said "Some people just don't get it!"
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 208
I remember only too well my first two trips to Alaska in 1977 and 1981: I took both trips with the same 1977 Suzuki - a reliable road machine, but it didn't handle well on any kind gravel or other loose surface, especially the way I had it loaded. But on each of those trips I managed to ride on more than 200 miles of dirt and loose gravel, and sometimes through quagmires of mud for more than 20 miles at a time. There were other times during the trip that I rode through many miles of snow, and I still managed to do a fair amount of exploring. I certainly had my hands full on both of those trips, and I'm not anxious to take on that kind of challenge again very soon, especially at my age.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 16
It also brought back memories of my fifth trip to Alaska in 1992, which was the 50th anniversary year of the Alaska Highway. In spite of its being paved for its entire length, I rode my 1986 Honda Gold Wing on more than 2,000 miles of gravel roads to get to Anchorage and back while purposely avoiding as much of the main highway as I could, due to the heavy RV traffic that was expected to be using it that year - and also to satisfy a passion for exploring some of the most remote areas. I carried extra gas in Prestone bottles on the back seat of the Gold Wing through the longest gaps in gas availability. I met my objective of avoiding the heavy RV traffic though, in that I saw practically no vehicles at all for days, and I was in my glory, riding all by myself in the far reaches of the Canadian wilderness, where I saw bear, bison, caribou, fox, lynx, and many other animals in their natural habitat.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 18-19
I was finally ready to leave on a four-week, 11,000 mile trip to Alaska with a dirt bike, a patched-up pair of rain boots, no saddlebags and a windshield that wouldn't keep the weather off of me. But I had a lot of confidence in the bike, and I was anxious to get underway on what I figured would be a great ride.
Needless to say, without the saddlebags I brought a lot less gear than usual and I packed exceptionally light; and I was well aware before leaving that it would be a rough trip for my 79-year-old body. But I called Jim and told him I was ready to go.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 23
I had stopped in the middle of the scarcely-travelled gravel road for a nature break. We hadn't seen another vehicle or sign of civilization for at least an hour, and we left Flin Flon before any breakfast places were open. Bud naturally asked, "Where are we stopping for breakfast?"
I said, "I was thinking of right here," as I reached in the trunk of the Gold Wing for a tin of sardines that I was carrying. Bud, who always looked forward to and treasured his sunny-side-up eggs with several strips of crisp lean bacon and a nice hot cup of coffee in the morning, said with an attitude, "You've got to be kidding!" refused to partake of the sardines and dug somewhat begrudgingly into his own bag for some beef jerky while Jake and I shared a can of the fish, and the three of us stood there having breakfast in the middle of the road in a light drizzle with the temperature in the mid 40s [F]. It's certainly not the classiest of breakfast places, but I think it worked out well enough under the circumstances.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 29-30
A few words at this point about my eyesight that had been getting progressively worse over the past few years: I was often unable to read road signs unless the sun was somewhere behind me and shining on the sign. The same applied to my instruments like the odometer that I needed for following my route sheet; and the bike's clock, both of which use pale LED displays. I couldn't read the route sheet on my tank bag either unless I came to a complete stop first, even though I used a 14-size font with bold lettering. My eyes are on the borderline for keeping my driver's license that I can only get with a signature from my eye doctor - and she sometimes shudders when I tell her about some of my motorcycling experiences; but maybe she thinks I'm exaggerating to spice up the story! I could rarely see the Canadian route markings during this trip, which are considerably smaller and less bold than most of those in the US. I can also rarely see motel and/or restaurant signs unless they're within less than 100 feet and I'm moving slowly. I usually had no problem with the "Golden Arches" though, which I suppose is one of the reasons they chose that particular symbol. Whenever the light is subdued, as it often gets on overcast days, I have difficulty seeing cars coming from the opposite direction for any great distance - especially when it's raining and they're coming toward me without headlights, which also makes it a lot tougher to pass on two-lane roads. I almost never execute the bold passes anymore for which I had become known a few years back when my eyesight and reflexes were a lot better.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 37-38
Jim's first experience with one of the infamous steel-grated bridges along the Alaska Highway with their deep grooves running in the direction of travel came that morning while crossing the Peace River. The grooves can be disconcerting to a motorcyclist and even turn the knuckles a little white if they're not expecting it, and Jim wasn't.
We ran through our first cold, zero-visibility fog bank in Fort St. John that morning. Truck traffic was stop-and-go and exceptionally heavy in town, causing us to lose about 20 minutes riding through a half-mile of thick fog and heavy traffic. I eventually had to flip the face shield up, remove my glasses and ride with I bare eyeballs in order to see anything at all as we felt our way through town.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 46
I instinctively locked both brakes with absolutely no hope of avoiding the inevitable because I was already less than 75 feet from impact when I first spotted the sheep- and there was zero time for me to change course or to do anything other than lock the brakes, hang on and leave the rest to God.
It's the moment that we all dread and hope will never happen to us. It comes with a feeling that's hard to describe, but once you've experienced it, you'll never forget it. The trouble with this particular feeling is that most people aren't around to describe it afterward. There was zero time to pray. The locked brakes threw the bike sideways a split-second before the headlight and windshield made initial contact with the head of the lead sheep. Meanwhile, the rear end of the bike whipped around and whacked the sheep full broadside a split-second later.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 50-51
The powerful collision sent the sheep tumbling down the highway as I clung desperately to the handlebars as tight as I could, maybe even with super-human strength. I'm guessing that my speed at the time of impact was still around 50 mph, with the bike fully sideways and still perfectly upright. The force of impact almost tore me clear off of the seat sideways, but I was somehow miraculously able to hang on. My left leg got squeezed between the bike and the sheep's belly at the same instant that the left tank pannier, directly in front of my knee, took the brunt of the impact as it struck the bony area of the sheep's front shoulder. Luckily the pannier, which holds my overnight bag, was a few inches thicker than my knee, and it was fully packed, which is what saved my leg that otherwise would have taken the force of the crushing blow and probably broken it, and maybe broken my knee too. It was a miracle in itself that my leg and knee connected with the sheep's belly, which felt like a huge cushion.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 51
The impact threw the tail end of the bike back to its original straightforward position, and I suddenly found myself facing forward again with the bike now rolling only about 10 mph or less, I was still hanging onto the bars as tight as I could. The whole incident took only a few seconds.
In spite of being in a slight daze and even before the wheels stopped turning, I thanked God, I thanked my angels and I thanked my family and friends who pray for me. I was convinced that God had just bestowed one of His greatest miracles on me. It was certainly one of the greatest I had ever known, and I've had a few real beauties in my lifetime. I could hardly believe I had come through totally unscathed. It seemed that the end result for me was simply a slightly sprained ankle - the only physical injury I got from it, other than having the wind knocked out of me - and it certainly scared me half-to-death.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 52
Twenty miles out, we went through another cold fogbank and for the next ten miles I rode with bare eyeballs and no face shield again, and this time it was with no windshield either. I could barely see well enough to hold the 60 mph that we were travelling. My eyeballs couldn't handle the cold dense fog at any higher speeds, nor was it safe to go much faster with the limited visibility. Fortunately the bugs weren't out that early to get into my eyes.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 68
About 10 miles out of Meade the wind got so strong that it was picking up dirt and sand from surrounding prairie and it was blasting the side of my face with it. It soon increased to a frightening velocity and I realized I was caught out on the open prairie in a full-blown sand storm with no shelter from it. The first thing I thought of was to stop at the edge of the road to remove the duct tape and close the faceshield.
After stopping, my feet kept slipping and sliding on the sandy surface and I didn't have enough hands to hold the bike from blowing over and to work on the shield at the same time. The road was totally covered with sand. I tried to turn the bike into the wind but the sand was making the surface so slippery that my feet kept sliding out. I was miles from anywhere and there was no place to duck into or get behind.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 117-8
After getting underway, I thought the safest speed might be between 50 and 55 mph because anything less wasn't offering enough gyroscopic action for the wheels and the wind was throwing the bike around a lot on the sand; and I figured that anything faster wouldn't leave enough weight on the road for adequate tire traction.
Meanwhile, the temperature was up around 100° and it was drying me up like a prune, especially after having taken my diuretic medication.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 118
Around noon the next day I stopped in the small town of Beloit, Kansas to inquire about US Rte 36, a road I had been looking for and thought I might have passed.
The road I was on was very lightly travelled and it went straight through the town, like in many small towns on the prairie. I parked in front of a Case-International tractor dealer and walked inside to ask for directions. There was no one around so I called out, "Anybody here?" No one answered and I repeated it a few times. My voice echoed inside the building. There were many farm tractors and pickup trucks inside, and at least three offices, but there was not a soul around. It looked like someone could walk off with the place.
I went next door to an open hardware store and called out again: "Anybody here?" There was no one there either. I walked across the deserted street to a gas station that I found to be closed and locked. I stood for a minute and looked around. Nothing was moving anywhere, and I saw no one. There was just dead silence.
I was beginning to get an eerie feeling that maybe there was no one in the entire town - like on the old TV series "The Twilight Zone".
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 136
I went back to the bike, got on, and drove off slowly, looking into every yard for someone to ask. As I was about to leave the north end of the town, I saw a diner with at least 15 to 20 pickup trucks parked outside. The place was packed. I parked the bike and went inside. The loud din of voices that I met suddenly fell silent as everyone turned to look at me.
I said, "Could anyone please tell me where I could find US Rte 36?" After a brief pause, I heard a gruff male voice say, "Up the road about 12 miles."
I said thanks, and I added: "Does everyone in this town go to lunch at the same time? I couldn't find a soul anywhere." I left while they were all laughing.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 136-7
I said, "Could you tell me where I might find a gas station?" He looked puzzled and answered that he didn't know but his dad or mom probably would. I asked if they were home.
"My mom's home," he said.
"Would you mind getting her please?" He got off the mower and disappeared into the house. Moments later an attractive young woman appeared, wearing shorts, a halter-top and sandals and I repeated the question. She answered smiling, "We have a gas station right here."
"Really? Could I possibly buy some? I'm about to run out."
She said, "Yes, of course. Follow me," and she led me across the farmyard to a pump that was probably used for filling the farm vehicles. I asked if it had a gauge and she said it probably does but the glass is much too cloudy to read. I said I needed around five gallons and I asked if that would be OK. She handed me the hose and turned on the power for the pump. Gas began to flow into my tank as soon as I squeezed the handle, but seconds later she noticed that the hose was spewing gas at the other end, and she said, "Oh my goodness, we're getting more on the ground than in the tank," and she turned the pump off. I looked into my tank and could see that I had already gotten almost a half-tank.
I said it would probably be enough to get me to a gas station. I reached for my wallet and handed her a $20 bill. She said, "I don't know what to charge. I don't know how much gas is going for nowadays, or how much we pay for it." I answered that if the $20 isn't enough, I'd be happy to pay more. "Oh no," she said, "I meant that I don't know how much change to give you."
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 192-3
Please don't be concerned about change. I'm very happy to get the gas and I would like for you to accept it." I had no idea how much had spilled on the ground she might be in big trouble for using the gas pump with a broken hose and wasting so much. She took it and offered her hand to shake hands and said, "My name is Ann."
I said, "Hi Ann. My name is Piet. I'm very happy to meet you." She saw my license plate and asked, "What in the world are you doing in this little farmyard in North Dakota?" I told her a little about my trip and we chatted for several minutes.
Needless to say, it was another of the nicest encounters I had on the trip. I thought after leaving that maybe I should keep wandering around this beautiful country meeting nice people like that along the way, and the thought crossed my mind - do I really have to go home?
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 193-4
I was totally exhausted and I hurt all over, and that fatigue and pain stayed with me for almost two weeks afterwards. My eyesight, which had been in poor shape for years, was never worse than it was on this trip. But I'll say to anyone who might ask, "So why do you do it?" One of the things that comes to mind is Winston Churchill's famous quote during World War II, at the height of the Battle for Britain, soon after a horrendous air raid blitz inflicted heavy damage on the city of London - he said, "Never, Never, Never give in." Herb Gunnison was much more blunt in his book "Seventy Years on a Motorcycle" when he said, "Don't ever let the bastards take it away from you."
I feel much the same about my long distance riding. Giving up something I've loved doing for most of my life is like surrendering to life itself, which I have no intention of doing - if I can help it. Travelling alone on the byways of this beautiful country is what I intend to continue doing for as long as I can get my leg over the machine; and for as long as I can still handle the pain - and for as long as my eyesight holds out enough to find my way out of the driveway.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 199-200
I was up at 4 AM, packed, loaded and out for breakfast by 5:45. It was cool when I left town with the morning sun glistening on the dew-covered alfalfa fields. I love smells of early mornings in farm country, especially on a nice two-lane bike road with long vistas and sweeping curves. The smell of honeysuckle was in air, intermingled with the sour smell of fermenting silage and other odours from the barnyards, and from the crops being exposed to the heat of the morning sun. was one of those mornings when it feels good to be alive - and riding a motorcycle.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 214
My most serious problem of the day was when the early-morning sun blinded me so much I couldn't read any of the signs during rush hour traffic coming into Atlanta where I-20 meets the beltway. It was a challenge for my eyesight when all four lanes of traffic were running bumper-to-bumper at a steady 80 mph and I had to switch from I-20 to I-85 without having a clue where the split was, and I was unable to read any of the signs. It actually went well though. I relied on my faith to be in the right lane when the time came to dive out of the 80 mph stream of madness into the relatively sedate cloverleaf at the last split-second.
It's tough when you get old, but even tougher when you can't see! Fortunately, I made some good guesses on which lane to be in and at what split-second to dive for the exit or entry ramps. I learned a week later that well-known Iron Butt competitor Eddie James was killed on the same highway only a few days before I came through. Some of the speeds they were travelling are scary, especially when you realize that many are kids still in high school; and others are older people, bordering on senility - all running bumper-to-bumper, four-abreast at 80 mph with the trucks.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 243-4
The bike was hard starting with the temperature around 14°, and the front brake calipers were frozen, causing the brakes to drag. The interstate didn't seem that bad, but when I got to the gas station, I couldn't turn the ignition switch off because the lock was frozen in the 'on' position and the key was frozen in the lock.
My spare key was at the motel, making it impossible to gas up. So I went back to my room and thawed the lock with a hot wet towel and got the key out, and I decided to deal with the problem in the morning.
The temperature Tuesday morning was 3°, with a wind chill of minus 12. After walking to breakfast, I loaded the bike and got totally suited up before trying to start it. I used a hot wet towel to thaw the lock enough to get the key in and turn it. The starter barely turned over, and I was concerned it would run the battery down before it started. For at least a full minute, it just popped once and failed to catch. It took eight or ten tries before it finally started. When it did, I left the motel wearing just about everything I had with me. Thank goodness for the electric vest and gloves. I wore my heavy woolen knee warmers under the riding suit.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 269-70
The roads were a total mess. It snowed all week and was still snowing on Saturday. Places near my home got much as 30 inches in five days. I probably could have gotten out Saturday, snow showers and all, but I wanted to spare the chain and engine cases from the salt brine - so I delayed it a day and left on Sunday. My sons did a great job of shovelling and sanding the driveway to give me a safe exit to the street.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 275
I came to a roadblock where six state troopers were inspecting vehicles, I pulled in and turned off the engine - I wasn't wearing my hearing aid and wanted to hear what was being said. One big guy said, "Don't turn it off," as he walked around to the right side of the bike, while several others stood in a line on my left side.
I said as the big guy walked around the bike, "It's over on this side, at the top of the fork leg." He said, "I already saw it. Do you have a motorcycle license?"
I laughed and said, I sure do. I've had one since they "grand-fathered" me in more than 50 years ago and I reached for my wallet. He said, "I don't have to see it."
I said, "I'm out taking a ride to celebrate my 86th birthday" - which got a few smiles and at least one "Happy Birthday" as I restarted the bike and said, "Have a nice day," and I left.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 284-5
There's another stretch of asphalt nearby that's stranger and perhaps even more fun to ride than the Rowena Curves: 3.6 miles, twenty-five curves, leading to absolutely nothing. Imagine building your own private road for the purpose of sport riding. What would you build? Well, you'd probably start with a hillside location that would provide lots of opportunities for elevation change and curves, but would be open enough to allow generous sight lines. You'd make sure the asphalt was perfectly smooth and grippy, and you'd probably make each curve unique, designing a smorgasbord of hairpins, sweepers, increasing-radius, constant-radius and decreasing-radius turns. And you wouldn't waste space on a straight. Sport riding is about leaning, so the run would consist of turns, all the way. That perfectly describes the Maryhill Loops.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 25
In an aerial view, the road looks like a very squiggly line drawn with a black marker on light brown paper. The dry, treeless slope allows for sightlines through most of the tight curves, which is always a good thing, though it mattered less than ever as I rode onto the Loops knowing that absolutely no other traffic lay ahead. I quickly dispensed with first gear and rolled into the series of curves in second, which would probably work for just about all of the road ahead. Shifting above third just amounts to putting unnecessary wear and tear on the gearshift lever, so I concentrated on rolling on and off the throttle, taking advantage of the grip provided by this dry, unmarred asphalt that has been lying here, curing in the sun.
I scrubbed away the vestiges of chicken strips on my tires and soon, all too soon, I reached the gravel turnaround area at the top of the hill. The brief, 3.6-mile length is absolutely the only thing detracting from this ride. But when you can ride it again and again, as you can during the rally, even that isn't much of a drawback. And better yet, because I happened to get there early, I got to ride it alone.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 29-30
Lured by the sheer oddity of the event, I mail in my entry for Lake Erie Loop V.I have no illusions of earning any of those bragging rights, but I can at least finish, right? In a lifetime of varied and sometimes misguided motorcycling, I've done a thousand-mile day, I've survived the infamous and since revised Turn 12 at Road Atlanta, I've been caught on the road by unexpected snowfall, and sideswiped by a car at 60 mph on the freeway at 2 a.m. yet lived to tell those and other tales. I can surely survive the Loop. The only problem is, I don't have a Loop-legal motorcycle.
Ah, but I know where I can get my hands on one. Years ago, my father gave my mother a 1996 Suzuki GN125 as a fifty-ninth birthday present, knowing she wanted to get back into motorcycling and knowing she probably wouldn't spend the money on herself. She's since bought other bikes, but always keep the GN125. As her phone is ringing, it dawns on me that it is Mothers Day. How am I going to phrase this?
"Hi Mom. Say, I'd like to borrow your sentimental favourite motorcycle, flog it near redline for sixteen hours straight and possibly blow it to smoldering bits somewhere in Canada. Oh, by the way. Happy Mother s Day."
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 33-4
By the time I've survived Detroit and crossed the state line into Ohio, night and my enthusiasm are falling rapidly. On the fly, I reach out and try to adjust the aim of the Suzuki's little five-inch headlight, but the effort is futile, and I learn to live with the anaemic yellow smudge of light in the roadway ahead as I roll through the dark, deer-infested woods and fields of northern Ohio, butt burning, shoulders knotted and aching. It's that time of evening when even the mental image of a sleeping bag in a tent on the hard ground hovers in the mind like a nirvana of feathery pillows and Loopers peer deep into the abyss of the soul and ask themselves the central questions of life, such as, "Does that valve clatter sound like its getting worse?" and "Why did I think this would be fun?"
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 36-7
For me, one of the rarest and most coveted feelings on any motorcycle ride is the luxury of free time. Typically, especially at home, my rides and trips are accompanied by a small black cloud that only I can see, a nagging feeling deep in the background of my mind that I soon need to be somewhere else, that someone is waiting for me, or that dawdling means neglecting other duties. That afternoon at El Tajin was the turnaround point in my trip. I had no farther to go that day, my hotel room for the night was already secured (the same one as the previous night), and nobody was expecting me to be anywhere else. That alone, that opportunity to relax on a grassy slope among ancient monuments after a 2,000-mile dash southward, was among the most savoured parts of my afternoon amidst the ruins.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 47
I picked my way through the narrow city streets, trying not to lose the thread of the route leading toward Tamazunchale, trying not to lose the tires tenuous grip on the greasy wet pavement, until a young policeman halted all traffic at an intersection. Sitting at the front of the line of stopped cars, I had a perfect view of a Christmas procession as locals on foot carried figures of saints to the church. Plodding along in the drizzle, the procession was more mournful, or at least more respectful, than festive. This is the difference that travel makes: On a trip back home, I'd be annoyed to be stopped because of a parade, fuming about where I needed to be. Here, nearly two thousand miles from home, I was just pleased to have a front-row view. That, for me at least, is the transforming magic of foreign surroundings. The ordinary can become memorable, and even mundane tasks become learning experiences. An inconvenience becomes an opportunity to peer into other lives.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 48-9
The checkered flag is out for the session and I raise my left hand to signal that I'm coming into the pits. The pit entrance at Mid-Ohio is curved and slightly downhill. I'm leaning gently through that curve, left hand still off the grip, already in first gear and already thinking ahead to the next session, when I squeeze some front brake to slow down even more and... Wham! I'm on the ground! Worse yet, I'm lying in the grass with my feet higher than my head and the rear wheel of the Ducati pinning my right leg. I'm splayed out on the ground with all the dignity of a deboned chicken, flopped helplessly in the grass for everyone to see as they ride into the pits, having just locked the front wheel and crashed. In first gear. At maybe 30 mph. On the pit lane entrance.
In the history of motorcycle crashes, many have been worse, but few have been more embarrassing.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 62-3
Of all my bad riding habits, turning in early is one I constantly battle. You'll never find a pro racer or a riding instructor who extols the virtues of an early apex, but anxiety gnaws at my patience and whispers in my ear, "turn now, turn now." But with McWilliams' advice stuck in my mind like the word God (only with an Irish accent), I check my worst impulses and force myself to wait until my front wheel comes even with that orange cone before banking left. Then, I plunge over the edge, like riding off the side of a building. It was with this very moment in mind that I showed restraint at the morning breakfast buffet. My guts rise to press against my lungs, the bike feels light, and any feelings of two-dimensional illusions are vaporized. As I fall over the edge and finally get to see the track ahead of me, the importance of following McWilliams' advice is instantly obvious in a way that sears the information into my mind for all future laps. If I had aimed the bike in the direction I would expect the track to go, if I had started my turn early and lined up for a sweeping curve like I'd expect to find on any other track, I'd be six feet into the gravel and dirt. Instead, thanks to my strict adherence to McWilliams' recommended line, I'm still on the black as gravity sucks me downward a few stories while I shift from left lean to right lean.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 77-8
Strempfer launches into a story about the Benelli brothers having a spat back in the 1950s, with one of the brothers stomping off in a huff to build motorcycles called Motobis. It all sounds very Italian. As for mechanical particulars, he explains that a Motobi 125 is a four-stroke with a single, air- cooled, horizontal cylinder. The five-speed gearbox is operated by a heel-toe shifter on the right side. In reverse pattern. The rear brake pedal is on the left side. So I'm trying to get my mind around the concept of downshifting by pushing down with the heel of what I've always considered my braking foot when I realize, I really ought to test ride this thing before I'm expected to perform anything called an "ability test," or even mingle with unsuspecting Vermont traffic.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 97-8
In a lucky lifetime, I've been visit some spectacular capital-D Destinations, the manmade Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna, Glacier National Park in Montana, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and many other "sights." And yes, I've also spent many an enjoyable afternoon in Manhattan, seen the Grand Canyon, and even survived a couple of visits to Vegas. But just as vivid are memories of places that never make anyone's list of Destinations, anonymous little places such as San Vito, Costa Rica, or Nipigon, Ontario, Canada. Usually, those memories stick with me because I not only visited a place, but through chance or planning, got a look into the lives of people who live there- people unlike myself- and learned something in the process.
Such was the case with my sojourn in Tuxpan. I can't describe for you, in any detail, the rooms of the Schonbrunn Palace, though I can assure you that all the ones I saw were opulently spectacular. What I do remember, much better, is the look on the face of the woman rushing to find the T-shirt I wanted before I changed my mind, and how glad I was that I waited. I remember a teenager washing laundry in Tuxpan while dreaming of making a living as a musician in the United States, and hundreds of children pulling homemade carritos (toy cars) through candlelit streets in memory of children who did not survive. And most of all I remember the surprising magic of finding myself in the best place I could possibly be on that one night of the year, even though I didn't know enough to choose it on purpose. Sometimes, it works out that way, and a simple motorcycle journey leaves lasting memories of a very human, if not historic, scale, from a place where nobody goes. Something to consider the next time you're choosing a destination.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 110
Around one of those sweeping turns I find a faded 1976 Honda CB550 Four parked in a wide spot by the road, its owner crouched at its side. I stop to see if I can provide assistance or, more likely, given my mechanical skills and the near absence of tools on the V-Strom, provide company and commiseration. The rider tells me that he only recently pulled the old Honda out of storage and is still tracking down electrical problems, one of which has just left him at roadside. While we examine fuses and poke at the thirty-year-old patina of corrosion on the ground wire, he asks me about my ride and I explain my northward course on Route 100 and my general lack of plans more detailed than that. "You should ride Lincoln Gap," he advises. "You won't believe it. You just go up and up the mountain. About that time, the Honda's lights come back on, though its hard to say what we did to achieve that success. I suspect it won't be his last search for wayward electrons in the old bike.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 121
I don't remember another specific detail about the ride my wife and I took that Sunday afternoon, but I still remember the old man telling his story. It's one of those quirks of humanity that define us. We may love motorcycles with an enthusiasm severe enough to qualify us for a clinical study. We may suffer an addict's craving for the physical sensations of riding. We see some of the earth's greatest sights on two wheels, and experience them more intensely because we ride to them. Yet because we are human, the most memorable part of many a ride is neither the destination nor the journey, but some unexpected character met along the way.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 127
If you happen to own a motorcycle bearing the logo of one of the resurrected marques, such as the Triumph I often ride, you're guaranteed to have extra conversations on the road. It happens to me time and again. An older man approaches me at a gas station to exclaim, "I didn't know they were still in business!" Then he tells me about the old Bonneville he had back in the day, and at some point his gaze drifts off to some unfocused place, and I can just hear him thinking, wondering, trying to remember why he ever sold that old motorcycle.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 128
Once I stopped for gas in upstate New York on a Suzuki V-Strom and the out-of-state license plate was enough to trigger the forty-something guy coming out of the convenience store to run over to me, ask cursorily where I was from, and then launch into an excited monologue about a cross-country motorcycle trip he took in his twenties, one of those life-altering experiences that's never forgotten, even though he'd hardly ridden since. His tale didn't slow down long enough for me to get a word out, which was good, because the obvious question was one I didn't have the heart to ask: "Why did you stop?" Why did that experience have to be just once-in-a-lifetime? Maybe I was imagining it, but there seemed to be some sadness punctuating the end of his story of excitement, youth, and adventure. He never really asked a word about where I was going, or why. He was still running on the fumes of a ride that was twenty years in the rearview mirror and I had places to go that very same evening. I rode away feeling a little sorry for him, I do occasionally for the men who tell me about long-lost Triumphs and Harleys and Indians, and I promised myself yet again not to travel down the road to regrets, if I can help it.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 128
I stop for stranded riders because I've been the beneficiary of kindness many times myself, and from all kinds of people, not just fellow riders. There was the guy with the shop making customized campers who interrupted his work and drove several miles to fill his gas can for me when I foolishly ran out on the highway, or, when I was a college student travelling on a shoe-string budget, the family at the campground that set up their extra tent for me after someone stole some of my camping gear leaving me without shelter as a night-long rain moved in. It sometimes seems to me that the farther from home, the better people treat me as a traveller and the more they go out of their way to help me out of a jam.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 130
I could be lots of places. I could be riding in the Rockies or the Alps, and those places make great fodder for bragging about memorable motorcycle rides. Or I could be riding some not-quite-two-lane past the silence of little country church graveyards where my ancestors lie, past the smell of hay drying in the sun, through the coolness that drifts from a deep fold of a shady country hollow, back through time, back through remembrance, pulled along by the motorcycle's torque, which is another remembrance in itself. And I could say, this feels right.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 146
Exactly why we're hooked is hard to say. A lot of writers have tried to pin down the reasons and come up gasping for words. Others have come close. Robert Louis Stevenson might have had motorcycling in mind when he wrote: 'To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive'. A little ahead of his time, perhaps, but as true today as it was then. Roger Hull, the bard of the American touring motorcyclist, puts it this way: 'It's the going. I mosey across the miles, mingle with the elements, merge with the macrocosm. See and feel for myself what others may have seen and experienced before me. A wandering cowboy, I... with an emotional genealogy which is suspected of linkage back to Cortez or Columbus or Marco Polo or to any other free spirit whose vision tended to focus on that which lay beyond what his eyes could see. Touring is a lonely feat; we are solitary seekers, wanderers sensitive to our physical surroundings, while we live mostly inside our heads.'
Therein lies the greater part of the magic: while touring on a motorcycle your body and your senses are open to an ever-changing battery of stimuli, and your mind in its solitude is the freer to savour them. The combined effect is spellbinding, and that's what keeps the touring rider coming back for more again and again.
Motorcycle Touring Peter Thoeming p186
But at eighteen, even the most precocious of us are slates still mostly blank. And that was the age at which I stumbled into being a motorcyclist, without much planning, by buying a very used, non-descript, massively mass-produced bike with a questionable history (and probably paying too much for it), falling in love not so much with the machine, but with the world of sensations and experiences it opened to me. In other words, pretty much the same old story. Millions of us did it.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 149
In 1973 the big lump of the Baby Boomer bulge was in young adulthood, prime motorcycling time. At same time, the Japanese manufacturers were importing relatively inexpensive, easy-to-ride, far-more-reliable motorcycles by the thousands to meet the demand, while Harley-Davidson limped toward its darkest years and the once-mighty British motorcycle industry continued resolutely firing repeated rounds into its foot by building the same old thing, with engines guaranteed to leak oil and headlights likely to fail at the first sign of impending nightfall. Millions of people in the United States at least gave motorcycles a try during that time and while many drifted off, some caught the addiction and never shook it. And the one thing that absolutely all riders share is a memory, whether dim or vivid, clear-eyed or nostalgic, humorous or heart-warming or traumatic, of a first bike.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 150
And yet, as much as the world changes, some human sentiments come close to universal. Home from college for the summer, I would park that utterly unremarkable CB360T in the garage of my parents' house after coming in from a night-time ride and listen to the tick ticking of the old air-cooled engine as it dissipated its heat, the metals contracting into their resting places. I could detect the distinct burning smell of oil pooling on the hottest engine parts and the few last wisps of exhaust drifting from the twin exhaust pipes. I lingered in the garage, not wanting to go inside the house. Sitting there, beside that cheap and practical machine few could covet, I savoured the ride, even if it was just an ordinary trip across town to a friend's house, and I was, without knowing it, burning deep and lasting memories into a primal part of my brain. The right combination of hot oil on hot metal can yank me back to those moments utterly unexpectedly, decades later.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 153-4
Now, I could be wrong, but I imagine little happened in Okeechobee, and I'm sure the bored pump jockey hadn't seen many motorcyclists ride up to the full-service pump. His lack of experience nearly led to my demise.
Having filled the tank, he decided to run up the sale amount to the nearest half dollar, just as he always did, no doubt, with cars. My little tank couldn't take it. By the time he gave up, the tank was filled to the cap, and I set off down the loneliest stretch of Florida 710 in the hot sun. Of course as that hot sun hit my stylish charcoal-coloured gas tank, the cool gasoline inside began to expand. By the time I was out of town and rolling down the bowling alley-straight two-lane, gasoline was flowing freely out of the gas cap and streaming down the tank toward my crotch, where it threatened to drip onto the rear cylinder of the air-cooled V-twin engine.
Let me tell you, my mind was quite focused as I considered my equally unappealing options. The thought of stopping by that desolate roadside led to visions of even more expanding gasoline flowing out and dripping all over the hot, air-cooled engine, threatening all-out conflagration. The thought of continuing down the road led to images of becoming a rolling fire-ball with a freshly filled tank of fuel. If external combustion did break out, which would be worse? Abandoning the motorcycle at the first hint of ignition and tumbling down the pavement at speed, or having a fine imitation of a flame-thrower aimed at my most sensitive parts for the time it would take me to slow down and dismount?
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 161-2
In 1963, the huge U.S. firm Grey Advertising came up with what is now the most famous slogan in the history of the U.S. motorcycle industry: "You meet the nicest people on a Honda". Not Hells Angels. Not someone wearing grease-soaked jeans and poking at his motorcycle's points along the side of the road, hoping to get it running again. Instead, magazine ads depicted housewives and families and a young couple dressed as if they were on their way to the country club on their fun little Honda 50. Although most people in the United States were probably as far from the country club lifestyle as they were from the outlaw biker stereotype, it was easier to buy into the Honda image than the Hells Angels image. For one thing, it required less money and fewer tools.
Along with thousands of inexpensive and reliable Japanese motorcycles that followed in the 1960s and 1970s, the Honda 50, with its quiet four-stroke engine, step-through scooter-like styling, centrifugal clutch (you could ride it even if you didn't know how to operate a clutch) and unimposing presence offered an entirely new way to get into motorcycling. The biggest generation of U.S. motorcyclists was born.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 165
Lots of women might have argued that my money would have been better spent on a first car than a second motorcycle, something a bit more appropriate for classier dates. Or maybe better spent on those classier dates at better restaurants than the ones we frequented. Or maybe better spent upgrading my minimalist wardrobe.
I'm sure, in fact, that those thoughts crossed her mind, but when I surprised her by picking her up on the Sportster for a short ride to a favoured but definitely un-fancy neighbourhood pizzeria, she shared my excitement about the new bike rather than questioning my good sense. That's when my motorcycle helped me learn another lesson about her: that she accepted me for who I was and shared my joy, rather than trying to change me and my joys to match hers.
Now anyone who has spent any time on a Sportster knows that it's not the ideal two-up motorcycle. So I repaid her trust and acceptance by fitting the Sportster with a more comfortable seat and a low backrest to make her feel more secure. Later, she would admit that she knew I was serious about the relationship when I modified my motorcycle to make her happier.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 173-4
Of course, lust and style are no deeper than a shiny paint job. To get beyond that initial attraction, you have to get to know someone. Or something. In this case, a two-wheeled something. You learn to appreciate its positive attributes and live with its drawbacks. Over the years, after you've come to know the motorcycle thoroughly and have relied on it thousands of times, it may come to feel like an old friend, one you're willing to forgive when it does let you down because so many times before it didn't.
The ideal lifelong relationship, with a human partner or a motorcycle, involves a little of all of that. It starts with a spark of lust that soon deepens into love and then ages finely over the years into the best and most lasting friendship you've ever had. At which point there's no longer any question of calling it off.
You're in it for the long haul, for better or worse. Congratulations, you've bonded. You may now kiss your ride.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 200
To someone reading this book ten years from now, this chapter may be the only part that isn't viewed as a quaint relic of a simpler past, a time when we rode motorcycles for fun with a naive confidence in an unending supply of cheap fuel to drive us. Whether they're powered by gasoline, electricity, or something else, I'm optimistic enough to believe we can continue to have fun on motorcycles that are faster and more exhilarating than cars and still contribute to the solution, not the problem. We can help influence public perceptions, so that motorcycles are seen as a sensible way to stretch out what oil is left, rather than noisy relics of a more primitive era that should be killed off as quickly as possible.
The future ride won't resemble the ride so far, but that doesn't mean it can't be a good one.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 218-9
When the rhythm sets in, I don't feel like I'm sitting on top of a motorcycle. Instead, I feel that the machine is an extension of my body, endowing me with superhuman powers. The machine is an extension of my limbs, vesting my feet and hands with unimagined abilities. Yehudi Menuhin once said that playing the violin is like singing through your limbs. I often think about that as I'm riding, and feel that I'm playing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony through the motorcycle.
With the help of earplugs and a good helmet, I fly quietly along just a few feet above the solid surface of the highway. With a flick of my wrist I accelerate quickly around other vehicles. I shift my weight imperceptibly and glide gracefully from one lane to another. I negotiate curves nimbly and confidently, as if the motorcycle were attached to a rail. I'm as agile as a hummingbird, negotiating my way around 18-wheelers, automobiles, and campers, noting the location and relative speed of every vehicle within my field of vision.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 15
Earlier in the year, Manny Sameiro had published an account on the Internet of the mistakes that resulted in his last place finish in the 1997 Iron Butt Rally.
Manny had whimsically titled his account "Against the Pavement", a title apparently inspired by my book "Against the Wind".
After travelling from Chicago to Madawaska, Maine, during the first leg of the rally, Manny had mistakenly filled his motorcycle with diesel fuel. He discovered the mistake, but replacing the fuel with gasoline, and cleaning the carburettors and fuel lines caused him to fall behind schedule. In an effort to regain the hours lost, Manny pushed his motorcycle beyond its capabilities, lost control, and wrecked his bike. He then purchased the only used motorcycle he could find in the small town of Houlton, Maine, a 1983 Honda VT500 Shadow. Because of the delays he experienced, along with the 10,000 point penalty that was invoked for his having switched motorcycles, Manny finished the rally in last place. I thought Manny deserved a lot of credit for overcoming such difficult obstacles to finish.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 61
Like Scott Ward, Jeffery Foster also wanted to perform an Iron Butt certification ride within my 7/49 ride. Jeff had attempted a Bun Burner Gold ride the previous October, but fell short of his goal, taking 27 hours to complete the 1,500-mile ride. Jeff admitted he hadn't been properly prepared for the cold weather he'd encountered, and he'd tarried too long warming up at rest stops. Jeff had established two riding goals for 1998. The first was to complete a Bun Burner Gold ride, and the second was to complete the IBA National Parks Tour, which required visiting 50 or more National Parks in at least 25 different states in one year. A "passport" would have to be stamped at the visitor centre in each park.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 137
Before I announced plans for the 7/49, Pablo Garcia sent me an email complimenting me on "Against the Wind". He was interested in pursuing endurance riding because of the amount of riding that he could accomplish in a limited time. This will allow me to put a lot of effort into something I really love into a limited schedule. In other words, I once suggested to my wife that I wanted to take about a year off and break the world record for the number of countries visited by motorcycle. She promised that she would be nowhere in sight when I got back. So as you can see, endurance riding can work for me.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 142
Norm had written:
I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like I was on that bike with him. It may be personal to him, but I have made it personal to me. I have followed his progress on his web pages in my waking hours at work and at home. I rode to Texarkana to meet him at midnight on Tuesday, getting back home at 3:30 a.m. and at work for an 8:00 a.m. meeting, but I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Those of us fortunate to have shared a few brief moments with him as he is hopefully making history, will no doubt feel like we played a small, small part in helping and encouraging him.
In his response, Ira wrote:
It never ceases to amaze me, this Internet. The line between cyber-reality and physical reality really gets cloudy sometimes. It's having very-long-range scanners, knowing almost minute-by-minute where Ron is and how he's doing. At the checkpoint, Ron mentioned the repair Paul Glaves made to the turn signal. Yup, heard about it. The big lightning storm that had him sidelined for a while? That, too. Indeed, it is riding along in the most vicarious way, and once in a while weaving between the cyber and the physical. And to dream the ride Ron is taking.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 155-6
I knew the script. But late this rainy night in Nevada, I was disregarding my own dictum about stopping when too tired to ride safely. I was pushing the edge of the envelope and it was bulging at the seams, threatening to tear. I didn't like doing this, but I didn't know what else to do.
Route 93 between Ely and Wendover has always been one of my favourite roads. Every time I've ridden it, I've felt there is something mystical about it. Riding the road has always made me think how fortunate I am to have discovered motorcycling and especially to have discovered endurance riding. I once told Barbara that if the sport killed me, I'd like to be cremated and have my ashes cast to the wind by a motorcyclist riding 100 mph on that route, from a spot overlooking the Great Salt Lake Desert in neighbouring Utah. How ironic that I was pushing my limits on the one highway, of all the highways in the world, where I had talked of having my ashes spread.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 161
Despite my fears, I fell asleep immediately and was awakened 90 minutes later by the Screaming Meanie. I felt very stiff as I attempted to rise from the bench, chalked it up to age, and limped toward my motorcycle. As tired as I was, when I approached the motorcycle, I was struck by the sheer beauty of the vehicle. It reminded me of the excitement I often feel when I walk into the garage after not having ridden for a while. At such times I wonder how I can love the sight of a machine so much. And then I remember that it's not just the machine, but the notion of adventure and excitement the vehicle invokes.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 194-5
When we were about 45 miles from Edmonton, a deer suddenly appeared directly in front of the motorcycle. We didn't see it until it was directly in front of us, as it was running at full speed across the road from heavy brush. There was no time to brake or to swerve to avoid hitting it. We were travelling about 60 mph when the impact occurred.
We expected the motorcycle to go down. My first thought after the impact was, "Is Barbara still on the bike?"
As the bike wobbled and began to lose stability, a conversation that I had with Steve Losofsky a few months before flashed through my mind.
The original owner of Reno BMW, Steve was an experienced flat-track racer and an expert rider. While on his way back to Nevada from a trip to Daytona Bike Week, Steve was our house guest. He told us that while riding to Texas in a construction zone in heavy rain, his motorcycle slipped into a rut caused by two adjacent uneven lanes. His motorcycle began to shimmy and he worried about losing control. "Reverting to my old racing days, I gave the bike full throttle," Steve related.
"I remembered that in a lot of situations, blasting through with maximum acceleration is better than slowing down."
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 215-6
When I hit the deer, the conversation flashed into my mind immediately. I remembered Steve standing at our kitchen counter, laughing and motioning with an exaggerated twist of his wrist and upper torso to emphasize how he managed to regain control of his motorcycle.
I cranked the accelerator fully open. After a moment, the bike stabilized and I slowed down and pulled to the side of the road. "Thank you, Steve Losofsky," I thought. "Thank you very much."
I brought the motorcycle to a stop about a tenth of a mile from the point of impact. "Oh the poor deer," Barbara lamented. "Do you think we killed it? What if it's just injured and suffering?"
I couldn't help but ask, "Do you have any idea just how lucky we are?"
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 216
I've never been convinced one way or the other about the effectiveness of deer whistles. But the only time I've struck a deer is also the only time I've ridden without them. I had intended to place a set of whistles of the type Jan Cutler at Reno BMW advocates, but hadn't gotten around to it before the ride. I don't intend to ride without them again.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 217
There was a shallow trench running parallel to each side of the highway. Recalling that it's safer to be in a depression in the event of a tornado, I headed for the trench. The wind at my back, I fought against it to resist being blown into the trench.
The storm raged as I sat in the gully in full riding gear. I got down as low as I could without entering the rising water. At least I knew I would be able to survive anything short of a tornado. I jumped, startled once again at the sound of a close thunderclap and brightness all around. I could smell ozone in the air.
A shudder of fear enveloped my body, from head to toe.
"What is there to be afraid of?" I thought. "The chances of being struck by lightning are probably infinitesimal now that I'm safely away from the motorcycle. And I'm not going to get any wetter by sitting here."
I tried to find humour in the situation. Sometimes I amaze myself when forced to acknowledge that in some bizarre way, I enjoy circumstances such as this. I enjoy every phenomenon nature proffers, including the fury and severity of her storms. They're an important part of a totality that I don't like to avoid. I'd have missed something important if I'd remained in Augusta while the storm passed. I'd have missed the excitement. I'd have missed the purity and genuineness of this magnificent event.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 221
I hit the switch to insure that my heated handgrips were turned to the highest setting, then plugged in my electric vest. I turned the bike around and continued south. I've learned that electric heat can stave off discomfort when you're wet, provided you get settled into a position and don't shift around. You're still wet, but at least you're being warmed by moisture that's been heated by the electrics. But if you shift your body around at all and disturb the "cling" that's sticking your wet clothes to your body, you'll suffer an immediate chill until you've settled down again.
The same goes for gloves. As long as you maintain a constant pressure and position on the handlebars, the heated grips will keep your hands warm and comfortable, even when you're wet. But remove your hands from the grips to adjust something, and they'll be chilled for a while.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 224
After a few miles, the shoulder of the road turned white, where the hail hadn't yet melted. A little further, the road, too, turned white and I concentrated on keeping my tires in the black section of the road where the tires of other vehicles had cleared the ice. I had never before seen such vivid evidence of a hailstorm.
I was fortunate to have stopped when I did, rather than to have continued into what apparently was much more severe weather than I had experienced. As I cautiously negotiated my way through the slick, hail-strewn highway, I thought about the incredible good fortune enjoyed in my ten-year riding career. I wondered if God doesn't have a soft spot in his heart for motorcyclists.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 224-5
Entering a small valley west of Hwy 97, I recall that midday sun had changed the shadows of the trees lining the road. A few minutes later I would be cresting the hill ahead. I recall, too, there was a slight colour shift as if someone turned the intensity knob on the surrounding scenery. Then it happened, an experience that would alter forever my perception the symbiosis of man, machine, and life in general.
As if in a dream, I hovered briefly high above the Beemer looking directly down on the rider- me! There was no feeling of fear or disorientation, in fact, the unusual part of the episode was that it felt calming and natural. Ahead, over the rise, I could see from my vantage point above the bike that a logging truck had overturned, scattering its load along the road. It hadn't come to a rest yet; the truck was on its right side, sliding, while disgorging logs in all directions.
Then I was back on the bike, ascending the grade and approaching the crest.
Immediately, I slowed and shifted down to 4th, 3rd, 2nd in rapid succession. I crested the hill and still had to brake to avoid a log that was crosswise in the middle of my lane. There was no path around the obstacles, the shoulder was blocked, and both lanes were impassable. The driver of the truck was pulling himself out of the cab- the accident had happened a moment before I arrived. The driver had minor injuries and was concerned about getting flares out to warn approaching drivers, which we did immediately. He marvelled that I avoided hitting the logs. I was still sorting it out.
All manner of conjecture and explanations have been offered. ESP, clairvoyance, good vibrations, a figment a fatigued mind- I reject none of these out of hand, they may all be part of it. I only know what occurred and I can add that similar things have happened since, although not as dramatic. And, they have occurred under similar circumstances.
The motorcycle is probably just another door amongst ways to experience the other side. Yet in this scenario it was me, a beloved machine, and a blissful ride that opened my perception to wider possibilities and lead me to write these lines:
Questions, so many questions
And in their answering
The awesome suggestions
Of more and better questions.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 225-6
As I crossed the border, entered Wyoming, and began climb toward Teton Pass, I was overcome with an extraordinary sense of happiness and serenity. I welcomed the chilly mountain air and the solitude the ride provided. I celebrated each twist and turn in the highway as I shifted my weight and altered pressure on the handlebars. It was just after midnight and the PIAA driving lights had been blazing brightly for a half-hour, illuminating the mountain road and mitigating the dangers of riding such a road at high speed at night. I increased my speed and leaned into the sharp curves, riding more aggressively than at any time since approaching Alaska three weeks earlier.
As my speed and altitude rose, so too, did my spirits. I opened the throttle even more, clearly challenged now by the twists and turns as I was propelled toward the top of the mountain. I wanted to race to the summit as quickly as I could, then stop to smell the roses. I had been rushing since leaving Edmonton. I wanted to indulge in private, quiet thoughts, totally undisturbed high in these majestic mountains. I wanted to reflect on how my abundant treasure of experiences had been multiplied by the events of the last several weeks. As the motorcycle catapulted me toward the peak, there were signs warning that stopping is forbidden. At the summit, there's an area for trucks to stop to test their brakes before descending the steep downgrade ahead. I glanced up and was astounded at the brightness and clarity of the stars. I pulled to the side of the road, into the brake test area. I didn't, want this opportunity to look at the stars right then and there.
I removed my gloves and helmet and looked at the heavens. The sky never looked brighter or more beautiful. The magnificent motionless Milky Way flowed silently toward the southern sky like a pearly, opalescent river. Scorpio was in full view, with Antares, the "Fourth of July Star", twinkling red at the heart of the constellation, the most prominent star in the southern sky.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 229-230
I'm very fortunate that Barbara has this attitude. I've asked her to summarize it.
I would be devastated if anything ever happened to Ron, but this doesn't preclude me from respecting his right to decide for himself what kind of risks he wants to take, or what level of adventure he wants in his life. If it would make me happier if he gave up riding, but would diminish his happiness, on what basis could I decide that my happiness is more important than his? Also, I want him to be the person he is. My favourite quote sums this up: "Never destroy any aspect of personality, for what you think is the wild branch may the heart of the tree".
I worry a lot and I pray a lot when Ron is on a long ride, but I also believe in fate. As human beings, we give ourselves too much credit for being able to control things. Ron acknowledges that being on a motorcycle is more dangerous than being at home in an easy chair, but if something bad is going to happen, it can happen even if you are doing something completely routine and safe. What is meant to be, will be.
On the positive side, I've been a beneficiary of Ron's sport. I've met some of the most interesting, original, and colourful characters of my life. Ron has made some very good friends who have demonstrated they would do anything for him. I wouldn't trade this for anything.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 243
"Over the years we have slowed down because it's not just about the riding," Lisa says who, teamed with Simon, has ridden 460,000km on the trip so far, breaking the record which previously set at 162,000km. It's the stopping and meeting - we've had such wonderful experiences when we least expected them. Like waking up in the morning on a Mongolian mountain and being distracted by a sound, only to realise it's some old Mongolian riding bare back on a pony.
"So you offer him some tea and he squats down, wearing the fur of the Mongol empire. But it's black tea and he doesn't like it, and spits it out (laughs).
The nomadic lifestyle of the two may strike you as extreme and by all accounts it is. They live off the smell of an oily rag, joining the dots financially while joining the dots on an atlas. Over the years they have learned to benefit in various ways from what they are doing.
Free Wheeling Magazine #1. p34
Simon and Lisa are a resourceful pair, but this story about finding tyres in the most unlikely of places is a ripper.
"We came through Mongolia, Kazakhstan, back into Central Russia, Kurdistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and by the time we got to Islamabad over the Silk Road we'd spent the last month wondering what we are going to do about tyres, Simon says. "The white on each front and rear tyre was coming through, and there was nobody, anywhere, that could give us tyres. We were screwed.
"We got on the internet forums, asking anyone out there for help, and amazingly we got a post saying, "this may be of no use to you, but we were in Islamabad and we changed our tyres. We took the old ones off that were in a pretty bad way, and where we were camped there was a rubbish tip next door, so we threw them over the fence. They should be there.
"So he gave us the GPS point from where he was camped, we found it, worked out where the tyres would have been thrown, and located them. We had new tyres; they were the right size, a bit sun damaged, but better than what we had. That got us all the way through Pakistan and India. The tyres were covered in shit and slime, and the stench was just terrible, but you do what you have to do. The first new set of tyres since was when we turned up in Australia."
Free Wheeling Magazine #1. p36
The first things Roger looked over were my receipts and he compared them to what I'd entered on my gas-log. On the third receipt he said that I had entered an eight on my log, whereas I should have entered a zero. I broke out in a cold sweat as I assured him that the number he was looking at on the computer generated receipt was an eight and not a zero with a bar through the center. To my absolute freaking horror Roger then pulled out a magnifying glass. Not a little pocket magnifying glass, but a large round glass with a large black handle. The IBR folk take scoring seriously. The rules for scoring have been explained again and again to the riders. No matter what happens, the rider must not get upset or be disrespectful to the scoring staff. The staff volunteers their time and they are tasked with scoring black and white basis. The bonus meets all requirements exactly or it is denied. Being rude to a scorer is grounds for disqualification from the rally. I began to seriously wonder if it would be considered disrespectful if I became violently ill.
Roger held the receipt up to the light as he looked at it with the magnifying glass like Sherlock Holmes studying a fragment of bone and said "No, look at this eight here and this zero over here and you can see that there is a slight angle to the zero cross bar but no angle at all on the crossbar on the eight." I looked through the magnifying glass and he was right. By a few ten-thousandths of an inch there was a difference. It was definitely a zero when studied on the subatomic level and one hundred and twenty-five points disappeared in a mist of cheap dot-matrix ink.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 197
When he got to 60th place and read my name he added that I had finished with over 523,000 miles on the R60 and there was a standing ovation that lasted until I got back to my seat.
This reaction to my finish from this group of hard-riders stunned me. I shook Bob's hand and Mike Kneebone's hand as I received my plaque and license plate-back which states "Iron Butt Rally 11 Days 11,000 miles".
I had officially covered 10,554 miles in the eleven days and had done it on a motorcycle that was a third of a century old and a half-million miles worn. My final score was 81,106 points. I was also realizing that this rally had been fun. Other than the glitches with the side-stand and saddlebag I had a good time. Sure, I was relentlessly weary at times, but in 2007 there were several times each day that I wondered why I was doing what I was doing, and that sense of despair never happened during this rally. Not once!
Instead of cursing the rain or the traffic or the clock or the heat or the distance, I had looked at these things as challenges and I was digging the ride. It was fun. I certainly wasn't as good at figuring out the bonus puzzle as the fifty-nine riders who finished ahead of me, but I did remarkably better than I had in 2007.
I was a happy camper!
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 201
Hi Biggles, any chance of a new book mate? This one's getting a bit repetitive. :)
OK- here's the last one from that book:
At 5:30 a.m. we left the hotel parking lot and stopped at a gas station a few block away. The station was closed but the pumps were powered up and we filled up at different islands. After I put the nozzle back on the pump I realized that the printer on the pump was out of paper and I wasn't going to get a receipt. I started fussing loudly about the damned receipt and having to take a picture and document the station. I was irate and cussing like a sailor as in a split second I had tripped from happy-go-lucky to pissed-off.
Then, from the other gas island I heard Bill yell "The rally is over. It's over. You - don't - need - a - receipt."
He was laughing so hard he could barely get the words out. He was right of course. But, after years of training, setting a regular routine for fuelling, and just ending the IBR where a receipt can make or break you, it is truly hard to return to the everyday. I grinned at Bill, climbed on the R60, and we headed east.
Hopeless Class Joel Rappoport p 203-4
It also brought back memories of my fifth trip to Alaska in 1992, which was the 50th anniversary year of the Alaska Highway. In spite of its being paved for its entire length, I rode my 1986 Honda Gold Wing on more than 2,000 miles of gravel roads to get to Anchorage and back while purposely avoiding as much of the main highway as I could, due to the heavy RV traffic that was expected to be using it that year - and also to satisfy a passion for exploring some of the most remote areas. I carried extra gas in Prestone bottles on the back seat of the Gold Wing through the longest gaps in gas availability. I met my objective of avoiding the heavy RV traffic though, in that I saw practically no vehicles at all for days, and I was in my glory, riding all by myself in the far reaches of the Canadian wilderness, where I saw bear, bison, caribou, fox, lynx, and many other animals in their natural habitat.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 18-19
I was finally ready to leave on a four-week, 11,000 mile trip to Alaska with a dirt bike, a patched-up pair of rain boots, no saddlebags and a windshield that wouldn't keep the weather off of me. But I had a lot of confidence in the bike, and I was anxious to get underway on what I figured would be a great ride.
Needless to say, without the saddlebags I brought a lot less gear than usual and I packed exceptionally light; and I was well aware before leaving that it would be a rough trip for my 79-year-old body. But I called Jim and told him I was ready to go.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 23
I had stopped in the middle of the scarcely-travelled gravel road for a nature break. We hadn't seen another vehicle or sign of civilization for at least an hour, and we left Flin Flon before any breakfast places were open. Bud naturally asked, "Where are we stopping for breakfast?"
I said, "I was thinking of right here," as I reached in the trunk of the Gold Wing for a tin of sardines that I was carrying. Bud, who always looked forward to and treasured his sunny-side-up eggs with several strips of crisp lean bacon and a nice hot cup of coffee in the morning, said with an attitude, "You've got to be kidding!" refused to partake of the sardines and dug somewhat begrudgingly into his own bag for some beef jerky while Jake and I shared a can of the fish, and the three of us stood there having breakfast in the middle of the road in a light drizzle with the temperature in the mid 40s [F]. It's certainly not the classiest of breakfast places, but I think it worked out well enough under the circumstances.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 29-30
A few words at this point about my eyesight that had been getting progressively worse over the past few years: I was often unable to read road signs unless the sun was somewhere behind me and shining on the sign. The same applied to my instruments like the odometer that I needed for following my route sheet; and the bike's clock, both of which use pale LED displays. I couldn't read the route sheet on my tank bag either unless I came to a complete stop first, even though I used a 14-size font with bold lettering. My eyes are on the borderline for keeping my driver's license that I can only get with a signature from my eye doctor - and she sometimes shudders when I tell her about some of my motorcycling experiences; but maybe she thinks I'm exaggerating to spice up the story! I could rarely see the Canadian route markings during this trip, which are considerably smaller and less bold than most of those in the US. I can also rarely see motel and/or restaurant signs unless they're within less than 100 feet and I'm moving slowly. I usually had no problem with the "Golden Arches" though, which I suppose is one of the reasons they chose that particular symbol. Whenever the light is subdued, as it often gets on overcast days, I have difficulty seeing cars coming from the opposite direction for any great distance - especially when it's raining and they're coming toward me without headlights, which also makes it a lot tougher to pass on two-lane roads. I almost never execute the bold passes anymore for which I had become known a few years back when my eyesight and reflexes were a lot better.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 37-38
Jim's first experience with one of the infamous steel-grated bridges along the Alaska Highway with their deep grooves running in the direction of travel came that morning while crossing the Peace River. The grooves can be disconcerting to a motorcyclist and even turn the knuckles a little white if they're not expecting it, and Jim wasn't.
We ran through our first cold, zero-visibility fog bank in Fort St. John that morning. Truck traffic was stop-and-go and exceptionally heavy in town, causing us to lose about 20 minutes riding through a half-mile of thick fog and heavy traffic. I eventually had to flip the face shield up, remove my glasses and ride with I bare eyeballs in order to see anything at all as we felt our way through town.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 46
I instinctively locked both brakes with absolutely no hope of avoiding the inevitable because I was already less than 75 feet from impact when I first spotted the sheep- and there was zero time for me to change course or to do anything other than lock the brakes, hang on and leave the rest to God.
It's the moment that we all dread and hope will never happen to us. It comes with a feeling that's hard to describe, but once you've experienced it, you'll never forget it. The trouble with this particular feeling is that most people aren't around to describe it afterward. There was zero time to pray. The locked brakes threw the bike sideways a split-second before the headlight and windshield made initial contact with the head of the lead sheep. Meanwhile, the rear end of the bike whipped around and whacked the sheep full broadside a split-second later.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 50-51
The powerful collision sent the sheep tumbling down the highway as I clung desperately to the handlebars as tight as I could, maybe even with super-human strength. I'm guessing that my speed at the time of impact was still around 50 mph, with the bike fully sideways and still perfectly upright. The force of impact almost tore me clear off of the seat sideways, but I was somehow miraculously able to hang on. My left leg got squeezed between the bike and the sheep's belly at the same instant that the left tank pannier, directly in front of my knee, took the brunt of the impact as it struck the bony area of the sheep's front shoulder. Luckily the pannier, which holds my overnight bag, was a few inches thicker than my knee, and it was fully packed, which is what saved my leg that otherwise would have taken the force of the crushing blow and probably broken it, and maybe broken my knee too. It was a miracle in itself that my leg and knee connected with the sheep's belly, which felt like a huge cushion.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 51
The impact threw the tail end of the bike back to its original straightforward position, and I suddenly found myself facing forward again with the bike now rolling only about 10 mph or less, I was still hanging onto the bars as tight as I could. The whole incident took only a few seconds.
In spite of being in a slight daze and even before the wheels stopped turning, I thanked God, I thanked my angels and I thanked my family and friends who pray for me. I was convinced that God had just bestowed one of His greatest miracles on me. It was certainly one of the greatest I had ever known, and I've had a few real beauties in my lifetime. I could hardly believe I had come through totally unscathed. It seemed that the end result for me was simply a slightly sprained ankle - the only physical injury I got from it, other than having the wind knocked out of me - and it certainly scared me half-to-death.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 52
Twenty miles out, we went through another cold fogbank and for the next ten miles I rode with bare eyeballs and no face shield again, and this time it was with no windshield either. I could barely see well enough to hold the 60 mph that we were travelling. My eyeballs couldn't handle the cold dense fog at any higher speeds, nor was it safe to go much faster with the limited visibility. Fortunately the bugs weren't out that early to get into my eyes.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 68
About 10 miles out of Meade the wind got so strong that it was picking up dirt and sand from surrounding prairie and it was blasting the side of my face with it. It soon increased to a frightening velocity and I realized I was caught out on the open prairie in a full-blown sand storm with no shelter from it. The first thing I thought of was to stop at the edge of the road to remove the duct tape and close the faceshield.
After stopping, my feet kept slipping and sliding on the sandy surface and I didn't have enough hands to hold the bike from blowing over and to work on the shield at the same time. The road was totally covered with sand. I tried to turn the bike into the wind but the sand was making the surface so slippery that my feet kept sliding out. I was miles from anywhere and there was no place to duck into or get behind.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 117-8
After getting underway, I thought the safest speed might be between 50 and 55 mph because anything less wasn't offering enough gyroscopic action for the wheels and the wind was throwing the bike around a lot on the sand; and I figured that anything faster wouldn't leave enough weight on the road for adequate tire traction.
Meanwhile, the temperature was up around 100° and it was drying me up like a prune, especially after having taken my diuretic medication.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 118
Around noon the next day I stopped in the small town of Beloit, Kansas to inquire about US Rte 36, a road I had been looking for and thought I might have passed.
The road I was on was very lightly travelled and it went straight through the town, like in many small towns on the prairie. I parked in front of a Case-International tractor dealer and walked inside to ask for directions. There was no one around so I called out, "Anybody here?" No one answered and I repeated it a few times. My voice echoed inside the building. There were many farm tractors and pickup trucks inside, and at least three offices, but there was not a soul around. It looked like someone could walk off with the place.
I went next door to an open hardware store and called out again: "Anybody here?" There was no one there either. I walked across the deserted street to a gas station that I found to be closed and locked. I stood for a minute and looked around. Nothing was moving anywhere, and I saw no one. There was just dead silence.
I was beginning to get an eerie feeling that maybe there was no one in the entire town - like on the old TV series "The Twilight Zone".
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 136
I went back to the bike, got on, and drove off slowly, looking into every yard for someone to ask. As I was about to leave the north end of the town, I saw a diner with at least 15 to 20 pickup trucks parked outside. The place was packed. I parked the bike and went inside. The loud din of voices that I met suddenly fell silent as everyone turned to look at me.
I said, "Could anyone please tell me where I could find US Rte 36?" After a brief pause, I heard a gruff male voice say, "Up the road about 12 miles."
I said thanks, and I added: "Does everyone in this town go to lunch at the same time? I couldn't find a soul anywhere." I left while they were all laughing.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 136-7
I said, "Could you tell me where I might find a gas station?" He looked puzzled and answered that he didn't know but his dad or mom probably would. I asked if they were home.
"My mom's home," he said.
"Would you mind getting her please?" He got off the mower and disappeared into the house. Moments later an attractive young woman appeared, wearing shorts, a halter-top and sandals and I repeated the question. She answered smiling, "We have a gas station right here."
"Really? Could I possibly buy some? I'm about to run out."
She said, "Yes, of course. Follow me," and she led me across the farmyard to a pump that was probably used for filling the farm vehicles. I asked if it had a gauge and she said it probably does but the glass is much too cloudy to read. I said I needed around five gallons and I asked if that would be OK. She handed me the hose and turned on the power for the pump. Gas began to flow into my tank as soon as I squeezed the handle, but seconds later she noticed that the hose was spewing gas at the other end, and she said, "Oh my goodness, we're getting more on the ground than in the tank," and she turned the pump off. I looked into my tank and could see that I had already gotten almost a half-tank.
I said it would probably be enough to get me to a gas station. I reached for my wallet and handed her a $20 bill. She said, "I don't know what to charge. I don't know how much gas is going for nowadays, or how much we pay for it." I answered that if the $20 isn't enough, I'd be happy to pay more. "Oh no," she said, "I meant that I don't know how much change to give you."
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 192-3
"Please don't be concerned about change. I'm very happy to get the gas and I would like for you to accept it." I had no idea how much had spilled on the ground she might be in big trouble for using the gas pump with a broken hose and wasting so much. She took it and offered her hand to shake hands and said, "My name is Ann."
I said, "Hi Ann. My name is Piet. I'm very happy to meet you." She saw my license plate and asked, "What in the world are you doing in this little farmyard in North Dakota?" I told her a little about my trip and we chatted for several minutes.
Needless to say, it was another of the nicest encounters I had on the trip. I thought after leaving that maybe I should keep wandering around this beautiful country meeting nice people like that along the way, and the thought crossed my mind - do I really have to go home?
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 193-4
I was totally exhausted and I hurt all over, and that fatigue and pain stayed with me for almost two weeks afterwards. My eyesight, which had been in poor shape for years, was never worse than it was on this trip. But I'll say to anyone who might ask, "So why do you do it?" One of the things that comes to mind is Winston Churchill's famous quote during World War II, at the height of the Battle for Britain, soon after a horrendous air raid blitz inflicted heavy damage on the city of London - he said, "Never, Never, Never give in." Herb Gunnison was much more blunt in his book "Seventy Years on a Motorcycle" when he said, "Don't ever let the bastards take it away from you."
I feel much the same about my long distance riding. Giving up something I've loved doing for most of my life is like surrendering to life itself, which I have no intention of doing - if I can help it. Travelling alone on the byways of this beautiful country is what I intend to continue doing for as long as I can get my leg over the machine; and for as long as I can still handle the pain - and for as long as my eyesight holds out enough to find my way out of the driveway.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 199-200
I was up at 4 AM, packed, loaded and out for breakfast by 5:45. It was cool when I left town with the morning sun glistening on the dew-covered alfalfa fields. I love smells of early mornings in farm country, especially on a nice two-lane bike road with long vistas and sweeping curves. The smell of honeysuckle was in air, intermingled with the sour smell of fermenting silage and other odours from the barnyards, and from the crops being exposed to the heat of the morning sun. It was one of those mornings when it feels good to be alive - and riding a motorcycle.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 214
My most serious problem of the day was when the early-morning sun blinded me so much I couldn't read any of the signs during rush hour traffic coming into Atlanta where I-20 meets the beltway. It was a challenge for my eyesight when all four lanes of traffic were running bumper-to-bumper at a steady 80 mph and I had to switch from I-20 to I-85 without having a clue where the split was, and I was unable to read any of the signs. It actually went well though. I relied on my faith to be in the right lane when the time came to dive out of the 80 mph stream of madness into the relatively sedate cloverleaf at the last split-second.
It's tough when you get old, but even tougher when you can't see! Fortunately, I made some good guesses on which lane to be in and at what split-second to dive for the exit or entry ramps. I learned a week later that well-known Iron Butt competitor Eddie James was killed on the same highway only a few days before I came through. Some of the speeds they were travelling are scary, especially when you realize that many are kids still in high school; and others are older people, bordering on senility - all running bumper-to-bumper, four-abreast at 80 mph with the trucks.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 243-4
The bike was hard starting with the temperature around 14°, and the front brake calipers were frozen, causing the brakes to drag. The interstate didn't seem that bad, but when I got to the gas station, I couldn't turn the ignition switch off because the lock was frozen in the 'on' position and the key was frozen in the lock.
My spare key was at the motel, making it impossible to gas up. So I went back to my room and thawed the lock with a hot wet towel and got the key out, and I decided to deal with the problem in the morning.
The temperature Tuesday morning was 3°, with a wind chill of minus 12. After walking to breakfast, I loaded the bike and got totally suited up before trying to start it. I used a hot wet towel to thaw the lock enough to get the key in and turn it. The starter barely turned over, and I was concerned it would run the battery down before it started. For at least a full minute, it just popped once and failed to catch. It took eight or ten tries before it finally started. When it did, I left the motel wearing just about everything I had with me. Thank goodness for the electric vest and gloves. I wore my heavy woolen knee warmers under the riding suit.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 269-70
The roads were a total mess. It snowed all week and was still snowing on Saturday. Places near my home got much as 30 inches in five days. I probably could have gotten out Saturday, snow showers and all, but I wanted to spare the chain and engine cases from the salt brine- so I delayed it a day and left on Sunday. My sons did a great job of shovelling and sanding the driveway to give me a safe exit to the street.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 275
I came to a roadblock where six state troopers were inspecting vehicles, I pulled in and turned off the engine - I wasn't wearing my hearing aid and wanted to hear what was being said. One big guy said, "Don't turn it off," as he walked around to the right side of the bike, while several others stood in a line on my left side.
I said as the big guy walked around the bike, "It's over on this side, at the top of the fork leg." He said, "I already saw it. Do you have a motorcycle license?"
I laughed and said, I sure do. I've had one since they "grand-fathered" me in more than 50 years ago and I reached for my wallet. He said, "I don't have to see it."
I said, "I'm out taking a ride to celebrate my 86th birthday" - which got a few smiles and at least one "Happy Birthday" as I restarted the bike and said, "Have a nice day," and I left.
Keep Going! Piet Boonstra p 284-5
There's another stretch of asphalt nearby that's stranger and perhaps even more fun to ride than the Rowena Curves: 3.6 miles, twenty-five curves, leading to absolutely nothing. Imagine building your own private road for the purpose of sport riding. What would you build? Well, you'd probably start with a hillside location that would provide lots of opportunities for elevation change and curves, but would be open enough to allow generous sight lines. You'd make sure the asphalt was perfectly smooth and grippy, and you'd probably make each curve unique, designing a smorgasbord of hairpins, sweepers, increasing-radius, constant-radius and decreasing-radius turns. And you wouldn't waste space on a straight. Sport riding is about leaning, so the run would consist of turns, all the way. That perfectly describes the Maryhill Loops.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 25
In an aerial view, the road looks like a very squiggly line drawn with a black marker on light brown paper. The dry, treeless slope allows for sightlines through most of the tight curves, which is always a good thing, though it mattered less than ever as I rode onto the Loops knowing that absolutely no other traffic lay ahead. I quickly dispensed with first gear and rolled into the series of curves in second, which would probably work for just about all of the road ahead. Shifting above third just amounts to putting unnecessary wear and tear on the gearshift lever, so I concentrated on rolling on and off the throttle, taking advantage of the grip provided by this dry, unmarred asphalt that has been lying here, curing in the sun.
I scrubbed away the vestiges of chicken strips on my tires and soon, all too soon, I reached the gravel turnaround area at the top of the hill. The brief 3.6-mile length is absolutely the only thing detracting from this ride. But when you can ride it again and again, as you can during the rally, even that isn't much of a drawback. And better yet, because I happened to get there early, I got to ride it alone.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 29-30
Lured by the sheer oddity of the event, I mail in my entry for Lake Erie Loop V.I have no illusions of earning any of those bragging rights, but I can at least finish, right? In a lifetime of varied and sometimes misguided motorcycling, I've done a thousand-mile day, I've survived the infamous and since revised Turn 12 at Road Atlanta, I've been caught on the road by unexpected snowfall, and sideswiped by a car at 60 mph on the freeway at 2 a.m. yet lived to tell those and other tales. I can surely survive the Loop. The only problem is, I don't have a Loop-legal motorcycle.
Ah, but I know where I can get my hands on one. Years ago, my father gave my mother a 1996 Suzuki GN125 as a fifty-ninth birthday present, knowing she wanted to get back into motorcycling and knowing she probably wouldn't spend the money on herself. She's since bought other bikes, but always keep the GN125. As her phone is ringing, it dawns on me that it is Mothers Day. How am I going to phrase this?
"Hi Mom. Say, I'd like to borrow your sentimental favourite motorcycle, flog it near redline for sixteen hours straight and possibly blow it to smoldering bits somewhere in Canada. Oh, by the way. Happy Mother s Day."
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 33-4
By the time I've survived Detroit and crossed the state line into Ohio, night and my enthusiasm are falling rapidly. On the fly, I reach out and try to adjust the aim of the Suzuki's little five-inch headlight, but the effort is futile, and I learn to live with the anaemic yellow smudge of light in the roadway ahead as I roll through the dark, deer-infested woods and fields of northern Ohio, butt burning, shoulders knotted and aching. It's that time of evening when even the mental image of a sleeping bag in a tent on the hard ground hovers in the mind like a nirvana of feathery pillows and Loopers peer deep into the abyss of the soul and ask themselves the central questions of life, such as, "Does that valve clatter sound like its getting worse?" and "Why did I think this would be fun?"
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 36-7
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1811500/LOOPERS/
For me, one of the rarest and most coveted feelings on any motorcycle ride is the luxury of free time. Typically, especially at home, my rides and trips are accompanied by a small black cloud that only I can see, a nagging feeling deep in the background of my mind that I soon need to be somewhere else, that someone is waiting for me, or that dawdling means neglecting other duties. That afternoon at El Tajin was the turnaround point in my trip. I had no farther to go that day, my hotel room for the night was already secured (the same one as the previous night), and nobody was expecting me to be anywhere else. That alone, that opportunity to relax on a grassy slope among ancient monuments after a 2,000-mile dash southward, was among the most savoured parts of my afternoon amidst the ruins.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 47
I picked my way through the narrow city streets, trying not to lose the thread of the route leading toward Tamazunchale, trying not to lose the tires' tenuous grip on the greasy wet pavement, until a young policeman halted all traffic at an intersection. Sitting at the front of the line of stopped cars, I had a perfect view of a Christmas procession as locals on foot carried figures of saints to the church. Plodding along in the drizzle, the procession was more mournful, or at least more respectful, than festive. This is the difference that travel makes: On a trip back home, I'd be annoyed to be stopped because of a parade, fuming about where I needed to be. Here, nearly two thousand miles from home, I was just pleased to have a front-row view. That, for me at least, is the transforming magic of foreign surroundings. The ordinary can become memorable, and even mundane tasks become learning experiences. An inconvenience becomes an opportunity to peer into other lives.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 48-9
The checkered flag is out for the session and I raise my left hand to signal that I'm coming into the pits. The pit entrance at Mid-Ohio is curved and slightly downhill. I'm leaning gently through that curve, left hand still off the grip, already in first gear and already thinking ahead to the next session, when I squeeze some front brake to slow down even more and... Wham! I'm on the ground! Worse yet, I'm lying in the grass with my feet higher than my head and the rear wheel of the Ducati pinning my right leg. I'm splayed out on the ground with all the dignity of a deboned chicken, flopped helplessly in the grass for everyone to see as they ride into the pits, having just locked the front wheel and crashed. In first gear. At maybe 30 mph. On the pit lane entrance.
In the history of motorcycle crashes, many have been worse, but few have been more embarrassing.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 62-3
Of all my bad riding habits, turning in early is one I constantly battle. You'll never find a pro racer or a riding instructor who extols the virtues of an early apex, but anxiety gnaws at my patience and whispers in my ear, "turn now, turn now." But with McWilliams' advice stuck in my mind like the word God (only with an Irish accent), I check my worst impulses and force myself to wait until my front wheel comes even with that orange cone before banking left. Then, I plunge over the edge, like riding off the side of a building. It was with this very moment in mind that I showed restraint at the morning breakfast buffet. My guts rise to press against my lungs, the bike feels light, and any feelings of two-dimensional illusions are vaporized. As I fall over the edge and finally get to see the track ahead of me, the importance of following McWilliams' advice is instantly obvious in a way that sears the information into my mind for all future laps. If I had aimed the bike in the direction I would expect the track to go, if I had started my turn early and lined up for a sweeping curve like I'd expect to find on any other track, I'd be six feet into the gravel and dirt. Instead, thanks to my strict adherence to McWilliams' recommended line, I'm still on the black as gravity sucks me downward a few stories while I shift from left lean to right lean.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 77-8
Strempfer launches into a story about the Benelli brothers having a spat back in the 1950s, with one of the brothers stomping off in a huff to build motorcycles called Motobis. It all sounds very Italian. As for mechanical particulars, he explains that a Motobi 125 is a four-stroke with a single, air-cooled, horizontal cylinder. The five-speed gearbox is operated by a heel-toe shifter on the right side. In reverse pattern. The rear brake pedal is on the left side. So I'm trying to get my mind around the concept of downshifting by pushing down with the heel of what I've always considered my braking foot when I realize, I really ought to test ride this thing before I'm expected to perform anything called an "ability test," or even mingle with unsuspecting Vermont traffic.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 97-8
In a lucky lifetime, I've been to visit some spectacular capital-D Destinations, the manmade Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna, Glacier National Park in Montana, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and many other "sights". And yes, I've also spent many an enjoyable afternoon in Manhattan, seen the Grand Canyon, and even survived a couple of visits to Vegas. But just as vivid are memories of places that never make anyone's list of Destinations, anonymous little places such as San Vito, Costa Rica, or Nipigon, Ontario, Canada. Usually, those memories stick with me because I not only visited a place, but through chance or planning, got a look into the lives of people who live there- people unlike myself- and learned something in the process.
Such was the case with my sojourn in Tuxpan. I can't describe for you, in any detail, the rooms of the Schonbrunn Palace, though I can assure you that all the ones I saw were opulently spectacular. What I do remember, much better, is the look on the face of the woman rushing to find the T-shirt I wanted before I changed my mind, and how glad I was that I waited. I remember a teenager washing laundry in Tuxpan while dreaming of making a living as a musician in the United States, and hundreds of children pulling homemade carritos (toy cars) through candlelit streets in memory of children who did not survive. And most of all I remember the surprising magic of finding myself in the best place I could possibly be on that one night of the year, even though I didn't know enough to choose it on purpose. Sometimes, it works out that way, and a simple motorcycle journey leaves lasting memories of a very human, if not historic, scale, from a place where nobody goes. Something to consider the next time you're choosing a destination.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 110
Around one of those sweeping turns I find a faded 1976 Honda CB550 Four parked in a wide spot by the road, its owner crouched at its side. I stop to see if I can provide assistance or, more likely, given my mechanical skills and the near absence of tools on the V-Strom, provide company and commiseration. The rider tells me
that he only recently pulled the old Honda out of storage and is still tracking down electrical problems, one of which has just left him at roadside. While we examine fuses and poke at the thirty-year-old patina of corrosion on the ground wire, he asks me about my ride and I explain my northward course on Route 100 and my
general lack of plans more detailed than that.
"You should ride Lincoln Gap," he advises. "You won't believe it. You just go up and up the mountain."
About that time, the Honda's lights come back on, though its hard to say what we did to achieve that success. I suspect it won't be his last search for wayward electrons in the old bike.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 121
I don't remember another specific detail about the ride my wife and I took that Sunday afternoon, but I still remember the old man telling his story. It's one of those quirks of humanity that define us. We may love motorcycles with an enthusiasm severe enough to qualify us for a clinical study. We may suffer an addict's craving for the physical sensations of riding. We see some of the earth's greatest sights on two wheels, and experience them more intensely because we ride to them. Yet because we are human, the most memorable part of many a ride is neither the destination nor the journey, but some unexpected character met along the way.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 127
If you happen to own a motorcycle bearing the logo of one of the resurrected marques, such as the Triumph I often ride, you're guaranteed to have extra conversations on the road. It happens to me time and again. An older man approaches me at a gas station to exclaim, "I didn't know they were still in business!" Then he tells me about the old Bonneville he had back in the day, and at some point his gaze drifts off to some unfocused place, and I can just hear him thinking, wondering, trying to remember why he ever sold that old motorcycle.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 128
Once I stopped for gas in upstate New York on a Suzuki V-Strom and the out-of-state license plate was enough to trigger the forty-something guy coming out of the convenience store to run over to me, ask cursorily where I was from, and then launch into an excited monologue about a cross-country motorcycle trip he took in his twenties, one of those life-altering experiences that's never forgotten, even though he'd hardly ridden since. His tale didn't slow down long enough for me to get a word out, which was good, because the obvious question was one I didn't have the heart to ask: "Why did you stop?" Why did that experience have to be just once-in-a-lifetime? Maybe I was imagining it, but there seemed to be some sadness punctuating the end of his story of excitement, youth, and adventure. He never really asked a word about where I was going, or why. He was still running on the fumes of a ride that was twenty years in the rearview mirror and I had places to go that very same evening. I rode away feeling a little sorry for him, I do occasionally for the men who tell me about long-lost Triumphs and Harleys and Indians, and I promised myself yet again not to travel down the road to regrets, if I can help it.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 128
I stop for stranded riders because I've been the beneficiary of kindness many times myself, and from all kinds of people, not just fellow riders. There was the guy with the shop making customized campers who interrupted his work and drove several miles to fill his gas can for me when I foolishly ran out on the highway, or, when I was a college student travelling on a shoe-string budget, the family at the campground that set up their extra tent for me after someone stole some of my camping gear leaving me without shelter as a night-long rain moved in. It sometimes seems to me that the farther from home, the better people treat me as a traveller and the more they go out of their way to help me out of a jam.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 130
I could be lots of places. I could be riding in the Rockies or the Alps, and those places make great fodder for bragging about memorable motorcycle rides. Or I could be riding some not-quite-two-lane past the silence of little country church graveyards where my ancestors lie, past the smell of hay drying in the sun, through the coolness that drifts from a deep fold of a shady country hollow, back through time, back through remembrance, pulled along by the motorcycle's torque, which is another remembrance in itself. And I could say, this feels right.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 146
But at eighteen, even the most precocious of us are slates still mostly blank. And that was the age at which I stumbled into being a motorcyclist, without much planning, by buying a very used, non-descript, massively mass-produced bike with a questionable history (and probably paying too much for it), falling in love not so much with the machine, but with the world of sensations and experiences it opened to me. In other words, pretty much the same old story. Millions of us did it.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 149
In 1973 the big lump of the Baby Boomer bulge was in young adulthood, prime motorcycling time. At same time, the Japanese manufacturers were importing relatively inexpensive, easy-to-ride, far-more-reliable motorcycles by the thousands to meet the demand, while Harley-Davidson limped toward its darkest years and the once-mighty British motorcycle industry continued resolutely firing repeated rounds into its foot by building the same old thing, with engines guaranteed to leak oil and headlights likely to fail at the first sign of impending nightfall. Millions of people in the United States at least gave motorcycles a try during that time and while many drifted off, some caught the addiction and never shook it. And the one thing that absolutely all riders share is a memory, whether dim or vivid, clear-eyed or nostalgic, humorous or heart-warming or traumatic, of a first bike.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 150
And yet, as much as the world changes, some human sentiments come close to universal. Home from college for the summer, I would park that utterly unremarkable CB360T in the garage of my parents' house after coming in from a night-time ride and listen to the tick ticking of the old air-cooled engine as it dissipated its heat, the metals contracting into their resting places. I could detect the distinct burning smell of oil pooling on the hottest engine parts and the few last wisps of exhaust drifting from the twin exhaust pipes. I lingered in the garage, not wanting to go inside the house. Sitting there, beside that cheap and practical machine few could covet, I savoured the ride, even if it was just an ordinary trip across town to a friend's house, and I was, without knowing it, burning deep and lasting memories into a primal part of my brain. The right combination of hot oil on hot metal can yank me back to those moments utterly unexpectedly, decades later.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 153-4
Now, I could be wrong, but I imagine little happened in Okeechobee, and I'm sure the bored pump jockey hadn't seen many motorcyclists ride up to the full-service pump. His lack of experience nearly led to my demise.
Having filled the tank, he decided to run up the sale amount to the nearest half dollar, just as he always did, no doubt, with cars. My little tank couldn't take it. By the time he gave up, the tank was filled to the cap, and I set off down the loneliest stretch of Florida 710 in the hot sun. Of course as that hot sun hit my stylish charcoal-coloured gas tank, the cool gasoline inside began to expand. By the time I was out of town and rolling down the bowling alley-straight two-lane, gasoline was flowing freely out of the gas cap and streaming down the tank toward my crotch, where it threatened to drip onto the rear cylinder of the air-cooled V-twin engine.
Let me tell you, my mind was quite focused as I considered my equally unappealing options. The thought of stopping by that desolate roadside led to visions of even more expanding gasoline flowing out and dripping all over the hot, air-cooled engine, threatening all-out conflagration. The thought of continuing down the road led to images of becoming a rolling fire-ball with a freshly filled tank of fuel. If external combustion did break out, which would be worse? Abandoning the motorcycle at the first hint of ignition and tumbling down the pavement at speed, or having a fine imitation of a flame-thrower aimed at my most sensitive parts for the time it would take me to slow down and dismount?
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 161-2
In 1963, the huge U.S. firm Grey Advertising came up with what is now the most famous slogan in the history of the U.S. motorcycle industry: "You meet the nicest people on a Honda". Not Hells Angels. Not someone wearing grease-soaked jeans and poking at his motorcycle's points along the side of the road, hoping to get it running again. Instead, magazine ads depicted housewives and families and a young couple dressed as if they were on their way to the country club on their fun little Honda 50. Although most people in the United States were probably as far from the country club lifestyle as they were from the outlaw biker stereotype, it was easier to buy into the Honda image than the Hells Angels image. For one thing, it required less money and fewer tools.
Along with thousands of inexpensive and reliable Japanese motorcycles that followed in the 1960s and 1970s, the Honda 50, with its quiet four-stroke engine, step-through scooter-like styling, centrifugal clutch (you could ride it even if you didn't know how to operate a clutch) and unimposing presence offered an entirely new way to get into motorcycling. The biggest generation of U.S. motorcyclists was born.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 165
Lots of women might have argued that my money would have been better spent on a first car than a second motorcycle, something a bit more appropriate for classier dates. Or maybe better spent on those classier dates at better restaurants than the ones we frequented. Or maybe better spent upgrading my minimalist wardrobe.
I'm sure, in fact, that those thoughts crossed her mind, but when I surprised her by picking her up on the Sportster for a short ride to a favoured but definitely un-fancy neighbourhood pizzeria, she shared my excitement about the new bike rather than questioning my good sense. That's when my motorcycle helped me learn another lesson about her: that she accepted me for who I was and shared my joy, rather than trying to change me and my joys to match hers.
Now anyone who has spent any time on a Sportster knows that it's not the ideal two-up motorcycle. So I repaid her trust and acceptance by fitting the Sportster with a more comfortable seat and a low backrest to make her feel more secure. Later, she would admit that she knew I was serious about the relationship when I modified my motorcycle to make her happier.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 173-4
Of course, lust and style are no deeper than a shiny paint job. To get beyond that initial attraction, you have to get to know someone. Or something. In this case, a two-wheeled something. You learn to appreciate its positive attributes and live with its drawbacks. Over the years, after you've come to know the motorcycle thoroughly and have relied on it thousands of times, it may come to feel like an old friend, one you're willing to forgive when it does let you down because so many times before it didn't.
The ideal lifelong relationship, with a human partner or a motorcycle, involves a little of all of that. It starts with a spark of lust that soon deepens into love and then ages finely over the years into the best and most lasting friendship you've ever had. At which point there's no longer any question of calling it off.
You're in it for the long haul, for better or worse. Congratulations, you've bonded. You may now kiss your ride.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 200
To someone reading this book ten years from now, this chapter may be the only part that isn't viewed as a quaint relic of a simpler past, a time when we rode motorcycles for fun with a naive confidence in an unending supply of cheap fuel to drive us. Whether they're powered by gasoline, electricity, or something else, I'm optimistic enough to believe we can continue to have fun on motorcycles that are faster and more exhilarating than cars and still contribute to the solution, not the problem. We can help influence public perceptions, so that motorcycles are seen as a sensible way to stretch out what oil is left, rather than noisy relics of a more primitive era that should be killed off as quickly as possible.
The future ride won't resemble the ride so far, but that doesn't mean it can't be a good one.
The Ride So Far Lance Oliver p 218-9
When the rhythm sets in, I don't feel like I'm sitting on top of a motorcycle. Instead, I feel that the machine is an extension of my body, endowing me with superhuman powers. The machine is an extension of my limbs, vesting my feet and hands with unimagined abilities. Yehudi Menuhin once said that playing the violin is like singing through your limbs. I often think about that as I'm riding, and feel that I'm playing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony through the motorcycle.
With the help of earplugs and a good helmet, I fly quietly along just a few feet above the solid surface of the highway. With a flick of my wrist I accelerate quickly around other vehicles. I shift my weight imperceptibly and glide gracefully from one lane to another. I negotiate curves nimbly and confidently, as if the motorcycle were attached to a rail. I'm as agile as a hummingbird, negotiating my way around 18-wheelers, automobiles, and campers, noting the location and relative speed of every vehicle within my field of vision.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 15
Earlier in the year, Manny Sameiro had published an account on the Internet of the mistakes that resulted in his last place finish in the 1997 Iron Butt Rally.
Manny had whimsically titled his account "Against the Pavement", a title apparently inspired by my book "Against the Wind".
After travelling from Chicago to Madawaska, Maine, during the first leg of the rally, Manny had mistakenly filled his motorcycle with diesel fuel. He discovered the mistake, but replacing the fuel with gasoline, and cleaning the carburettors and fuel lines caused him to fall behind schedule. In an effort to regain the hours lost, Manny pushed his motorcycle beyond its capabilities, lost control, and wrecked his bike. He then purchased the only used motorcycle he could find in the small town of Houlton, Maine, a 1983 Honda VT500 Shadow. Because of the delays he experienced, along with the 10,000 point penalty that was invoked for his having switched motorcycles, Manny finished the rally in last place. I thought Manny deserved a lot of credit for overcoming such difficult obstacles to finish.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 61
Like Scott Ward, Jeffery Foster also wanted to perform an Iron Butt certification ride within my 7/49 ride. Jeff had attempted a Bun Burner Gold ride the previous October, but fell short of his goal, taking 27 hours to complete the 1,500-mile ride. Jeff admitted he hadn't been properly prepared for the cold weather he'd encountered, and he'd tarried too long warming up at rest stops. Jeff had established two riding goals for 1998. The first was to complete a Bun Burner Gold ride, and the second was to complete the IBA National Parks Tour, which required visiting 50 or more National Parks in at least 25 different states in one year. A "passport" would have to be stamped at the visitor centre in each park.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 137
Before I announced plans for the 7/49, Pablo Garcia sent me an email complimenting me on "Against the Wind". He was interested in pursuing endurance riding because of the amount of riding that he could accomplish in a limited time:
"This will allow me to put a lot of effort into something I really love into a limited schedule. In other words, I once suggested to my wife that I wanted to take about a year off and break the world record for the number of countries visited by motorcycle. She promised that she would be nowhere in sight when I got back. So as you can see, endurance riding can work for me."
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 142
Norm had written:
I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like I was on that bike with him. It may be personal to him, but I have made it personal to me. I have followed his progress on his web pages in my waking hours at work and at home. I rode to Texarkana to meet him at midnight on Tuesday, getting back home at 3:30 a.m. and at work for an 8:00 a.m. meeting, but I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Those of us fortunate to have shared a few brief moments with him as he is hopefully making history, will no doubt feel like we played a small, small part in helping and encouraging him.
In his response, Ira wrote:
It never ceases to amaze me, this Internet. The line between cyber-reality and physical reality really gets cloudy sometimes. It's having very-long-range scanners, knowing almost minute-by-minute where Ron is and how he's doing. At the checkpoint, Ron mentioned the repair Paul Glaves made to the turn signal. Yup, heard about it. The big lightning storm that had him sidelined for a while? That, too. Indeed, it is riding along in the most vicarious way, and once in a while weaving between the cyber and the physical. And to dream the ride Ron is taking.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 155-6
I knew the script. But late this rainy night in Nevada, I was disregarding my own dictum about stopping when too tired to ride safely. I was pushing the edge of the envelope and it was bulging at the seams, threatening to tear. I didn't like doing this, but I didn't know what else to do.
Route 93 between Ely and Wendover has always been one of my favourite roads. Every time I've ridden it, I've felt there is something mystical about it. Riding the road has always made me think how fortunate I am to have discovered motorcycling and especially to have discovered endurance riding. I once told Barbara that if the sport killed me, I'd like to be cremated and have my ashes cast to the wind by a motorcyclist riding 100 mph on that route, from a spot overlooking the Great Salt Lake Desert in neighbouring Utah. How ironic that I was pushing my limits on the one highway, of all the highways in the world, where I had talked of having my ashes spread.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 161
Despite my fears, I fell asleep immediately and was awakened 90 minutes later by the Screaming Meanie. I felt very stiff as I attempted to rise from the bench, chalked it up to age, and limped toward my motorcycle. As tired as I was, when I approached the motorcycle, I was struck by the sheer beauty of the vehicle. It reminded me of the excitement I often feel when I walk into the garage after not having ridden for a while. At such times I wonder how I can love the sight of a machine so much. And then I remember that it's not just the machine, but the notion of adventure and excitement the vehicle invokes.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 194-5
When we were about 45 miles from Edmonton, a deer suddenly appeared directly in front of the motorcycle. We didn't see it until it was directly in front of us, as it was running at full speed across the road from heavy brush. There was no time to brake or to swerve to avoid hitting it. We were travelling about 60 mph when the impact occurred.
We expected the motorcycle to go down. My first thought after the impact was, "Is Barbara still on the bike?"
As the bike wobbled and began to lose stability, a conversation that I had with Steve Losofsky a few months before flashed through my mind.
The original owner of Reno BMW, Steve was an experienced flat-track racer and an expert rider. While on his way back to Nevada from a trip to Daytona Bike Week, Steve was our house guest. He told us that while riding to Texas in a construction zone in heavy rain, his motorcycle slipped into a rut caused by two adjacent uneven lanes. His motorcycle began to shimmy and he worried about losing control. "Reverting to my old racing days, I gave the bike full throttle," Steve related.
"I remembered that in a lot of situations, blasting through with maximum acceleration is better than slowing down."
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 215-6
When I hit the deer, the conversation flashed into my mind immediately. I remembered Steve standing at our kitchen counter, laughing and motioning with an exaggerated twist of his wrist and upper torso to emphasize how he managed to regain control of his motorcycle.
I cranked the accelerator fully open. After a moment, the bike stabilized and I slowed down and pulled to the side of the road. "Thank you, Steve Losofsky," I thought. "Thank you very much."
I brought the motorcycle to a stop about a tenth of a mile from the point of impact. "Oh the poor deer," Barbara lamented. "Do you think we killed it? What if it's just injured and suffering?"
I couldn't help but ask, "Do you have any idea just how lucky we are?"
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 216
I've never been convinced one way or the other about the effectiveness of deer whistles. But the only time I've struck a deer is also the only time I've ridden without them. I had intended to place a set of whistles of the type Jan Cutler at Reno BMW advocates, but hadn't gotten around to it before the ride. I don't intend to ride without them again.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 217
There was a shallow trench running parallel to each side of the highway. Recalling that it's safer to be in a depression in the event of a tornado, I headed for the trench. The wind at my back, I fought against it to resist being blown into the trench.
The storm raged as I sat in the gully in full riding gear. I got down as low as I could without entering the rising water. At least I knew I would be able to survive anything short of a tornado. I jumped, startled once again at the sound of a close thunderclap and brightness all around. I could smell ozone in the air.
A shudder of fear enveloped my body, from head to toe.
"What is there to be afraid of?" I thought. "The chances of being struck by lightning are probably infinitesimal now that I'm safely away from the motorcycle. And I'm not going to get any wetter by sitting here."
I tried to find humour in the situation. Sometimes I amaze myself when forced to acknowledge that in some bizarre way, I enjoy circumstances such as this. I enjoy every phenomenon nature proffers, including the fury and severity of her storms. They're an important part of a totality that I don't like to avoid. I'd have missed something important if I'd remained in Augusta while the storm passed. I'd have missed the excitement. I'd have missed the purity and genuineness of this magnificent event.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 221
I hit the switch to ensure that my heated handgrips were turned to the highest setting, then plugged in my electric vest. I turned the bike around and continued south. I've learned that electric heat can stave off discomfort when you're wet, provided you get settled into a position and don't shift around. You're still wet, but at least you're being warmed by moisture that's been heated by the electrics. But if you shift your body around at all and disturb the "cling" that's sticking your wet clothes to your body, you'll suffer an immediate chill until you've settled down again.
The same goes for gloves. As long as you maintain a constant pressure and position on the handlebars, the heated grips will keep your hands warm and comfortable, even when you're wet. But remove your hands from the grips to adjust something, and they'll be chilled for a while.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 224
After a few miles, the shoulder of the road turned white, where the hail hadn't yet melted. A little further, the road, too, turned white and I concentrated on keeping my tires in the black section of the road where the tires of other vehicles had cleared the ice. I had never before seen such vivid evidence of a hailstorm.
I was fortunate to have stopped when I did, rather than to have continued into what apparently was much more severe weather than I had experienced. As I cautiously negotiated my way through the slick, hail-strewn highway, I thought about the incredible good fortune enjoyed in my ten-year riding career. I wondered if God doesn't have a soft spot in his heart for motorcyclists.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 224-5
Entering a small valley west of Hwy 97, I recall that midday sun had changed the shadows of the trees lining the road. A few minutes later I would be cresting the hill ahead. I recall, too, there was a slight colour shift as if someone turned the intensity knob on the surrounding scenery. Then it happened, an experience that would alter forever my perception the symbiosis of man, machine, and life in general.
As if in a dream, I hovered briefly high above the Beemer looking directly down on the rider- me! There was no feeling of fear or disorientation, in fact, the unusual part of the episode was that it felt calming and natural. Ahead, over the rise, I could see from my vantage point above the bike that a logging truck had overturned, scattering its load along the road. It hadn't come to a rest yet; the truck was on its right side, sliding, while disgorging logs in all directions.
Then I was back on the bike, ascending the grade and approaching the crest.
Immediately, I slowed and shifted down to 4th, 3rd, 2nd in rapid succession. I crested the hill and still had to brake to avoid a log that was crosswise in the middle of my lane. There was no path around the obstacles, the shoulder was blocked, and both lanes were impassable. The driver of the truck was pulling himself out of the cab- the accident had happened a moment before I arrived. The driver had minor injuries and was concerned about getting flares out to warn approaching drivers, which we did immediately. He marvelled that I avoided hitting the logs. I was still sorting it out.
All manner of conjecture and explanations have been offered. ESP, clairvoyance, good vibrations, a figment a fatigued mind- I reject none of these out of hand, they may all be part of it. I only know what occurred and I can add that similar things have happened since, although not as dramatic. And, they have occurred under similar circumstances.
The motorcycle is probably just another door amongst ways to experience the other side. Yet in this scenario it was me, a beloved machine, and a blissful ride that opened my perception to wider possibilities and lead me to write these lines:
Questions, so many questions
And in their answering
The awesome suggestions
Of more and better questions.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 225-6
As I crossed the border, entered Wyoming, and began climb toward Teton Pass, I was overcome with an extraordinary sense of happiness and serenity. I welcomed the chilly mountain air and the solitude the ride provided. I celebrated each twist and turn in the highway as I shifted my weight and altered pressure on the handlebars. It was just after midnight and the PIAA driving lights had been blazing brightly for a half-hour, illuminating the mountain road and mitigating the dangers of riding such a road at high speed at night. I increased my speed and leaned into the sharp curves, riding more aggressively than at any time since approaching Alaska three weeks earlier.
As my speed and altitude rose, so too, did my spirits. I opened the throttle even more, clearly challenged now by the twists and turns as I was propelled toward the top of the mountain. I wanted to race to the summit as quickly as I could, then stop to smell the roses. I had been rushing since leaving Edmonton. I wanted to indulge in private, quiet thoughts, totally undisturbed high in these majestic mountains. I wanted to reflect on how my abundant treasure of experiences had been multiplied by the events of the last several weeks. As the motorcycle catapulted me toward the peak, there were signs warning that stopping is forbidden. At the summit, there's an area for trucks to stop to test their brakes before descending the steep downgrade ahead. I glanced up and was astounded at the brightness and clarity of the stars. I pulled to the side of the road, into the brake test area. I didn't want to miss this opportunity to look at the stars right then and there.
I removed my gloves and helmet and looked at the heavens. The sky never looked brighter or more beautiful. The magnificent motionless Milky Way flowed silently toward the southern sky like a pearly, opalescent river. Scorpio was in full view, with Antares, the "Fourth of July Star", twinkling red at the heart of the constellation, the most prominent star in the southern sky.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 229-230
I'm very fortunate for Barbara's attitude. I've asked her to summarize it.
I would be devastated if anything ever happened to Ron, but this doesn't preclude me from respecting his right to decide for himself what kind of risks he wants to take, or what level of adventure he wants in his life. If it would make me happier if he gave up riding, but would diminish his happiness, on what basis could I decide that my happiness is more important than his? Also, I want him to be the person he is. My favourite quote sums this up: "Never destroy any aspect of personality, for what you think is the wild branch may the heart of the tree".
I worry a lot and I pray a lot when Ron is on a long ride, but I also believe in fate. As human beings, we give ourselves too much credit for being able to control things. Ron acknowledges that being on a motorcycle is more dangerous than being at home in an easy chair, but if something bad is going to happen, it can happen even if you are doing something completely routine and safe. What is meant to be, will be.
On the positive side, I've been a beneficiary of Ron's sport. I've met some of the most interesting, original, and colourful characters of my life. Ron has made some very good friends who have demonstrated they would do anything for him. I wouldn't trade this for anything.
Against The Clock Ron Ayers p 243
"Over the years we have slowed down because it's not just about the riding," Lisa says who, teamed with Simon, has ridden 460,000km on the trip so far, breaking the record which previously set at 162,000km. It's the stopping and meeting - we've had such wonderful experiences when we least expected them. Like waking up in the morning on a Mongolian mountain and being distracted by a sound, only to realise it's some old Mongolian riding bare back on a pony.
"So you offer him some tea and he squats down, wearing the fur of the Mongol empire. But it's black tea and he doesn't like it, and spits it out (laughs)."
The nomadic lifestyle of the two may strike you as extreme and by all accounts it is. They live off the smell of an oily rag, joining the dots financially while joining the dots on an atlas. Over the years they have learned to benefit in various ways from what they are doing.
Free Wheeling Magazine #1. p34
Simon and Lisa are a resourceful pair, but this story about finding tyres in the most unlikely of places is a ripper.
"We came through Mongolia, Kazakhstan, back into Central Russia, Kurdistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and by the time we got to Islamabad over the Silk Road we'd spent the last month wondering what we are going to do about tyres,
Simon says. "The white on each front and rear tyre was coming through, and there was nobody, anywhere, that could give us tyres. We were screwed.
"We got on the internet forums, asking anyone out there for help, and amazingly we got a post saying, "this may be of no use to you, but we were in Islamabad and we changed our tyres. We took the old ones off that were in a pretty bad way, and where we were camped there was a rubbish tip next door, so we threw them over the fence. They should be there.
"So he gave us the GPS point from where he was camped, we found it, worked out where the tyres would have been thrown, and located them. We had new tyres; they were the right size, a bit sun damaged, but better than what we had. That got us all the way through Pakistan and India. The tyres were covered in shit and slime, and the stench was just terrible, but you do what you have to do. The first new set of tyres since was when we turned up in Australia."
Free Wheeling Magazine #1. p36
Simon and Lisa are more qualified than anyone to give you pointers on a successful distance adventure ride. Here are their top five essentials, some might surprise you.
Multi-fuel stove: "It's basically a mountaineering stove," Lisa says. "Our one is made by MSR, called a Dragon Fly. It packs small, but most importantly can burn any fuel. Unleaded, diesel, even vodka. If you have a quick release connector on your petrol tank, you can cook. If it's a constant heat, you can re-heat food.
But if you can adjust the flame, you can cook. If you have crap water, you can boil it. If you have snow, you can melt it. Having clean water is vital."
Flexibility: "A degree of flexibility is essential, " Simon says. "Your adventure really starts when all your plans have turned to shit. It's often when you meet the best people. Take your expectations, put them one side, then the journey really begins. Expectations are purely there to disappoint you."
Confidence: "You must have a genuine and founded self belief, and ability to problem solve," Simon says. "A lot of people are amazed at some of the problems we have been able to overcome, and presume we had these skills prior to departure - not so. If you have that level of self belief and confidence, there's very little you cannot do.
Camera: "Take the biggest and best camera you can find. At the end of the trip you have memories and photographs," Simon says. "Be enthusiastic and creative, and learn about your camera. You want to share those images with clarity. These days there are great cameras for very little.
A good riding partner: "It sounds cliched, but a really good riding partner makes a trip," says Simon. "An awesome experience shared is worth double than if you were on your own."
Free Wheeling Magazine #1. p37
It's late on a blazingly hot Sunday afternoon as I take shelter with Austin in the cool air-con of the local chicken shop. It only takes a couple of sips of his Passiona to see Austin's intense belief in the everyman bringing the extraordinary bubble to the surface.
"You have these people that put themselves on television, and in their minds they think they are doing something incredible; it's painful, and they get away with it!... Meanwhile the really cool people are being ignored," he says.
Maybe it's the heat, but at that moment a classic Hunter S. Thompson quote completely engulfs my thinking: "The Edge, there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over." Is this their intent, to try to explain that true adventure is possible for the everyman, to show us 'the edge' isn't as Far And Away as we'd been led to believe?
Free Wheeling Magazine #1. p54
When my mood gets too hot and I find myself wandering beyond control I pull out my motor-bike and hurl it top-speed through these unfit roads for hour after hour.
My nerves are jaded and gone near dead, so that nothing less than hours of voluntary danger will prick them into life.
T. E Lawrence in She's A Bad Motorcycle frontispiece
Riding on the back of a friend's bike through southern Germany's excessive picturesqueness, I took in the passing sights secure in the knowledge that he was as able a rider as they make. We took the turns at a good lean, overcoming an instinctual fear to emerge into the pleasure of having done so. Then a light drizzle started washing the streets to a gleam, and everything changed. My seat noticed it first, a slight side-to- side motion that I almost thought was in my head. When we stopped, I asked if I had in fact felt something, and my friend just looked pale in response. So I mounted up behind another member of the party, whose experience was equal but whose rear tire was less bald. Confidence returned, even though the rain now fell in hard sheets. The beer at lunch I allowed myself as consolation for being a mere passenger was having its effect under the canopy of trees. The next thing I knew my hands thrust themselves into the air. Every sinew pulled itself tight. In a flash the seat had gone out from under me, shimmied curtly side to side to side. Then a second it was over, and we were going on as before. Who knows? It could have been a bit of patched paving, slippery tar, some chameleon oil behind the sheen of wet.
Melissa Pierson in She's A Bad Motorcycle p3
The small glow emanating from the lighted dials is a portable beacon that remains both ahead and calmly with you. The sight of the instrument panel's little light in the greater dark puts me in mind of a tiny spaceship floating on its way through a benighted universe of unfathomed spread. The headlight glances off the slick leaves at the edge of the road, and what is beyond that quick beam waits there for you to arrive upon it and briefly launch it into existence before consigning it back to what is behind in the black.
Melissa Pierson in She's A Bad Motorcycle p4
But Hell's Angels started riding Harley-Davidsons mostly because, unlike today, they didn't have much choice. In 1957, it was either ride a Harley or settle for a Triumph or BSA. They'd already stopped building Indians. It's always been important for Hell's Angels to ride American-made machines. In terms of pure workmanship, personally I don't like Harleys. I ride them because I'm in the club, and that's the image, but if I could, I would seriously consider riding a Honda ST1100 or a BMW. We really missed the boat not switching over to the Japanese models when they began building bigger bikes. I'll usually say, "%&@# Harley-Davidson. You can buy an ST1100 and it will do 110 miles per hour right from the factory all day long." The newest "rice rockets" can carry 140 horsepower to the rear wheel, and easily do 180 miles per hour right out of the box. While its probably too late to switch over now, it would have been a nice move, because Japanese bikes today are so much cheaper and better built. However, Japanese motorcycles don't have as much personality.
Sonny Barger in She's A Bad Motorcycle p35
I had drifted into the Pagans earlier that Spring. I had sold my car and bought a motorcycle. A 650 cubic centimeter Triumph. Harley- Davidson is forever associated with the outlaw image. And for good reason. When you saw a pack of outlaws most of them were riding Hogs. But the truth is that if you rode a Harley you needed a car. Hogs broke down a lot, and they were hell on wet ground or snow.
The Triumph and BSA (that's pronounced Beeser) started in all weather. The front ends were the best ever made. You could even ride them on snow and ice. Just put your feet down and glide along slow. If rear wheel went sideways, you could catch your balance with your feet and straighten the bike out. Try this with a hog, and you broke your leg. But best of all the Triumph and BSA were also designed for off-road use. If a cop was chasing you down the back roads of Berks County, you could take off through a cornfield. You could never get away with that on a hog.
I rode through the winter. And I froze. On weekends my Triumph was the only bike parked outside the Gaslight East on Hempstead Turnpike. In the summer the place was a motorcycle hangout with fifty bikes lined up in the street. But in the winter these guys travelled by car. They weren't outlaws.
John Hall in She's A Bad Motorcycle p177
I am a man, in a time when it has become anachronistic to be masculine, I am a man.
It's my fifty-seventh birthday and I have heart disease.
It had not and has not yet killed me and to my great surprise I am somehow two years older than Columbus was when he died. Twenty-two years older than Mozart.
I have accomplished more than I ever thought I would. Certainly more - considering the rough edges of my life - than I deserve to have accomplished. My children are through college and launched, my wife is set for life, and yet.
And yet. Just that. An unsettling thought, like a burr under a saddle, rubbing incessantly until at last it galls and still it was and is there...
There had been a time when I was content. Not completely, and only briefly, but at least enough to settle, to accept, to live - shudder - within an accepted parameter. Then it changed and in the change I learned a fundamental truth about myself; I saw a weakness that was a strength at the same time.
It is very strange what saves a man.
I had a friend caught in the blind throes of bottom-drinking alcoholism who was going to kill himself, had the barrel of the .357 in his mouth and the hammer back and pressure on the trigger, ready to go out when he saw a spider weaving a web and became interested in it and forgot why he wanted to kill himself. Another friend, a soldier, was saved on a night patrol in Korea because Chinese soldiers ate raw garlic and he smelled them coming and hid. As I drove into Mankato, there was a Harley dealer, and that dealer saved me as sure as if it had been a spider or garlic.
Gary Paulsen in She's A Bad Motorcycle p181-2
"I'll buy it." It was out before I thought. I couldn't stop it. Years of waiting were in back of it, a frustration-powered blurt. "Now."
"I don't know how much the boss is asking for it."
"Go find out." He left but I stayed with the bike until he came back. "Nineteen" he said. "Nineteen thousand plus tax and license.
I nodded. "Done." And then I thought of the first place we'd bought when we went north to live in the bush and run dogs; the whole farm, eighty acres and buildings, cost less than this bike. We lived then on two thousand dollars a year and all the beaver and venison we could eat. We could have lived for nearly ten years on what this Harley was costing.
"Half an hour," the mechanic said, smiling like a drunk who has met somebody to drink with. "Just have to check her out."
Gary Paulsen in She's A Bad Motorcycle p187
I felt strange but in some way whole. It was like an extension of my body, and I cradled down in blue steel and leather and chrome and sat that way for a time, perhaps a full minute, and let the bike become part of me. I know how that sounds but it was true. I would meet hundreds of men and tour women who owned Harleys and they all said the same - that the bike became an extension, took them, held them. This is one hell of a long way, I thought, from clothes pegging playing cards on the fork of a bicycle to get the sound of a motor when the spokes clipped them, but it had all started then. The track from that first rattling-slap noise in the spokes led inevitably to here, to me sitting on Harley, sure and straight as any law in physics.
I turned the key, reached down and pulled the choke out to half a click, made sure the bike was in neutral, took a breath and let it half out, like shooting an M1 on the range. Then I touched the starter button with my thumb.
Gary Paulsen in She's A Bad Motorcycle p189
If you have a Harley, there ain't a damn thing wrong with you unless you're a blatant asshole. But even if you are an asshole, a Harley can personality spackle in that it will cover over any deficiencies. That's why balding midlife crisis boys get them.
Sadly enough, Harleys are usually the bikes you see broken down on the side of the road. I think they're better for riding around your block and showing off like a mating bird, but I don't know how far I'd wanna go. A whole lotta myth, and not known for being reliable. But you won't have to tap on people's shoulders and tell them how cool you are, because a Harley will do it for you. Once you get a Harley you don't even need a relationship.
Erica Lopez in She's A Bad Motorcycle p235
Later that afternoon I had my first riding scare of the trip. The extremely high temperatures all day had softened the road tar in Holbrook, Arizona to a consistency where my front tire began to pick up wet tar and sling it up under the fender. The road surface actually got slippery and I almost lost control of the bike a few times right in town. The sticky tire would pick up gravel and sand that gradually built up on the wheel like a snowball rolling downhill. It built up to where the front wheel began to scrape and bind against the inside of the fender. I managed to get through town without mishap, but the tar stayed under the fender for several days and the clearance was reduced to almost nothing. For days every time the tire picked up even the smallest stone it would rip loudly through the close clearance and the wheel would bind a little. That night I had tar on the engine, the windshield, the tank, my shoes, and even on my face.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p12
In that next 161 miles I didn't see a house, a car, or even a sign that anyone had ever been there, except that someone must have built the narrow dirt road and the small single-lane wooden bridges across the many brooks and white-water streams. Several hours I enjoyed total solitude. I was able to maintain between 50 and 55 MPH most of the way. I stopped at some the most beautiful spots, shut off the engine, put the bike on the center stand in the middle of the road, and I proceeded to oil the chain. There were no sounds at all. I would look around for several minutes admiring the incredible beauty and serenity of it all. The dark-blue lakes reflected a mirror image of the evergreen trees and snowcapped mountains in the background. The lakes were so clear I could see pebbles very clearly through several feet of water. I took many photos and regretted not having brought a better camera.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p26
When I stopped for gas at Jake's Corner, I saw a sign at the pump, "Do not operate pump yourself." Another sign said, "Free ice cream with fill-up." Jake didn't come out right away but I figured if I ignored the first sign and pumped my own gas he'd probably get mad and I wouldn't get the free ice cream. He looked annoyed when he finally did come out and he said gruffly, "Whadda you want?" He was a big, burly guy with long red hair and a big red handlebar mustache. When I said I wanted a fill-up he jerked the nozzle from the pump and jammed it hard into my already open tank with a single sweeping motion. He put only about three gallons in the tank, which didn't quite fill it. As he was hanging the nozzle back on the pump I asked if he would please top off my tank. He answered gruffly, "You're full!" and he put his hand out for the money. He scowled when I handed him a credit card because he had to walk back to the office to get the imprint and it was uphill all the way, with some steps included. After signing the receipt I asked politely if I could have my free ice cream now. He stood for a few moments glaring at me but finally he walked back up into the office a second time for the tiny cone. He returned and handed it over very begrudgingly. I smiled and said, "Thank you."
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p30
That night I adjusted the spokes for the first time and the chain for the third time. About ten spokes on the rear wheel and four on the front were quite loose.
The rear tire was totally bald and almost showing its casing. I noticed several deep rock cuts that did reach the casing. Whitehorse was now my only hope for a fresh tire since none were available in Dawson City.
Day 19 - The weather was perfect when I left Dawson at 9 AM. I definitely had to forego earlier plans of a ride up the Dempster Highway due to the condition of the tire. I learned that the Dempster was completed to just beyond the Arctic Circle at Mile 245. Gas was available at two maintenance camps - at Miles 129 and 231.
My problem now was getting to Whitehorse 355 miles of rough dirt road away. I spent a nerve-wracking day dodging millions of sharp stones on the Klondike Highway.
I tried not to think about how much I might get torn up if the tire blew and I came into contact with some of the sharp stones in the road at that speed. I kept pushing between 60 and 65 MPH though, because I was worried that the cycle shop, if there was one, might close before I got there. That evening I found a sports shop and bought the only 400X18 motorcycle tire they had which was a soft-composition Yokohama sport tire. I changed it that night outside my hotel.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p40-1
I stopped at a McDonald's for a mid-morning snack although I also snacked on peanuts while I was moving. I would put both feet up on the highway pegs and hold the jar between my knees to remove the cap. I could then drink the peanuts from the jar as I rode along. I couldn't possibly take both hands off the handlebars at the same time because the front end of the bike would immediately start to wobble and shimmy no matter what speed I was travelling, which was due in large part to the poor weight distribution.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p53
At around Mile 200 I was surprised to see headlights in my rear view mirror through the snow and dense fog. I was struggling with both feet down at the time and travelling less than 10 MPH. He didn't close the gap very fast but eventually he came up alongside and we both stopped. It was the maintenance superintendent from Eagle Plains in a VW bug. He said he had been trying to figure out what was making those strange tracks. He said he would see three tracks, then sometimes two, occasionally only one. He laughed and said, "Mostly three." He asked if I was OK. I responded by asking how far it was to Eagle Plains. He said, "Maybe another 30 miles." I answered, "Oh hell. I guess if I've come this far, I can make another 30 miles, as long as it doesn't get much worse." He said if I were not in within an hour or so from the time he gets in, he'd send help. He wished me good luck and slowly moved away with his wheels churning in the mud.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p65
I was totally dispirited and somewhat depressed that morning as I climbed into the Canadian Rockies in heavy rain and very dark overcast. I was actually wondering if God was still with me. It seemed as though I was having such a terrible time of it with the foul weather and horrible road conditions on this trip. Suddenly a perfectly round opening appeared directly overhead in the otherwise dark overcast and rain. The opening was the size of a football field, exposing a bright blue sky. It was still raining and dark everywhere else, except directly over my head. The hole seemed to get larger as it followed me for almost a mile up the road, drenching me with warm sunshine I was awestruck, as I took it as a reply from God. Then just as suddenly the huge gap closed, it got dark again, and the rain and darkness returned. I was alone on the road at the time and no one saw it but me. I was really shaken and I broke down and cried.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p80
I also learned early on the trip when not to use my cruise control, which I had been experimenting with on my new machine. Sometimes while travelling on straight roads I would set the cruise control at a comfortable speed; and later after having ridden several miles with it on, I would forget about it. Once in West Virginia as I approached a fairly tight turn I got well into the turn to the crucial point where the side almost touches the road and suddenly the cruise control decided that I needed a healthy application of throttle. It was pretty scary. That's when I stopped messing with it.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p104
Just before pulling up to a traffic light near Carrnel our four-lane detour, I noticed a young guy in a car behind us hanging out of the driver's window screaming obscenities. He jumped out at the light and ran toward me, yelling and using the foulest language imaginable at the top of his lungs. He kept getting angrier and louder as he screamed something about my cutting him off. It was a real bad scene at the crowded intersection. I couldn't remember what I had done to bring on his tirade. I figured the best thing to do was to calmly say I was sorry; but that only seemed to enrage him even more, and I thought at any moment he was going to take a swing. I was wearing an open-face helmet with both hands on the controls and Lilli was on the back. I felt if I were alone at the time and 40 or even 20 years younger, to quote the famous mayor of Carmel, he would have "made my day".
After we got out of there, I asked Bud what I had done. He said, "Nothing. Didn't you see his eyes? He was strung out on something." I was watching his hands more than his eyes. I recalled reading about California motorists who had been shot in similar confrontations.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p116
From Atascadero we headed east on a road that I thought was our route; but about a mile out of town the road I took a sudden left turn without warning, and we charged straight ahead onto some soft dirt. It took almost two hundred feet to stop. Realizing that a road without signs couldn't possibly be the state highway, we went back into town to find the right road.
It led us through several miles of tight curves and some of the strangest terrain I had ever seen. It twisted and turned through miles of high grassy mounds and ridges. There was a sign at the end saying that late movie idol James Dean, who loved to manoeuvre his Porche along that road, was killed in a high-speed car crash near there. Later we saw another mile-wide strip of the same odd terrain extending north and south for many miles, and we learned that it was the San Andreas Fault line.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p117
I think the "turnout law" in California is a great idea, but all drivers don't observe it. The law apparently says it's unlawful to delay five or more vehicles on two-lane roads. Several times we were crawling along in a string of more than a dozen cars, campers and trailers for miles, led by someone moving at a snail's pace.
Turnout areas are provided for slow vehicles to pull over so others can pass, but it doesn't always happen.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p118
The Morenci mine near Clifton is one of the largest open-pit copper mines in the world. Billions of tons of ore have been extracted from Morenci, which is still an active mine. Trains that haul copper ore from the mine look so small you have to look carefully to spot them, even through binoculars, as they move around in the tremendous pit. US Route 666 from Morenci to Alpine has more turns and tight switchback curves than any road I have ever travelled. We noticed one S-curve sign in the mountains that said "10 MPH - Next 6 Miles."
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p123
Near the top I met a four-wheel-drive pickup coming toward me on a very narrow section of the road. It was the only vehicle I met going in either direction. I figured I could probably back down a little easier than he could back up the hill, due to poor traction on the loose stones. Holding my front brake as it occasionally skidded, I backed down very slowly for about 50 feet to a shoulder on the cliff-side of the road. I had to lean the bike toward the edge so his side mirror wouldn't hit my arm on the way by. I could see down the scary edge of the cliff again between my forearm and my leg.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p138
I almost lost the bike [a GL1200 Goldwing] when I stopped on a steep incline at the cemetery gate and the front brake wouldn't hold on the loose gravel. We were on the bike together as it slid backwards down the hill faster and faster with the front wheel locked and dragging all the way. I managed to hold it upright with both feet also skidding backwards. The bike finally stopped without falling over, which seemed like a small miracle on the rutted, washed out terrain.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p155
The sun came out after lunchtime and it was nice enough except for a strong head wind that cut my gas mileage considerably. I came up behind an older 1100cc Gold Wing travelling in the same direction. I was doing about 10 miles over the speed limit and was about to pass him when I noticed it was a cop on a motorcycle. I followed him for several miles until he turned off.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p204
That afternoon I came upon the largest Tramo Peligroso sign of my trip. It was before the first of three ominous-looking temporary pipe bridges I had to cross. The bridge was made up of several long, eight-inch-diameter steel pipes, laid across the span. Several pipes were used for each wheel track. When heavy trucks or buses crossed very slowly, the pipes would bend under their weight. I chose two pipes that were butted fairly close together to ride between and I kept both feet down for security. It was tricky and I wondered what it would be like in the rain when the pipes are covered with slick mud. I looked down between the pipes and saw water running several feet below the bridge.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p210
Sometimes I could see for only about 200 feet. Another accident held up traffic for about 15 minutes on the Houston beltway. Later a guy in a pickup truck spun out directly in front of me. First I was following his taillights and a moment later I was looking at his headlights.
Besides the pouring rain, there was a fierce crosswind. I got into some heavy truck traffic and got thrown around quite a bit. The random wind currents around the trucks were so strong that my tires kept breaking loose sideways and the bike was doing a ballet as the tires would break traction one way and then the other. The deep furrows in the road and the rumble knobs between the lanes didn't help.
After I got out on I-10 I tried three times to pass a truck, but every time I got even with his front bumper, I was struck by a heavy blast of wind from his front end that would hit the bike so hard the front wheel would break traction. I was finally able to get by when we went behind some trees, which temporarily blocked the strong crosswind.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p225
We learned at dinner that his name was Mario Francisco del Castro Filho. He was an entrepreneur in his home country, a dealer in boats. He was a very interesting guy. He told us about a motorcycle accident he had a few years earlier, after which he was in a coma for three days. Before the accident he was able to speak fluent French and English; but as a result of the accident he got total amnesia and completely forgot both languages. Although he was relearning English on this trip, he struggled with it. He was headed for the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta where he was entered in the competition with the Brazilian rowing team. He said
he had been sleeping on the ground in his bag, and he was travelling a lot at night because of the heavy RV traffic and road construction during the day.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p233
It was raining and 48 degrees when we rode into Jasper for breakfast at a fancy restaurant there. A group of Swiss people from a tour bus came out of the restaurant about the same time we did. We talked with a few of them as we prepared to leave. One guy kept smiling and saying to me in poor English, "You're goving?" I answered twice, "Yes, we're going." He kept saying it like I didn't hear him the first time and each time I answered the same way. I thought he might be a little simple, or maybe hard of hearing, but finally his wife, who spoke English clearly, enunciated, "He asked if this is your Gold Wing." Meanwhile he was smiling and nodding. As we were pulling out he said "Goot fahrt!" which Jake told me later was German for "Have a good trip."
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p236-7
The thought processes involved in deciding to take a 3300 mile trip on a 225cc dirt bike get a bit complicated. It involves a lot of "been there, done that", and wanting to do something different while staying within the general definition of adventure touring. Having been to Alaska six times on big bikes I once said that if I ever go again it would probably be on a 200cc motorcycle just to be different. But then I may never get the desire to go to Alaska again and I may never own a 200cc motorcycle. Besides, it would probably take me at least two weeks just to get there on that size bike.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p239
I soon learned that it was necessary to shift down on many of the hills. The little engine sang soprano as it whirred loudly in the lower gears over Storm King Mountain behind West Point. Coming down the north side it let out a high-pitched whine as my speed edged up over 65 MPH. I swore I could hear it saying, "Hold on old man, we're going to Labrador." I stopped briefly at Jim Moroney's shop in Newburgh before heading into the Catskills. I got a few chuckles and a few expressions of skepticism about the little bike, but I think no one doubted my resolve - my sanity maybe but not my resolve.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p240
It did start to rain near the first construction activity about 30 miles out, where a large piece of machinery was cutting a swath through the trees with a huge cutting wheel. The machine threw chunks of bark and branches all over the place. I caught a piece of something on the end of my toe that was quite painful. Around 50 miles out a huge backhoe was digging on one side of the road and depositing its bucket loads on the other side. We had to time our passing to be between swings of the huge bucket.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p247
About 20 miles past the construction I thought I saw a deep washout across the road in front of me as we were travelling about 40 MPH. My clouded, rain-covered face shield blurred my already poor vision. I thought I didn't want to hit the ditch at that speed, so I went for the rear brake. Unfortunately I hit it a little too hard, throwing the bike into a slight broad-slide. Consequently it was crossed up when it struck the minor washout and I did a really ugly departure from the bike, landing on my head. Jake said when the bike landed it hit first on one side and then did a complete somersault, landing on the other side. It's amazing how much that little machine can take, not to mention my 72-year-old body. I bounced along the ground and heard my helmet hit the dirt road three times before I finally came to rest. As Jake was picking me up, he said I was lucky I landed on my head; otherwise, I might have really gotten hurt! The only damage that resulted from the spill was that the brake pedal got bent, which Jake straightened while I regained my composure. I sustained a slight concussion and we had to stop a few times to rest when I got dizzy and nauseated each time we took off.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p247-8
I noticed that from riding a few hours with bare hands, the strong return spring on the throttle had caused all of the heavy skin on the entire palm of my right hand to break loose from the flesh like a huge blister. It meant that I would have to use my heavier gloves and I'd have to hold the throttle mainly with my fingers and thumb until the skin a chance to reattach itself. It also meant no more riding with bare hands until I could get different return springs installed.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p254
It rained the entire day between Beaver Creek and Watson Lake, 570 miles of the roughest part of the Alaska Highway. Most of the dirt in the 22 miles of construction was soft from the rain and offered no better handling than the loose gravel on the way up. At least there was no dust and it was still early, so there wasn't much machinery working and I rode through most of it between 65 and 70 MPH.
The road surface was particularly rough around Haines Junction and Lake Kluane. Going across some of the huge breaks in the pavement at 75, the GS would let out a loud "Brrrrumf," as the paralevers and cantilevers soaked it up like it wasn't there. Even though I had several extra pounds of air in each tire, the sound it made was sometimes unnerving.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p262-3
I left the co-op store totally exhausted and thinking, "Oh well, it could be worse; it could be raining with strong crosswinds instead of the head winds." Almost like magic, the strong winds changed to the side and heavy rainsqualls started. I cut my speed to 70 and a few times down to 65 when the crosswinds got up to 40 and 50 MPH. Having had the Gold Wing break traction once with both wheels at the same time in similar conditions, I was very leery of what could happen next. The BMW was about 250 pounds lighter than the Gold Wing, and my tall tank bag, high trunk, and back-seat luggage all contributed to giving it a huge silhouette and making it want to act like a kite, wind-surfing me across the prairie. I had to constantly struggle for control and I worked for every mile.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p267
It got the most hair-raising when trucks coming the other way at the same high speed would momentarily block the wind and I would become entangled in their turbulence. I would be instinctively making the necessary corrections behind the truck when all of a sudden I would be spit out the other end; which left me to struggle with regaining control on the wet, slippery road, while the crosswinds would again hit me hard from the side. I'd laugh about it at the time, but after a few of those I tried to find a different track whenever a big truck approached. The tire tracks on my side were usually filled with water, there was a lot of loose sand along the shoulder, and the center of the lane was shiny with oil drippings; so there wasn't a clear track anywhere, and I was continually aware that the wind could knock the bike out from under me at any moment.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p267
I also had problems with my eyesight in Saskatchewan whenever I passed long trucks. I couldn't see far enough to get clear view for my pass and sometimes I would think I had a clear shot when I would start passing a truck moving around 70 or 75 around 80, I would realize that the truck was a tandem rig with two trailers and a huge 12-wheel dolly between the trailers. Some of those rigs were more than 150 feet long. I'd usually have the throttle screwed on all the way; but when I would be 3/4 of the way by, I would then see someone coming fast from the opposite direction. It would be far too late to change my mind and drop back, so I'd have to continue my pass. Before I could get all the way by, the oncoming car would be there, and I would have to tuck in close to the truck's cab. The other vehicle would have to take to the shoulder, usually with his horn on high. I think they should either ban that length truck from 2-lane roads or have a sign on the back informing motorists of the length of the rig; but with my eyesight, I probably wouldn't be able to read the sign anyway.
Motorcycling Stories Piet Boonstra p268
Howard had a racer's bias against touring. He campaigned, sometimes successfully, a highly tuned Honda 350 Four against droves of "off-brand ring-dings" on Midwest road circuits. He thought touring a tedious penance for some unspecified sin committed in an earlier life. He also feared and distrusted venerable British Twins.
Howard's last word of advice was that I send a Honda Gold Wing to the post office in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and then pray that I made it that far so I could change horses en route. No thanks, I said. I'd ridden a Gold Wing.
Too easy. Like taking a tram up the Eiger, instead of climbing the face.
Anybody could get to Seattle on a Gold Wing. Farrah, for-Gods-sake, Fawcett-Majors could get there on a Gold Wing. It was adventure I was after, not trip insurance.
Leanings Peter Egan p15
There was some rain gear, minimum clothes, and a carefully chosen tool kit. No compass, snakebite kit, or spare shoe laces. Travelling light on a motorcycle demands ruthless restraint, a fine sense of asceticism, and a big wad of colourful plastic credit cards. We left before sunup on a Saturday morning.
Two hours of ghostly pre-dawn gloom swirled past, and then at 7 am. the Twin delivered us to the crest of the palisades above the Mississippi River Valley. The air was cool, but the first rays of the sun warmed our backs and began to burn away the mist. Only the towers of the bridges below rose out of the fog. The hills on the opposite bank were golden green in the morning sun.
"Not bad!" I shouted over my shoulder.
"What?" my wife replied. We were to have many such conversations in the miles ahead.
Leanings Peter Egan p16
I loved my Honda 50. It was a 1964 step-through, C100, two-tone blue, with 6,000 miles on the odometer. I bought it from a doctor who was cleaning his garage and wasn't sure if anyone would want the little thing, but took a chance on throwing an ad in the paper. His doubts were understandable. Who, after all, would want a used $75 machine that takes almost no maintenance, is reliable as a stone (though slightly faster), and takes the owner to work and back all week for 37 cents?
The day I drove out to look at the machine it was sitting in the doctor's driveway, and even as I drove up I could see that the bike was in mint condition. It nearly brought tears to my eyes. My Volkswagen was still dieseling as I wrote out the cheque.
Leanings Peter Egan p23
My first gas stop, on the second morning, revealed that the Honda had guzzled no less than half a gallon during the 80 miles we'd covered the previous day, at a cost of 32 cents. That was 160 mpg. John was numb. "Thirty- two cents? That's crazy! Hell, I spent over a dollar on granola bars yesterday, just so I'd have enough energy to pedal this bike."
He stared at the Honda with a troubled frown, as if trying to grasp some searing new truth. "That's plain madness. You can't make a gas tank leak that slowly, much less run a vehicle."
Leanings Peter Egan p27-8
Just outside of town I stopped to install some ear plugs I'd bought to ward off total deafness on the long trip. After five minutes, I had to stop and take them out. They worked too well; I couldn't hear a thing. They made riding surreal, and eerily quiet. For all I knew, my exhaust header had fallen off and a broken rod was hammering my block to pieces. I began to fantasize engine and chassis noises, much the way someone wearing stereo headphones constantly imagines that the phone and doorbell are ringing.
Like those early airline pilots who objected to enclosed cockpits, I preferred to hear the wind in the wires and ignore the instruments.
Leanings Peter Egan p34
When I couldn't stand it any more I sold my 160 and bought a sports car- a 1959 Triumph TR-3 with no side curtains and a hole the size of a cannonball in the otherwise opaque rear window of the convertible top. The Triumph, of course, was no warmer than the Honda, but since it never ran more than three minutes at a time I never had a chance to get really cold. Also, when you tapped the horn button the steering wheel began to smoulder and melt, which added a touch of comfort in cold weather. The wiring harness finally burned up and I sold the car for a tremendous profit and bought myself another bike; a 305 Superhawk. By that time it was summer. I was done with winter riding for good.
I took the sheet off the Norton, dumped in a gallon of stale lawnmower gas, strapped its trickle-charged battery back under the seat, and went upstairs to dress. I put on all the clothes I owned and then went down to the garage to get my waxed-cotton Belstaff jacket. My wife won't let me keep it in the regular coat closet because she says it smells like creosote. I wrapped a scarf around my face and buckled my helmet. The Norton's anaemic electric starter went "dit," so I started the bike with just enough kicks to steam up my face shield with hot panting breath.
Leanings Peter Egan p48
Motorcyclists in cold weather are always in a quandary over their speed. Should they ride fast and get it over with, enduring the ravages of high-speed wind, or should they ride slowly, prolonging a slightly less terrible agony.
Jim had chosen Slow Death. Coming down the highway his bike looked like one of those lone cavalry horses returning to the fort with a dead rider full of arrows slumped in its saddle, stopping here and there to nibble on sagebrush. I'd never seen Jim ride so slowly, or so stiffly. And I'd never seen a motorcycle turn a corner without leaning, but Jim did it as he pulled into the parking lot. He pulled to a stop and sat on his bike; just sat, not bothering to shut the engine off, as though he expected some kind of emergency ground crew to run out of the restaurant and lift him off his Commando. No help arrived, so he slowly reached for the key and turned it off. A minute later he tilted his head downward and began to look for the kickstand. A stiff robot leg caught the edge of the stand and kicked it out.
Leanings Peter Egan p49
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
There are no motorways or expressways to speak of in Ireland, so there is a fair amount of commercial traffic on the main roads along the coast and between larger cities. Leave the main roads, however, and the traffic drops off to a desultory mixture of sheep, tractors, the occasional car, cattle, donkey carts, and pedestrians, all travelling at roughly the same speed and spaced well apart. Irish drivers tend to be relaxed and easy-going, with none of the murderous seriousness you find on the Continent. There is a sense of good-natured flexibility and complete patience. Making time on Irish roads is not in the cards, however, and dragging your knee in corners isn't recommended unless you wish to become one with the back of a haywagon, or are especially fond of sheep.
Leanings Peter Egan p137
In the morning we rode out to the Waterford Crystal factory at the edge or the city and watched the glassblowers and cutters at work. I'd never seen such a cheerful, good-natured bunch or workers in any factory, but then, the last factory I worked at was a gunpowder plant, where anxiety was our most important product.
Barb and I bought a crystal salt-and-pepper-shaker set, after voting them most likely to succeed in a tank bag. Wine glasses and chandeliers were out of the question.
Leanings Peter Egan p138
"Take off those leather jackets. Okay, now open the duffel bag. Unroll that pink thing. What is that, a pink tent? Unroll it. What are those?"
"Tent stakes."
"What's that other thing in there?"
"A flashlight."
"Let's see it. Take the batteries out. That's it. Put them on the table."
And so on. Then we were searched and told to empty our pockets on the desk. Drivers licenses were checked, social security cards, draft cards of course, plans, home towns, and possible criminal records. One officer took our ID material into his office and began dialling phone numbers. He talked, nodded, dialled, lit and snubbed out numerous cigarettes, all the while watching us through the glass partition with unblinking reptilian eyes that said he'd seen guys like us before. It was 1967, a war was on, we were or college age, this was the Canadian border, it was midnight and of course we were on motorcycles. All wrong.
Leanings Peter Egan p148
Following the St. Lawrence River, we crossed into Quebec Province and made it to Montreal late in the afternoon. After being turned down at three hotels with VACANCY signs burning, we learned to leave our helmets and jackets on the bikes while inquiring. In the end, the effort was wasted. We found a room in a downtown hotel so cheap that mere possession of helmets and jackets made us something of a success story within its dark hallways. Most of the patrons were elderly men who talked to themselves and seemed to own nothing but a jealously guarded brown paper bag. The rest were slightly younger women who kept funny hours.
For the next two days we walked all over the hills of Montreal, sitting in parks, poking abound in bookstores, and looking over the campus of McGill University. We climbed Mount Royal and looked out over the grounds of Expo 1967. The second evening we stopped in a topless bar, which at that time was a brand-new concept- or great novelty. As we sipped on beers, a rather bored-looking woman climbed up on the bar and did some perfunctory topless dancing to Spencer Davis' "Gimme Some Lovin'". Then she sat down at the bar and said "Give me a beer, Ernie." Donnelly and I looked down the bar for a moment and smiled politely. She studied us for a moment and didn't smile back. I don't think she liked my work boots. It was suddenly too quiet in the bar. What do you say to a topless dancer? That was nice dancing? We paid our tab and left. I felt Spencer Davis had somehow been compromised.
Leanings Peter Egan p152
Always wary of being refused service because of our motorcycles, I was overjoyed to walk into the office and find that the place doubled as a Yamaha dealership, of all things. An elderly woman sat knitting by a kerosene stove. She explained that her son ran the Yamaha end of the business and she managed the cabins. Would we like a cabin for the night or motorcycle parts? A cabin? She'd get the stove and hot water turned on for us then, and a clothesline to hang up our wet clothes.
She explained almost apologetically that the cabin would cost six dollars for both of us. Was that OK?
It was OK. We stayed in a tidy little log cabin with two feather beds and a bathtub on feet. In the morning the rain was hammering down on the green shingled roof and neither of us wanted to get out of bed. We discussed staying in the cabin until the rain stopped or until we died, whichever came first. Lack of money and a driving need for breakfast finally got the better of us however, and we pushed onward into the morning rain.
Leanings Peter Egan p154
His Harley had the biggest pile of luggage I'd ever seen lashed onto the back of any motorcycle. It looked like an overloaded pack burro. Prominent in this mobile heap of goods was a full-sized Coleman two-burner stove, an ice chest, and the biggest tent I'd ever seen outside a circus. Ron sipped his coffee and looked in amazement at our damp jackets.
"Don't you guys have any rain gear?" he asked.
"No." He shook his head. "Strange . . ." He invited us to travel with him and said he had a tent big enough for all of us. The weather at last began to clear, and the three of us cruised along the north shore or Lake Nipissing, across the barren yellow moonscape of Sudbury's sulphur mining district and down to the North Channel of Lake Huron. It took us a while to get used to travelling with Ron. He cruised down the road with his feet up on highway pegs, looking around at the scenery, never exceeding 60 mph. It had never occurred to Donnelly and me that anyone would ever voluntarily go slower than 85 mph, as long as there were no cops
around. We rode everywhere flat out. And here was this guy, motoring along 5 mph under the speed limit, appearing to enjoy himself. It took some getting used to.
Leanings Peter Egan p155
There was also a glassy smoothness that implied to us Britbike fans, a long engine life and a riding experience devoid of lost bolts, loose head-pipes, fractured gas tanks, and headlight filaments shaken to tungsten dust.
Also of interest and pleasure to those of us who used British motorcycles as a standard of aesthetics (if not smoothness) was the general shape and look of the 500 and 550. Hondas of this era looked less. . . well, Japanese, than they had earlier. They embraced a kind of architectural classicism that paid tribute to both British and Italian design, with just enough Honda thrown in to reassure those who hated walking.
Leanings Peter Egan p167
Where the 1200 Trophy exudes a kind of solid, head-of-the-famiiy virtue, the Speed Triple is the wild, good-looking son who smokes cigarettes, runs around with girls, and stays out too late. It is a lithe, low, and fast cafe-racer that feels dense and compact, as if cast from a single billet It has one of the most charismatic engines to enrich our sport since Ducati got back on its feet. Responsive and punchy, it has a growly, torn canvas exhaust note that cures depression, boredom, and ailments of the nervous system.
Leanings Peter Egan p175
In the morning we rise early and don wetsuits for a whitewater raft trip down a nearby river gorge. Our raft guide is a lovely woman of outdoor radiant health (does no one look sickly in this country?) who says her name is Ista.
"Beautiful name," I remark. "Unusual."
"Not unusual here," she says. "Ista is a name from the Old Testament.
Edwards and I look at each other for a minute, blandly. "Ah," David says, "Esther."
"Right," she says, "Ista."
After years of canoeing in Canada, I have learned to be wary of water that moves fast enough to rip your arms off. Nevertheless, we go through some heavy rapids, then over a 20-foot fall with me in the front of the raft and nose straight into the roiling water below like a Stuka with a broken elevator cable. I am flung out of the raft (holding onto a rope) and then flung back in, with a little help from Ista. Thrilling stuff, even if I have sprained my thumb and will spend the rest of the trip putting on my right glove with my teeth. Such is the price of glory.
Leanings Peter Egan p176
Twenty-five miles later I pull over, flip up my shield, and say to David, "I've been thinking about that jump."
"Me too.
"Let's go back and do it. We'll never be here again."
So, we ride back, pay our money, get weighed (for bungee length), walk out on the bridge, and get in line, David first. They wrap a towel and a nylon strap around the ankles of his motorcycle boots and latch the bungee to the strap. David tells them, "I'm kind of worried, because my boots are about two sizes too big for me. They're pretty loose."
The kid who hooks up the rope says, "If it feels like you're going to slip out and fall into the river, just curl up your toes."
David does not laugh as hard at this joke as you'd think.
The man just ahead of David jumps off the bridge and disappears from our sight. The kid looks over the edge and cries, "Oh, NO!"
"What happened'?"
"Ripped both his legs off!"
David smiles wanly. Then it's his turn.
He bravely jumps without hesitation and disappears into oblivion. Then I see he's been lowered into the tethered raft on the river below and returned to the riverbank. He is actually waving and smiling.
My turn. I hop to the edge of the bridge platform, my feet tied together, and look down.
If there was ever anything that goes against 5 million years of human evolution, it is the concept of diving head first off a 143-foot bridge over cold rushing water with your feet tied together. There is a special place in your brain set aside for the express purpose of telling you not to do this thing.
Nevertheless, I jump. The moment of jump is an odd existential experience, but the stretch and triple recoil of the bungee is pure and simple whoopdee-doo fun, like being tossed in a blanket, and is surprisingly unstressfull on the joints, muscles, and spine. When you are lowered into the raft (like a side of beef) you feel relaxed, refreshed, and loose. Another triumph of endorphins over reality.
Leanings Peter Egan p179-180
As on the Alpine trips I've taken, every night is essentially party night at the hotels, which are well-chosen for their local charm and colour as well as mattress and shower-stall quality.
We eat well, drink lots of good New Zealand beer, wander through towns, and sit around fireplaces telling true stories. And making friends. It is an unavoidable part of group motorcycle tours (this is my fourth) that you make friends for life. This is a natural by-product of hanging around with examples of the world's only known species of consistently superior human, the avid motorcyclist.
Leanings Peter Egan p181
Non-motorcyclists take the black leather jacket for granted now, as a mere fashion accessory. Everyone from the Ramones to Madonna has appeared publicly in some version of the Brando-style "Eric von Zipper" motorcycle jacket, so that it has become as harmless a cultural cliche as carhops on roller skates or the 1957 Chevy.
We live in the age of pre-fab charisma, where mere money can buy you an artificially aged (right at the factory) Fender Stratocaster or a pre-stressed 50-mission flight jacket. Buy the stuff, share the life. And with a black leather jacket, the spurious risk-image of motorcycling can rub off on you without the inconvenience of learning which is the clutch lever or ever getting wet. Or crashing. Everyone wants a piece of the danger, but no one wants to get hurt. We want authenticity to come easy, without too much stress or conflict.
It was not always so.
There was a time in America when symbols had real meaning, and the black leather jacket was a potent one. No one dreamed of wearing a motorcycle jacket without owning a motorcycle.
Leanings Peter Egan p192-3
It didn't take Middle America long to connect these jackets with rock-and-roll, overstimulated hormones, greasy ducktails, big sideburns, loud pipes, and the sort of trouble that rode into Hollister, California, one fine day and tore up the town. Ordinary citizens had seen the photos in Life magazine and they were Not Happy.
You could almost say they were violently, homicidally unhappy. A wave of revulsion for all things motorcycle swept over the country, and the black leather jacket was its arch symbol.
By the time I was a freshman in high school in the early 1960s, wearing a black leather jacket was an invitation to be ostracized by all but the toughest elements in your hometown.
Even the hoods in my high school quit wearing black leather jackets. They were afraid some older, unemployed biker with three teeth would kill them with the broken-off neck of a beer bottle, just on principle.
Leanings Peter Egan p194
Germans- and Europeans in general- seem not to have developed this simmering, Puritanical disapproval of speed you find in America. Once they are out of the city, Germans simply travel at whatever logical speed is suggested by the road and the capability of their vehicles, be it 65 or 90 mph. Even in slow vehicles, they don't begrudge other people who can go faster. This makes for nice riding; almost heavenly, by our standards.
Leanings Peter Egan p199
On the autobahns, of course, there are no speed limits. There, I discovered our R1 100RS would hit 215 kph (about 135 mph) if we sat in normal riding positions and did not go into a tuck, but the wind flow and noise were a lot more pleasant below 180 kph, and we settled on 160 (about 100 mph) as the most serene cruising speed.
Which, where we live- the Land of the Free- would get us thrown in jail and our bike towed.
Leanings Peter Egan p200
Germany is a hard country in which to navigate. Unlike, say France, which has numbered roads, Germany depends on clusters of destination signs to point the way.
You come to a sudden cross-roads, and instead of an arrow that says "Route 19" you are confronted with one small yellow sign that says.
Marktoberdorf
Klosterlechtfeld
Totenschweinhocksmitstuffin .. .
and another one that reads...
Pfizerknottendinkelrude
Rotenkaisersunterwarren
Bad Rainagain
Behanginwashonderseigfriedline
As you go flying past the intersection at about 120 kph, your navigator/wife leans forward and shouts, "What did those signs say?"
Struck completely dumb in the presence of a thousand Teutonic syllables, you simply skid to a stop and put your head down on the tank and groan.
Leanings Peter Egan p200
On the road, fellow tour member Peter Wylie on his Suzuki TL1000 passed us with a wave, sailing off into the distance at high speed. Five miles later, we found him standing in the road next to his bike, at the end of a 50-yard streak of rubber. As he was accelerating through the gears, his transmission had suddenly seized up solid in fourth gear, locking the rear tire. The TL had been a test bike for several German magazines, so its trans had probably seen better days.
Leanings Peter Egan p201
Saturday was race day, but the Friday night before was festival night in downtown Assen. Unlike Douglas at the Isle of Man, which is Bike Central, Assen has its guest park just outside the barricaded downtown, which is as charming as Disneyland's European Village, but real. Bands play on every other street corner, bungee jumpers leap from cranes, beer tents sell beer, food tents sell pretzels and sausages. and everybody walks.
Everybody: Kids, grandmas, bikers, riders in full leathers, moms, young couples with prams, all circulating in a huge, swirling counter-clockwise flow through jam-packed streets. No pushing, shoving, or swaggering, just a polite, cheerful crowd out for a mass stroll. I've never seen anything quite like it. In the U.S., we seldom get an all-ages family crowd at a bike rally.
Leanings Peter Egan p204
On Saturday we rode to the track, joining the flow down A28 until we were ducted into one of a dozen parking fields whose size and glittering mass of handlebars, gas tanks, and headlights almost defies description. How many bikes do you picture on Earth? Triple that number, square it, and then multiply by your age and envision them all parked at Assen.
Ever wonder where all the cowhide goes when McDonalds is done making hamburgers?
Leathers. At Assen.
Leanings Peter Egan p204-5
I later stopped again at the Nurburgring, the famous 14-mile race circuit tested in the Eifel Mountains. The track was open for anyone with the 22-deutchmark ($13)-per-lap fee. So our group lined up behind various Porsches, taxicabs full of tourists, sportbikes, and teens in hot-rodded Opels (can you imagine this happening in America?) and paid our money, just as the rain began pouring down again. Before we pulled onto the track, Christian walked up and said, "A road- racing friend of mine recently won a race here in the rain because he didn't crash. He normally finishes 14th." He peered in through my helmet visor to see if I understood.
Message delivered. The track was indeed quite slippery in the rain- slick with oil and rubber- so we didn't exactly set any new two-up lap records, but the length and difficulty of the track, one of the most beautiful on Earth, made its impression. With 174 corners per lap, you feel like you've been gone for a month when you finally get back to the start-finish line. And, in my case, I probably had.
Leanings Peter Egan p205-6
El Chico Loco rejoined us for dinner that night, seated in a wheelchair. Seems the surgeons had not only fixed his broken leg, but repaired the botched job done by an American hospital back in the 1970s after his dirt-bike accident. He read us a hilarious account he'd written of his week in the hospital, and said he'd seen the Dutch TT on TV in the hospital lounge, sipping champagne ordered from the maternity gift shop.
Seems a German policeman came to his hospital room and served him a traffic ticket for going too fast.
"I was going fast," Chico told him, "but certainly not too fast. If I'd been going too fast, I'd be dead. All I've got is a broken leg."
The cop agreed and reduced the fine. A happy ending, all things considered.
Leanings Peter Egan p207
Over dinner, I learned that Stan and Herb have been riding since high school and, between them, have owned, restored, broken, or patched up just about every motorcycle ever made: BMWs, BSAs, Ducatis, Harleys, Hondas, Kawasakis, Laverdas, Nortons, Triumphs, etc. Motorcycle guys of wide focus, lifelong and hopeless, which we now know to be the best kind of person. They've got the disease.
Leanings Peter Egan p213
And, as usual, we had a great bunch of guys to travel with. I looked around the table at our typically hilarious farewell dinner and thought of that old saying about the pioneers and cowboys who settled the Old West: "The faint of heart never left, and the fools perished along the way."
Motorcycle tours have a little of that same filtration process built into them. Only folks with a sense of adventure and the ability to keep it on two wheels for a week ever sign up for these trips, and they are by nature a lively bunch.
Leanings Peter Egan p225
(Remember- this is USA- LH drive, so the sidecar is on the right...)
A sidecar, of course, is not like any other vehicle. It doesn't- as some have suggested- exist halfway between a motorcycle and a car; it's simply a Third Way. It lacks all the saving dynamic virtues of both bikes and cars, so driving one ("riding" seems an inadequate verb) is an art form unto itself.
In right turns, the car feels as though it wants to lift and flip over on you, while the motorcycle itself leans and groans vertiginously outward in defiance of all sound motorcycling instinct. In left turns... well, it doesn't want to turn left. It prefers to go straight and can be made to change its mind only through brute force on the handlebars. Until you get used to it both motions set off primitive alarm bells in your brain that Something is Going Wrong, inducing the occasional cold sweat.
In straight-line cruising, inertia and wind want to hold the car back, so you have to keep a steady pressure on the right bar to hold it straight. In hard downhill braking, the car wants to circle the bike, unless you use plenty of rear brake- which, on the Harley, is linked to a nicely effective disc brake on the outer wheel of the car.
In other words, its more work than riding a motorcycle. But once you get used to the rig, you begin to relax and it becomes fun. It's simply a unique and refined skill, like flying an airplane, or playing the dulcimer with a sledgehammer.
Leanings Peter Egan p228
I'd been standing by the highway for some time when two full-dress Harleys came thundering by. To my amazement, the front rider signalled a stop and pulled over. I ran up to the bike and an older man in a white T-shirt and a yacht-captain's hat grinned and said, "Hop on."
I climbed on the back of a huge sprung saddle with fringe and conchos and we roared on down the road. I remember looking over the guy's shoulder at the speedometer and noting that we were going 80 miles an hour. The whole ride was a crazy overload of sounds and sensations: too much to take in. What struck me about it, though, was the absolute sense of freedom. I looked around myself at the Harley and thought, "With one of these you could go anywhere." On that big motorcycle, the open road seemed to beckon endlessly as it never had when I rode in a car.
Leanings Peter Egan p240-1
Novellist D. H. Lawrence once asked how it was possible that so many young Englishmen were able to leave the green, pastoral beauty of their farms to work in the coal mines, living deep underground for all their daylight hours. His answer?
Motorbikes.
Young men wanted motorbikes, he said, so they could return to their villages and farms, take their girlfriends for a ride, and generally Be Somebody.
Leanings Peter Egan p245
The only disconcerting part of these rides home was that there was something slightly odd about shutting down a lawn mower with a big four-stroke single, and then firing up a motorcycle with a 50cc fan-cooled two-stroke that would have been right at home on a lawn mower. I felt, as Kurt Vonnegut would later say, that some terrible mistake had been made. Bigger bikes with Turtle motor mower quality engines would come later, along with larger loans.
Leanings Peter Egan p247
Not only do I have plenty to do until spring, but I sometimes find myself overwhelmed with the myriad possibilities, suffering from a condition that has recently been called "option paralysis". This is a malady where you have so many things to do that you can't focus on any one task, so you end up (in my case) sitting on a workbench, staring happily at your bikes, sipping on a Guinness, and listening to Bonnie Raitt and John Lee Hooker on the garage boom-box.
This is not a bad thing in itself, but it raises the spectre of spring arriving with bikes only half ready to be ridden. I still picture them, poised like a row of battle-ready fighter planes, waiting to take off at the first sign of warm weather, then to be ridden like crazy all summer without guilt or mechanical hassles.
Leanings Peter Egan p252
Then, suddenly, there were Hondas. Word spread like wildfire, and so did the bikes, all through the early Sixties.
The price range was $245 to $700 new, depending on the model. Most models (other than the 50cc step-through) had slick, four-speed transmissions hidden inside engine cases, where they couldn't even snag your pants cuff and leave grease marks. Electricity actually reached the headlight, which in turn lit the road. Performance, per cc, was amazing. A Honda Super 90 would go about 60 on the highway while getting around 100 mpg. The CB160 was quicker than most of the old 250 British singles and cost less. The 305 Super Hawk was a giant killer. What's more, these bikes looked good. Someone in Japan understood. Goodbye, Cushman scooter.
Leanings Peter Egan p258
It was assumed, for reasons I will never understand, that motorcycles had to be wrenched upon constantly, that they were destined to leak oil and vibrate excessively, scattering parts and vaporizing light filaments.
Perhaps I'm painting too bleak a picture of the pre-Honda era, as there were many fine and relatively refined bikes made earlier, but the majority of 1950s motorcycles had what seemed to me a World War I aircraft flavour to their mechanical innards- and outards. ("Advance the spark, Biggles! We've a Hun on our tail.")
My own first bike was not a Honda. After a brief fling with a semi-functional James/Villiers 150, I bought a Bridgestone Sport 50, mainly because we had a local dealer. A good little bike, but it was a two-stroke and had the usual oil-mix/plug-range hassles.
Shortly thereafter, I got a Honda Super 90 and decided I was a four- stroke kind of a guy.
Leanings Peter Egan p258
A group of people at a party hear you ride a motorcycle and at least one person in the crowd can produce a richly detailed, moment-by-moment account of catastrophe on a first bike ride. Usually the tale ends in a vow never to ride again, or to "stick to four wheels".
As nearly as I can tell, a typical sequence of events in most of these mishaps seems to be: (1) surprise at the abruptness or speed of forward motion combined with a poor sense of twist-grip modulation; (2) growing panic in realizing that the technique for stopping safely has not been adequately rehearsed; and (3) a total loss of steering control as the unnatural instinct to countersteer is replaced, through terror, by an attempt to automatically turn the handlebars in the direction you want to go (which is effective only at very low speed) causing the rider to hit the very object he or she had hoped to avoid.
Leanings Peter Egan p261
Reflecting on this later, I thought it was both sobering and a little amusing (if such serious matters can ever be said to be amusing) that so many of us who love cars, motorcycles, airplanes, etc. nearly always react to a life crisis in terms of a coveted machine- or an untaken adventure with a machine. Chest pains? Quick, call your Ducati dealer and see if that 916 is still unsold! Tornado miss your house by a few hundred yards? Might as buy a new XR and do Baja off-road, all the way down to Cabo.
Time's a-wastin'!
Leanings Peter Egan p290-1
Yours truly, for instance, has hardly ever been without some form of late 1960s Triumph in the garage. I like the way these bikes look and sound, but there's a little more to it than that. Part of their appeal lies in the fact that these are the bikes I most lusted after during the time I was in Vietnam. And every time I look at one now, it reminds me I'm back.
There's a little reward built into every Triumph, a little private celebration. I suppose people who don't care about motorcycles find some other way of handling these curve balls life throws at us. Maybe a new set of gardening tools, a deluxe bowling ball, or a trip to the Yucatan. Or, if they are of a non-materialistic bent, they may find renewed interest in some spiritual aspect of life, or merely be reminded of how much their families and friends mean to them, or how pointless it is to cause dissension in this short passage of time.
Leanings Peter Egan p291-2
Inside, mixed with fishing lures, hip boots, rifles, and shotguns, were rows of new 1973 Hondas. And one of them, pulled out from the row, had a tag on the handlebars that said "SOLD: Egan."
It was a Honda CB350- first year with the disc brake- in a beautiful dark green.
I looked at Barb, who was watching my face to see if she'd done the right thing.
"How did you do this?" I asked quietly.
"I saved a little every month in the credit union at work."
Back in business, after three years without a bike. Reborn.
Anyway, when someone says, "I'm surprised your wife lets you have a motorcycle," I never get annoyed. I just reflect for a few fond moments and am too. Every time.
Leanings Peter Egan p295
The author wrote this book after completing a round-Australia awareness raising ride for Batten Disease sufferers and their families.
She self-published the book, and all proceeds go to the Batten Disease charity to promote research and support families with information.
The book is only $17.50 posted and can be bought here: http://www.battens.org.au/perils-motorcycling
During 1988 I went up to Queensland to visit my youngest sister Kylie for her 21st birthday. Her partner was a truckie and they had to go out to Ipswich to drop off a truck somewhere out west, so I went in the car with Kylie. We followed his semi-trailer with the truck on the back of the trailer. Whilst I was sitting in the passenger seat, a horrible thought occurred to me. What would we do if the truck fell off the back of the semi? I started sliding down in the seat to see how flat it was possible to lay.
The next minute I noticed all the chains had in fact snapped, and were dangling off the left side of the truck as we started heading up a hill. I told Kylie and we madly overtook Phil to get him to pull over before he continued on. We joked later that because I came up for her birthday, it prevented her from becoming a flat pancake. She would have been in the car by herself and wouldn't have noticed the broken chains from the driver's seat.
I have the utmost respect for truckies and have appreciated their help over the years during my travels. Many of them ride motorcycles as well, so their brains work on a similar wavelength. I've lost count of their "saves" and can remember their warnings, whether it be water over the road ahead or some other potential disaster.
The Perils Of Motorcycling Alanna Gayko p47
My instruction on learning to ride an outfit was a short lesson in the car park, of which all I can remember doing was a 'figure 8'. Off we headed down to ride for what likely had been a very short distance. I went out of control, middle of the freeway. The rig tipped over, with the chair up in the air momentarily. Whilst Marie was balanced up there - or perhaps it was immediately after the chair slammed back down to earth, I can distinctly remember her words. She was so cool and didn't panic, just calmly said, "Lucky no one was in the overtaking lane at the time!"
Well I never got over that experience remaining scared senseless for the remainder of the trip. I loved the chair, but must have had a look of terror on my face during the times I was at the helm. Firstly, I didn't feel right sitting so high on the K series, being more comfortable lower to the road. I have a severe case of duck's disease, where my bum is close to the ground and it likes being there. The occasional time I rode into a service station, I would forget about the chair being there, hitting the petrol bowser. Anyway, only because of Maries' skill, we made it to Mt Dare in one piece, to enjoy the rally over the next few days.
The Perils Of Motorcycling Alanna Gayko p56
Riding the Beemer R1OO/S westward past Ipswich, it was the most suffocating heat, somewhere in the mid-40s. It was the most intense temperature by the middle of the day. The soles of my boots, as well as the foot pegs, were literally soft and sticky, with the rubber actually melting.
I was riding behind a line of cars, when the next moment I got whacked with a large piece of truck tyre hitting me on the lower body and leg. I don't know how I stayed upright, but fortunately was able to pull over still in one piece despite the intense pain and sit by the side of the road. I eventually stopped bawling, regaining my composure. It was only then that I realised how lucky I was not to have copped it in the head or chest, as it may have been a different story.
The Perils Of Motorcycling Alanna Gayko p74
After multiple attempts to start the bike, it finally fired away. I looked down at the engine where petrol was pouring out everywhere and noticed some electrical sparks flying about. Being "the sharpest tool in the shed", I considered that this may be a vital bit of information that could prevent the two of us self-combusting up there on the road. I quickly informed Ludo and he immediately cut the engine. That was the only time we started the motorcycle. Besides not being able to start it, I didn't like my chances of using the right foot gear changes without killing myself. For those reasons, we have since sold the Matchless.
The Perils Of Motorcycling Alanna Gayko p100
Later that morning, as I was standing with Steve near the main tent, we saw Macka. I knew him and Simmo from some of the previous Off Centre runs, where the New South Wales and Queensland BMW Club members would sometimes meet up. I asked him if he remembered me, and he replied, "Of course I do." At some stage during our conversation, Macka asked me if I was still with the same bloke, as he had met Ludo once before at the Urunga Pub.
Too many years of riding without ear plugs has shot my hearing to pieces, to say the least. I thought he asked, "Have you still got the same bike?" to which I replied in all earnest that I had to get rid of it because it was too small, it wasn't fast enough etc. Steve was a bit quicker than I in working out my misunderstanding. Thankfully he did, as the conversation was going downhill fast and in retrospect made me sound like a right tart!
The Perils Of Motorcycling Alanna Gayko p104
One day whilst riding the Super Glide, I came across our club President at the time, Steve Hill. His 1920s Douglas had expired in the main street of Bellingen.
Knowing there wasn't anything much I could do mechanically, the best offer was my mobile phone or a lift home to Nambucca Heads. Steve rode my bike with me as pillion, enjoying himself immensely scraping the pegs. Then he jumped on his GS Beemer, which has a trailer, to pick up his Douglas, by which time he was sorted.
It was too easy, with such a good setup for towing a motorcycle with a motorcycle!
The Perils Of Motorcycling Alanna Gayko p114
We went on another Just Girls trip, but this time we were heading down to Gloucester. The Sporty was off the road getting its gearbox fixed (no, I did not cause it to blow up!). Instead I was taking the R60/5 with some of the northern girls. I got caught at a set of lights, with one of the girls riding barely ahead of me. As I put the Beemer into gear when the lights changed, the clutch cable broke with the bike stuck in gear. Having a 4WD and also a semi-trailer bearing down on you has a tendency to make your mind go blank, and I panicked.
The only other time I had a clutch cable break was when Mark (from SA) was riding my Beemer down Spit Road in Sydney. We were caught in the far lane and had to push it in gear across the traffic, which was an absolute nightmare. Unbelievably, I had a spare cable under the seat on that occasion which enabled Mark to get us back on the road. Anyway, the truckie jumped out of his rig and helped me get the bike out of gear, then pushed my motorcycle off the highway. You've got to love I truckies when the going gets tough. The 4WD changed lanes, nearly colliding with another car!
The Perils Of Motorcycling Alanna Gayko p122
Three guys were riding through the Coffs Harbour district in the middle of the night. One young fellow happened to be behind the other two riders when he hit a 'roo.
It was immediately apparent that he'd done some major damage to his leg, but amazingly hadn't come off his Harley.
The pressing problem was how he was going to pull over, lacking the strength in his legs to hold himself up without doing even more damage coming off the bike.
Consequently he took off after his mates down a desolate country road, somehow catching up and then indicating to them that he was in big trouble. They were able to help him stop, whilst they supported his weight and the bike without the guy falling onto his obviously broken leg. The guys also organised getting him to hospital, along with all the other things needed to be done after coming off second best to a 'roo. You can't do without your mates!
The Perils Of Motorcycling Alanna Gayko p127
I was making a fairly unsuccessful attempt to undo the oil dipstick when a guy who had done a U-turn pulled up to see if I needed a hand. He was towing an enclosed trailer with dirt bikes, and was obviously keen to help a fellow motorcyclist. I didn't have a problem as such, I just couldn't undo the oil thingummyjig. The guy came over, easily undoing the dipstick which I doing a wonderful job of tightening even more. I reassured him that I really wasn't that stupid, and he could have total faith that I would make the Territory in one piece (perhaps the bike as well). Since coming home my friend Glenn has given me some worldly advice which I shall remember forever more: "lefty - loosy, righty – tighty". Boy, did I feel like an incompetent fool!
The Perils Of Motorcycling Alanna Gayko p129
My most common nocturnal activity seemed to be standing on the toilet seat in motels, peering out of the bathroom window to check whether my motorcycle was still there. With no steering lock or a chain with padlock as my security, I was worried that the Stroke 5 might be wheeled off in the dark.
Suddenly, I was awoken midway through the night by someone thumping loudly on my door. It took a moment to orientate myself as to where the heck I was. Logically I knew someone was there, as I hesitantly opened the door with the safety chain still on. However, the sight of a big shadowy figure in the door frame terrified me! I couldn't stop screaming hysterically, meanwhile the guy was trying to pacify and reassure me that he was from the neighbouring motel room. He was able to blurt out that my bike was on the ground, which seemed to calm me down enough to venture outside with him. Sure enough my motorcycle was spreadeagled in front of the unit as petrol poured out, with all my remaining belongings from the saddlebags scattered about. They had also broken into my neighbour's unit but were disturbed midway through their attempted robbery. He had contacted the police. It was fortunate nothing obvious was missing from my bike. Especially lucky for me was the fact that the mongrels hadn't thrown a match on the bike as a departing gesture. It is the only time I have been interviewed by the police in my pyjamas.
The Perils Of Motorcycling Alanna Gayko p136-7
My latest ride on the outfit was out to Nindigully Pub in Queensland for Rob Wynne's birthday bash. A big group of mostly off-road Beemer riders from Sydney, Newcastle and Brisbane were meeting up at the pub to help Rob celebrate another year down the gurgler...
The icing on the cake was a busload of girls turning up dressed to the nines in wedding and bridesmaid dresses obviously sourced from op shops, carefully coordinated with either stilettos or riding boots. They were on a long-distance pub crawl celebrating a hens' night. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert would have been proud as the girls piled out of the bus, under the watchful eye of their driver. He sported a red hard hat with a plastic cattle prod to protect himself from danger and help keep the ladies in line. Within a really short time, the bride-to-be was roaring off down the road as pillion on one of the Harleys. It became a familiar sight with the girls on the back of the bikes, their flowing dresses all pulled up out of harm's way.
The Perils Of Motorcycling Alanna Gayko p157
"A pleasure," he said, shaking my hand. "Have a good, safe trip."
"The pleasure is mine," I said, and it was. I was finding out that one of the best things about a motorcycle trip is that people you would never meet otherwise will come up and talk to you. "Won't you be lonely?" some of my non-biker friends had asked before I left.
"I doubt it," I had said, and on the ride down I never was.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p23
Still, you wouldn't ride a bike if you didn't want to cultivate a bit of an outlaw status. I was working on my Entrance, one of the most important aspects of being a biker. You come into town and cruise slowly down Main Street- rump, rump, rump, cough-REVVvvv-rump- rump (obviously a high-powered machine, dangerous if not for your expert control)- and at the end of the street do a slow U-turn and come back to the cafe.
You back the bike up against the curb, taking long enough that you know all eyes are upon you, take off your helmet, put your sunglasses back on, and walk toward the door. You use the Strut: shoulders back, head high, just a hint of pelvic thrust You step inside the door and, chin still high, moving only your head, survey the room (even if it only has four tables). Then you take off your dark glasses and hook them in the left-breast pocket of your leather jacket the way fighter pilots do in the movies. Don't look. This is crucial. If you have to fumble for the pocket, you've blown it and you might as well get back on the bike and leave. Okay, by this point the men are cowed, the women trembling, and girls behind the counter moaning softly.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p26-7
Near the end I found my guide, a local in a red Dodge pickup truck who led me at 65 through a bunch of bends marked slow, and slowed to 25 for some that were not marked at all. I was happy to follow. I had learned a long time ago that on the back roads the fastest car would never be an out-of-state Porsche; it would be a dusty Ford Tempo with a bumper sticker from the hometown radio station. Horsepower was no match for local knowledge.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p29
Friends told me of their neighbour, a professional woman in her late forties who had started to ride. Short and soft spoken, she is not an immediately commanding presence. One Sunday during a ride she and her husband stopped at McDonald's. She was in full leathers and thought nothing of it until, with her burger and fries in hand, she had to get through the long food line-up to get to the ketchup station. She took a step forward and even before she could say "Excuse me," the line-up parted like the Red Sea. "It was wonderful," she said, "They thought I was a Biker!" Whether you're riding a cruiser or a dirt bike or a big touring rig, in the eyes of the world you're a bit of a hooligan or you wouldn't be out there. We reject it, we deny it, we explain at length that there is a difference between a Rider and a Biker, but we secretly relish it. We like the idea that we're mad, bad, and dangerous to know.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p33
Five minutes later none of it mattered. I found myself going a little faster, a little faster, a little faster. My memory of the country is a blur- bright creek, slender pines- grabbed in laser-glimpses between corners. I tried to ride fast and stay off the brake, fast and smooth, using the Duke's linear power. I kept it in third- there it pulls hard all the way from 30 to 75 miles an hour, and when you back off it's like throwing out an anchor. This is why riders love big twins. Then I blew by a slow camper, snapped down my visor, and dived into a bend at 80- and found everythingoingintoslowmo. Instead of feeling fast it felt as if I could get up, do a tap dance on the tank, smoke a Havana cigar, get back down, and finish the corner with time for a snack. Glorious. Better than drugs.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p52-3
"Pull off when it starts to rain," the instructor had said at Safety School. "The road is slipperiest in the first fifteen minutes because the oil on the pavement floats on the water. After it gets washed off, the motorcycle will be stable on the wet asphalt. Be careful, though. If too much water collects in the grooves of the lane you may hydroplane."
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p84
The 300 miles to Roswell felt like 3,000. All day there was a 40-mile-an-hour wind coming out of Arizona and I felt as if I was wrestling with the lat pulldown bar of a weight machine. After lunch I rode for more than an hour without seeing another car. I didn't see a cow, though the land was fenced. I didn't even get bugs on my visor. Nothing, just the wind and the sage and the yellow-flowered cactus. I honked my horn every once in a while just to feel homey, and talked to myself inside my helmet. "Ain't nobody here," I told myself, "Nooooobuddy." The day was defined by wind and emptiness.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p89
Non-riders would always ask me, "Don't you think motorcycling is dangerous?" in the tone of a foregone conclusion. It could be, I agreed, but I was a conservative rider. Besides, I said, motorcycling is only one of a million ways you can die. You can just as easily go in your La-Z-Boy recliner. In the spring, or when I haven't been riding in a long time, I have a moment of fear thinking about what I'm going to do, but as soon as I'm up and riding, I'm fine. I would give the answer my father gave when people asked him, "Isn't mountain climbing dangerous?" "Sure," he said, "but at least you go doing something you like." Then in The Stone Diaries I read about a Canadian journalist named Pinky Fulham who was crushed to death when a soft-drink vending machine fell on him. He had been rocking it back and forth, trying to dislodge a stuck quarter. Apparently eleven North Americans per year are killed by overturned vending machines. The next time I approached a vending machine I did so warily. And the next time someone asked me about bikes being dangerous, I told them about Pinky.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p93-4
When I first put on a full-face helmet, I have a moment of claustrophobia. I can hear only my own breathing and I feel like one of those old-time deep-sea divers.
The boots, jacket, and gloves feel cumbersome too- they're shaped all wrong for walking, but once you are on the bike, the gloves curl round the handgrips; the arms of the jacket flare out and forward, the wristbands are at your wrist instead of your fingertips; and the boots are snug onto the footpegs, reinforced toe under the gear lever. When you hit the starter, your breath merges with the sound of the bike, and once you're on the highway, the sound moves behind you, becoming a dull roar that merges with the wind noise, finally disappearing from consciousness altogether.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p124-5
Even if you ride without a helmet, you ride in a cocoon of white noise. You get smells from the roadside, and you feel the coolness in the dips and the heat off a rock face, but you don't get sound. On a bike, you feel both exposed and insulated. Try putting in earplugs: the world changes, you feel like a spacewalker. What I like best about motorcycle touring is that even if you have companions you can't talk to them until the rest stop, when you'll compare highlights of the ride. You may be right beside them, but you're alone. It is an inward experience.
I like the fact that 'listen' is an anagram of 'silent.'
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p125
They have begun using Ducati workers- "Ducati people"- rather than models in a sophisticated marketing campaign designed to hail you as a Ducati person.
We stopped first at the engine assembly. No robots in this factory: engines are made one at a time by one mechanic. She- and it is mostly women technicians in this section- moved with the engine and a tray or parts as it travelled down the line. The workers reminded me of typesetters, hands instinctively choosing the right piece from the case.
The bikes outside had led me to expect a bunch of lean, mean sport riders, but these looked like moms making money for their families. We moved on to the line where complete bikes were taking shape.
I wondered which person had assembled my engine. Maybe the blond woman with her hair pulled back. And who fit the engine into the frame? Maybe one of the older men tuning the finished bikes. Each bike is made, in effect, by a family of workers.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p154
"And all the bikes are still built here, on the same site as the original factory. We have produced only forty thousand bikes, where Honda has produced eight million. Ducati is like the pumpkin at Halloween or the Christmas tree at Christmas." I think what Livio meant is that you could not imagine the motorcycle world without Ducati, that Ducati crystallized the spirit of motorcycling. Certainly part of the mystique of Ducati is that everything they produce derives from a race-bred engine and a race-tested frame.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p159
"One time coming back from the coast through the desert in Nevada- you know the Big Basin?- you come over a rise and you can see the road stretching away for miles and miles. No turns. Well, I'd always wanted to ride at 100 miles an hour for an hour. To cover 100 miles in one hour. And I did, I put my head down on the tank bag and just held it at 100. No one else out there. Straight across the desert." Will smiled, and for an instant I could see the young librarian speeding into the empty space, stretching the moment to an hour he would have all his life.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p174
My reading on Lawrence and Ulysses had naturally led to a little research on Lawrence and motorcycles, and in one sense his death on a bike seemed inevitable. "Its my great game on a really pot-holed road to open up to 70 miles an hour or so and feel the machine gallop," he wrote to George Brough in a letter praising the firm's motorcycles. He told Charlotte Shaw how he rode down from Edinburgh averaging 65 miles an hour, hitting 90 miles an hour for 2 or 3 miles on end, "leaping" past Morris Oxfords doing a staid 30 miles an hour.
He called his motorcycles Boanerges- "sons of thunder"- and the thunderous riding was a compulsion: "When my mood gets too hot... I pull out my motor-bike and hurl it top-speed through these unfit roads for hour after hour." Like the pilots after the Second World War who formed the biker gangs in the United States, Lawrence felt his nerves" jaded and gone near dead, so that nothing less than hours of voluntary danger will prick them into life.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p176
Once off the bike I knew I should stop. I got directions to the Energy Park Inn, and walked out to the bike already thinking of how cool the room would be and forgetting how top-heavy the bike becomes with a full tank. I swung it off the sidestand and- aaurghh... thump! tinkle-tinkle- I dropped it. The brake lever knob skittered across the tarmac. The saddlebags kept the bike from coming down on my leg, but gas was spilling out around me. I struggled but couldn't get the bike up (which way do you turn the bars? there's a trick to getting bikes up but I couldn't remember).
"Excuse me?" I called to the guy at the next pump. He had his back turned and I was muffled by my helmet. "Excuse me!..." I said louder (god how embarrassing- it's like those commercials: "Help, fallen and can't get up"- maybe they should have emergency beepers for elderly motorcyclists). "Help!!" I shouted.
"Oh ...oh ... sorry," he said, grabbed the handlebar, and together we got the bike up. I was really shaken. Not because of the bike falling over but because the fall made me realize how far gone I was. I had no business riding around the block, much less blasting into the desert sun at 80 miles an hour with my brain completely poached. I was lucky I had fallen over at a gas station.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p190
I had a lesson in aerodynamics that morning. As a car driver I had always laughed at semi trailers that sported swooping curves on their mammoth fenders or those spoilers on the top of the cab that made them look like bald-headed wrestlers. As if that would make a difference. Yet one of the first things you discover as a motorcyclist is that it's the shape of the truck, not the size, that makes a difference. Cube vans throw a fat blast of air that feels like it could punch you straight back off your bike. Somewhere west of Artesia I met an old moving van, completely squared off, like a brick wall chugging across the plain at 55 miles an hour. I hunched down a little, as I always do, when poum his draft hit me like someone swinging a sandbag. If I had not been holding on tight I would have been in the ditch. Those rounded corners on modern vans do make a difference.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p191
Later, at a popular culture conference in Albuquerque, I would learn that helmets were not just a choice, they were a corner-stone of American freedom. The last session was "Biker Stigmatization" and by this point in the conference the room was divided: bikers on the left, riders on the right. I had already learned that I wasn't a "biker." I'm a "rider." Maybe just a wannabe writer who occasionally rides. I wasn't sure. These distinctions were becoming difficult.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p207
The presenters talked about bikers being abused and exploited, mocked "hand-wringers" like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other safety groups, and argued that bikers were still the victims of systemic harassment. Then the big bruiser in front got up to respond. He had sat quietly through the whole conference, but at well over 6 feet and 300 pounds, with a Mohawk haircut slicked into pony tail, and a face that looked like 20 miles of bad road, he'd been hard to miss. He wore his riding boots outside his jeans and a leather vest commemorating past rides and dead comrades.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p207-8
"Ah jist wanna thank y'all for havin' a Dumb-Ass Biker to one a these here academic conferences," he drawled. I missed his name "That's Sputnik," someone whispered behind me. He was head of the Motorcycle Rights Association of Texas. A Texan and a biker, you can't get more independent than that. He began denouncing mandatory helmet laws- which Texas had recently repealed- and told of government harassment. Of how at the conference of Motorcycle Rights in New York the delegates were under constant surveillance by the FBI, the local police, even the chambermaids. One delegate was arrested for possession of cocaine, and then released.
"Why? Because she, like I do, brushes her teeth with baking soda and salt. She was guilty of possession of baking soda! And then it came out that the maids had been paid $50- $50!- for each item that they found that might be illegal. A clear violation of the Constitution." Americans are always talking about the Constitution.
Sputnik was warming to his point, "Ain't no such thing as a biker-friendly politician. And these new rich bikers? They ain't gonna help us. They don't care about motorcycles. They're just toys to them. If the government puts too many restrictions on 'em, why they'll just go on to their next toy- a... a hayng-glider or sumthin'." We all laughed.
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p208
"The only good thing 'bout these born-again bikers is it means more hardly used bikes on the market for Real Bikers to pick up at cheap prices." Muttered yeahs! rumbled through the audience and we all had visions of picking up a Harley softtail for ten grand from some soft-ass dermatologist. Yeah!
"We don't need biker-friendly politicians, we need Bikers in office. We need the fire in the guts, the Fire-In-The-Guts of the real biker!' He clenched his fist on the upper slope of his belly. "Because if there's anything that's going to save America, to stop the decline and save this country, to save this civilization, it's the Spirit of the Biker."
Riding With Rilke Ted Bishop p208-9
There's something about being alone on a bike, cruising down the road in the silence of a loud engine and pounding wind. In these moments, everything can seem perfect. We are elevated from the pressures of life, removed from the responsibilities. No one and nothing can touch us. You begin to wonder why the ride ever has to end, why you have to return to things the way they are. You wonder why the rest of your life can't be like this.
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p9-10
Look at fear on a bike. We are confronted by the possibility of serious bodily damage every time we go for a cruise. Now I believe the possibility for danger exists equally in driving a four-wheel vehicle as it does on a bike (see the chapter on karma), but I'll be a bit mundane and simplistic for the moment. Unless you are a jerk, and I've seen a lot out there riding fast motorcycles, you probably respect your machine, appreciate its power and its limits, and cruise down the road within this power/limit grid. Depending on your personality and state of mind, you have your own unique fear threshold. For some people, like me, it falls around fifty miles per hour on wet pavement near the ocean-side S-curves north of Malibu. For others it's 167 miles per hour on the drag strip in Pomona. Still others experience it idling at the traffic light. We all have our fear threshold. If you don't think you do, then I'll guess that yours is with being truthful.
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p29-30
I know that when I ride, I face my ability to be "present" in the moment. Maybe it's second nature by now, but I like to feel it for a second, sitting on the bike as it's warming up, feeling how exposed I am, how sensitive the controls are, how close I am to the pavement. It wakes me up and brings me to a place of sheer connection with everything about who I am, my mood, my fragility and my incredible sensory system that even allows me to ride this 650-pound beast. This is the Ride. That split-second sensation that brings you into the present moment, a moment that goes by with a flash... yet is eternal. That's what a bike does for me.
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p30
So you just ride your bike to commute to work and you say it's only transportation... or it's just a hobby on weekends... or it's just a bike for heaven's sake, get off my case. Well, that's my point. That's how mundane the rest of our lives are as well. If you can't see the awesome beauty of nature, the depth of the Ride when you ride a bike, when the hell are you going to see it? Somehow I'm not convinced that humans can live their lives without sensing the connection with their ultimate nature, with the true essence of who we are. Sure, many people do, but they are the ones who are bitter, or hopeless or numb... and ultimately unhappy.
Happiness is a real option in this world, not just a fantasy. Sure things suck sometimes, but they are pretty damn good sometimes, too.
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p31-2
We got back on the road after refuelling at the single-pump station next to the bar. This is about as much action as Wilitz gets all year. Riders have an unspoken honour at pumps. Even with long lines of bikers waiting to get their three or four buck's worth of fuel, there's a respect and etiquette that is effortless. At a pump like this, the attendant has to trust you tell him the right amount; you just can't wait to reset the pump for each bike. And riders typically round their payment up to the next dollar amount as a courtesy. This is just the way it's done.
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p42
It's amazing what we carry from our parents in so many unconscious and intangible ways. My love for motorcycles began when I was a youngster, drawing pictures of Harleys and imagining the day when I would get one of my own. I'd talk to my dad about it and he was always a bit neutral, not influencing me one way or the other.
When, at twelve, I finally saved up enough paper route money for a little used dirt bike, I went to my dad to help me get one. At first he was against it, but with my tenacity, he finally gave in. I was jazzed to make this dream come true, and my father got into it as time when on. My younger brother, Jimmy, became the recipient of the bikes I outgrew, and he took to them like a fish to water. He's gone so far as to rebuild antique Indians and is a meticulous bike mechanic and president of his local motorcycle club. One day recently, he showed me an old picture he dug up in my father's drawer. It showed my twenty-one-year-old father sitting on his 1947 Harley. We both had a good laugh about it- something my dad never revealed. Turns out he had several in his day. Maybe an example of how the unseen forces of the past influence us in our present life?
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p44
It's amazing what we carry from our parents in so many unconscious and intangible ways. My love for motorcycles began when I was a youngster, drawing pictures of Harleys and imagining the day when I would get one of my own. I'd talk to my dad about it and he was always a bit neutral, not influencing me one way or the other.
When, at twelve, I finally saved up enough paper route money for a little used dirt bike, I went to my dad to help me get one. At first he was against it, but with my tenacity, he finally gave in. I was jazzed to make this dream come true, and my father got into it as time when on. My younger brother, Jimmy, became the recipient of the bikes I outgrew, and he took to them like a fish to water. He's gone so far as to rebuild antique Indians and is a meticulous bike mechanic and president of his local motorcycle club. One day recently, he showed me an old picture he dug up in my father's drawer. It showed my twenty-one-year-old father sitting on his 1947 Harley. We both had a good laugh about it- something my dad never revealed. Turns out he had several in his day. Maybe an example of how the unseen forces of the past influence us in our present life?
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p44
I had to ride the bike home in the pea-soup atmosphere. Intense, with zero visibility, it was like I was shining the headlights into a mirror three feet away. The road was slick, like snakeskin. At the last leg up to my house, way on top of the ridge, where the road is almost vertical, unlit and unpaved, I just said into the darkness, "God, please help me tonight" and it was awesome. I blasted right through the fog layer, going up so steeply and so quickly. I got to the top, to my house, and looking around, it was like the bike and I were floating just atop a sea of dense white fog that extended in every direction. The only other thing I could see was the mountain range a couple miles across the canyon, peaks emerging like icebergs, penetrating toward a sky slowly filling with stars... heaven's grace for another trippy ride.
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p60
When you shed the images of who you think you are, you are free. When you shed the restraints that come from what other people expect of you, you are free.
Isn't that one reason why people like to ride motorcycles? No restraints, no safety net, nothing to hold you back? An image of singularity, independence and total connection with the Universe freedom. It's not the only path to this experience, it's just one that works for me and the others that groove with it. The question is, what's your motorcycle? What promotes your freedom? What's your Ride?
These metaphors of life all paint the same picture. They all converge on freedom. If you aren't free then you are constantly trying to escape. I see it all the time in people. It's the "thank God it's Friday" routine, the mass exodus on holidays, the constant need to "get out" of something or from someone.
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p81-2
Though the Ride is ultimately an individual experience, it can't be done alone. This is the paradox of life on this planet. We only discover the truth of who we are through others. It always takes others to help us uncover our potential. The brotherhood that exists among riders is legend. How such a solitary event as riding a motorcycle can foster community spirit, deep ties and friendships is astounding. I constantly see how bike riders find their personal freedom through being responsible to the club or group they belong to. This appeals to our most basic tribal instincts. I just heard about how an enormous group of Turkish bikers on the island of Cyprus just stormed the Greek border in a life-threatening attempt to make a political statement. They acted from their sense of duty and faced a hostile army aiming machine guns at them. Everywhere I travel, I discover that bikers have assembled and created associations to further their interests, whether it's to go on group rides, become politically active or just honour the brand-name bikes that they have become attached to.
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p89
I don't always have a specific destination when I begin a ride. I let the mood of the moment dictate my direction. Do want to find solace in a desolate back road?
Do I want to be an exhibitionist? Do I want the challenge of negotiating hairpin turns through winding back roads? No matter what the discussion, it's all good!
At this point in my life, the rush doesn't come from speed; it comes from the freedom. I enjoy getting glances from a passer-by or cruising through a crowd. I love accelerating through a turn on a mountain road or just tooling around the neighbourhood. What I am trying to say is that the feeling of what the ride represents is as important as the ride itself. The freedom is my fuel if you will.
When I return home from one of my journeys, I feel exhilarated! Could it be from the wind pounding my face and chest? Or does this feeling come from the clearing of my mind? Am I exhilarated by the physical or mental stimulation? Who cares? The important thing is that I can't wait for my next ride!
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p98
Why don't I feel the same while driving a car? A car has way too much insulation. I can't hear the birds, the engine; I can't smell the fragrances that are so abundant when I'm riding a motorcycle. Most of my body goes into a sleep state while driving a car; on my motorcycle, every part of me feels alive- especially my brain. I am processing information, controlling my hands and feet, and absorbing sounds, smells and sights that tell me I am alive and that I am an active participant in my life.
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p111
When I ride I become exhilarated. The adrenaline soars as I feel the power beneath me. Sometimes, I can be at peace with the world on my motorcycle when a cruel thought invades my pleasure- "It could happen now."
"It" means another accident. I realise "It" is my own doubt caused by negative thinking. "It" spoils my pleasure. I quickly push "It" out of my mind so that I may concentrate on my surroundings and the motorcycle beneath me. Mental balance allows me to enjoy the ride. Without a positive outlook, fear invades. In turn, the fear steals my concentration. Without concentration, I know I'm danger of having another accident. Without concentration, I can have no pleasure.
It takes strong mental discipline in order for me to concentrate and enjoy the ride. At the end of each ride, I celebrate my victory over fear and negative thinking. I feel awe at the power of my mind and the forces that allow me to control "It" rather than "It" control me. I feel more confident, powerful and ready to accept new challenges. I know that I can do anything I allow my mind to imagine.
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p122-3
I can recall getting up at dawn and pulling out in the damp grey chill of a fall morning to see a gopher munching on greens along the side of the road and a hawk soaring overhead. In a car, I would have been warm, insulated, surrounded by metal. But through that band of windshield, I would not have been even aware of the hawk soaring over the roof of the car or of the gopher.
In a wealthy country like Canada, we are too often insulated in our warm comfortable houses and cars. With such comforts, it is easy to lose awareness of what surrounds us in nature and how we impact on the environment.
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p132-3
The motorcycle is not designed for the city. It does not like to be constantly stop and go, or to be stationary. It is meant to move. And like Tai Chi, when that energy is being expended, it more easily managed. The motorcycle longs to be moving on the open road, or cutting through forests and mountain passes. As one riding a motorcycle, I have learned that I need to harness that energy and to use the path of least resistance to keep the energy flowing.
Tao Of The Ride Garri Garripoli p133
Skipping a few details, suffice it to say that one day after twenty years of marriage, Sheila calmly said, "I'd like you to leave. Go find your happiness. It's not here."
Two days later I was staying in a motel, two weeks later in my own apartment. When the assets and liabilities were decided, the divorce was final. In one of my fits of inspiration or insanity, (they often resemble each other and I get them confused), I decided to sell almost all of my possessions, except the motorcycle. By shedding my entanglements, I thought I'd be free to search for the elusive meaning of life, i.e., happiness. I knew the answer was out there waiting to be found.
I fantasized about riding my cycle to California and mile by mile becoming enlightened to the truths of the world. Yes, in my ecstatic moments, I saw myself as America's saviour. I was making this journey not only for myself but also for every unhappy being in the world, for every individual who hated his job and for the down-trodden and humbled masses. "America, I hear you calling and I'm on my way."
In my depressed moments, I knew I was running away. I had no idea where I was running to, but that didn't matter. Running just felt very good.
Only two negatives stood in my way. The first was that I got terrible leg cramps after riding my motorcycle for as little as fifteen minutes. The second was that I have no sense of direction. For most of my life I lived in a town with a population of three thousand people and one traffic light. I still kept a map on the front seat of my car.
Motorcycle Enlightenment Charles Sides p2-3
The receptionist at the auto club doesn't understand that I only want directions to the auto club. "When I get there," I explain to her, "you can give me directions to California."
I carefully write down her instructions and take them the motorcycle. Where do I put the directions so I can check them as I ride? A flash of insight tells me to get masking tape at the apartment rental office so I can affix them to the- I can never think of the name of that dial, the one that shows RPMs. I never use it anyway.
Actually, I don't know what it's for, so I follow my impulse and tape the directions on it.
The motorcycle is packed with my few remaining possessions. I get on and I'm off to find America. But first I must find the auto club. The AAA sign is right where the receptionist said it would be and I pull into the parking lot. Balancing the cycle carefully, I try to pull it up onto the stand, but it's too heavy. The kickstand is facing uphill so I can't use it. I back out of the space, turn around and back in. This time the kickstand is aiming downhill and seems to hold the weight of the cycle. I carefully get off, lock my helmet under the seat, and go inside.
Motorcycle Enlightenment Charles Sides p5-6
Instantly, I know not to tell him that I'm searching for America and enlightenment. With a moment's deliberation I say, "I'm heading for California. May I have directions?"
He turns to get maps. Safe, I think. Even though I lost my number, I handled that part okay.
"Where in California? Panic! I hadn't thought about that. "Los Angeles," I decide quickly.
"Nice place. My brother lives there."
I'll tell him you said hello if I see him.
He just looks at me.
Too much, I remind myself. Relax. He lays out a map of the United States and highlights lines. "Take Route 30 to 83 to the PA Turnpike. Follow the Turnpike to Route 70. Take Route 70 the whole way to Utah. Then 15 and 10 to Los Angeles."
"That's it? I won't even have to tape that on the tachometer. Tachometer!" I say with great enthusiasm. "That's the name of the dial I couldn't think of earlier."
He waits patiently.
"Thanks," I say and leave. As I walk away I hear him call number 48. Instinctively I reach into my pocket to check if that's number and pull out number 47. Where had it been? I turn back towards the counter to show him I really did have the number, but second thoughts intervene. Somehow I don't think he cares. I put the number back in my pocket and walk outside. The cycle is still standing. Things are looking good.
Motorcycle Enlightenment Charles Sides p6-7
Nevertheless, here I am on Route 30 heading... east, according to a sign I just passed. California is definitely west. Even I know something's wrong. I take the first exit and pull into a convenience store. With helmet still on I go into the store and ask the clerk for directions to the PA Turnpike. She looks at me strangely so I take off the helmet and try again.
"May I have directions to the PA Turnpike?"
"Route 30 to 83," she says.
"East or west on Route 30?"
"West.
"Darn.
"Pardon?"
"Nothing." I hesitate a moment, then ask, "How far am I from the Turnpike?"
"About an hour," she answers.
Four cramps, I think.
Motorcycle Enlightenment Charles Sides p10-11
Suddenly I come around a turn and spot the twin towers of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. My heart beats faster. I start up the bridge. I look straight ahead and realize I have no idea where I'm going in life. I look to my right and see nothing but sky and water. A strong wind could suddenly blow the cycle and me over the side. Meaningless life before me and possible death beside me. What a choice. I keep riding.
Motorcycle Enlightenment Charles Sides p12
Rolling off a boat on a motorcycle into a foreign land is one of the most exciting experiences I know. No matter where it is in the world: freewheeling down the ramp, the metallic clank that marks your arrival, and your first glimpse of a strange land. Everything looks different, sounds different, even smells different - you feel different.
Lois On The Loose Lois Pryce p1
It was around this time that I was given a significant piece of advice. Naturally, plenty of opinions start flying around when you decide to do something like this, usually along the lines of "DON"T!" from people who watch a lot of television. But this pearl of wisdom, given to me by a world-traveller friend of mine with thousands of miles under his belt, was:
Make it a mission. Don't just meander here and there. State your goal before you leave, whether it be to motorcycle around the world, or from A to B, or whatever.
But this sense of purpose, even though it's self-imposed, is very important in keeping you focused.
Now I must admit I scoffed a bit at first as it sounded rather too regimented and organised- all the things I wanted to get away from- but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
Lois On The Loose Lois Pryce p13
Although it was many years later that I finally got round to acquiring motorcycle licence, the obsession with all things noisy, greasy and rocking had never gone away, and against the advice of experienced and, frankly, sensible motorcycling friends, I cut my biking teeth on a 650cc 1963 BSA. This scheme initially involved more gnashing than cutting of teeth, but after a series of "character-building" breakdowns, accidents, electrical failures, oil leaks, snapped chains and the many miles of obligatory pushing associated with British bike ownership, (wo)man finally triumphed over machine and the suitably shiny black and chrome BSA became a trusty friend, providing me with many happy road miles.
Lois On The Loose Lois Pryce p14
Most importantly, I wanted a bike that could go anywhere, that would be a friend, not a foe, in a tricky situation, and whose paintwork I didn't have to worry about scratching. Cheap and cheerful were my watchwords and after much deliberation I decided to fly in the face of perceived wisdom and opted for a 225cc trail bike: the Yamaha XT225 Serow. It was small, light, economical and named after a stocky little mountain deer. What more could I ask for? What I wasn't prepared for were the howls of derision and hoots of laughter from those who considered themselves in the know.
"You're going to do it on a 225 dirt bike?" they would exclaim. "I pity your arse!"
"Sixteen thousand miles? At fifty miles an hour!" spluttered another.
"Fifty-five," I corrected him.
Lois On The Loose Lois Pryce p15-6
But for some reason that I still can't fathom, the need to keep moving was stronger than the need to keep warm. The truckers howled with laughter as I donned my extreme-weather clothing. I'd picked up a new piece of kit in a gas station, the Emergency Poncho, ninety-nine cents for a see-through yellow plastic cape that I'd been saving for a day like this. Surely, this was just the kind of emergency it was intended for. To complement my new look I had also taken to wearing a pair of rubber washing-up gloves over leather ones. Like a low-rent Caped Crusader, I trundled off into the snow, a mass of billowing yellow plastic flapping noisily behind me. Ten miles down the road my super hero outfit hung in tatters around my shoulders; this was clearly more than a ninety-nine-cent emergency.
Lois On The Loose Lois Pryce p44
It wasn't until I woke up in the alien comfort of a family friend's guest bedroom at one o'clock the next afternoon, utterly exhausted and craving a hearty dose of healthy fruit and veg, that I realised I'd knocked out Anchorage to Vancouver in ten non-stop days, running on pure adrenalin, gas station coffee and maple syrup pancakes. Is this what Merle Haggard meant by "White Line Fever"? I had it bad. If I carried on at this rate, I'd be in Ushuaia in a couple of months and back home before I knew what had happened. It was time to slow down the pace.
Lois On The Loose Lois Pryce p52
After half an hour of tinkering, fiddling and fruitless kick-starting in the scorching heat, we were still stationary and she was at her wits end.
"I don't know what's wrong with it. We'll never get out of here!" she exclaimed miserably. "Well have to sleep by the side of the road."
"We're at the top of a slope here, I'll try bump-starting it if you want," I offered. I climbed on to her bike, selected second gear, and with the clutch pulled in, freewheeled down the track descended the mountain. I quickly picked up speed and as I released the clutch, sure enough the engine roared into life. "Hurrah!" I shouted, giving Rachel the thumbs up with my left hand. But my moment of celebration coincided with the front wheel hitting a patch of deep sand at the bottom of the slope. I skidded out of control and before I realised what was happening, I had slammed her bike straight into the mountainside, smashing up the front end, snapping the mudguard and sustaining a few minor injuries of my own.
Lois On The Loose Lois Pryce p119
There followed some pointing (from me), some translating (from Rachel) and attempts at English from the group of eager onlookers. But there was no need for any of this garbled explanation. Che knew just what to do and it certainly didn't involve ordering parts from Yamaha. Judging by most of the traffic we had encountered on our journey through Mexico, the national approach to vehicle maintenance was "keep it going, amigo!" This mentality combined with a generous squirt of sealant meant I was up and running again in less than half an hour. Back home they might call it a bodge, but if it was good enough for Che, it was good enough for me.
Lois On The Loose Lois Pryce p136
"Aaaaaah," sighed Jose, turning to me with a broad smile, suddenly composed, "esta bien. Now, you come with and we do the paperwork."
Ah yes, the paperwork.
The paperwork?
"Paperwork!" I yelped. The forklift was in mid air, the bike was almost in the plane.
"STOP! STOP!" I shouted, tearing down the runway. The men turned to look at me, pegging it towards them, waving my arms and yelling as they loaded the bike into the hold.
"My papers, passport" I gasped, "they are on the bike." I was sure I was in big trouble, but the men burst out laughing. "Tranquilo, chica, tranquilo," they chuckled, lowering my motorcycle to the ground. I shuffled back across the runway towards Jose, feeling rather foolish, but he was very nice about it and made me a strong cup of coffee in his office as I stared out of the window, watching the plane lift my bike into the clouds.
Lois On The Loose Lois Pryce p206
By the time the night was through, Ricardo, Sjaak and I had formed our own rebel splinter group and the following day we forsook the organised Harley Riders Pig Roast for a day out riding a stretch of the Ecuador National Rally course and generally hanging out and talking nonsense. With our Dutch, English and Ecuadorian number plates, we made an unlikely international trio. Ricardo, a swarthy giant on his big rally bike, Sjaak crouched low over sports bike, blond hair dangling down the back of his skin-tight leathers, and me, spluttering along on my little dirt bike, apparent disparity being no barrier to us revelling in the beautiful Andean scenery and plenty of good-natured banter.
Lois On The Loose Lois Pryce p227-8
But to join in the hanger racing, it was necessary to know the regs. Firstly, I had to understand that an awful lot of white paint had been wasted creating lane markings on Lima's roads. Secondly, where traffic lights were concerned, red and green were one and the same. Thirdly, I mustn't use my indicators, it only confused the natives. Finally, and most importantly, I must sound my horn at all times.
It took me a little while to work out these basic rules and initially my heart was in my mouth as I tentatively weaved my way through the madness. It was only when I reached the centre of the city to discover four square miles of twisty, narrow streets snarled up in furious gridlock that I realised if I was going to get anywhere I had to start acting like a local.
Lois On The Loose Lois Pryce p245-6
But the winds were worse than the day before, and without warning a violent gust would regularly whisk my bike round by ninety degrees, sending me careering across the road, sliding and skidding in the gravel, banging through potholes and eventually off the road altogether. I soon devised a technique to deal with these incidents by simply steering the bike in the direction the wind forced me, sending me plummeting down the steep bank or flying for yards across the scrubby plain until I could come to a controlled stop.
This survival method worked well enough until such an occasion coincided with Rachel overtaking me on my left. As a furious squall rushed in from the west, spinning my bike around, the front wheel drove slap bang into her back wheel. I crashed. She looked around to see what had happened. She crashed. It was a comical sight; the two of us sprawled on the ground next to our supine motorcycles. "Are you OK?" I yelled, crawling across the gravel towards her.
She called something back at me but the sound of the wind rendered our voices inaudible. We dragged ourselves towards each other on all fours, still shouting silently into the wind, and set about picking up the bikes. With them and us upright once again, we attempted to top up our fuel tanks with the contents of my jerrycan, but to no avail. The wind sprayed the petrol into our faces, on to our clothes and all over the bikes. And then once more, straight off the Pacific Ocean, a howling beast of a gust slammed Rachel's bike to the dirt, the filler cap still open, precious gas disappearing into the dry earth. Gasping for breath, exhausted and aching, we lifted her bike from the ground for the second time and sure enough, another vicious blast screamed across the plains, this time sending Rachel herself flying to the ground.
Lois On The Loose Lois Pryce p345-6
Exhausted and desolated, I flew back to Toronto, staying there just long enough to organize the house and put it on the market, with more help from family and friends, then got away to the house on the lake, still not knowing what I was going to do. Before she died, Jackie had given me a clue, saying, "Oh, you'll just go travelling on your motorcycle," but at that time I couldn't even imagine doing that. But as the long, empty days and nights of that dark summer slowly passed, it began to seem like the only thing to do.
Ghost Rider Neil Peart p10
In any case, I was now setting out on my motorcycle to try to figure out what kind of person I was going to be, and what kind of world I was going to live in.
Throughout that first day on the road, as I traced the rain-slick highway north across the rocky face of Quebec, my shaky resolve would be tested a few times. Tense and shivering, peering through the turbulent wash of spray behind a lumber truck for a chance to pass, more than once I thought about packing it in. "Who needs this? I'm really not having fun, and don't think I'm strong enough to deal with this right now. Why not turn around and go back to the house by the lake, hide there a little longer?"
But no. That too would be a perilous road. When I allowed myself to consider turning back, the thought that kept me riding on was, "Then what?" For over a month I had tried living there alone, with occasional visits from friends to help take me out of myself, and I had still felt myself beginning to slip into a deep, dark hole. Various stimulants and depressants could help me get through the days and nights, but as I had recently written to a friend, "That's okay for a temporary escape hatch, but it's no kind of a life." I had tried the Hermit mode, now it was time to try the Gypsy mode.
I tried not to think of what I would do if that didn't work.
Ghost Rider Neil Peart p11
Setting off through the forests of north western Ontario, the lonely road cast its hypnotic, soothing effect over my mood. The steady droning of the engine, the constant wind noise, the cool, forest-scented air, and my visual fixation on the road ahead occupied most of my senses, while my mind wandered above its monitoring function into the fields of memory.
Ghost Rider Neil Peart p17
Parking my motorcycle in front of a motel at the end of a long day road could certainly be sweet, like finally exhaling after holding my breath all day, but best of all was setting out in the morning. Whatever torments night had brought; whatever weather the new day threw at me, when I loaded up the bike and swung my leg over the saddle, my whole perspective changed. Focus tightened into the mechanics and mentality of operating the machine, and awareness contracted to that demanding paradigm. As I let in the clutch and turned the throttle, my world-view expanded as I moved into a whole new paradigm of landscapes, highways, and wildlife. Infinite possibilities.
Ghost Rider Neil Peart p41-2
"September now, you know. It could snow any day. What you gonna do then?"
"Well, load the bike on a truck and haul it out, I guess. I don't know." I began to think of him as Mister Dismal, though time would prove me wrong. His manner was only the voice of the "old Alaska hand," impatient with naive travellers from Down South. When I mentioned my concern about the front brake pads, he asked the year of the bike. I told him it was three years old, and he said he didn't think they could be worn yet. Then he asked "How many miles on it?" and when I told him "just over 40,000," his tone softened. "Oh, you're a rider. You're a real rider." Evidently I was now worthy of respect, and he agreed to do what he could for me when I arrived in Fairbanks.
Ghost Rider Neil Peart p64-5
But first, my route into Vancouver would delight me with a road I would later rate as one of the great motorcycle roads in the world. Highway 99 began among the dry hills of pine and sage near Marble Canyon, then after Lillooet it went snaking through deep forest, up and down past fast rivers and aquamarine mountain lakes.
The sky remained bright, the air cool and delicious, and the sinuous road coming toward me was so challenging and rewarding that I was tempted into the adrenaline zone. Turn by turn my pace increased until I was riding with a complete focus spiced by the ever-present danger and occasional thrill of fear, racing against physics and my own sense of caution in a sublime rhythm of shifting, braking, leaning deep into the tight corners, then accelerating out again and again. I felt a charge of excitement I hadn't known for many months, and found myself whooping out aloud with the sheer existential thrill.
Ghost Rider Neil Peart p77
I recall writing to you when I was taking the Jim Russell course in Formula Ford cars at the racetrack at Mont Tremblant, Quebec, and while that was pretty exciting, this seemed way more serious, in the same way that riding a motorcycle on the street is more serious than driving a car can ever be.
The main pressure, of course, was to not crash, and I was happy enough to succeed on that level, but I also had some highly adrenalized fun (rare and welcome in my recent life), and learned a thing or three about bike-handling. Even riding away from there on my way up here, I felt more comfortable and confident on my old GS than I had coming down that same road a few days before.
Ghost Rider Neil Peart p159
Back eastward to Mike's Sky Rancho! Mecca for dirt-bikers and Baja racers, but Salvadori warns "it can be a rough 22 miles," and indeed it was. Dirt, sand, rocks, stones, streams, ruts, and all that. But, he assures you, "a well-ridden Gold Wing [heavy luxury-touring bike] can make it, much to the disgust of the dirt riders," and sure enough, when I finally pulled in (after having a good, long look at the last 20-foot-wide stream crossing, full of sand and stones) a bunch of guys were standing there beside their one-cylinder, unladen dirt bikes, and one of them started shouting, "How did you do that?
I just said, "With great fear". They all gathered around, and he said, "You came up the same road we did?" I said, "I guess so," and he blurted out, "But you're not even dirty!" True, I did look quite smashing: the mechanic at Hollywood BMW had shined up the bike; I had on my relatively new Vansons (summer leathers) for the first time, and I'd even had my boots cleaned up nice in L.A. "Well," I said, "I guess it's 'cause I wasn't following anybody."
Ghost Rider Neil Peart p189-190
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
"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
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
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
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
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
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
As I twisted the throttle to get more fuel through the injectors I had to pull on the front brake to stop from lurching forward. Then it hit me, the most amazing aroma of cooking oil. It was an unmistakable food smell, a combination of fish 'n' chips and greasy fry-up. I turned in the saddle and looked down at the light grey smoke puffing in time with the engine's KA DONK, KA DONK, KA DONK.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p75
Practice makes perfect, provided of course you have the right parts. I drilled myself over and over again changing tyres, chains, sprockets, filters, the whole lot.
Betty and I went for ever-longer rides from Perth. I was getting to know her, and discovering that many of her character traits were- how can I put this?- less than ideal. Betty was loud, so loud people walking down the street 50 yards away would turn to see what was making that bizarre noise. This was often followed by an open-mouthed stare and the question: "Mate, is that thing a diesel?" Riding Betty past a group of people waiting roadside for a bus was a cringe-making, loud, smelly and smoky experience; the combination of her rank green colour, noise and exhaust fumes was as repellent as you could imagine.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p105-6
I stood in the little examination room staring at the eye chart on the opposite wall and nervously hopping from toe to toe while the doctor sauntered in and casually closed the door, regarding me with a whimsical look. "Right, you've got an insect in your ear then."
I twitched, my eyes big and crazy. I closed the gap between us, put both hands on his shoulders. "Get it out, for God's sake."
He straightened up instantly, all humour gone. "Don't worry, Mr Carter. Over to the bed and sit down, please." I leaped onto the bed. "Call me Paul. Just get it out, Doc!" He produced one of those black trumpet-shaped scope things with the little light, pulled down on my lobe and poked in the scope. As his head drew close to the lens he jerked back.
"Whoa," was all I heard.
"What the stuff is it?" I asked.
He put down the scope. "Well, there's a big cockroach in there, but don't worry, first we're going to drown him with oil, then we can remove him."
"Whaddya mean drown him? It doesn't need to look like an accident- why don't you send in a hit man? Drown him in oil, what do you mean in oil? I work in oil. What kind of oil? Why muck about with a drowning? Just use a gun- even better, there's a meat skewer back at the house. I was raving, but he was already gone. I sat there for what seemed like forever. My new friend, sensing he was in real trouble, began scratching around even harder. The doc came back with a giant turkey baster full of warm vegetable oil. He had to sit on my head to keep me still while a nurse squirted the oil into my ear. The roach went into his death throes while he slowly suffocated. The doc held on while I screamed and bucked wildly. The nurse held the examination bed down while the doc enjoyed his first human-head rodeo; he rode for the full eight seconds before dismounting and straightening out his hair. I lay there twitching in unison with my newly drowned friend.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p120-1
We ascended through the Madura Pass at nightfall, with rain still falling hard, and pulled up at the motel there. "Try the quiche, it's really good," said the motel manager as I checked us in. I glanced over to the driveway; Clare was waking up in the cab outside. The manager was a big man with a shaved head, a goatee and a lazy eye. On a night like this one, my first impression was that he had probably just finished digging three shallow graves out in the bush in anticipation of our arrival. It didn't help that the motel was a big spread-out complex at the base of the pass.
Other than us and the manager, it appeared to be totally empty. Our room was at the end of a wing that stretched into darkness. "This place is creepy," said Clare, looking through the rain as lightning lit up the wet landscape. We unloaded our bags and ran back to the main building for something to eat. The motel manager was there. "Try the quiche," he grinned. "It's really good." We sat there in the restaurant alone, not another soul in there. "This place is like an Aussie Bates Motel," I whispered. Clare looked worried and put on Lola's bib. "He's scary," she said.
"Are you going to have the quiche? Apparently it's really good." She pulled a face. The manager returned a moment later with a pad. "I'll have the quiche," I said, smiling at Clare. Clare had a salad and Lola demolished a big piece of fish.
The quiche was horrible, our night was long, the door had a flimsy lock on it, and Clare was convinced the motel manager was going to burst through the door and hack us up with a fire axe. She was ready to pile up the furniture against the door, but in the end the night was uneventful. The manager was in fact a perfect gentleman with a dry sense of humour and bad taste in quiche.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p122-4
Our first night's stop was due to be Mount Gambier via Keith. My initial joy at finally being on the road was ephemeral to say the least. The first thing that hit gain- was how slow Betty was. The second thing that hit me- on a highway surrounded by trucks- was the shockwave of wind right after each truck has shot past. My hands were totally numb from the vibrations coming through the bars. Now that's a weird feeling: you know you're holding onto the handlebars, you just can't feel it.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p129
They could not understand why this guy on a big motorcycle was only doing 80 kilometres per hour. I was in the slow lane, where you can legally do 80, but this just wasn't good enough for the average mild-mannered motorist, most of whom simply defaulted to giving me the finger and/or a verbal serve on passing. I'd had enough, so we turned off the coastal route at Lavers Hill, heading northeast. This country was much better for an underpowered bike. Betty cruised over the Otway Ranges through some really pretty country. The sun came out, the road traffic was light and I started enjoy myself- that is, until the sun went down and we hit the Princes Highway.
Back to the road rage and abuse- again with the hand gestures- from fast-moving cars; trucks blew by threatening to suck me from the handlebars. It was impatient driving at its worst. One bloke even threw a kebab at me.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p131-2
This must be the start of the dreaded Betty-crushing Black Spur, I thought. Eddie swiftly confirmed this over the two-way. "The Black Spur," he announced. "You're never gonna make it, sucka." I overtook the truck and put-putted into the most amazing high country forest. Two brand spanking KTMs pulled alongside and Betty got the once-over. There was some pointing, lots of laughing, then they barked the engines, down a gear, on the throttle, front wheels effortlessly airborne- wankers- and off up the straight on the balance point through the gearbox. I couldn't do that; I just didn't have the power or the gearbox. But I could enjoy the scenery, hairpin after hairpin straight up into the Yarra Ranges.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p140
In the morning Eddie got up early and fixed us a full cooked breakfast. Dan wanted to go for a ride to get some shots, so he jumped on the back of Betty again. We plodded through a few paddocks, cresting a big hill to pull up right in front of the biggest bull I've ever seen. He was magnificent. It looked like someone had stretched a hide over a drooling city bus.
The big beast blew snot out of nostrils you could fit a fist in. 'OK mate, we've seen the giant bull, let's move on,' Dan said nervously.
The bull turned and started walking towards us.
"Pauli, let's go, c'mon mate," Dan said. I pulled off very slowly. Dan didn't think it was funny.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p149
The ride down the other side was a joy, all the same swervery but no longer underpowered so I could finally keep up with all the other bikes enjoying the run. The KTM duo were stuck behind a caravan, deep in conversation, doing twenty. I thumped past, rushing a really silly overtake on the apex of a right hander. No oncoming traffic but an overhanging tree nearly took my head off. Don't look back, just hold her wide open and go. The game was on. I caught flashes of their headlights in my mirrors; Betty's footpegs touched bitumen for the first time. I rode as hard and fast bike would let me. We duelled, always within our lanes, measured, experienced fun, ripping through turn after turn, the bikes well over, jittery on the lean from the leaf litter on the roadside, into the centre line and back, always thinking ahead, always looking towards the exit point and the next setup. No looking back, or they'd know I was trying, no glancing down at gauges or mirrors. We were flying.
At the first straight section we came to the duo pulled up, one on either side of me. I was hopelessly out-gunned, out-wheelied and out-braked. We rode on, three in a row down the straight, no hard-faced manly nods or piss taking, just big happy grins.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p141
Rory had obviously done this kind of thing before [made custom leathers]. He talked easily to the camera, he spoke well and knew exactly what he was talking about. He described the ideal fit of a riding suit for professional racers and amateurs, and explained the difference from a rider's point of view in the different suit designs as well as different types of leather.
"Right Paul, if you could hold out your arms like said." I did as I was told, and Rory started taking my measurements, then entering them into his laptop. I was rather enjoying the whole thing, until Rory got to the crotch measurement. "OK, Paul, I need to get the tape directly on the skin here, so I'll need you to hop out of your jeans." There was a pause while my mind raced for an answer.
Rory grinned. "You're not wearing underwear, are you?" I shook my head. Dan looked up from the camera.
"Mate, who goes to a racing suit fitting jockless?" I tried to look penitent.
"Sorry, guys. I've been on the road and just ran out of clean undies."
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p156-7
Stage three was a straight run up the Pacific Highway through Newcastle with a brief detour through Bucketts Way. It's a popular run for riders. Some parts of the road are not so great to ride on but at my speed and with all the vibration it didn't really make any difference. We meandered along with the Karuah River past wide paddocks and shaded forest, then turned left at Gloucester and on to Nabiac and the National Motorcycle Museum.
Our stop for the night was a small house in a paddock directly behind the museum. As usual we arrived late. Dad and Phil had spent the day on the road chatting and both looked tired, so Dan and I wandered over to the main entrance of the museum in the dark. A massive bike was displayed out the front. Dan lit up the camera, and its beam cut through the pitch-black interior, bouncing off hundreds of neatly lined up, polished handlebars. "Wow." It was an Aladdin's cave in there. I was like a drooling kid outside a toy store window at Christmas. I pushed on the door as if somehow by magic it would open and automatically all the lights would come on, beaming me through the looking glass and into Bike Nirvana.
The door of course remained locked, so I had to wait till morning, but as soon as the museum opened, I was there hopping about like a cartoon rabbit ready to spend my morning soaking up bikes, bikes, more bikes, bike stuff, bike trivia- bike everything. The place didn't disappoint. I have never seen so many bikes in one place.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p162-3
By mid-morning we had crossed over into Queensland. By then we were back on the Pacific Highway and I was back to feeling silly each time a big, ballsy, hairy-armed biker sidled up for a look. As I sat in my upright bio-fuel typing-pool riding position, hairy-armed bikers glanced over at me with a mixture of pity and amusement.
Seated astride their Harleys in that laid-back, reading-the-weekend-paper-in-the-armchair position they travel past me effortlessly, their bikes sounding like several howitzers going off in unison. Even when bankers, lawyers and brain surgeons skip a weekend shave, get up early, saunter into the garage and throw a leg over their Harley, they get that face on, that look-at-my-bad-arsed-substance face. When they go past me, I can practically hear what they're thinking: "I'm cool today baby, but next to this thing I'm really cool. Hey, I think it's a diesel." I knew that for the entire ride I was never going to bump into another twat riding an irrigation pump. I was never going to go fast enough for anyone to want to ride with me, unless I befriended a retired biker in a cart. I was never going to hear someone say, "Hey, you have a slow bio-diesel Frankenstein special, so do I- let's be friends."
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p165-6
We met John Lloyd, an old Air Force flying mate of Dad's, and his wife Glenda. John's a great guy; I ran into him at the Brisbane Writers' Festival last year. He had me in stitches with stories about Dad, and told me lots of things I didn't know about him. John's memories of those days, long before I was born, were clear as a bell, and by the end of the night I started to look at my father in a new light, like a veil had been lifted. They were like two young blokes again, bouncing off each other, laughing. I hope Erwin and I will be like that in years to come.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p166
Roma was the goal; Roma was a place to rest for the night. I focused on the road ahead, and forced myself to pay attention. You live inside your helmet on a long-distance ride, but it becomes Wally World after a while. You drift, way off into other times, other places. While I rode I made lists, thought about tits, planned extensions to my house. I thought about the past a lot, revisiting childhood streets and alleyways in Scotland, like a morbid Google Earth. I jumped forward and backward through my past, made lists of people I wanted to catch up with, then crossed off the ones who were dead.
The problem is, it you let your brain box wander. your bike will eventually follow, likely straight into an oncoming road train. Rule of thumb, as I was repeatedly told by mates who know, guys who are long-distance riders: expect the worst, plan for the worst, and know yourself before you go.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p170-1
There are countless disadvantages to riding an experimental bike like Betty around Australia, lack of power being paramount. Close behind is the lack of comfort- the vibrations had my arms feeling like they had just come from the dentist; I kept dropping things- and at this point, the lack of spares. We were down to the last CVT belt, and Roma was about 80 k's away. I waved to Geoff and took off, praying to the god of spare parts that my drive belts would turn up safely in Roma, all the way from Mexico.
Soon after Jackson, the road up ahead changed colour. I call that colour "Hint of Death"; its not quite brown, more of a reddish-brown mix. If this stretch of highway on my map was scratch-'n-sniff, then most people would vomit when looking at it on the way through Queensland. Plus, it looked like I was about to cross the frontline into some kangaroo civil war; littering the road before me were hundreds of stinking smashed carcasses in various stages of decomposition, from just splattered to bleached skeletons. I could smell it before I could see it, that rotting stink. Everyone else on the road was moving fast enough to rip through the pong before it made them gag- for other riders sitting on 130 kph it was just a matter of picking your way through the carnage and missing a breath. For me it was half a dozen breath mints and a prayer to the CVT belt: "Don't fail me now."
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p172-3
"He's got cat dementia," I explained to Gav.
"MMMMAWWWW" Oswald started digging out scoops of earth. It had started raining, but that didn't bother him.
"Where's he going mate, China?" said Gav.
"Well, either that or he's remembered why he's digging a hole in the rain."
"He's down to his shoulder there, how big does your cat shit?" Gav finished his beer. "That's a bit optimistic, don't you think, Ossy?"
I shrugged."He's an oilfield cat, mate, he'll be running casing in that hole next."
Gav smiled and we were about to walk off when Ossy suddenly puckered up and nutted one out about a foot away from his perfectly vertical hole. Then he turned around and filled in the hole, patting down the earth fastidiously. He sprinkled leaves over the top and everything. He turned to go and stopped dead in front of his turd.
"Bloody hell!" Gav was in hysterics.
Ossy looked up at us as if to say, "Now, how did that happen?" and sat there in the rain looking at his poop.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p184
I flipped open my visor to wedge a Minty into my mouth. The air was like a slap in the face- imagine sitting in a sauna while someone holds a hairdryer an inch from your eyes, that's what it was like.
"Shit!" I often swore out loud, or I'd sing, or have long conversations with myself like a mad person with Tourettes. A corner came looming up with a triple banking hard around it, always on the apex. You could sit on the bike for hours on the straight with nothing and no one passing you, then the minute you hit a blind corner, a road train the size of Brussels would be coming directly at you. There was no time to react, other than just blindly hang on and hope for the best. Because of Betty's very upright riding position, the invisible wall of air displaced by a truck doing 130 k's would hit me hard. It was often like catching a sack of flour in the chest, while the bike got blown across the road.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p189-90
The shoulder was as wide and flat as the road; it looked like it had recently been graded. Betty was about two metres off the road when she slammed to a complete stop. Time and adrenalin put you in a weird place. I wonder if there is a word for those moments in your life when accidents happen: that out-of-body parallel universe you enter when you realise you're going to crash, just before you actually hit something. Time slows down; adrenalin transforms you from a disposable camera into a microscope.
The information I processed in those split seconds was astounding. If only I could make my brain perform like that all the time. For me, the initial horror- like the spike of a needle- then dissolved into calm hyper-awareness like I'd had a giant hit of Berocca. I was suddenly as calm and detached as at any quiet moment. As my head went through Betty's windshield, I noticed the odometer read five kilometres; I'd reset it when we left Longreach. "Five k's," I thought, "that s not very far out of town for an ambulance to travel." My body was thrown forward and to the left; I was obviously getting high-sided and was about to get slammed down on my left side, head first. I thought, "It's OK, the airbag vest will go off now," and then my mind flashed to image of me throwing the vest on the back seat of the truck as we left the coffee shop not ten minutes earlier.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p191
Matt's DVD choices were good considering he got them in a petrol station. Hitchcock's classic The Birds, Ghostbusters, an old Sean Connery sci-fi movie from the eighties called Jutland and, God love him, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's Long Way Round- just what I wanted to see. I'd rather rub Deep Heat on my balls and staple my tongue to a burning building.
Dan handed me my phone. "Thanks for waiting, mate, I'll just roll."
I called Clare. I didn't want to tell her I was in a hospital, that I'd dropped the ball. So I lied, telling her we'd decided to stay a couple of extra days in Longreach. She saw through my lie in a second though, even over the phone. She was straight onto me, and got all the facts.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p200
Heading out of Longreach, we stopped at that same coffee shop that we were in before the accident. I had another bucket of latte, and it hit my bladder at almost exactly the same place where I had dropped the bike four days ago. Matt slowed down as we passed the spot. "We should do a piece to camera here," Dan said from the back seat.
"Keep going," I said. I didn't want to stand there looking at it. Matt nodded and got back on the throttle and back into the story he was telling.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p210
Queensland's crappy outback roads would throw the truck's cab into the air every few minutes; my arse would leave the seat and come down hard, shooting waves of pain up and down my chest and shoulder. Because I could make out the potholes and bigger undulations up ahead I started tensing up and holding my breath just prior to the jolt, but this just made it worse.
As we pulled out of Winton the wheel directly under my side of the cab slammed into a bottomless pothole and I lost it. The next 2068 k's was feeling more like 10,000, and I still had over 8000 k's to ride after Darwin- that is, if I could ride after Darwin at all. It was a dummy spit to end all dummy spits, but it made me feel a bit better. After all, there was no other option, we just had to keep going.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p211
My morphine reserve was helping. Around the halfway mark, I opted to lie down flat on the back seat, and the magic pills put me away. I was in limbo, when the truck suddenly stopped.
I heard Matt talking to someone and slowly sat up. There, in the absolute middle of nowhere, at an anonymous crossroads in central Queensland, was a group of eight lost backpackers. I got out of the cab; the drugs had me in their grip, and I wandered about on the baking hot road without a hat, looking at this group of carefree young backpackers. I don't remember where they were going, but one of them, a Canadian dude with a goatee, crazy hair and an eye patch, was playing a piano accordion.
My head was light as a feather, and Matt started dancing about in the middle of the road while Dan seized the opportunity to get some filming done. We all joined in. It was totally bizarre and very surreal, dancing a jig with the backpackers in the middle of the road in the blinding heat. Only in Australia.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p212-3
While I was in Darwin, I had done another ABC Radio interview. I had also done several phone interviews roadside along the way. We had been lucky with the media on this trip, and now the interest was really picking up. Random people were starting recognise the bike. "Is that the veggie burner?" some would ask. Others had me posing in photos. A lot of people seemed really enthusiastic about what we were doing. "Wow, is that the bike? Good on ya." Rather than kebabs in the face, I was getting the thumbs-up from overtaking cars. And the truckies went from something feared and avoided to princes of the highway. They got on the radio to talk about the bike; I sat there listening to the chatter. "Looks like a bugger of a way to get around," said one. "Our washing machine's got more grunt," said another. But now they gave me a heads-up and a wide berth, always with a honk and a nod. On ya, fellas.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p230-1
The 75 k's to Bullo was a mix of everything. It started as corrugations formed by years of trucks passing over the dirt. These buggers were punctuated by sudden, deep tennis-court-sized holes full of soft bull dust. Hitting them was terrifying because I instantly lost all my torque and speed. Thump! The front wheel would sink; it took all my strength to avoid a flight over the handlebars while the bike snaked wildly left to right. Back to the c-c-c-c-c-c-c-corrugations until I picked up enough speed to get over the top. My shoulder and leg were throbbing. My kidneys and liver were starting to jiggle their way out of my mouth. Another patch of bull dust, and BANG, I went down.
The first fall didn't hurt at all, the second only made me drug-dependent, but the third had me on my knees. It wasn't much to look at; I was only doing about ten kilometres per hour when the front wheel just dug in once again and stopped. I just didn't have the upper body strength to rake back the handlebars; I went over on my side, my cracked ribs re-cracked, my whole face creased in pain as though I'd got a nosefull of wasabi.
Betty's impeller hoovered in bull dust, the whole right side of the handlebar was buried in the ground, her throttle wide open. The engine screamed as she choked down dirt-filled air and spewed out thick white smoke.
Gav rushed over. "What can I do?" he yelled over the squealing engine. Betty's back wheel was spinning, throwing out oil and dirt. I was too winded to answer, so he bolted to the back of the truck and came back with a pair of pliers to cut the throttle line. I knew the bike couldn't take much more, so I sat up, grabbed the buried handlebar and pushed the heavy machine up. The back wheel bit into the dust. I twisted the throttle back and stopped. I fell back, my ribs and shoulder burning, spasms of white-hot pain in my lungs.
Gav helped me up and lifted my leg over the bike for me. We had to push on; we were so close. I was sore, but now I was getting better at blanking it out.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p235-6
A gaggle of early-retirement red Ducati roosters showed up with matching $1000 lids and no wear on their tyres. They strutted about pecking at each other's bikes for a bit, then mooched over to take a morbid but sympathetic curiosity in Betty's plumage. To them it doubt appeared she was just a nasty twenty-dollar crack whore with a university sticker on her tank. Then they started scanning for the rider. We got pinged on the far table. The head rooster squeaked over in his leather Ducati pants.
"I hope they're paying you to ride that thing." He pulled out a cigar and manned up, nipping the end off with his teeth. What a tinea of a human.
"Good morning." I smiled and finished my coffee. "So." Rooster One was not giving up. "Is it part of some experiment?"
"Sort of."
Dan, who had returned from the toilet looking paler than before, looked at his camera on the table. He's thinking about picking it up, no, don't touch the camera, Danny, or this punisher will puff up his feathers and start making an even bigger ponce of himself.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p250
At 40 I'm constantly looking to exorcise my ghosts of respectability in the pursuit of another journey. But now I realise that can't happen anymore. My girls are the real journey I couldn't see through the dream of dust and bio-diesel. It wasn't until I got my first real look at Australia, not until I was thousands of empty miles away from them, that I understood that at last. I set out on the trip wanting to feel like I used to on a bike miles from anywhere, but I didn't, I couldn't.
Everything has changed. The internal road that plays out in Clare and Lola's world is where I'm headed.
Well, as soon as I crack 300 on the salt.
Is That Thing Diesel? Paul Carter p260
Whatever the cause, an instant later he's still leaned over turning hard right at a point where he should be standing the motorcycle up and steering it up the road.
His exit from the turn carries him off the crown of the road, down onto pavement sloping toward the ditch. The front wheel is leaned way over, scrabbles for grip, and starts to slide. The bike stops pointing up the road and starts pointing toward the ditch. Exactly, in fact, toward the spot where I'm standing. Instinctively, the rider turns the handlebars a little farther, and the front wheel tucks. Now the front wheel is pointing the right way, but its still skidding because the rest of the motorcycle is moving the wrong way.
This rarely happens to ordinary motorcyclists, because they don't lean over far enough or wrench the handlebars hard enough, to get into this kind of trouble. Which is good, because of all the ways a motorcycle can slide, a front-end tuck is the hardest to save. If you want to try to save it, you can apply the racer's maxim: "When in doubt, gas it." This, to be honest, doesn't always solve the problem, but at least it ends the suspense.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p9
Using the throttle to regain control is a hard thing to learn, for two reasons. Its counterintuitive and there is no time to think about it before acting. So racers learn, if they learn, by mulling it over ahead of time. Visualizing it on long winter evenings when it's too cold to ride. Programming themselves, even hard-wiring themselves, to do the very thing that their instincts desperately oppose when they get into trouble.
The rider, whoever he is, isn't consciously thinking. That much I know. His body feels the slide. A message - which originates in his inner ear, and bypasses his brain altogether - goes straight to his right wrist, which opens the throttle, spinning the rear tire. The rear of the bike slides out to match the front. Each wheel of a motorcycle is a spinning gyroscope. As the rear wheel comes back into alignment with the front, physics makes the bike rise out of its lean; the front tire stops sliding and starts rolling.
Had he done nothing, or done too much, or too little, the bike would have continued along its path: ditch, berm, rusty gate, me; bangbangbangbang- as it is, the rear wheel catches traction and fires the bike back onto the center of the road.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p10
Still, years after I'd given up every other childhood dream, put every other adolescent fantasy out of my mind, I remained nagged by thoughts of motorcycle racing.
Not that I thought I could have been a TT star. But I didn't know that I couldn't have been one.
Back in high school, I had stopped riding before giving myself the chance to find out. After all, you can't learn anything until you are willing to admit there's something you don't know.
Confronting the reality of middle age, I realised that I did not want to go gentle into that good night wondering if I could have made it in Grands Prix.
So, in my mid-30s, at an age when most motorcycle racers have long since quit the sport, I went back to school. I took a road racing course, run by an ex-Canadian Superbike champion.
The paperwork for course specified, "Students must have at least one year's motorcycle riding experience" I checked the box that said "5+ years riding experience" neglecting to mention that I'd hardly sat on a bike in almost 20 years.
I told myself I was going to racing school just to experience it. Most people who go never actually race. But I did OK, held my own in a class that was mostly 15 years younger- kids entirely lacking a sense of their own mortality. I immediately booked a slot in the following week's Intermediate session, where I crashed violently and was hooked.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p24-5
The entry to Governor's Bridge is steeper and faster, lined on both sides with stone walls. You're downshifting, downshifting, while the road gets steeper and steeper all the way to the turn-in point. There is a severe camber problem on the turn's entry, and a steep drop off across the apex. Taking the normal racer's line around Governor's Bridge would result in a guaranteed crash, I counted about five pavement changes, especially tricky in the rain, and what seemed like gallons of white paint had been used to direct normal street traffic.
From where I had been standing, I could see about a hundred yards up the Mountain into the braking zone, and an equal distance in the acceleration zone, (The hairpin right exits through a dark, tree-covered dip with a left-right flick onto Glencrutchery Road and the finish line. Shaded and sheltered from the wind, its often wet here for days after a rain, even if the rest of the track is bone dry.) All in all, its a racer's nightmare, a place where you're never going to make up time, but where it'd be devilishly easy to throw a race away.
If you took a modern, short-circuit racer (like me) and plunked him down in the middle of Governor's Bridge saying, "We're going to race through here," he'd tell you that you were completely mad. And you would be, unless you knew it as well as I did after staring at it for five hours. After that, it would still be mad, but it would, I now think, be manageably mad.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p42-3
So I have that two hundred yards covered. I do a quick calculation: The Mountain course is 37.73 miles long, about 66,000 yards. At 200 yards a day, it would take about 330 days to come to grips with the whole circuit. There is, actually, time to make next year's race.
I have this idea... (Did I just have it, or was it already in my head? It certainly seems fully formed.) I could go over with a bicycle and cycle the course daily, learning it, imbuing myself with the Manx landscape and history, all while whipping myself into top shape for the race. It occurs to me that my MZ Skorpion race bike may be a lost cause as a Pro Thunder class racer, but that it is well suited to the single cylinder class I watched last Wednesday on the Island. So I actually own a suitable machine. It's difficult for British riders to even get a TT entry. But, desperate to retain the aura of a global event, the organizers actively encourage foreign riders, so my AMA Expert license almost guarantees they'd let me try to qualify.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p43
Tommy was born at Strang, a spot just above Union Mills, "I was pushed down to the TT course in my pram," he says. His dad raced a sidecar but like many locals, Tommy aspired to become a star in Observed Trials (a sport in which motorcycles are ridden over impossible obstacles, the objective being to do so without falling off or putting a foot down).
"I scrimped, and saved," he tells me, "and I bought a Greeves, that I rode in the Scottish trials when I was 17." I'm guessing that that would have been sometime in the late '50s or early '60s. He tells me that, back then, he couldn't afford petrol to practice, so he'd start at the top of the hill by his mother's house, and inch the Greeves down, stopping and balancing all the way. He calls this "jiggling it down". At the bottom of the hill he'd get off, push the Greeves back up over and over.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p55
Hemingway is famously quoted as having said "There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games". This is ironic, because as a motorcycle racer, I've always been jealous of mountain climbers, in the sense that they don't seem to face the same resistance from society when it comes to justifying or explaining their obsession. If you grow up in Switzerland and then live in the Canadian Rockies like I did, you meet lots of climbers. I've known about half a dozen people who've summited Everest, and I've always been struck by the fact that we seem understand each other well. We both appreciate a kind of self-knowledge that comes from our particular risk sports.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p56
Other experiences were unquestionably real but weird bits of luck. Like the time, walking down a road in Onchan toward my house, that I noticed a little boy dressed up in a cowboy outfit. He was on the sidewalk, dragging a broomstick between his legs- performing one of those feats of imagination that are effortless for little kids, turning a stick into a horse.
So there I was, having come from Alberta- real cowboy country in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies- to be here on the Isle of Man. But the first time I imagined coming here, I was that little boy's age. I looked at that kid and couldn't help but see a weird reflection of my own life. All of that was going through my mind.
Then, as I reached the corner, I realized the little boy had been walking (in his mind, riding) down Alberta Road. Alberta Road. How weird is that?
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p68-9
That article concluded with what is arguably the most bucolic crash report ever:
It was A J. Steven, on his Humber, who, endeavouring to take the bridge "all out" was unable to negotiate the curve, and in order to avoid what Jake de Rosier would call being caught "bending", ran down a narrow lane leading into the waters of Sulby Stream and the rich, herb-laden pastures thereby. Amid these pleasant surroundings he stopped his machine, falling off somewhat and having made sure no limbs were numbered amongst the lost, got on the road once more.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p74
The Bandit is a good bike, really, but it feels like a huge lump to me. Its been a long time since I've ridden anything at all, and it's so different from the bikes I've been racing that it takes me a long time to get comfortable on it. Still, it is my first real lap of the course on a motorcycle of any kind. I concentrate on staying in Steve's wheel tracks. Up on the Mountain it's foggy and raining, and my visibility gets worse and worse until discretion gets the better part of valor and I let him get away. After a while, I flip up my visor and realize that half the fog was inside my helmet. I pick up speed and find Steve parked and waiting for me farther down the Mountain, down out of the fog.
...
Over the next few weeks- it takes that long to get around to putting the CBR on the road- I ride the course on at least a dozen different bikes- pretty much anything that's been taken in on trade and has fuel in the tank is fair game. I start to feel that I know the course, maybe not as a distinct, sharp series of turns and bends, but in the way you might come to know a person; they become generally but not specifically predictable.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p87
On one of those shopping trips, I pull the bike up to the store just as a mother is leaving, pushing a baby in a pram. At the sound of the bike, two little hands wave above the rim of the baby carriage. The kid gets a grip and pulls himself up so that his wide-eyed gaze meets mine for a few seconds, until he falls back. The mother looks from her baby to me, smiles and shakes her head. I point at the carriage and then at my own chest, using sign language to say, "That's exactly what I was like!"
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p88
Dodging cars, I walk down through the corner to look for more hazards on the exit. There I notice a commercial florist's bouquet that's been tied to a concrete fencepost with ribbon. It's been there a long time, I can tell. There's a tiny white envelope attached to it; the kind that comes with any basic commercial bouquet, which would normally contain a card with a message from the sender. I slip finger into the envelope, which has been softened by the elements. Its empty. No card. No clue who it might have been for, or from, I realize that there is some faded writing on the envelope itself It says, "34th milestone (Kates)"
Something about this one, in particular, sticks in my mind. Sometime later, I walk down the Strand in Douglas and look in on a florist when it hits me: It wasn't that someone put the bouquet there, they, phoned it in. That was why there was no message in the envelope: there was no recipient, at least no one who needed to read anything The florist had just written the delivery address down on the envelope, and gone out and tied it to the fence. The people, friends and family who gather in small groups to place the more permanent memorials are- at least in part- doing something for themselves. Getting "closure" to put a pop psych label on it. But whoever phoned in that florist's order was doing something very different. He or she was never going to see the bouquet. The flowers were to be placed by someone with no connection to anything. And really, except for me, they were destined to go almost unnoticed. It was less a public thing than a private message to an anonymous rider, as if he was still out there somewhere, lapping the course. Something about that flips a neuron in me, and I suddenly realize that, read as a collective, the hundreds of memorials are not sad. Although they often express loss, "You'll be missed" not one of them condemns the TT. If anything, they celebrate it as the high point, which it was, of every life thus recalled.
I don't want Steve polishing my memorial here either. But I cannot think of any place I'd rather have one.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p94-5
In practice for the 125 cc race, Hondas were dominant. When the race itself began, Ernst Degner's MZ was the only non-Honda among the top six and he dropped out on the second lap. For most of the race, every rider on the leader board was mounted on a Honda. For a manufacturer, it was a performance so dominant as to be nearly anti-climactic.
However, Taveri pushed Hailwood right to the end. After 113 miles, Hailwood won by a mere seven seconds. Phillis, Redman, and Shimazaki rounded out the top five.
Looking back on it, it seems appropriate that Mr, Honda was given his first TT victory by the greatest motorcycle rider of all time. Needless to say, Honda won the team trophy as well. The Examiner said simply, "It was a devastating win for the Orient."
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p109-10
The 250 cc race was run later the same day. Based on practice times, this one was still up for grabs. MV Agusta claimed to have withdrawn its factory team, but the guys working on Gary Hocking's motorcycle certainly looked like the works mechanics from past years. Bob Mclntyre opened with a storming first lap, averaging nearly 100 mph from a standing start.
Hocking, on the MV, was close behind. On the second lap, Mclntyre went faster than any of the previous year's 350 cc racers. Indeed, his times would have dominated the class just three years earlier. Hocking dropped back to third, and then retired with a mechanical failure. Once again, every rider on the leader board was Honda-mounted. Mclntyre was denied the victory he deserved when, halfway round his final lap, his own engine expired. So Hailwood inherited his second win of the day, followed by Phillis, Redman, Takahashi, and Taniguchi, all on Hondas.
It took seven years, not the single year he'd hoped- but even Mr Honda couldn't have dreamed of the extent of his Isle of Man TT success when it finally came.
Curiously, he himself did not return to the Island until after he'd retired. Then, before devoting himself to painting, he embarked on a final world tour, visiting the sites of all his company's most famous victories. He brought a Honda factory race bike for the cluttered private museum at the Bungalow, where it remains the most valuable exhibit.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p110
When you read about the TT, you come across varied counts of the number of turns and bends on the course: 137,140; depending on who's figuring, it can be as many as 180. In clear weather, sightlines are good up on the Mountain, but three-quarters of the course is tightly walled and hedged in, built up, or overarched by trees. And there are many crests and elevation changes, so no matter whose count you believe, there are literally hundreds of places where the course disappears in front of you. Around a corner. Over a crest. Behind a fence or building or hedge. Climbing or descending into a forest glade. Here's the trick: most of the time when this happens, it happens at blind kinks that can be taken flat out. You don't have to slow down as long as you know where the road goes next. So far so good, but here's the other trick: every now and then, something that looks just the same turns out to be a tight bend that requires two or three down shifts.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p111
When you first get to the Island and the long, long lap blurs into a series of undifferentiated bends, the knowledge that there are a few deadly traps scattered among them can be pretty intimidating. Frankly, the course seems unlearnable. Your initial reaction- at least my initial reaction- is that all those other guys must really have been riding on guts and reflexes.
Your second reaction is that you can't do it, at least not at the speed you're going to have to go. It's pretty depressing.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p111-2
At this point, I have to interrupt, "But its so featureless! I've been through there a hundred times and still haven't found a single landmark." The course kinks down and to the right- a blind approach with a wall on one side and steep berm on the other.
"How," I ask, "do you time the turn-in?"
For a moment, Hislop looks at me as though he's wondering if he should give away a trade secret. Then he thinks, "What the hell, I'll never ride the TT again anyway.
"Toward the end of the straight, you come to the crossroads, but that's much too early to turn in." As Hislop starts to answer, he closes his eyes, and leans forward in his chair. His hands float up, as if grabbing an imaginary set of handlebars. "You can't feel it at all on open roads but when you're flat out, there's a little rise after the crossroad. If you're tucked right down, you'll feel the bike come up..." eyes still closed, he exhales sharply, and lifts his chest- miming the tank hitting his chest, then lets his body sag back down for a moment. "As soon as you feel the bike settle back down," as he says it, his body scrunches into a tuck, "you throw it to the right, aiming at the end of the hedge." He opens his eyes, and looks at me with an expression that asks, Got it?
I wish Peter had been here to film. It's been almost ten years since Hizzy last rode through that kink wide open. But when he told me how he'd done it, he hadn't been dredging up a distant memory- it was still right there, in his body. When he closed his eyes, he was there.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p119
There's a huge blue and white striped tent nearby and without asking I know its "the" blue and white tent I've been reading about since I was in high school, poring over accounts of the TT that used to appear in summer issues of Cycle. It's the tent where riders go to await the start, have a tea in the morning, or a mug of soup when they stumble in half-frozen from a wet practice.
It's as familiar as can be. Two women of the grandmotherly type ubiquitous among TT volunteers tend a pair of enormous kettles. A plywood table sits in front of them covered with styrofoam cups. Milk and sugar are laid out. An oversized tin can has been turned into a sort of piggy bank; donations are welcome but they understand when you come creaking in a race suit that you probably don't have pockets, say nothing of coins for the tin.
I ask Andrew if he wants a cup of tea. He looks down. "No thanks." He works full time at Padgetts, but he's only 16 or 17. This is the first time he's ever had a team pass. Despite (or is it because of) being Manx, he's awed. He doesn't seem sure if the tea's for the likes of him.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p156
Still, I'm glad to have a chance to review the launch procedure. Bikes are fired up in the parc ferme and then the stewards open a big gate onto Glencrutchety Road. There's no prescribed starting order to practice. Bikes pull out and line up two by two. Most riders are accompanied by two or three mechanics and friends, who help push them slowly along.
You pass a person standing in the road, supporting a plywood sign with a drawing of a crash helmet and the question, "Helmet Strap?" Then another person, with a chalkboard, which carries specific notices of the hazards of the day. This morning, it is a Manx haiku:
Heavy Rain
Standing Water- all around
Fallen leaves on road
Fog on mountain
High Winds
Be Careful
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p157-8
There are two predominant schools of thought concerning the rider inputs that cause a motorcycle to turn. The Freddie Spencer school of thought holds that the rider's position on the motorcycle is key. Spencer's arch-rival, Keith Code, runs something called California Superbike School. Code's position is that counter-steering: handlebar pressure alone- is what makes motorcycles turn.
At the Spencer school, they tend to rely on what your prof called "argument from authority" back in Philosophy 101. Freddie, they point out at every opportunity, is a triple World Champion; who ever heard of Keith Code? But over at the California Superbike School, they've gone the gadget route. They've created a motorcycle with dual controls. It has one conventional set, and a second handlebar rigidly mounted to the fuel tank. "Think you can body steer?" they sneer, "see how far you get on this."
As usual in such political debates, once you've studied both positions, you realize they are making essentially the same case, though they see it from opposing perspectives. Each chooses to ignore their similarities, and focus on their differences.
Strip the rhetoric away, and you'll initiate a turn the same way, no matter where you learn to do it. At the approach of the turn, you shift your weight forward and to the inside. Most good riders take care of this early, because it gets awful busy very soon. As you reach the turn-in point, you will simultaneously transfer as much weight as possible to the inside, by hanging off the bike. At this point, the weight of your body is carried by the inside foot-peg, and by the outside knee, which is pressing against the side of the fuel tank (For simplicity, I've left out all the braking and downshifting that accompany most turns, and throttle control which is essential to balance turning forces between front and rear tires).
Then, magic happens. You push on the inside handlebar. Momentarily, you actually steer opposite to the direction you want to travel. This causes the motorcycle to fall down into a stable lean angle, matched to the radius of the bend and your speed. Your knee makes contact with the pavement, which is usually incidental but serves as a gauge of just how fast you're going. (At this point you must be looking up through the corner, planning your exit, and you couldn't look at the speedometer even if you had one.)
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p176-7
Slowly but very loudly, she tells us, "If you need a cuppa tea," she pauses, and forces a smile, as her brow wrinkles. She looks from one of us to the other to the other, hoping for some sign of comprehension, but were too bemused to react, "or summat to eat," she enunciates- if anything even slower and louder- while miming the act of eating, "there's – tea – and – sandwiches - on at the - church hall!" One last searching look, hoping for any kind of comprehension. We re dumb-struck, but manage a few nods. She walks away.
"What's really funny about that," Jim says as she turns and disappears into the church hall, "is that when she walked up to us, we were speaking English!" I guess if you're from Kirk Michael, and you see strangers in front of Collister's shop during TT week, you just naturally conclude they're Krauts, then make the assumption (common to all British, it seems) that loud, clear English is all that should ever be required to communicate with any foreigner.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p180
After hearing the first few pairs of bikes launch, the line starts to move back where we are. I've worked my way almost to the front. Past the chalkboard that reports conditions are essentially ideal all the way round the course. Past the plywood sign about the helmet strap. I've charged Kris with the task of confirming that I've not forgotten to wear the vest, that my leathers are zipped up (as a final touch, we seal the zip with a strip of matching duct tape) that my gloves and boots are firmly velcroed shut, knee sliders well stuck on, and that, most importantly, my helmet strap is, indeed, done up. He inspects them all, tugging and tightening, like one of those birds that hops around on a hippo. Paul restarts the bike, and he and Kris drift away to the side.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p184
If you're just riding on the road, you take the contact between your front tire and the road for granted. It rolls along in the direction and at the speed of your travel, and that's that. It's
different when you're racing. Small bumps in the pavement force the front wheel up- a moment of very good contact between tire and road- then the tire is briefly airborne, until the springs in the front forks, and gravity, return it to the pavement. Even when the tire is in contact with the road, the soft rubber compounds of racing tires may or may not be conforming to the surface on a microscopic scale. The way these special compounds work, the surface area of the contact patch can be much larger than what you see with your naked eye. (Imagine rubber stretching over all the tiniest grain of the pavement. Now, flatten those mountains and valleys out.) The rubber sticks to that surface like a Post-It note- so it will pull itself off the road and roll without much resistance, but stick tight and resist sliding when the bike is at an angle. All those variables influence traction and determine a racer's confidence that a violent steering effort will steer the bike around the corner, instead of cause the front tire to slide and make him crash. Over time (and its one of the hardest skills to learn as an apprentice racer) you get to feel, through the handlebars, what your front tire is doing down there on the pavement. This is what racers mean when they say a motorcycle is "giving good feedback ".
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p186
It's about now that I start to really enjoy the ride, I lose- or at least compartmentalize- the "Oh my God this is fast" thought- I stop seeing the fences and hazards- I stop thinking how useless one hay bale is when you're passing a telephone pole at 140 miles an hour. (The only one I notice in particular, and I'll keep seeing it until the end of practice, is a bale at the exit of Greeba, which has a hand-scrawled poster on it, reading "This is Joey's famous bale". I think the story is that Dunlop clipped it with a footpeg, ripping it apart at God-knows-how-quick a speed I can see how he would've, as the last right turn leading onto the Bailacraine straight tightens deceptively, at a time you really want to begin accelerating. I just about clipped it myself, and the next time through I almost hit it again because I was thinking about the last time.)
The top of Barregarrow is another one of those places where you can't see the road ahead at all. The course drifts ever so slightly then kinks left around the church and its off down the bumpy hill. On open roads, with the churchyard wall just off your left handlebar, you've slowed down for it, but now I realize that I can ride through almost flat-out. Its a place where I can hold my own, the sort of challenge you'd only find here, and I love it. But this time as I barrel through, a dark shape breaks away from the hedge and it's a good sized bird, flying right into my path. I sense, more than see, an explosion of feathers, and my view is smeared.
Instinctively, I roll off, tilting my head so I can look through a spot on the visor that's still clean.
Some guy on a 250 who must have been right behind me, passes, looks back, and shakes his hand at me. The gesture could just mean "Holy Shit!" or maybe he was miming shaking off the guts.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p188
What I didn't know, and wouldn't until after my races, was that one of the first riders sent off in the previous session had a problem at the top of Bray Hill, just a few hundred yards down the road. His crash took place right where, in the infamous video, Paul Orritt's bike shook, went into that wild tankslapper, and threw him down like a rag doll- a crash that was only funny because Orritt lived.
Colin Daniels didn't live. The long delay before I got to start was the time it took to clean the wreckage of his Suzuki GSX-R600 off the course. Even some of the TT's most ardent supporters shuddered when they learned that his body- wrapped in plastic and stashed behind a nearby wall- was not moved to the morgue until after the session had ended, in order to keep the practice on schedule. In hindsight, when I put all that together, I realized why Steve was rattled. It happened right where my bike's been shaking.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p189
Once again, we stage on dry pavement, but by the time I launch, it's streaming rain. My practice partner passes me on the brakes at Quarterbridge. This is getting old. I concentrate on hitting the apex and a reasonable drive off the corner, the rear spins up in the wet, but the Honda holds its line, and I have a good run to Braddan church.
At the church, I notice something: the wake of the bike ahead of ahead. Maybe I have an epiphany, aiming for late apex, winding the throttle on, and letting the spinning rear tire slide around until I'm pointing down the road. Over the next few miles, riding the CBR as though it were a little dirt bike, I catch and pass several guys. No one passes me.
I close on my next victim at the top of Barregarrow. He's in black leathers- another Newcomer, I see by the orange vest. Even in this weather, the run down to the bottom of Barregarrow is in top gear. There's a hump where the road crosses a stream, and it kinks left around a building. It's the hump, not the corner, that limits your speed. The apex marker is a cast-iron drainpipe. The first time I came through here, I found it damned intimidating- and that was on a bicycle.
I know that I'm going to carry a lot more speed through here than this guy. I plan to pass him on the bumpy straight just beyond. But as I adjust my speed and commit, Mr. Orange Vest panics and brakes extra hard. Leaned over, in the rain, with the bike unsettled by the bridge, there's no way I'm stroking the brake, I literally squeeze through the gap, brushing the drainpipe with my left shoulder, "brushing" him a little harder with the CBR's muffler. When I look back, I'm relieved to see that he's still on his wheels.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p203-4
So it was sweet when Mike [Hailwood], a genuine hero untainted by the TT boycott, came and beat Read in the TTF1 race. If people hadn't paid too much attention to the F1 class before, they did after that. And if his other races that year, including the Senior, were anti-climactic, it didn't matter. In '79, Mike came one last time, winning the Senior, on a Suzuki RG500. Soon afterward, Mike was killed in a road accident near his home. He'd gone out to pick up an order of fish and chips.
It was a dark and stormy night. There was a truck in the middle of the road making a U-turn. Not a happy ending, I suppose, but good for the myth.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p218-9
[After the road was opened for public riding.] Along the way we catch up to a huge crane truck loaded with at least twenty crashed bikes stacked up like cordwood.
At Windy Corner, it pulls off the road to collect several more that have come to a stop in the gravel trap. On the Isle of Man, though there is no blanket speed limit, there are laws against reckless riding. To add insult to injury, every one of the riders of these bikes will be ticketed. By Manx logic, crashing proves they were riding without due care and attention.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p224
Dear Reader,
If Hollywood picked up this story, the script would be rewritten so that, at the story's climax, I won. But you've already read the climax, such as it is, of this book.
For most Newcomers, and it was perhaps especially true for me, that the goal in a first TT is to come, to qualify, to be in the show. Having earned a start, all a Newcomer can realistically hope for is to be around at the finish.
We live in a culture that increasingly sees in black or white. The only alternative to winning is losing. Everything is neatly labelled right or wrong. Its detractors put it simply: the TT is brutal. But the TT is not simple.
When all its nuances are appreciated, it is beautiful.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p228
Once I'm underway, I push a little harder than I have been in practice, until I have a huge headshake. Then I go back to my baby steps approach. Still, I find myself carrying fourth gear instead of third through the left-hander at Greeba Bridge and I carry a higher gear at Ballacraine, too. By the time I pass the Sulby Glen Hotel, David Jefferies (who broke a valve) has already coasted to a stop there and is having a pint.
So, I beat DJ.
I beat John McGuinness, too, the only way I ever will; his motor expires on the long Cronk-y-Voddy straightaway, I see and avoid the long trail of oil he left behind him.
Up on the Mountain I drag my knee in a long and satisfying way as I pass the Graham Memorial On my second lap up there somewhere, Jim Moodie (who had about half a lap's head start on me) catches me.
After the pit stop, I know that despite my best efforts, I'm running close to last. On the final lap, in survival mode, I ride just fast enough to maintain my concentration. Do I still qualify for a finisher's medal I wonder, if I'm passed by the travelling marshals when it comes time to open the roads after the race?
(Don't laugh! It happens.)
I'm held up a little when I catch some guy around the 32nd stone. He's got a little motor on me and opens up a gap, again, on the drop down toward Creg-ny-Baa, He slows me at every bend until, finally I get past him between Signpost Corner and the Nook. (Later, when I got the official times, I wondered if he prevented me from getting my "ton up' lap, but I don't think he accounted for more than a few seconds.)
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p232
One morning there I was- with my computer on my lap, a coffee beside me on the carpet. In the middle of typing some altogether unrelated thought, I had a vivid, vivid sense of being out on the course, I was at Greeba Bridge. You get to the bridge after the beautiful flowing section past the castle. You throttle back a little at the kennels but then its wide open through Greeba village. The road wiggles but it's easy to see a straight approach to the bridge, which is in the middle of a sweeping left turn.
This is one of the widest, smoothest parts or the TT course. I never noticed it on open roads but there's a slight hump to the bridge, right on the apex of the turn.
For two weeks, I'd been taking it in third and finally fourth gear, cautiously increasing my speed each lap. But every lap, I found myself with too much road on the exit. "Too slow!" I thought, time after time.
Anyway, sitting right there on the stairs, I felt myself braking later and less, downshifting only once, instead of twice. I saw the paint mark on the bridge wall that I used as my turn-in point. I felt my left knee on the pavement, gauging a steeper lean angle- and this is the important part- I felt the bike lift over the
hump in the bridge and drift wide. But I held the throttle steady. Because suddenly I knew that the road, right there, was smooth enough and wide enough that the bike would settle, the tires would grip, and I'd get through, I knew I could carry 10 or 15 miles an hour into the next acceleration zone, which is at least a
thousand yards long. There were seconds to be saved there. There, again, was my hundred-mile-an-hour.
But there I was on the stairs, not on the bike where I could do anything about it.
Riding Man Mark Gardiner p246
In a picture of him [the author's father] sitting on the Harley, he's garbed in heavy boots, khakis, a tight fitting white t-shirt and leather gloves. His hair is slicked back and he's wearing cool aviator shades, and no helmet.
He's also wearing a grin from ear to ear.
Turned out flying the Harley was more dangerous than B-17's and one day he almost ended up dead. A truck ran a stop sign and he laid it down, sliding underneath the trailer the truck was towing and coming out the other side. He was lucky to be alive and pretty banged up and woke up in the hospital. That was the end of his riding career, and makings of his decision as long as his boy lived under his roof, the word on motorcycles would be "no". We all make our choices, but too bad in a way about the one he made. I never saw him grin in life like he did in that picture.
The Making Of A Motorcyclist Gordon Bunker p2
"Uncle Bernie, that is so neat-o!" It had a headlight and speedometer with little jewel like indicator lights, deeply ribbed black rubber hand grips and it was about the right size for me. If I was drooling, Bernie was kind enough not to point it out. "How fast does it go?" Then as now, speed was under my skin and still all these years later, this question is the first I think of when looking at a bike. "Aw, I dunno. Not very." Bernie stood there, a big easy-going hulk of a man with his thumbs in his two front belt loops. He looked like he'd swallowed a whole watermelon, so distinct was his pot belly. It pushed his suspenders out to the sides.
"Y'all want to ride it?"
Oh golly. That's all it took and Bernie leaped to hero status. A halo radiated around his old baseball capped head. A rush of excitement ran through me. All of a sudden I needed to pee.
The Making Of A Motorcyclist Gordon Bunker p3
Will and Janet were working construction. I'd known Will on the periphery for a couple of years. He was a big jolly Buddha of a guy, tattooed and pierced and a colossal character. He had a sense of humour that would go way out there and come circling back around with everyone laughing until their sides hurt. He and Janet had had his and hers Harleys for years and one day they decided they'd had enough of the studded leather scene and traded them in on his and hers Vespa scooters. One baby blue and one powder pink, It takes a big man to walk a small dog. It takes an even bigger man to ride a powder blue Vespa. I bet Will had no problem carrying Janet's purse when required. The two of them created quite a stir when they would tear off in duelling ding-ding-ding two stroke engine racket and clouds of blue smoke.
The Making Of A Motorcyclist Gordon Bunker p16
On the return leg of a trip to the east coast, one cold grey Sunday morning I was filling up the R12 at a station in farm country near Gilman, Illinois. Two guys riding tricked out Harley choppers had pulled off to the side. They came clinking and clanking over for a chat and to check out the bike. They were local to the area and their bikes were suited only for short rides. Even though they were only twenty five miles from home they had a third companion driving the pickup. BMWs by the way come with a three year road side assistance policy. Harley's come with a pickup truck. (Sorry, couldn't help it.) When they saw the New Mexico plate I had instant big cred.
The Making Of A Motorcyclist Gordon Bunker p26
The next morning riding the To The Sun Road across Glacier and then south though Kalispell was the turning point in the trip, I was now homeward bound. I spent the night in Missoula and had the R80's oil changed at the local BMW shop. Showrooms at BMW dealerships are the ultimate candy stores. There sat a new R1100RS, a radical design departure for BMW and a beautiful bike, this one was black. I could feel the Visa card in my pocket getting hot as the bike sang the siren's song. I didn't want the R80 to catch me lusting for it. You don't want your bike getting put off with you - ever.
The Making Of A Motorcyclist Gordon Bunker p43
"What will this cost?"
"You will of course pay for the parts."
I stammered out some objection. "No. You will work along side of me, but there will be no charge for labour."
"TJ. I need to pay you something for this."
He thought about this for a moment, and said, "Some day you will know someone who will need help. Help them. That will be my only pay." This was the end of any negotiation. I stood there flabbergasted. And relieved. TJ went on. "Further, you will not ride this motorcycle back to Santa Fe. If that bearing seizes, the rear wheel will lock and you will go over the bars. You will ride my motorcycle home tonight and use it as if it was yours while we are working on your bike." Another foregone conclusion.
I'd known TJ for about a half hour and he was handing me the keys to his bike. There are occurrences in life, you never know when or where they will come, that change the way you see, the way you are, forever. TJ opened a door. With no special effort on my part life has since included giving and receiving on a greater level than I could have imagined.
Only some of it's been around motorcycles.
The Making Of A Motorcyclist Gordon Bunker p50-1
One of the good days I was carving the High Road to Taos. Curves, hills, no cages, snow capped mountains off in the distance, on the gas and in the groove. Rpm's rising and falling with perfect shifts. The bellowing exhaust note. Who cares about chicken strips? This was heaven! In Taos I stopped for gas. The station was busy.
The Ducati was beautiful, that luscious coat of red paint, the bronze painted frame and wheels, gold anodized brake and suspension components, black carbon fibre mud guards and clutch cover. And of course me, stud guy in all black leathers standing there filling the tank. And this beautiful young woman walks by and smiles that kind of smile where the whole world lights up and she says, "Nice bike."
Looking back, if I were half as intelligent as I would like to think I am, I would have dropped down on one knee right then and there and proposed marriage. And not taken no for an answer. But instead the best I could manage was squeak, "thanks." And she and her bottle of Gatorade got in her Toyota 4 Runner and were history.
Damn! OK, the next time that happens I'm proposing marriage.
The Making Of A Motorcyclist Gordon Bunker p64-5
The weather was mixed, and climbing into the Diamond Mountains I ran into a snow storm, it was coming down so hard and so fast, before I knew it the road was covered and there was no traffic to make tracks. I turned back. Now I was riding on snow. Like grease. I could make only the lightest inputs into the controls, picking my way down the mountain switchbacks I reached a relatively level spot and coasted to a stop. Crashing the bike was an issue but of greatest concern was faster traffic coming up behind and in the almost zero visibility not being able to slow quickly enough to avoid tail ending me.
Pulling off to the side and coming to a stop, shutting down the bike in a full on snowstorm fifty miles out in the middle of Nevada desert with visibility so low I had no idea what my surroundings were, I felt exceedingly small. It was huge out there. And save for the slight hiss of the snow hitting the ground, quiet. I considered pitching my tent and crawling into my sleeping bag and waiting it out, but the duration the severity of the storm were unknowns. Falling asleep and freezing to death was a real possibility.
The Making Of A Motorcyclist Gordon Bunker p79-80
It had to be either Ernest Shackleton or some motorcyclist who said, "Adventure is duress seen in retrospect." So, if our adventure experiences are so unpleasant, why do we seek them?
My friend Ben and I were having a beer at a local watering hole. Ben is a Master Technician for BMW, a quiet unassuming guy who is way beyond what any certification can attest to. Ben is a master craftsman and mechanic, one of the three. We got talking about why we do this thing called motorcycling.
We determined it all comes down to survival of the fittest, or more immediately, mating. Going back to when the guy who had the skills and accepted the greatest risk came home with the biggest one, more or less. The good provider naturally gets the girl. Of course he may die in the process, but all are going to die in the process, which helps get the proper perspective on risk tolerance. So, in terms of motorcycling, if you make it through some nasty weather this is good. If you make it through a hurricane this must be better, right? Go out and ride, and bring it on Mother Nature. You basically go through hell, but come home with tales of adventure and get the girl (giving her a gift item helps). Either that or she looks at you like you're completely out of your tree and decides to have nothing to do with you. She goes for the guy who brings home thrilling tales of high adventure with his actuarial tables.
The Making Of A Motorcyclist Gordon Bunker p89
Then, of course every once in a while the adventure is fun. Imagine! A few years ago, on the second day of a ride to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, I rode Route 191 from Vernal, Utah to Rock Springs, Wyoming. The section of the road east of Flaming Gorge in Wyoming just blew my socks off. It was getting on into early evening.
The road climbs into high open range country, it is rolling hills with long views all around. It was late May and must have been a wet spring. It was lush, grasses were tall and thick and green and bursting with life. The sun was going down and I had the place to myself. Rolling along on the BMW, I carved into big sweeping curves one after another. Low golden sunlight streaked across the land, making the greens more intense. The temperature was dropping and the air was full of evening dampness and grass smells. Sublime. In Rock Springs I checked into a motel, and went out for some dinner feeling so alive I could barely contain it. It was a high that briefly put me in the middle of what it's all about.
The Making Of A Motorcyclist Gordon Bunker p90-1
I was dreading a little jog to the south in my route. It would be eleven miles of crosswind hell. And taking that turn, indeed hell came with thick black dust, once rich topsoil blowing off plowed fields reducing visibility to where I could only hope nothing would pop into my way too late. I put the headlight onto high beam and was glad to be running an illegal but effective 100 watt lamp. If anyone was coming the other way at least there was a chance they'd see me coming. I was one happy camper coming to the end of my southward run. I turned east and pressed on to Watertown, my destination for the night.
The Making Of A Motorcyclist Gordon Bunker p93
Eight or ten miles down the road Mo had pulled over and shut down the R6. He was off the bike and had his helmet off and was ogling over this hot rocket. It took me a while to catch up. Eventually I pulled over next to him. His eyeballs were like white china saucers with big lurid silver blue whirlpools in them. He had that silly grin and handed me the keys.
Waving his arms around, "I gotta stay away from that thing. Holy shit, it goes SO fast SO easily! I'm slicing along and look at the speedo and I'm doing a hundred!"
He collected himself as I was pulling off my helmet.
"What did you think of the Harley?" He was all proud and grins.
"Well Mo," I said, "if what you want is a cross between a motorcycle and a farm implement it's nice." The poor guy's face dropped. After that whenever the opportunity presented itself he gave me generous rations of shit about my bikes. And I deserved every bit of it.
The Making Of A Motorcyclist Gordon Bunker p106-7
Cars just sit there when you stop. A bike at least has the inherent decency, the instability if you do nothing when you stop to fall over. So, in this most basic way a bike requires your participation to make it work, that is, stick your foot out. And from this point forward a bike demands a lot more from you than a car. Bikes will always be more challenging to operate than cars, especially to operate well.
Cars are containers. You get in a car, you get on a bike. The confines of a car isolate you from your surroundings, the windshield becomes a frame and thus the outside world becomes a movie-like abstraction. On a bike you are directly in the environment. Heat, cold, wet and dry are experienced and responded to directly. You respectively sweat, shiver, swear and smile. There is no frame to constrict the view. In a car your surroundings are designed to be functional and comfortable and impress your girlfriend. Or boyfriend. On a bike your surroundings are the whole wide outside world. Thank you Mother Nature, who was busy in the environmental design studio long before cars were even a glimmer in Adam's eye.
The Making Of A Motorcyclist Gordon Bunker p134
My mouth went dry as I threw my leg over her massive bulk and settled into the seat. Her frame had been built around mine- it was like putting on a tailored smoking jacket in a gentleman's club for sociopaths. But I had no fear of consequences, none at all. Steve strapped the red emergency stop cord to my wrist and flipped up the three bright red switch covers concealing the fuel pump start, fuel management module and the engine start button. He primed the throttle and flicked the first two switches and the bike whirred, the digital instrument cluster blinking to life, tiny bulbs glowing green and needles jumping to indicate fuel and oil pressure, battery levels, engine temp, oil temp, engine revs and speed. He looked directly at me, grabbing the sides of my helmet: "Push it."
I nodded, looked down over the metre-wide front end surrounded by a massive green fairing, inside a cockpit of lights, gauges and switches. Fear suddenly rose up into my throat.
Before it reached my head I pushed the engine start button and she barked, shuddering alive with that unmistakable diesel rumble.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p48-9
I tuned into the sound of her engine as my right hand rolled the throttle back and my left released the clutch. She pulled hard, rolling forward and gathering speed much faster than I'd expected. I slipped down and back into the seat base and let my feet find the pegs. Laying my chest down over the front end, I focused on the horizon and popped her into second. She was smooth and accelerating as fast as my regular bikes do.
Third gear at 2500 rpm and 100 kph dead straight no problems, I cruised to the end of the track and discovered she has the turning circle of a battleship. The wind gusts had been picking up and I was very conscious of them and the wet track, but the bike was just so big and heavy it reassured me, so by the time I'd gone down the track four times I was ready to see just how fast we could go.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p49-50
The first orange traffic cone was coming up fast; I held the throttle open although everything told me not to, glanced down, passing 170 kph.
I don't know what the odds are, you tell me, on a windy, rainy day, but right at that moment, not one but two eagles decided to fly across the track at head height.
I pinged the movement in my line of sight, stopped my brain from making my reflexes roll off the throttle, and smashed on. At that speed hitting an eagle wasn't going to make any difference, it was all in the hands of the gods now.
Bird one didn't see me hammering at him but bird two did; he slammed on the brakes, looking for height, while I passed through the gap between them. The funny thing is, when I tell friends these sort of stories, as I've always done, they invariably say, "Bullshit" then "Did you get a photo?"
Well, this time I did; one of the guys was snapping away and the moment was caught on camera.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p50-1
My ride back was interrupted by the metabolic chain reaction of riding a fast but homemade experimental motorcycle down a racetrack after consuming a dodgy curry the night before, followed by coffee. As I leant forward to lie over the fuel tank, my brain put a bit too much effort into getting the gear changes right and forgot to maintain the clench and I passed what felt like a gram of gas. No problem, I thought, I can make it to the pits, get my leathers off and find a toilet before I lose my arse. Then it hit me. The tiny fart had expanded into a cubic metre of horrendous air that rose sharply up through my leathers and filled my helmet. I gagged, my eyes stung, the bike was passing 160 kph, I sat up and flipped open my visor in a desperate effort to breathe fresh air, nearly crashing when the wind hit my open lid and tried to rip my head off my shoulders.
Pulling up fast I leapt off, handed the bike to the boys and ran off pointing at the toilet block. Our bike passed the shakedown with flying colours, so did my curry.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p71-2
[Back in Perth] There was only one hitch: we had to put the bikes in crates. So I called the companies that make crates to order, but there was either no time, no response to messages or no actual sense of effort. That meant I was going to have to build the crates myself. Erwin called me from a rig somewhere in the South China Sea while I was on my way to the timber yard to ask how it was all panning out. I got as far as explaining the crates when he laughed. "Shit, Pauli, you're a dumb arse," said the man who was, to me, like a brother, mentor, friend and Yoda.
"Well, bugger you, too, champ!" I barked.
He chuckled, which annoyed me even more. "What kind of bike is Diego riding?"
"A new BMW 650 Tourer," I replied curtly.
"Mate, call up the Harley and BMW dealers in Perth and ask for a shipping crate. I guarantee they'll have crates out the back purpose-built for both your bikes."
And this is why the man is a legend.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p88
Showered up and happy, I was back out the front or the motel, just checking out the scene while I waited for Diego- it was party time now and the street was packed with punters.
Then I saw him running towards me like someone just stole the family empanada recipe. 'Pol, Pol .... I can't believe eet ... Eet cannot be possible .. he gasped. He was really agitated, and frantically going through his jacket pockets.
"What is it, mate?"
His dark Argentinean eyes fixed on me, his expression bewildered and gutted. "I have lost the keys to both our motorcycles."
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p93
Colin and I were no longer just two guys in a bar planning to go fast on a bike, we had morphed into a team- designers and builders of an outstanding motorcycle and everything that encompasses. But now we had to put it to the test, against the implacable speed-cubed law of drag. If you're male, you will understand the quest for more speed- as pointless an exercise as it may, perhaps, be perceived. All known barriers need to be pushed- whether it's a land-speed record at age 40 or peeing highest up the wall in the school urinal at age eight, its just the way it is.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p110-1
I flipped down my visor and just hammered it as hard as I could. As she leapt through the gearbox red-lining the gear changes, I held the throttle fully open the whole time and all too soon I was reaching the point where brakes would have been applied back at Tailem Bend and it would have been over at 170 kph. But this time I had more blacktop in front of me. In fourth gear I glanced down, passing 190 kph and still pulling hard as the engine started to shriek under me, vibrations reaching a crescendo as the perimeter of the runway flickered past in a sickening blur. Her revs hit the redline again and another glance down: 200 kph. She was deafening me with noise from the darker reaches of Hades, her vibrations not letting me focus my eyes on the instruments. My peripheral vision liquefied, orange cone, orange cone... I had two more seconds on full throttle before I had to brake.
The fear, the very real moment when I reached the braking point and passed it, tore through my mind like acid; my stomach, groin and brain had turned into stone and I could feel my heart pounding on my leathers. Then it went calm, built up to the point where speed, vibration and pressure reached a bizarre balance and for a second we were just flying on air. I was laying over the bike cocooned inside the massive front fairing, wide-eyed and high as a kite, as the end of the runway hurtled towards me at somewhere over 200 kilometres per hour.
Brake! said the voice in my helmet. She dipped down hard, the front forks bottoming out as I squeezed both front and back brakes harder and harder while the end of the runway's hold lines streaked past under my face, which was now doing Edward Munch's "The Scream" as I desperately tried to stop the bike before we hit the end.
We stopped right on the edge.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p114-5
We didn't get there in the end, though we got very close. If only we had the chance to see what this bike could do on 16 kilometres of dry salt lake, with the proper DLRA track, officials, Federation Internationale Motorcycle timing gear and everything that makes Speed Week a world-class event. For now, Corowa's 2 kilometre main runway was ail we had, and it was over. Frustrating does not begin to describe it. I was accelerating at a rate of 2 kilometres per hour per second; all I needed was another three or four seconds.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p117
The boom gate opened and we formed up in a queue waiting to enter the belly of the gargantuan ferry. While the massive line of vehicles waited to board, people got out of cars and stretched their legs, occasionally chatting with other passengers. Here we got our first look at a 'Taswegian', a species of bogan found on the Apple Isle. He emerged from a horrendously battered Kingswood that was parked next to us, wearing pyjama pants and a sauce-stained singlet, about 50, overweight; his nose alone suggested large amounts of beer were about to be consumed. He smiled and asked if we were "goin' tourin".
Diego froze in complete astonishment before glancing at me.
"Yup," I replied and smiled.
"First time to Tasmania?" He was openly and unashamedly scratching his balls.
"Yes, we're really looking forward to it."
He removed his hand from inside his pants and offered it up to shake, I stepped aside and deflected the shake to Diego. "This is my friend Diego," I said as the manky ball-sweat-stained-hand was redirected at Diego.
"George," said the man.
Diego smiled serenely and put his gloves back on. Nice move, mate- and shook the offered hand then continued to smile and nod so much he started to look like a stroke victim. I pretended there was a problem with my bike and lay on the ground tinkering with it. Eventually the Taswegian went away and sat on the bonnet of his Kingswood, pulled out his false teeth and started polishing them with his singlet. Diego and I hid behind my bike, consumed with our all-important task of tinkering, while Diego whispered "Unbelievable" and "I have never seen anything like eet, Pol."
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p125-6
George Town offered up a warm fire, awesome hospitality and contented stomachs. Fully fuelled we consulted our map and hit the bikes. We skimmed along empty roads in a state of bliss, stopping again at Bridport, hitting some unsealed road and getting it a bit sideways on the way round, then joining up to the main road, the A3, that plugged us into St Helens for lunch and a brief game of 'Spot the Local'. Then it was back up in another big dogleg after Fingal towards the silly but fun part of the day called 'Jacobs Ladder'. This involved a world-class blat through Ben Lomond National Park; some of it was blacktop and some of it was dirt, all of it was fun. The Ladder is a curious succession of six very steep switchback hairpin climbing turns that slither up the side of the formidably wet and Scottish-looking Ben Lomond. Going off the edge of the ladder was a frightening prospect; any mistake would result in a proper caber toss into a red stain at the bottom, so we took it nice and easy to the top. Sufficiently ready to call it a day, we headed to Launceston for the night having done just over 500 ks since we landed.
Diego had it all worked out. "I've booked us a bakery," he said, beaming. I debated whether I should ask for an explanation then decided just to go with it.
Although I have not yet fallen at the altar of App]e and am able to say "There's an app for that" while someone is talking about hippo mud wrestling, I'm not too proud to admit I was glad Diego had an iPhone. When the sun is going down and you're getting cold and tired on a bike rolling down a random street in a strange town with no information and no plan, that phone is a crackerjack piece of kit.
We pulled up at the rear car park, checked into bakery (converted into a very nice hotel) and enjoyed another great meal. I fell asleep to the sound of rain on the tin roof and thoughts of home.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p134-5
"Well, it would have been in the 60s. Dad was flying Javelins, I believe."
He smiled. "Wonderful aircraft. So is he a bike nut, too?"
I laughed. "Mad for them, cost him dearly, though." I went on, "He got smashed in the officers' mess one day and on a dare tried to ride his bike right through the bar..."
Jethro sat forward, his face lit up and to my complete surprise finished the story off. "He rode up the steps to the entrance, paused on the nice clean red carpet that ran the entire length of the hall, dropped the clutch and sat there pissed while the long red carpet was hurtled out the door under the spinning wheel. He runs out of carpet, the back wheel hits floorboards, flipping his Vincent up into a trophy cabinet, then bursts into flames and the whole bloody place nearly goes up- your dad's a legend." I was speechless that Jethro knew the story which I had grown up with.
"You know, that bike is mounted on the wall behind now. I used to stand there with a pint looking at it."
Now I was really stunned; my dad's bike decorating a bar, that I did not know.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p141-2
The asphalt gods were good to us that morning, the beautiful green undulating hills revealing picture-postcard town after town with names like Snug, Flowerpot and Woodstock. The road, however, was the opposite of its laidback sleepy surrounds; it was draped like a discarded black necktie over the landscape, serious aggressive riding; as soon as you're out of a blind turn you're already setting up and looking for your exit from the next one. Concentration on the relentless corners should be forcing you to slow down and enjoy the surrounds a bit more. Instead we opted for the riding experience, though we did stop at every town to take a look and almost every town had something interesting to look at as well as the occasional tourist coach to avoid slamming into the back of. It was a weird time of year to tour Tasmania, in between the energetic grey nomad ramblers of summer and the winter walkers.
As we hit the bottom of this little cape, the road offered up wonderful sweeping seaside corners that gave a visual all-clear for any other traffic and an open invitation to lay the bike over, drop a gear and use the whole road to take it as fast as you can. And that's where the local police will nab your arse for speeding, lesson learnt. Speeding fine neatly folded in my wallet and a friendly wave from the cop who just blew my beer money, we mooched along well under the limit back up the other side of the cape till we hit the A6 at Huonville, turned left and tracked down to Southport. I started thinking about the endless choices for dinner; the food was good, really good here. Progress was stress-free, and we had plenty of time to admire the views.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p146-7
Last night over a counter meal at the bar- after I'd explained to the locals that we're not a gay couple, but if we were I'd be the man gay because I don't eat quiche I eat egg-and-bacon pie, and I'm not wearing a cravat- Diego and I looked at the map and decided to ride directly across Tasmania from right to left, so that was the plan for the day: head out from St Helens straight across to Queenstown with a dip down to Melton Mowbray in the middle.
I had time for a quick shower and to get my gear and I was out the front in fifteen, then had a few more minutes to warm up my bike while Diego did his legover and mounted his. We fuelled up and blazed our way south, criss-crossing the landscape as the sun slowly warmed the earth. As usual there was no one else on the road and we took it in turns to lead through k after k of increasingly faster bends, cutting our way through the patchwork of lime green and banana yellow fields to hit our lefthander at the Midland Highway and start the dogleg down to Melton Mowbray.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p156
Diego came out into the sun and fired me "Come, Pol, let us ride into the mountains." He grinned at a random passerby, swaggered over to his bike then stopped and pointed at the road in front of him where two thick black burnt-rubber tyre marks snaked up the road courtesy of some idiotic petrol head.
"Look, Pol, ees bogan tracks," Diego said, proudly showing off his command of the vernacular. Then he pushed his bike forward onto the road looking like a midget walking a rhino, humped his leg over it and rode off down the street.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p157-8
We slid and roared into an ancient forest, shattering the silence and tearing up the dust. My bike stayed as slick and slippery as Diego in a dinner jacket and I was having a ball. We were still climbing as the woods became thick with heatless layers of light, mist and cloud evolving above the treeline, then descending past us into the folds of the valleys, filling up like a Spielberg effect below me.
We rounded another climbing lefthander side by side, then on the apex of the bend we heard it first, a residual rumble over the top of our engines, bouncing and reverberating off the forest at us. Then two massive lumber trucks, also running side by side, rounded the corner straight at us. With only seconds to react we just fluked it and made the right choices. Diego and I came together in the middle and the two trucks separated and ran the outside. Everyone entered the massive dust cloud together. The trucks made a hole, Diego and I touched elbows, gritted teeth and disappeared into it. As soon as we passed the trucks and were out the other side, we both stopped and sat there for a few moments, completely blind in a red cloud until the dust started to settle and we could actually see one another. I was about to say something but Diego just gave a mumbled shout from inside his helmet and bolted off, leaving me in another cloud. I love that crazy bastard.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p158-9
Diego had noticed a sign just up the road and wandered over to take a closer look. "Pol, how big do the kangaroos get here?" he asked, pointing at the sign.
I looked at the sign and it, combined with Diego's quizzical face distended in real concern, made me laugh. The sign was definitely not to scale and I could see how it could be confusing for a foreigner. It appeared to be saying three things to the happy motorist: first, you should be doing 65 kph; secondly, under the heading 'Wildlife', there was a visual warning of giant albino kangaroos as big as your car; and lastly that they will from 'dusk to dawn' leap out of the bush and perform a snatch-lift your front bumper. All it needed was a Monty Python foot smashing down on you as you read the sign.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p162
I woke with a start, almost rolling off the bench. Diego was snoring, his empty mug still sitting on his chest slowly going up and down. I checked my watch; two hours had gone by, we were losing daylight fast. I gave him a shake and we both lumbered round the corner towards the bikes, only to discover two large salty-looking possums trying to hotwire my Harley.
They had already dumped the contents of one of my saddlebags on the ground and had a good look through my shaving kit, managing to also cover each other in shaving cream.
Sprung, they ran off into the trees and sat there above us, chewing on my muesli bars and smelling of lemon.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p163-4
I heard the car before I saw it. Sally and Simon Dominguez's battleship-sized 1979 Special Edition 'Bill Blass' Lincoln Continental. Even though they weren't deliberately driving like maniacs, the massive 21-foot- long two-door coupe's tyres squealed like dying rabbits as they hurtled rounded the corner and pulled up in the car park grinning like a couple of outpatients. The Lincoln was all blue leather, the hula-hoop-sized steering wheel sat in front of the hilarious instrument cluster; all chrome and long with a Cartier clock at the end, it looked like my grandmother's silver service. Simon sat in the back sprawled out like a pungent bum in a leather dumpster. The car was bigger than the flat I grew up in.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p180
"Nice lid," he said as I bounded up the steps to his porch. "Pity." He gulped his coffee.
"What is?" I asked, sitting down.
"The dog's pissing in it."
"What?"
I spun around in time to see Boston shaking off the last few drops on the rim of my upturned no-Ionger-smells-like-brand-new carbon-fibre helmet. That dog lets go like a racehorse. I spent an hour washing it out while Erwin got his bike out of storage mode. He kept laughing whenever the image of Boston popped into head.
"Sorry, mate," he said repeatedly. "How's your lid?" I had finished hand-washing the liner and scrubbing out the inside, but it didn't really matter what or how much I tried. I slipped my head inside its super-light carbon Darth Vader slick cottonwool internals, and for a second everything was fine, like shoving your head into an Aston Martin's glovebox, then finding a sodden nappy in the corner.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p205-6
First it was a little grunt, followed by the smell; I knew before I turned around what I was going to see. Take one post-spaghetti-bolognaise-fed toddler, place padded comfy-looking receptacle within range, in this case my clean lid sitting hollow side up and supported on all sides, for protection in transit, on top of my leathers and boots, then simply turn your back and let it happen. Sid was not wearing a nappy and, unlike his sister who was very good at announcing her intentions, he simply gave you a three-second warning before he defecated on the spot. So we always had his potty within his window, but this time his potty was not in the garage, so he just improvised and went ahead and backed one out in my lid. 'Daddy, ka ka,' his little voice came seconds later. I turned around and, yes, there he was, bless him.
I didn't react, I just picked him up and carried him into the bathroom and cleaned him up. We walked back down to the garage together and he went quietly back to playing with my socket set while I dropped a thousand dollars of carbon-fibre helmet into a plastic bag and threw it in the bin.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p221-2
Next was scrutineering or tech inspection, where the DLRA officials make sure that your vehicle is good to go. The rulebook is thick and very detailed so this isn't a hasty process. I jumped on the bike and rode it over to the three-lane queue forming for inspection. The vehicles that started lining up looked incredible and their noise alone vibrated right through my body: fully retro-styled hotrods, cigar-tube Lakesters with mirror-polished giant wheels jutting out that looked like full-size 1950s toy cars, the full spec Streamliners ready to push 300 mph, a Jaguar E type and an XJS, a 356 Porsche Speedster- there was even an old split-windscreen Volkswagen Kombi in there, and a truck. The bikes were equally diverse and abundant, from a Honda CT 110 postie bike capable of more than 80 mph to vintage to ultra-modern, the lot.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p234
As far as Speed Week goes, it's 90 per cent waiting and 10 per cent racing.
"How'd you go?" The starter at the GPS track yelled at me, smiling with his big hat on.
I smiled back in my helmet and gave him the thumbs-up. "Can I go over to the right?"
He nodded. "Crosswind?"
I shifted over slightly to the right, primed myself and the bike, gave the starter the nod.
"Stand by... Visor down... Go!"
Exactly the same thing happened again, at the same point: the crosswind collected me, but this time I held power, leant into the wind way past my comfort zone and held my breath, letting go on the power as the bike wobbled through the loose salt in the middle and slid towards the left edge. I remembered not to sit up or touch the brakes and changed down very late to avoid compression lock on the back wheel. The result was 95.5 mph, 153 kph.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p243-4
Lake Gairdner is widely recognised as being just as good as Bonneville, the slightly fat but funny little sister of the queen of speed in the USA. As I rolled towards my third run, she reminded me that although fun to be around, and good to look at, she's got gas, and can ruin your day if you don't give her the respect she deserves. It was at this moment she blew one of her 30 kph crosswinds at the queue and half a dozen riders stack it, including me.
Embarrassed by this, everyone sprang up and immediately heaved their bikes off the ground. It took four guys to get mine back on two wheels and, unbeknown to me at the time, I had just fractured my L5 vertebra; that is to say, a half-tonne bike falling on you is going to hurt and it did, but I did what men do and ate painkillers to shake it off.
Half a box of Tramadol later I was back at the start line; the starter, still grinning, jogged over. 'You again, we need to stop meeting like this.' He leant in to remind me of the gusting crosswind somewhere after the first mile and asked if I was sure I wanted to make a run.
I nodded and flicked my visor down.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p244-5
We loaded the bike into the trailer and headed down to the main track where only a handful of cars and bikes had qualified to race the full 8 miles. We pulled out deck-chairs and sat on the roof of the trailer with umbrellas, watching the show. And what a show it was. One car flipped at over 150 mph; its nose lifting and swapping ends mid-air, it smashed its way down the track several times while we stood on the roof frozen. The driver was pulled out with only eight-ball haemorrhages in his eyes, other than that he was fine. The safety procedures at Speed Weed work. But I was amazed that his first bounce covered 130 metres in distance, and totally floored when the driver announced he was ready to get back and do it again.
I watched other bike riders get hit by that potentially lethal crosswind and get the wobbles on, sliding all over the track at more than 200 mph, then regain control and hammer on.
There were a few who came off, but they all walked away. Well, except for the two guys who came off their bikes on the way home; one broke his neck, the other his femur.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p249
[In the UK] I don't know how much time passes while I talk and Dad's chest moves in a slow, uneven rhythm with his breathing. He leaves us very quietly, just a brief last look, then his eyes close for the final time, and all the while Elisabeth talks to him, her voice so soft and reassuring. After a life that had been at times fraught with danger and so much tension, of which I only know of fragments, he had a peaceful death at home surrounded by his children and his true love. It's only now that I can start to understand how close life and death are all the time, so much closer than my rational mind can process here in my safe, secure, free western democracy. It takes on a new parallel when it's your immediate family; he was gone, just when our relationship was getting interesting. I step outside into the street with a glass of Dad's Macallan; I found the bottle in his collection, one that I gave him thirteen years ago still wrapped up, a 1969 vintage, the year I was born.
Ride Like Hell And You'll Get There Paul Carter p254
Motorcyclists love to ride. They don't really have a choice when the gotta-have-a motorcycle virus strikes. Dante said when he first laid eyes on Beatrice, "Here is a deity, stronger than I, who in coming will rule over me." Many have experienced such a moment, when the heavens open and something breaks into the soul that is more powerful than anything that has come before. Musicians, artists, luminaries, and lovers of all kinds have felt touched by something far beyond what can only be described as sacred. I felt that way about motorcycles for as long as I can remember. I didn't choose to swoon over motorcycles; that love found me and pulled me as surely as the ocean draws all rivers to itself.
Riding Off The Edge Of The Map David Bryen p5
When I discovered counter steering I realized how the journey of life is more like riding a motorcycle than driving a car. Motorcycle riding represents the inner urge to become an individual, to ride in the raw open air without the metal cocoon of a car or the restrictions of culture. Every corner, every change in temperature, every smell becomes another opportunity to intimately touch our surroundings. The soul thrives when it steps away from the habitual because in the unknown it discovers itself. Life in its richest moments is lived counter steering.
Riding Off The Edge Of The Map David Bryen p12-13
While riding a motorcycle, one must discipline the mind to not look backward, but to stay attentive to the moment. It's absolutely imperative to focus on the here and now. When we make a mistake, run wide in a corner, experience a near miss, or come across some hazard in the road, it must pass from thought immediately because the next instant requires all our concentration. A moment of inattention and boom, we're in the ditch or some other catastrophe has struck. Memory has little value while riding. Forgetting what has passed and letting go of the fantasy of what lies ahead helps the rider alive in the creative potential of every single moment. The attention demanded of every moment while riding is one of the reasons that I love to ride; I can't be anywhere else.
Riding Off The Edge Of The Map David Bryen p34
When I was teaching motorcycle safety we drove the mantra, "Keep your eyes up! Look through the corner!" into the heads of our students. However, now that I was afraid of hurting myself again, I had a compulsion to look straight down at the scary rocks on the ground. That invariably upset my balance because keeping my eyes looking up toward the horizon is essential to maintain equilibrium. My fear drew my focus to the rocks below, which upset my stability, which caused more fear.
Could I make the transition? Could I use my fright to remind me that my terror came from memory, not from what was going on in the moment? This is exactly what I have been teaching my psychotherapy clients for years! Fear comes from a story of what could happen or comes from a memory of what did happen. Those stories are useless when the task is to climb the next hill, cross the next stream. Look where you want to go! Stand up on the foot pegs! Get the weight on the back wheel! Pour on the power!
Riding Off The Edge Of The Map David Bryen p79-80
Jake must have figured that my resolve to continue was waning and, thinking it was time to educate us on the nuances of riding in mud, told us, "Truck tires ride in the centre of the left and right tracks and kick the loose rocks and gooey stuff to either side of the puddle. You'll find best traction in the middle where the water will be the deepest. Drive in the deepest part of the rut. The bottom will be firm there. Give it some gas and get your weight off the front tire."
Riding Off The Edge Of The Map David Bryen p85-6
By this time of the day, after righting our bikes so many times and standing on the foot pegs, my legs had turned into wet noodles. My mind was in worse shape. While we were sitting on the road, heaving from the exertion and our bikes clinking as they cooled off, we looked across the ravine of the hill we'd been climbing and saw hundreds of trees ripped away from the steep slope. We followed the trail of the recently slashed ground, and 400 feet beneath we saw the freshly crumpled skeleton of a dump truck that had tumbled down this mountainside, lying there like an insect belly up in its death throes. I couldn't imagine what business a dump truck would have on this nearly impassable section of road. We just shook heads. We didn't need to say much. The twisted truck, washed-out road, and stripped section of forest said it all. Worse, I still had to surmount the rock face that now looked taller than the Matterhorn.
Riding Off The Edge Of The Map David Bryen p90
We learn things from heroes that have gone before and use their resolve when ours is too small. But how do you know when you're supposed to stop? How do you determine if it's the fussy voice of fear that unnecessarily paralyzes, or the voice of deeper wisdom that is calling for a legitimate retreat? How to close that troublesome eye that insists on seeing all the danger when you know your task is to focus on where you want to go? Awareness was the goal I couldn't reach. The more tired I became, the less control I had. The dreaded "what ifs" boiled through my mind without interruption.
Riding Off The Edge Of The Map David Bryen p92
He went on to tell me some of the scary times he had while alone. "The road I was on forced me down this incredibly steep and crumbly section. I knew that if I started down, I wouldn't be able to turn around. At the bottom I discovered that the recent rains had washed out the bridge. In order to cross the river and get to the other side I had to pop a wheelie at the edge of the stream to get the front wheel up and over the 40-inch bank. When the front wheel cleared the lip I threw my body forward and pulled the bike with me." Jake stood up and showed the way he had to contort his body to get over the edge.
"As soon as I cleared the lip and headed up the road, the bike spun around and turned back towards the river again, and I crashed headed the wrong way. The road was too slippery to drive any further and I had no idea how I was going to turn it 180 degrees to climb the hill. While I was figuring out how to get going again, the rain started. I set up camp and waited for two days in the rain without food or water before I could move."
Riding Off The Edge Of The Map David Bryen p178
From the airplane flying out of Morelos, I got a taste of the Canyon's grandeur. But the glimpse didn't take care of the hole inside me. After I returned to Ajijic and had bought another bike, I found my way to a compatible bunch of motorcycle riders and began to enjoy time with Jake again. I took many rides across the spectacular Mexican Sierra Madres and rode to some of Mexico's many beaches. I rode on some more awful dirt roads and on pavement but my heart still yearned to settle into what I'd missed in the Canyon.
My deep regret about the motorcycle adventure was not that I'd abandoned the trip or lost the bike to the drug lord and an inept insurance company, or that my bank account took a hit. It wasn't even in the physical pain I endured or hurt pride. The failure that haunted me was not having reached that place on the rim of the Canyon where I could kiss and be kissed by its majesty. My longing to get to the Canyon ate at me like a cancer. While it was spectacular to have seen it from the airplane, I missed bathing in all it had to offer. The kind of immersion I wanted would take time, long, delicious, velvety time, sitting on the edge at sunset, watching the sun etch its shadow across the Canyon walls.
Riding Off The Edge Of The Map David Bryen p198
The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, It is no use. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.
GEORGE MALLORY, 1922
(Yes, we know he later died climbing Everest, but that's not the point.)
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll Foreword
I knew everything there was to know about Australia. After watching Crocodile Dundee and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, I knew that men wrestled crocodiles, shaved with knives and dressed up as women. From further research at the local video store, I also knew that schoolgirls shouldn't have picnics at hanging rocks, and that at any given moment you were likely to round a corner and find Jenny Agutter swimming naked in a billabong. Whatever a billabong was.
Australia was an elemental land where all the men were called Bruce, and all the women Sheila.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p1
"Listen," said Colin, coming back from the fridge with two more beers, "the only way you're going to find out is to go there. Why don't we rustle up a couple of bikes and ride all the way around Oz on Highway One? It's only 15,000 miles or so." He paused. "And besides, it's about time you learned to do a wheelie."
He was right. Wheelies, like stoppies, doughnuts and getting my knee down on corners, had eluded me through my short but eventful motorcycle life. You see, I may have ridden a Royal Enfield from Delhi to Belfast, a Harley from Chicago to Los Angeles and a Triumph from Chile to Alaska, but in the depths of my heart there lurked the suspicion that I was a bluffer rather than a proper biker.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll pp4-5
At around 17,500 miles, it's also the longest road in a single country in the world.
Australia's founding fathers had wanted this road to tie all the states together, giving the new country and its people a sense of unity and equality, which it did successfully for over one hundred and ten years, but I had heard that in 2010 it was due to be decommissioned as a federal highway. This meant that it would be broken up among the states, with each looking after and developing its own section as it saw fit. The road would largely remain as a physical entity, but would cease to be a single continuous body that united the entire country. No longer would those black and white signs reading simply 1 run like a ribbon around the continent. I knew that I had to travel on it before that happened.
The thought of returning to the land of sharks, snakes and road trains instilled no fear in me; instead my biggest worry telling my darling wife Catherine of my plans. She was eight months pregnant at the time and I was afraid that this could bring on early labour.
Discretion being the better part of valour, I bravely decided to wait until Geoff and his wife Cate came over for one of our Friday night pizza sessions before breaking the news. I simply announced that I was considering quitting my job, leaving her with an infant and riding off around Australia. Then, as the enormity of what I was saying sunk in, Geoff and I made a bolt for the kitchen.
Once safely out of reach we cracked a couple of tinnies and waited until the screaming stopped, "I think that went rather well, considering," said Geoff.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll pp6-7
I walked up the stairs to the book-lined study at the top of our house, lit the fire, hauled out an atlas and opened it at the map of Australia, with its familiar profile of a schnauzer gazing west. It didn't actually look any bigger than the Isle of Man from my atlas of the British Isles, so it couldn't be that difficult to circumnavigate, I thought.
I got up, poked the fire into life, picked up the phone on the old oak roll-top desk and called Colin to give him a good listening to. Put it this way, Colin is to talking what George Best was to drinking.
"Here, mate, I've been talking to my publishers, and they're on for that idea of a jaunt around Oz on two motorbikes. Do you fancy it?" Then I quietly put the phone down, went downstairs, made a cup of tea, fed the cat, shaved, walked back upstairs and picked up the phone again just in time to hear Colin saying... so to cut a long story short, I think it's a bloody good idea, mate. I'll just go and break the news to Catherine that we're definitely going to do it. She'll kill me, but it'll be worth it.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p7
"Cate, I was just talking to Colin about another book, and I wanted to see what you thought," I said.
"Don't tell me: around Australia on two motorbikes," she said.
I know she's a psychologist, I thought as I went to open a bottle of wine, but it's still spooky how much she knows about what I'm thinking before I've even had a chance to think it.
We filled our glasses and touched them with that old Turkish toast: "Cam cam'a degil can can'a" - "Not glass to glass, but soul to soul". They met with a bright tinkle, an optimistic sound which drifted out through the French windows and rose into the sky, to join the stars as they looked down on that moment which is one of the rare, perfect moments of life, like the moment when you fall in love, or fling open morning shutters on a new city and go walking into streets fresh with rain, or land an aeroplane so gently that you do not even feel when the wheels touch the ground. The moment when an adventure begins.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p8
We set off, with first Colin, then me, taking the lead and Paul in behind. I don't know about Colin, but with an ex-police biker watching my every move, I was riding like a granny on Valium. After half an hour, Paul pulled us in for a natter. "Right, you both need to ride faster. There's no point being on a bike if you don't make progress by overtaking and filtering past slow-moving traffic. Colin, you could be faster through corners as well, and Geoff, you seem obsessed with riding down the middle of the road," he said.
"Listen, the first LP I bought was Neil Diamond's 'Twelve Greatest Hits', and I've been middle of the road ever since," I said lamely, and we set off again, making progress, filtering furiously, making our way to the front of the queue at traffic lights, and generally behaving like well-mannered kings of the road. Especially since we'd just been told by an ex-cop to ride faster.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p17
It's not the wombats that you have to worry about, it's the emus! Next to sheep, they're known to be the dumbest animals that God ever put life into. They run at 60-80 kph beside you before suddenly changing direction... straight in front of you! The good news is that if you hit them at just the right speed they'll deflect off your fairing and spin down the side of your bike, giving it a nice clean as they do so, sort of like going through an automated car wash. Then there are the snakes which like to sunbathe on the roads, and don't get me started on the kangaroos... happy travels.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll pp25-6
By the time we got onto the plane for the short hop to Adelaide the next morning, I had become convinced that the Australian Government was putting Prozac in the water, since every single person we had met since we arrived had been unfailingly cheery, optimistic and helpful. Including the drug-sniffer dog at the airport. It was an impression confirmed by the fact that among the duty-free items for sale in the Qantas in-flight magazine was a guitar, presumably in case everyone on board fancied a good old sing-song.
However, that discovery was not the highlight of the day. It was not even picking up the back-up vehicle, a Toyota Hiace High Top with 652,425 km on the clock which the chaps at Wicked Campers had painted up for us with inspired combination of bike adventure graphics and rude quotations.
No, it was the moment when we collected the keys of two Tigers from the Triumph dealer in Adelaide, started up the engine and I heard that sweet hum which had accompanied me all the way from Chile to Alaska on my previous adventure, and was again in this moment the sound of freedom and the open road.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p32
The next day, the three of us that were left- me, Colin and Matt - rose early and rode north heading for the city of Canberra. Our journey took us along a tree-lined highway through rolling parkland which had climbed to high sierras by the time we stopped for a break at noon. As we sat in the shade outside a roadhouse, three Harley riders rolled in and walked inside with a nod.
"So sad the way middle-aged men feel the need to go riding around on motorbikes so they can feel like heroes," I said.
"Aye, what's that all about?" said Matt.
"Beats me," said Colin, and we rode on, passing some wonderful old cars out for a Sunday drive - an acid-yellow Ford V8, a purple Valiant, an endless black Cadillac with fins and whitewall tyres, and a silver E-Type convertible. Australia, like California, is a land where the climate is kind to ancient metal.
The afternoon stretched on, languid and hot, and to stop myself from nodding off, I kept myself amused by spotting road signs such as 'Gordon Exit Here', and wondering how many Gordons had exited, then wondered why; or 'Howlong This Exit', and muttering happily to the inside of my helmet, 'Not so long, thanks for asking.'
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p77
We had spent the morning exploring the only other real attraction in the city - the new parliament building, which looks like a Neolithic burial mound about to blast off into space. Not that the building was even the real highlight of trip there. That honour goes to the magnificently Australian conversation we had with the policeman who arrived on his mountain bike as I was getting off the Triumph.
"G'Day, mate. Listen, if you park there, it means a fine for you and a shitload of paperwork for me. But if you park over there, it means none of the above, and we're both apples. Nice bike, by the way. Used to have a Bonnie, but these days I've got a nice little Yamaha."
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p85
Later that day we made our way to Deus Ex Machina, the motorcycle company operating from a renovated factory in Camperdown, Sydney.
All devotees of Greek and Latin drama, which I'm sure includes all of you, will know that the phrase Deus Ex Machina means 'God from the machine', and is a device used by crap playwrights when they realise they've only got one minute left in the last act and no denouement in sight. Solution: enter God stage-left with magic wand, and all sorted.
He'd certainly been busy inside Deus, I thought as we wandered around looking at bog-standard bikes which had been transformed into works of art. Two of the men behind this magic are Dare Jennings, who used to run the surf-clothing giant Mambo before he and a couple of friends started Deus in 1996, and head of sales Shaun Zammit.
"Here, are your parents from the planet Krypton, or do you guys just pick your names out of a Superman comic?" I said to Shaun as we stood looking at a Triumph Thruxton, already my favourite bike in the world, which the mechanics at Deus had made even faster and more beautiful, a thing I had previously thought impossible.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p97
Back then, bikers had such a bad reputation that every time Margaret and Brian went touring, they had to book ahead so that motel owners wouldn't run away screaming when they rolled up on two wheels.
"Then one day in the late nineties we arrived in Nabiac and everyone treated us like human beings, so we bought a plot of land and built the museum," said Margaret.
"Here, what are you doing wearing a Deus Ex Machina T-shirt? Don't you know that most of their clients are gay men with more money than sense?"
"Well, I'm not gay, and I haven't got either," I said. "Anyway, it was reduced from $70 to $15."
"$70 for a T-shirt? Bloody hell!" Having sorted out Deus, she then led us on a happy hour around the eight hundred motorcycles in the collection, accompanied by her arthritic chihuahua, Acme.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p103
For me, the most emotional moment was filming a piece for the documentary while sitting on a 1937 Rudge Ulster similar to the one my dad raced in the fifties, complete with ancient leathers, gauntlets and pudding bowl helmet. As I talked, I was filled with melancholy thinking of him as he is now at the age of eighty-four, 'old and grey and full of sleep', and of the man he was when he tore around circuits on motorcycles such as this, filled with vim and vigour in the days when he met and fell in love with my mother.
How sad it is, that we all grow old, I thought, then dealt with that sadness in the only way I know, by getting on a motorcycle and riding into the newborn day, holding aloft the torch of hope and optimism against the darkness of the unknown future and my own advancing years.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p104
All men want to be heroes, you see, especially to their wives, but in their misguided minds, they think the way to do it is by going out and flying aeroplanes or riding motorbikes across continents, whereas the still, silent truth is that they would probably do it better by staying at home and doing the dishes.
And talking of dishes, several weeks after this, I read a wonderful thing in a magazine in Broome: that in Italian, the word for table, tavola, is masculine until the table is set, when it becomes feminine.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p109-110
By this stage Geoff had caught up with us, just in time for to run into some roadworks. "Think we're gonna get pretty wet soon," the ganger holding the stop/go pole told us.
We told him we already had. Twice. But that we had just laughed it off as the rain was warm, plus we were hard-assed bikers who feared nothing but a lack of pies and beer. Unfazed by our chutzpah, he said, "We had a shower last night – about two inches it was. Think we might get another one today."
We wished him well, handed him a snorkel and sped on.
As the roadworker had predicted, we were alternately drenched by rain and dried by sunshine as we rode along. The rain stung our hands, since it was too hot for gloves, but it was a good-to-be-alive kind of stinging.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p110
"Oi, you don't wanna ride Triumphs, mate. AJS is the bike," he said, rolling up his sleeve to reveal a large AJS tattoo. "I used to ride everywhere with me mate on ours until he went straight on at a bend and came a cropper on a barbed wire fence. Right across the neck. Nasty."
Having thus failed his interview as head of marketing for AJS, he pottered off.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p113
Zen had succeeded where conflict would have failed, and perhaps it was that which led to the feeling of beautiful contentment I had as we rode up the Sunshine Coast that morning. Or perhaps it was because we had cast off our jackets and were riding in our T-shirts, feeling like boys on bicycles on our summer holidays, filled with that gloriously youthful sense of our whole lives in front of us, filled with infinite possibilities. Or perhaps it was as a result of weeks of being surrounded by people living in the endless summer that is Australia. Whatever it was, it lasted all the livelong day, as we sped north along the section of Highway One called the Bruce Highway, with jagged blue mountains shimmering in the distance and in the foreground a vista of hills and dales, forests and streams, pine trees and palms, like the love child of Scotland and Barbados.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p116
From time to time we were stopped by the roadworks which will turn Highway One from two lanes into four, after which it will presumably be known as the Bruce and Sheila Dual Carriageway.
The great thing about bikes at roadwork queues, of course, is that you can filter all the way to the front, and this afternoon Colin set a new world record as he led the way to the front of a two-mile tailback just as the man with the 'Stop' sign swung it around to 'Slow'.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p118
All too aware that this was the witching hour for Australian wildlife, we kept a careful eye out for assorted kangaroos, wombats, koalas and funnel-web spiders as, at speeds which would have had us in a Van Diemen's Land chain gang had there been any traffic cops about, we swooped and dived through lush grassland, copse and sugar plantations, on a road of such seductive curves that if it had been a woman, you would have married her and had her children, never mind the pain.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p118-9
I stood there for a long time, filled with the happiness which being around old aeroplanes and motorcycles creates in me, possibly because it blesses me by osmosis with a ghost of the heroism of the men who flew and rode them, and then I got on more modern motorcycle and rode west into the late afternoon, imagining as I did that, as well as the hum of the engine, I heard an echo of another sound, the thrumming of ancient Avros and de Havillands heading home through the dying light of the day.
And then I realised that the thrumming was coming from below me, accompanied by a staccato thudding against my boots. Looking down, I saw that they were liberally covered with bits of dead insect, and realised that Ray's grasshopper plague had come to pass. He'd just exaggerated the height they could jump.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p129
And if you're wondering why the Corones Hotel is my favourite venue for the founding of Qantas, it's partly because Poppa Corones allegedly proposed that the airline's first planes should be named after the figures of Greek mythology, such as Hermes and Pegasus, and as a reward was granted the Qantas catering contract so that, as every plane touched down at Charleville, his staff were already on their way across the grass with food, white table linen and silver service. And even more, because when Amy Johnson stopped to refuel at Charleville during her epic flight from England to Australia in 1930, she stayed at the Corones and asked Poppa for a champagne bath to celebrate the fact that the most dangerous part of her journey was over.
Poppa duly filled a bath with sixteen bottles and, not being a man to waste a penny, not only managed to rebottle the champagne after Amy had left, but ended up with seventeen bottles, so heaven knows what Amy got up to in that bath.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p129
Our bad-luck streak hadn't quite run out though as, just out of town, Matt was pulled over by the police for driving too close to Geoff. I chucked a Uey to have word as Matt pulled away, and the cop, who was actually pretty friendly, said, "I just thought he was driving too close to your mate, and didn't know you were all travelling together, no worries mate."
After driving along the same dead-straight road for another 80km, Geoff and I were pulled over outside a police station in the middle of nowhere - the same cop we had encountered earlier was now doing random breath tests. We reckoned that he and his partner were just bored and wanted to have a look at the bikes, and sure enough, one of them turned out to be a biker.
After they had breathalysed us, and Geoff revealed he had left his licence at home - "It's okay, too much paperwork mate" - we had a yarn about what we were up to and they told us that the next bend was 480 kilometres away.
"We'll have to be re-trained," I said.
"No worries. Once you turn right there, there's another couple of bends before Darwin - you'll love it, it's really interesting bike country."
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p138-9
To relieve the boredom of the endless straights, Colin and I finally decided to put them to some use by having a race, and as we were hurtling along side by side at a shade over 130mph, the thought suddenly occurred to me that this was only the average speed of the Isle of Man TT lap record set by John McGuinness the year before on winding country roads. It was about time we slowed down anyway, since a wind had sprung up from nowhere, flinging us this way and that across the road, and we found the reason why when we stopped to refuel; a sign in the window of the filling station saying, 'Fishing contest cancelled due to cyclone'.
"You're lucky. Today's just the end of it," said the woman behind the counter.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p141
Then, all of a sudden, red sandstone bluffs began fisting through the sunbaked earth, and before we knew it, we had dipped into the gorge of the Victoria River, winding through the dappled shade with the sun dancing cool blue on the river to our right and hot red on the cliffs to our left. We swooped around corners, like boys reborn. The scenery and grandeur lifted our mood after the enforced captivity of Darwin and we each hummed tunes as we sped along. We felt like the whistling kites that circled above us as we swooped through the valleys, the road rising and falling as it cut its way around the mountains. Black and white cockatoos kept us company as we drove, with the only downside being the occasional smell of death as we passed yet another wildlife traffic victim. Even cattle aren't safe from the road trains, and we saw at least two cows by the side of the road, slowly putrefying in the heat.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p161
West Australians are known as 'sandgropers' by the other states and looking around it was easy to see why. This area had very little soil but an abundance of white sand and it seems the local plants have evolved to survive in it. Unfortunately the town of Eucla hadn't fared so well as, back in the nineteenth century it had been completely swallowed up by the shifting sand only to emerge every now and then, perfectly preserved, before being swallowed up again.
A sign from the local police kept me amused for the next few miles. It informed passing drivers that the local fuzz were 'targeting fatigue' and I wondered how they went about doing that. If they saw your eyelids drooping, did they jump out of the bushes and offer you a coffee? Or a pillow and a blanket? Maybe they drive you back to the station and tuck you in and read you a bedtime story. The possibilities for positive public relations seemed endless.
Clearly I was in need of a break, so we stopped at a hamlet called Edeabba, where we spotted a sign at the local football oval reading 'Beware Falling Limbs'. I looked at Geoff and checked my own, but they all seemed to be well attached.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p193
We left at lunchtime, riding south in glorious sunshine and equable warmth, bliss after the heat and humidity of the north, through gum trees lining cow meadows and vineyards, until at last - Colin and Paul having gone ahead - I found myself riding behind an immaculately restored pearl grey and indigo Jaguar.
As we fell together through the chiaroscuro of the late afternoon light through the trees, it was as if we slowly slipped back into a more elegant age, so that instead of riding a modern Triumph, I was astride a Vincent Rapide or Brough Superior, wearing a houndstooth jacket and soft-collared shirt, goggles and tweed cap reversed, on my way home to a little house in a grove tor a supper of Lancashire hotpot and Spitfire ale with my wife.
But my wife was Far And Away across the world, so when we arrived in Margaret River I had a takeaway pizza and a glass of wine, then fell asleep in a backpackers' dorm, my heart filled with melancholy.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p196-7
The next day, with time now on our hands after the long days in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, what bliss it was to wake late, have a leisurely breakfast and then gain all the time lost anyway by flinging the bikes around the curves of the road to Nannup, a sleepy hollow of wooden houses, a bowling green and a little cafe where we sat outside in the sun drinking organic hand-knitted free-range cappomochafrappuchinos and passing the time of day with locals walking their dogs or just themselves.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p201
The next morning, we were filling up at the village petrol station when owner Mick Cassidy pointed to a postcard on the wall behind him of a naked woman sprinting across the road. "The Nullarbor Nymph, lads. Keep your eyes peeled for her, for very few are lucky enough to see her," he said in an accent which still had traces of London.
"Where are you from, Mick?" I said, handing over my credit card.
"Wembley. You know, where our lot always beat you lot at football. Came out here to help my brother run the local store, then had to close it fifteen years ago when the gold mine closed down. One hundred and fifty miners left with their families and houses, and that was the beginning of the end for Norseman. Oh, and I don't want to see you lads again today."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm the local undertaker's assistant as well."
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p207
Balladonia had achieved brief global glory in 1979 when the space station Skylab broke up on re-entry and fell on it, after which President Jimmy Carter phoned the mayor to apologise and a brief industry sprang up overnight selling T-shirts saying 'I Survived Skylab'.
Today, the attractions of the town are even more down to earth. I had plenty of time to think about them, since they were listed on a series of signs by the road into town cunningly calculated to build the hysteria up to near danger levels: 'Swimming Pool'; 'Children's Playground'; 'Cappuccino'.
As if that wasn't enough excitement for one day, shortly afterwards was the start of a ninety-mile stretch, known for being the longest straight road in the world. As we rode along it for mile after endless mile, I could not help but think that Zen Buddhists spend a lot of time meditating to find the nothingness at the centre of their being, which is traditionally an inch and a half above the centre of their navels. I've got news for you, chaps. You're wasting your time. The nothingness you seek is in the Nullarbor, which is full of the stuff.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p209
All of a sudden we came upon the Madura Pass, where the flat plain suddenly drops away towards the Great Australian Bight, offering an astounding view of the plain from above. It looked just like the Serengeti, minus the herds of wildebeest. It was breathtaking. At Madura Roadhouse the next day, the halfway point between Perth and Adelaide, we sat drinking coffee and looking down the hill at the Nullarbor stretching out to the horizon.
On the roadhouse sound system was "The Power of Love", that old eighties power ballad which made women come over all funny at the end of discos and men glad they did.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p210
Certainly waking up these last few mornings of the adventure was a bittersweet feeling: on the one hand I was looking forward to going home, to sleeping in my own bed and having all the old familiar things around me, yet knew that, as always, I would miss getting up every morning, putting all my stuff on a motorbike and riding off down the open road in the early morning sun, not having a clue what the day would bring.
As this morning proved, for we had been on the road a mere half an hour when we spotted three Royal Enfields parked by the side of the road, as Enfields often are.
As I knew only too well, from having ridden one back to the UK from India where they are still made, the vagaries of old British bikes combined with Indian quality control created a machine on which even a trip to the shops was an adventure, although radical innovations such as electric start and a unit construction engine have more recently given them a disturbing reputation for reliability. These ones turned out to be owned by Ian, Charles and Russell, who were making their way back from the Hutt River fortieth anniversary, having ridden all the way across the Nullarbor to get there. Naturally, since you can take the Enfield out of India but not India out of the Enfield, Charles had spent several days in Perth while most of his engine was rebuilt.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p212
In a way, they were following in the honourable tradition of Winifred Wells, who in 1950 at the age of twenty-two rode an Enfield 350 all the way from Sydney to Perth and back on dirt roads at the height of summer, arrived back and announced that her machine hadn't missed a beat. She is still alive and well at the age of eighty-two.
How strange and wonderful it was, though, to watch them kick-start the bikes into life, to drink in the familiar heartbeat of single cylinder engine, like the purr of a lion after eating a particularly satisfying wildebeest, and then to ride with them for the rest of the day, feeling for all the world as if I was back crossing the burning sands of Persia with Paddy Minne the world-famous Franco-Belgian motorcycle mechanic, Enfields painted pillar-box red and lemon yellow, on my first motorcycle adventure twelve years before.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p213
On the stroke of noon, we dismounted in Penwortham, walked up a grassy path past the little church, and found ourselves standing before the grave of John Horrocks, who set forth from these parts in July 1846 to find good pastoral land. From the very start, his expedition was prescient proof of W.C. Fields' later adage that you should never work with children or animals. Particularly animals: first the goats took great delight in leaping on the tent and eating it. Then Harry, a psychotic camel who was the first of his species to be used on an Australian expedition, tried to eat one of the goats, bit Garlick the tent-keeper, who was presumably wandering around redundant since he had no tent to keep, and chewed to bits the precious bags of flour.
As if that wasn't enough, one evening as Horrocks was unpacking, Harry lurched to one side and discharged Horrocks' gun, which was rather unfortunately pointing at Horrocks at the time. Harry was subsequently shot, although it took two bullets to kill him and he bit a stockman on the head before succumbing. Horrocks died of his wounds two weeks later, and 164 years later, we stood in mute homage before the plain grey cross and matching slab which marks the last resting place of the only explorer in history to be shot by his own camel.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p216
Vehicle ferries are a major mode of transportation for crossing the Puget Sound in Washington. On many a sunny Saturday afternoon you can find hundreds of cars queued up and waiting hours for the next crossing. But this is not the case for motorcycles. Yes, there can easily be twenty bikes in line, but we do not wait. It is perfectly legal to skip around all cars, butt your way to the front of the line, and rally together with the other motorcycles in the staging zone. The officials will then have the motorcycles get on first and consolidate them at the front of the ship. And for this magical moment, be it thirty minutes or an hour and a half, you are no longer riding alone. All from many directions, we join together for that time.
On the ferry, you find out really quickly that everyone has a story, and, because you are not in a car and cannot roll up your window, you enter each other's world.
All introductions start with the other person's ride and usually involve the history of their former bikes and ones they currently have but are cheating on this particular day. We then can get into stories about their journey.
Ride On Joseph Fehlen p60-1
Sunrises and sunsets. Make the effort to watch at least one sunrise and one sunset every month, preferably while on your bike. Riding at these times has a magic all its own that cannot be described. To watch a new day come to life and to be part of it is a privilege and should be treated as such. Sunset is a sign of that day's passing and a glorious reminder that no day should be wasted. Pay attention to these things. Life is a fantastic journey and sunrises and sunsets are the mile markers.
Road Tales Steve Reed p18
The love of a good woman. You'll need this one most of all. Not only in all aspects of life, but especially with regards to motorcycling. She'll need to understand your need to ride in bad weather, your desire to see distant places, the times you need to ride alone, your constant obsession for your bike, the trips with your buddies, and dozens of other things. Maybe she'll ride, maybe she won't. Regardless, she should never feel threatened by your riding. Instead, strive to make her part of it. Involve her in more than just the bike cleaning rituals. If you're out on a trip, call her so she can hear your voice. See that she knows you'll return from each and every ride. Take the time to let her know that she's special and that the best part of any ride is coming home to her.
Road Tales Steve Reed p19
That black Bridgestone 125 was the biggest, baddest, motorcycle he had ever seen and he was standing right beside it. He didn't dare touch it and knew better than to ask how fast it would go. Grownups didn't like foolish questions, you know. None the less, he couldn't help but be drawn to that machine. Something about it kept beckoning him back time and time again. It was as though he was a fish on a line and the bike kept reeling him in. Even when he would lay in bed at night, he could feel ifs pull on his soul. There was something mystical about that motorcycle and he was powerless against its spell. The thought of actually owning something that grand, that powerful, that beautiful was more than he dared to imagine. Maybe when he was grown up and rich and famous he would buy that bike and it would take him on hundreds of adventures. Yeah. That's exactly what he would do. He'd show everybody what a person could do if they had a bike like that! So the next day, he went to see the bike again. But this time he had a purpose. However, as he approached the bike, his resolve started to crumble. It was so big! The speedometer went all the way to 80 mph! How could a person drive something so big so fast! It just didn't seem possible. His dreams of excitement and adventure started to fade when he heard a voice say "Want to sit on her?" He whirled around to see a man smiling down at him "Are you serious? You'd let a little kid like me sit on this motorcycle?" the boy asked excitedly.
"You wont be a little kid forever," came the answer. "Who knows? Maybe you'll grow up to be a motorcycle rider. You gotta start somewhere." Having said this, the man lifted the boy up and placed him on the seat of the motorcycle. Sitting there, the boy noticed the gasoline price on the sign was 24.9 cents a gallon. And he had not one, but TWO quarters in his pocket! All the excitement and adventure came rushing back, pouring over the boy like rainwater pouring out of a downspout in a thunderstorm. That one voice had made a difference. It opened a whole new world when it placed that small boy on the seat of that shiny black motorcycle.
To this day, it's still my favorite seat.
Road Tales Steve Reed pp23-4
Grab six or seven friends and take off for nowhere in particular. After about 10 minutes, have the leader fall back to the last position. In another 10 minutes, that leader falls to the rear as well. Continue this procedure until the original leader is back at the point position. During the ride, all leaders should be encouraged to get the group as lost as possible, since it would be someone else's responsibility to get the group back on track. The larger the group, the more lost you can get. After a couple of these rides, you learn to have an eye for detail, believe me. One thing to remember, don't take this ride too seriously. Enjoy the companionship and tuck those memories in a safe place. You'll want to pull them out some cold winter night.
Road Tales Steve Reed p26-7
Do you know how to tell if you live next door to a motorcycle rider? Tall grass in the yard, weeds in the garden, dirty gutters, windows that need washing, house in need of painting, all signs of the 2 wheeler's creed, "If its nice enough to work outside, its nice enough to ride." My long-suffering wife, Angie, can (and has) testified to witnessing my possession by unseen forces once the temperature climbs above 70 degrees. Gotten the mower out of the shed, gassed it up, went by the garage, and the next thing I know, I'm cleaning bugs off my Gold Wing's windshield.
Not only did I claim to have a 10 hour memory gap, possibly caused by alien abduction, but those rascally aliens put 350 miles on my bike as well! And not one of them was thoughtful enough to cut the grass for me! In their defence, they did fill the gas tank before returning the bike to my garage.
Probably in the name or intergalactic peace or some such thing.
Road Tales Steve Reed p45
"So many roads, so little time". That phrase rings true with so many of us. So many places you haven't seen. So many adventures yet to experience. So much to see and do and so little time. And finally, you get it. That elusive answer to the question you've been asking yourself these many years. You come to realize that each ride is the best ride you've ever been on. The saying, "there are no bad rides, just some better then others," takes on a special meaning to you. When you hear a guy whine about being cold and wet you smile quietly to yourself. That guy over there telling about his 800 mile ride, the kid with the gauze on his forearm, the couple in their matching vests, all give you an inner peace. You know that they are part of you and you are a part of them. All of you are taking the same ride regardless of where you're at on the journey. You say to yourself, what an incredible and wondrous adventure I've been on. It's been more fun than I could have possibly imagined all those years ago. Now, I can't wait to see what's coming up around the next bend in the road.
Road Tales Steve Reed p110
After a hot shower and a great dinner (thanks Dear), I can now reflect on the day's events. The elation of the morning had been replaced with pleasant weariness. The overcast skies had been replaced by the glow of my wife's smile. The coldness of the ride had been replaced with cosiness. Strange how two totally opposite sensations are so dependent on the other? Without cold weather riding, you cannot truly appreciate the pleasures and comforts of a meal in a warm home. Without winter, how can you appreciate spring? And, if you don't go away, how can you come home?
Philosophy is not my forte. I just love to ride motorcycles. However, could the two be related? I may have to ponder that puzzle for a while, perhaps over some carrot cake and coffee.
Road Tales Steve Reed p113
Rouen is one of those places that, having visited once, you wonder why on earth you haven't been before. However, as I'd never visited previously I was keen to find somewhere to park my bike and take stock of my journey so far. Like most large towns, Rouen is a nightmare to navigate, particularly on a motorbike. It took about two hours of riding around in something like circles before I learnt the most important lesson of the trip: whenever you arrive at a new town or city, always make a beeline for the tourist information centre (they're usually located in the middle of whichever town or city you find yourself in, and are usually pretty well signposted).
The lady at the information centre was very helpful; unnecessarily so, some might say. She kept me talking (or rather, she kept talking to me, I've no idea what she was on about) for the best part of half an hour, and when I finally managed to flee, I did so under the weight of a hundred folding maps, brochures and pamphlets.
Still, she was kind enough to point me in the direction of a cheap and cheerful hotel near the train station which I found with remarkable ease.
I booked a "chamber pour une nuit avec salle de bain", and - with literally nothing else to say - dragged my luggage up three flights of stairs before cracking open a bottle of red wine and collapsing on the bed, a big, idiot grin writ large across my grimy face.
Bonjour! Is This Italy? Kevin Turner p10-11
I spent the next couple of hours wandering around the city, taking in the various sights, stopping every now and again for a relaxing drink, but mainly worrying about my bike. The Suzuki SV650S isn't a particularly desirable machine, but it was all I had and, in the run-up to my trip, I'd heard countless horror stories about bike theft in France, which, if the tales were to be believed, was pretty much a national pastime. Conveniently, the Suzuki has an under-seat storage area just big enough to accommodate a hefty chain and padlock - it's always a good idea to chain your bike to something, even if it's just a tramp - and this, coupled with a front disc lock and an alarm, meant it was pretty much theft-proof. Even so, I couldn't escape the nagging fear that, as I sank my third beer, my pride and joy was being wheeled into the back of a van. I decided to return to the hotel earlier than planned to check on her.
Bonjour! Is This Italy? Kevin Turner p14-15
I was hugely relieved to find my bike shackled to the post where I'd left it. Maybe it was the glow from the setting sun, or maybe was the half bottle of wine and five beers, but the SV had never looked better than it did there in the cool French evening light: the jet black, slightly bulbous semi-fairing exposed the dull silver engine casing, like a satin dress slipping off an elegant thigh. Well, not really, but in my drunken state I found myself lapsing into that strange, singularly male state of mind that equates fast bikes and cars with the female form. I'm sure Freud would have an explanation for it, but honestly, I don't think I want to hear it. Anyway, for whatever deep-seated psychological reason, I couldn't resist the urge to throw an ungainly leg over the tank and sit there for a while, watching the world go by, just me and the Suzuki.
Bonjour! Is This Italy? Kevin Turner p15
From the word go I was hopelessly lost. It quickly became apparent that the city's commuters were not in a tolerant mood. Like an ant in the middle of a football pitch I swerved this way and that, attempting to read road signs for any hint of direction. Cities aren't pleasant places to ride in at the best of times due to the sheer number of risks you encounter, but when you're lost, stressed and tired, mistakes become likely, and mistakes on a motorbike tend to hurt. Especially when they involve forgetting you're in France and turning left onto a busy roundabout instead of right... it seems that Lady Luck was riding pillion on that occasion.
Having received the sort of wake-up call that could feasibly raise the dead, I decided to call it quits: I rode the Suzuki onto the nearest pavement, took off my crash helmet and sank to the ground next to the bike exhausted and broken at 9 am.
Bonjour! Is This Italy? Kevin Turner p18
Then an unusual thing happened: an angel appeared out of the traffic in the guise of a rough-looking chap on an old Honda CB500. He stopped next to me and gestured to the madness behind him, "Eez fun, yes?" he said, with a big grin. I replied that if by 'fun' he meant a complete bloody nightmare, then, yes, it most certainly was! We chatted briefly and I explained, in my sub-GCSE French and via steering wheel gestures, that I was looking for the Le Mans racetrack, which he kindly offered to lead me to. I couldn't believe my luck. Thanking him profusely, I pulled on my lid and fired up the Suzuki.
Unfortunately, my saviour had neglected to mention that he was suicidal, and that he had chosen this very day - the journey we were on, in fact - to be his last on this earth.
Bonjour! Is This Italy? Kevin Turner p18
He rode like an absolute lunatic and it was only by following suit, ignoring every conceivable sense of self-preservation, that I was able to keep him in sight. We squeezed through gaps in the traffic that wouldn't have been possible had I had a slightly bigger breakfast that morning, and gambled with our - and every other road users' - lives at each and every junction. It quickly became apparent that my guide viewed traffic lights as a form of street decoration, pleasant enough to look at but of no practical value to a man in a hurry. In our wake a thousand car horns beeped furiously, while just feet ahead pedestrians dived this way and that, thrilled no doubt to have had their dull morning routine injected with such excitement. Through all of this my insane companion rode with heroic abandon, and I remember noting in a fleeting moment of calm that I hadn't seen his brake light come on once since he'd launched me into this hell just ten minutes earlier.
Bonjour! Is This Italy? Kevin Turner p18-9
But the roads are so smooth and virtually empty that big speed is almost a pre-requisite, at least on the larger roads where the throaty V-twin will wind up a hot 120 mph without a glitch and sit there comfortably while you tuck down on top of your tank bag, a big grin spread across your face.
Pin the throttle on a downhill stretch and the needle edges slowly toward 130 mph, but now the SV's engine is straining. The red line approaches for both bike and rider, as instinct begins to tighten the muscles until your arms cease to function as useful shock absorbers. At this point you have to step back, at least mentally; not necessarily by rolling off the throttle, but by consciously relaxing, forcing the brain to release its stranglehold on the sinews, to unlock the talons clenched around the handlebar grips and let the forearms cushion and iron out the natural imperfections of the road. Then everything becomes slower, easier and paradoxically, faster.
Bonjour! Is This Italy? Kevin Turner p24
I'd anticipated freezing, snow-covered highways and roaring blizzards, but in reality the roads were clear and smooth, the sun shone brightly in the cloudless sky, and the entire Alpine experience turned out to be one of the most enjoyable of the journey. In hindsight I wish I'd spent days, rather than hours, amid that rugged and beautiful scenery. Parked at the side of the road, gazing out across the mountains, it was wonderfully peaceful, with nothing but a light breeze caressing my face and a long, empty winding road stretching off into the distance: the only indication I wasn't completely alone in the world.
Alpine roads demand a certain respect; not only because they are twisty and awkward and often flanked with drops measured in hundreds of feet, but also because if you do throw your bike down the road and hurt yourself, you're unlikely to be found for a while (if at all). I rode along those treacherous mountain paths with fear as my pillion. I couldn't shake the notion that the smallest mistake might end with me either plummeting to my death or lying in a heap at the bottom of a frozen ditch, totally obscured from the view of other road users and utterly helpless.
Bonjour! Is This Italy? Kevin Turner p96
Eventually, the road stopped going up and began to descend, gently first, and then with unexpected severity. It's surprising how much physical effort is involved in riding a heavy bike downhill continuously for the best part of 90 minutes. Under braking - which happens quite a lot - your forearms and wrists take the full weight of your upper body, including, in my case, a rucksack which was full to bursting. It's like doing countless push-ups while also trying to concentrate on the road ahead, noting and avoiding that innocuous looking patch of gravel that could so easily rob the front tyre of its grip, or the pothole ready to hammer and send a bone-shaking jolt through the bars and down your spine. By the time I got to the bottom of the pass I was exhausted.
Bonjour! Is This Italy? Kevin Turner p96
I was alone up there on top of the tower, with no one to tell me when or where or how to be. Just me and the clouds and the breeze. It's how I feel when I pull on my crash helmet and close the visor. Alone and at peace.
I looked out beyond Nurburg, Adenau, beyond the rolling hills and the Eifel Mountains, beyond Germany even, to Europe - a vast, sweeping mass of triumph and tragedy, romance and despair, heroism and tyranny; as diverse geographically as it is culturally. This way for scorching Mediterranean beaches, that way for the snow-capped Alps and great swathes of excitement and challenge - and I had barely scratched the surface. Still, the time had come to say goodbye, for now, at least.
With a heavy heart I made my way back down the castle's spiral staircase, through its ruined walls and along the pathway to where I'd left the Suzuki leaning heavily on its side-stand. After a final look around, I slid the key into the ignition, dabbed the starter, and with the sweltering heat of the Mediterranean now a distant memory, reluctantly began the final part of my journey back to London.
Bonjour! Is This Italy? Kevin Turner p130-1
If you get a bit jittery because it's been two days since you last rode, or if you've ridden in torrential rain telling yourself "there's no need for wet weather gear because it'll stop soon"... even if you find yourself talking to any rider about their bike, although the postie is getting tired of my questions about his CT90, either way, motorcycles are all consuming. Once bitten it's hard to shake them. The lifestyle that goes with them is just the same, not to mention the camaraderie.
You don't see car drivers having an amiable chat at the lights.
My Motorcycling Life Greg Hirst p ix
The very first time I sat on a bike was as a young teenager. A well-meaning mate talked me into hopping on the back of his Honda 350. He gave me a helmet and we took off. Unfortunately, he did little else and when we came to a major left-hand corner he did what was required and leant to the left. This didn't make sense to me at the time, and thinking we were getting too close to the road surface, I leant as hard as I could to the right. As a result we missed the corner and speared across the traffic into a petrol station. Thankfully we had room to stop and managed to avoid all sorts of stationary objects. Then it dawned on him to explain to me how important it was for the pillion to lean with the rider.
My Motorcycling Life Greg Hirst p xi
Then there was the time I was pulled up in Victoria at another biker rock concert. I encountered yet another Police roadblock, surely the bane of many major motorcycle events at the time. As I waited in line for the 'boys in blue' to get to me I wondered what would happen. This time the wait was short before a plain-clothes cop approached me. He asked for my license and questioned my reason for coming to this particular event. After looking me over he proceeded to write me a ticket for an illegal helmet. It seems that my helmet didn't have the appropriate Australian Standards sticker and he decided this was the way to make my visit to Victoria memorable. Initially I was dumbfounded. I knew I was being done-over in order to get at the event organisers but how to prove it? Then I asked the officer to explain the Victorian helmet law to me. Was it required to wear a legal helmet or was it required to show an approved sticker? I then explained how my helmet was, in fact, an older and legal one. Suddenly he went quiet and stopped writing the ticket. He looked up at me and then in a measured voice announced he was showing me undeserved favour and was not going to issue me a ticket. As he walked off I thought how fortunate that the law in Victoria was not clear. Perhaps he just didn't know it. Either way I was not shafted by a cop bent on harassing those who ride.
My Motorcycling Life Greg Hirst p 11-12
The crowd present was made up of acting and media types plus a selection of the 'beautiful people'. This was my first TV launch and I got the invite after an acting appearance in the 3rd episode. The launch was held at a suitably decorated studio in upmarket Balmain. It was fitted with all the necessities, a boxing ring, a jacuzzi and, of course, a mud-wrestling pit. When I arrived there was plenty of security at the entrance and I parked my Harley in their view. Inside was packed and after looking around I found a place to set my helmet down and went off to get a drink. When I returned my helmet was gone. Security helped me search but with no luck. Pizzas Pauly came by and spent some time checking out possible hiding places, but at the end of the night it was clearly stolen. And by one of the beautiful people no less. In all the years going to biker events, pubs and clubhouses, I've never had a helmet or gloves stolen. But in two visits to what are supposed to be upmarket and safe venues, venues frequented by people who society looks up to, I ended up having crucial riding gear stolen within minutes. I guess you can't go by any sort of stereotype.
My Motorcycling Life Greg Hirst p16
Getting blamed for things is a biker's lot. Many people think that if you get in trouble or hurt in a road accident it must be our own fault. This way of thinking has its roots in the early history of motor vehicles in Australia. From the earliest times motorcycles have been associated with risk and rebellion. Some years ago I met an old Aussie bloke who reminisced with me about riding a motorcycle down the Hume Highway to Melbourne when it was mostly dirt. He spoke in terms that riders today understand. Adventure, challenge, thrill and a sore backside. He also remembered something else; being regarded as a temporary Australian and treated as someone who needed to be looked after. Riders today get angered every time someone suggests motorcycles are dangerous. And with good cause as those who often make this claim have never had to face the reality of the car driving public.
My Motorcycling Life Greg Hirst p17
For the uninitiated a gymkhana is a series of motorcycle games such as the slow race where the last bike to the finishing line without going backwards or putting feet on the ground wins. Another favourite is the blind race where the pillion guides a hooded rider to the finish line. This particular event has proven less popular after a number of broken friendships. And, of course, the famous keg-roll with the front wheel of a moving motorcycle. This one often requires the consumption of a great deal of amber fluid, in order to provide enough empty kegs for the race.
My Motorcycling Life Greg Hirst p20
Just the other side of Redfern I had cause to stop at a set of traffic lights. Unexpectedly the bike stalled so I prepared to kickstart it just like I had been instructed at the shop. Colleen had dutifully slid towards the back of the seat to give me room to stand and put my weight into the kick, and it started easily, which pleased me to no end considering I got the hang of it so quickly. I returned to a seating position and headed off through the lights and down the road. Around half a kilometre later a car pulled up next to me and called out, "Mate, you left something back there!" I turned back in time to see Colleen dodging traffic as she tried to get off the road back at the lights. It seems she did a little more than just slide back on the seat.
My Motorcycling Life Greg Hirst p26
Sorry about the hiatus- still in hospital after a fall. Back to normal service soon.
I had the opportunity to lead out a group of entertainers onto the Sydney Cricket Ground for a promotion for the movie Mad Max 3. Heavy rocker Angry Anderson was to be interviewed before the game and was escorted by a number of cars and lead out by our Harleys. During the week I had trouble starting my bike. An electrical problem, I thought, and spent many hours working on it. Problem solved as I rode around in the lead-up to the game. It started without difficulty for several days,
but to be sure I made a point of testing it regularly. Even during the lead-up time to the game I kept up the testing. It didn't miss a beat. As we sat at the northern entrance to the ground on two Harleys ahead of an assortment of dancing girls, off road cars and celebrities, my machine turned off and on without trouble.
Finally the call came to head out onto the hallowed SCG surface. Wheeling to the right we headed out and past the Members' and Ladies' Stands and finally stopped in front of nearly 9,000 enthusiastic rugby league fans.
As the commotion died down, Angry disembarked from his vehicle and mounted the small stage for his interview about the latest Mel Gibson flick. As a precaution I kept my motor running- after all I didn't want a problem in front of such a lively crowd. Suddenly, one of the Channel 10 crew approached. Apparently one of the producers was worried the noise from my motor could drown out the interview and I was asked to switch it off. I confidently and dutifully complied. Some minutes
passed and Mr Anderson finished, jumped off stage and headed to his vehicle. My mate and I took this as a cue to start up again. To my dismay nothing happened as I pushed the starter button. In desperation I moved to the kick-starter and frantically kicked and kicked. Nothing was happening, except that the crowd was starting to realise my predicament. Finally the other vehicles moved around me and exited the field leaving me in front of the Brewongle Stand as the entire crowd roared with
laughter. Even after the players had emerged and the game got under way, there was still no roar coming from my motorcycle. I acknowledged defeat when a crew member asked me to push it off the ground. I can still hear the roars of laughter as I left. To make matters worse I had a couple of friends in the crowd, one of whom had a camera. He kindly preserved my embarrassment in several glossy black and white photos. Eventually I succeeded in reaching the haven of the carpark. In frustration I
gave it one last try. The bike fired up immediately. My embarrassment was complete.
My Motorcycling Life Greg Hirst p34-5
We came across the other riders and together we roared around underneath this famous Olympic venue, thirty bikers, most of whom were athletically challenged yet doing something that most in our world could only dream about, and in front of 80,000 plus screaming fans. It was a blast (fully sick, if you are under 25).
As we neared the exit ramp something else happened that to this day has me shaking my head in disbelief. Coming around the final section of the road and on our way to head up the ramp we came across about eight cops. To my amazement they began applauding us as we passed, all of us. It was a moment to savour. Usually bikers and Police keep pretty distant from each other in social situations. Here they were reacting to us in a positive, friendly even supportive way. Even when an older sergeant stepped in at the death to stop this public bonding exercise, it was too late. Something had happened that none of us expected to see in our lifetimes.
Police clapping riders instead of reacting in a negative way. I guess anything can happen at an NRL Grand Final.
My Motorcycling Life Greg Hirst p40
I could again see a constant stream of bikes go around Parliament and park. This time it took a full hour for all the bikes to pass which delayed the official start time by fifteen minutes. Not that anyone seemed to mind, as the band on stage was playing some jumping rock music. Finally we were ready to start. As I got to the microphone to welcome everyone I could sense the excitement amongst this huge cross section of clubs and individuals. Besides the usual riders' rights suspects there were tourers, vintage riders, Ulyssians, Outlaws, Christian clubs as well as road and off road racing types. Darrell Eastlake got a huge cheer as did the other celebrity speakers. Impressively Triple J's Merrick Watts and Triple M's Brendan Jones rode all the way and spoke passionately about their motorcycling life. Jonesy was particularly impressive having ridden to Canberra after stopping at Goulburn Hospital. On the way down he caught a bug in the eye, requiring it to be bandaged.
Even in pain he finished the ride and spoke with passion about his clear love of riding. Politicians from the Liberal, Labor and Democrats all spoke in support of this endeavour, taking the opportunity to present written policies ahead of the next Federal election. Warren Fraser and Ray Newland represented the industry and hailed this united approach of riders, industry and sport to positively challenge society in a pro-motorcycling way. In the end this call to work in unity provided a fitting end to an event that had drawn riders from all over Australia and remarkably, in 2001, appeared as big as many of the rider's rights rides in the United
States and Europe.
My Motorcycling Life Greg Hirst p60
However, it was on the way home that the action really started. We had decided to go back to Sydney via the New England Highway and unexpectedly ran into the mother of all inland storms. Not only did it rain heavily but a fierce, driving cross-wind made riding extremely dangerous. Regardless we rode on. As time passed Grunt, who was on the back, started to get ill. It got so bad we had to stop at a servo at one of the small towns near the border in NSW. It was a good thing too. Little did we know that the battery on my bike was in trouble. It couldn't cope with the long ride with the headlight hard-wired on and was on the verge of complete shutdown. It wouldn't start at the servo and the mechanic who inspected it gave it a death sentence. In fact if we hadn't have stopped then, the battery would have been fried.
And in those conditions, with fierce wind driven rain and the number of heavy vehicles using the road at the time, we could have easily found ourselves bent around a tree or sharing the grille of an oncoming semi.
My Motorcycling Life Greg Hirst p85
As I walk the bike along the riverbank, following the man with the machete, I ask him how we will cross. He points to an esplanade ahead: "Bac. I'm the captain." Bac is a French word adopted in various countries to describe a raft.
Soon we round a curve and find in front of us a floating wreck- a rusty iron platform, full of holes, 25 meters long and 8 meters wide. It's fixed on top of a dozen rusty 50-gallon oil drums, tied to a rusty, frayed steel cable that leads to rusty pulleys anchored to trees about 200 meters apart on opposite shores. The bac will cross by means of the cable, which has to be pulled by hand. Everything looks as if it will fall apart in midstream, but my biggest concern, as always, is money.
"How much will you charge to take me across?" I ask.
"If is to the other shore, one million," he says. "You have to settle up with the pullers."
I smile at his term, "If is to the other shore." What could he mean, that he only charges half to get to the middle of the river? One million of his pesos equal $25 a fortune in these latitudes, so I start to bargain. We settle at $10, then I ask, "Where are the pullers?"
"I don't know."
"How can I settle up with the pullers?"
"I don't know."
"When do we cross, then?"
"I don't know. Maybe when the pullers come."
"And when do the pullers come?"
He shrugs his shoulders.
"OK, who are the pullers?"
"You. And others who may want to cross."
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p8
As an adult I took a job with Pfizer selling pharmaceuticals. One day a sales rep from another laboratory said to me, "I've bought a motorcycle, and I have to go to sign the papers. Why don't you come with me?"
I'd never been interested in those types of vehicles, which cost as much as a car but left you looking like a cat rescued from a river when it rained, but I went with him out of my impulsive curiosity. That decision changed my life forever.
At the dealership my gaze fell upon an advertising display picture, a photo of a big, black, bulky, enormous, shining machine. It looked like a bus, a motor home. It had saddlebags, one on each side, a big trunk at the back a large protective fairing with glove compartments, a soft seat that looked more comfortable than my grandmother's rocking chair, and a powerful 1100cc four cylinder engine. The ad claimed that it even came with a cassette player and antenna. Honda Gold Wing Interstate was the name of the hair-raising monster. Like a premonition, big red letters on one corner of the leaflet proclaimed, "Your future has come on two wheels."
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p12
I went back to the show room with the money and signed the documents. The owner knew that sooner or later the moment would come when I wouldn't be able to pay the installments, and he would keep what I'd already paid, and the bike, which even used, would cost double the original price, because that was the way things worked in my country in those days.
A few weeks later my wonderful machine arrived from the United States. When they handed it over to me, I found another major drawback- I'd never been on a motorcycle, much less driven one, so I didn't even know how to start it. When I asked, they all looked at me in horror. They took it into the street for me and gave me a 10-minute crash course.
I started up. After 100 yards, I fell off. The left mirror broke.
My monthly salary was just enough to pay the installments, but I only managed to pay two of them; by the third I couldn't keep up the payments. Everyone who knew me agreed that I'd made the biggest mistake of my life, dreaming beyond the mark, and that in a few days it would be proven to me.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p13
But before I could lose the bike, fate intervened. One Monday, the week began with the secretary of the treasury announcing: "Those who bet on the dollar, will lose," as he always did in his speeches. On Tuesday, when the country woke up, it discovered that either the newspapers had printed the secretary's name incorrectly or during the night the president had sent him on a permanent holiday. By Wednesday, a new secretary of the treasury devalued the peso. From that moment, the American currency no longer cost 170 pesos per dollar but the incredible sum of 1,700 pesos per dollar. On Thursday it rose to 3,000 pesos; on Friday 5,000; the following Monday, 6,000 pesos per dollar!
One week before you could buy 170 pesos with a dollar, now with the same dollar, you could buy 6,000 pesos. Generally these economic calamities only serve to make the rich somewhat richer, and the poor somewhat poorer, but never to make the poor richer. Well, there are always exceptions.
My Pfizer salary was fixed to a dollar tariff, so I went on to earn almost 6,000 times more pesos than I earned when I'd bought the bike, and, as the instalments were fixed in pesos, the total debt left outstanding for me to now pay became the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes. That's how I got a $26,000 motorcycle that ended up costing barely $3,000. The Honda dealership that sold me the bike survived for another year, but finally closed down.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p13-4
I arrive upstairs feeling anxious. Sonia tells me that the hotel has no parking lot. I take my passport, and I run downstairs, Sonia behind me. Less than a minute has passed. An eternity.
The motorcycle is totally naked. Empty. Everything has disappeared. Even what was inside the locked fiberglass saddlebags and the rear trunk has been carried off.
Everything that was not part of the machine itself is gone. Gone. Gone.
They left me nothing. Not even a thank-you letter.
I'm completely cleaned out. I've been totally, absolutely, undoubtedly robbed. Under the moonlight of Rio, and the neon lights of the street, I walk around the bike, not believing my eyes.
I'm an idiot.
Sonia ask me, "And now?"
"I've been robbed."
"I noticed. Can I help you in any way?"
I can't answer her. I need to think.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p17
Of all of my essential things, only my documents and the few dollars are left. I'm wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and sneakers. And the underpants, of course, which I have on. More importantly, I still have my black flying carpet. What else do I need to go on my vision quest, my walkabout?
With the loss of all my amenities, I could have been sunk into misery, but instead, I find a good side to the disaster. For the first time since beginning the journey, I enjoy driving. Without the extra 170 pounds, the bike rides like a grand prix racer instead of a garbage truck. Before I had a hundred things to look after, now I have only one: the bike. I can move my body, and I have space to carry Sonia. The robbery was a blessing.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p17
Here on the equator the days become longer and the heat becomes hotter, but as soon as the sun goes down, the shadows swallow everything faster than it takes me to switch on my lights. My skin roasts, my blood boils, and the motorcycle melts. I've driven all day, without a break, hitting cracks, falling into deep potholes, crossing faults in the ground, streams, fjords, rivers. The insects have eaten me alive, and I feel as if I've just done 30 rounds with 10 boxers the same time. More dust has entered my body than I've trodden on in the last 30 years. The people who warned me how difficult it was going to be were right. I've driven 15 hours nonstop. Of the 300 miles to the next post, I've done 40.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p27
I start the engine. I accelerate. She doesn't move. I look around and, with horror, discover what has happened. The rear wheel is not only stuck in the mud, but is also completely deflated, squashed flat The situation is as follows: I can't get the bike out of the mud, I don't have a pump, I have no tools for repairs, and I have no idea how to get the wheel off the chassis. I've never done it before, and I barely paid attention when some mechanic did it. And it's raining. No, not raining, pouring. The jungle has disappeared in the darkness of the night, under a curtain of water. I leave the bike in the middle of the track, half sunk in the mud and I walk back about 200 yards. There's a small clearing, with some pieces of wood laid like a roof. I lie on the ground under it, with no strength left. I can't think clearly. I'm out of the rain, not completely, but enough. It's late. I'm very tired. I need to sleep.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p27
The fifth day when I'm ready to continue way, the Atroari chief, who has come to the road, goes to say something to someone from the government. It's a request which makes me proud. With a bit of help, we fulfill his wish, and sit him on the bike. The chief is happier than a dog with a bone, and hangs onto handlebars, with his legs dangling to the sides and showing off his yellowish teeth.
When he's on the ground again, he takes one of the shrunken heads off the string round his neck and hands it to me as a gift. Everyone is astonished. This is a treasure more than one of them would like to have, but the Indians do not usually give them away, as it represents their fortune and demonstrates their status. They tell me I have to accept. I do so, and I thank him by giving him a gift in return. I take the shiny key ring which keeps my keys together and give it to him. The Indian takes it and goes back to his village.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p29
I gently accelerate. I put the wheels in the water and go slowly forward, using my feet to help, preventing the water from knocking me over, or from going into the exhaust pipes. If the engine fails, that's it. I'm not going to let this Buraco [Hole] River be my hole. I just hope God has come to love the bike and helps us. Now I'm in the torrent. The front wheel slides one way and then the other, and the back wheel slips on the rounded rocks. I tighten my grip on the handlebars. We're
going dangerously deep, too far. The water is already over the engine. I keep it revving, although not so much that I have to lift up my feet. The current hits us sideways and washes over my head. We're almost in center of the river. The bike is almost completely covered. Only the tank and the fairing are out of the water. If the water touches the air filter it's all over. We're sinking deeper and deeper. I stop.
Bad mistake.
I can't keep upright, and I'm about to fall over. The eddies push the back of the bike and slide it sideways. Now I'm facing the current, which is hitting the fairing so hard it seems it may smash it to pieces. The noise of the flood coming at me covers all the other jungle sounds, even the roaring of the carburettors. I can't go on like this, in the riverbed; I have to face the other bank, but I can't move. I'm petrified.
It's almost all over. Now I know that you mustn't brake when you're in the middle of a river.
When I jump off the bike and leave her to save myself, a message came into my head: "Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it!" My right hand twisted the accelerator more and more, and I'd say I sailed, rather than rode, to the other side.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p30
I go forward, revving. The sleepers are in pairs a foot so apart, riveted to a labyrinth of iron girders which, criss-cross below, but between them there is nothing, just the ravine. The bike's wheels get stuck in the gaps. I accelerate and push with my feet. Things are getting complicated. After about 60 yards I skid, and to my shame, I fall off, landing heavily and dangerously on my right side. I drop something which falls between the girders to the gulf below. I don't know what it is, but I haven't the time to find out. The trucks are about to run over me. They hoot. They'd like to push the bike over the edge. I pick up the dead weight of the motorcycle using all my strength. I get on and start up. The engine coughs. I try again, pushing the starter button. At last the cylinders fire. I accelerate, but this time I decide not to let myself be intimidated or pushed. I'm going to go slowly, and very carefully. I go over two sleepers, and crash! The front wheel falls into a gap. I give gas to the engine, the tire crawls out, goes forward, and crash! The rear wheel falls into the gap. I accelerate, go over the sleepers, go forward, and crash! The front wheel falls into the next gap. I accelerate, go over, and crash! The rear wheel. Accelerate, forward, crash! And so on, from sleeper to gap to sleeper and back to gap again. It's as if the bike had big square wheels. It goes up and down, and up and down. The soldiers in the body of the truck in front of me, which is now moving further and further ahead, try to encourage me by waving at me to follow them. Some of them clap when I come out of the gaps by burning rubber from the rear wheel. The truck behind me speeds up and hoots at me a couple of times to get a move on. One thousand feet below I can see the bed of the River Lempa.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p50-1
A guttural whine from an antique taxi- probably from the time of the Mayas- alerts me to the fact that the taxi's brakes have failed. "Whoomp!" The driver crashes into the left side of my motorcycle and sends me flying. I make a spectacular pirouette.
Luckily, I'm OK. Only my pride gets a little dented. I raise up the bike, surrounded by dozens of Guatemalans who discuss the accident. My Gold Wing has stoically endured the knock, but will need some bodywork repairs.
I'm in Guatemala, and although the taxi driver crossed the intersection at high speed through a red light, I know the law here is not any different from in any other country in which I have been. I play my part and he plays his; we exchange a few harsh words, and then everybody continues on their way.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p52
At the entrance to Houston, the cars are stopped on the freeway for miles and miles, bumper to bumper. I go slowly along between two lanes of cars that are almost stationary and hear a siren. It's a patrol car racing me in the emergency lane, alongside the crash barrier, with its lights flashing. As I am now an expert in this, I move in front of them and stop. Two officers in uniform get out. The one in front starts barking at me; it seems he's unable to speak. He reminds me of a Chihuahua with hiccups. He shouts so much and so fast that all I can do is look at him carefully, because I can't understand a word of what saying. Anyway I can't imagine that I've done anything wrong. I wasn't even doing 10 miles per hour. Then the other one, as big as Hercules, comes up to me. "Here comes real trouble, Emilio," I say to myself, but he only looks the bike up and down. "Drugs again," I think. It's like an obsession with them.
But no, he's not looking for drugs. He quiets his partner and asks, "Don't you know you can't drive between the cars?"
"But they're stopped. In California..."
"This is Texas, not California. Your plates are from Argentina. Why?"
"I'm from there. I'm going around the world."
"You're joking."
"No."
"When did you leave?"
"A year and a half ago."
"And where are you going now?"
"Houston."
"Where are you going to stay?"
"At the campsite."
"Campsite! My friend, you've just found yourself a place to stay. We'll go to my house. I have a Honda Gold Wing, too, and it will be an honor for me and my family to put you up. Follow us on your bike."
The other cop is speechless, and I am too. This is crazy. A cop inviting me to stay at his home!
The Gold Wing Road Riders Association organizes a meeting in Shreveport, Louisiana, and we go there: my friend Terry, the sheriff, and his son and daughter-in-law, who follow us in a van. Of the ten thousand motorcycles present, mine is the oldest, but the way the people welcome me makes me feel at home. "Americans are cold," someone once said to me. Well they ought to attend a meeting like this one. The only cold things are the thousands of drinks consumed.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p65-6
Are there no options for getting out of here? Yes: walking. Leave behind what has become an anchor to me. I look back at the bike. "I'll be back for you, Princess. I'll bring help to get you out of here." I walk off, carrying just the clothes I'm wearing, already in rags. I turn again to see her, before we're separated by the jungle. I know my chances of survival are not very high if I walk, but they are less than zero with the bike. And I'm clear about one thing. I won't go back over those terrible hundred kilometres. I walk off in thick, muddy water, telling myself- "It's only 20 kilometres. Come on Emilio! A little further. Come on!"
Somewhere-I don't know if a hundred yards or a mile further on- my spirit breaks. My legs fold, and I fall in the water and start to cry. I cry because of my failure, because abandoning the only companion I have is a failure. I'm exhausted, soaking wet, hungry, and confused, in the middle of the biggest crisis of my life.
I don't want to die, but I fear death less than what awaits me: failure. I have to go on, that's true, but my motorcycle is my spacecraft. How can I get where I want without her? Yes, there is another way of getting out: the way I came, those hundred kilometres, step by step, with the Princess. I start to walk back, maybe a kilometre or two. I don't know. And I find the Princess, and I embrace her. I drink some water and lie down next to her.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p98-9
Getting the bike up the hills was difficult, but getting her down again is worse. With gravity as an unwelcome companion, I fight to control a vehicle which is heavier than me by a ratio of five to one. She gathers speed as she slides through the mud, and I even have to use my feet as brakes. Then, on a hillside, the front tire hits a stone, and we lose balance and fall. I hang onto the handlebar and pull for all I'm worth, but I'm beaten and forced to let go, and the Black Princess starts slipping down the hill. She slides 30 feet and ends up with her wheels in the air.
I go down and examine the position she's in. I conclude that her position might be an advantage to me. I contemplate pushing her and making her slide some more, using the impetus to get her up, but this plan could end miserably if she slips much further down the slope.
With these horrors in mind, I decide to try and get her up without making her slide any more. I manage to upright the bike and carry on downhill. By midday, both bike and I are on level ground; the asphalt road that goes back to Bissau.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p99
I come to another river, the Chari, which, apart from carrying water, fulfils the function of the border. There is supposed to be a bridge, and in fact there was, but its collapsed and sank into the water. Even so, some people risk the crossing, balancing on a narrow cornice of the bridge which is still sticking out, and which the water rushes over. After a long while I admit there's no other alternative. I see two locals who are about to cross, and I offer them money in exchange for their help. We begin to move forward along the slippery cornice. The water carries all kinds of tree trunks and trash, and we can't see the edges. One man walks in front of the bike, marking with his feet where the edges are. The other goes behind, holding the rear trunk to counter the swaying. The rapids are very strong. As the water hits me sideways, it rises over the tank. Slowly, with great difficulty, we reach the middle of the river, and now the water surprises me, or surprises the three of us, because it comes so strongly that it almost goes over our heads.
A tree trunk hits us and the man in front grabs hold of the wheel so as not to be dragged away, and twists the whole bike toward the river. The wheel comes off the cement, and with the impetus the front part of the bike is left hanging off the cornice, practically submerged up to the engine. The water is about to carry us away literally as if we were a piece of paper. The engine stops, and although I have hardly any firm space at the sides, I triple my efforts, desperately hanging on, trying to save Princess. If we fall in the river, I'm sure I will swim, but she will go to the bottom, and my journey will be over.
"Pull back! Pull!" I shout to one of them. "Lift the wheel back onto the cement!" I shout to the other.
"Let's push! Together! Now! Come on!" I keep shouting, trying to direct the operations in a battle that seems lost already. Then, as if from heaven, another two boatmen arrive and willingly pitch in, holding the bike by the sides, helping us to set her straight and back on the cornice, and then managing between us all to get her upright and heading toward the opposite shore again. We're still fighting the current, but by pushing, we slowly move forward.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p107-8
When we reach Yaounde, the capital, the driver brings the train into the station to let the passengers off, but the goods wagon, where the bike is, still sits outside the station. I wait for him to move the car forward, but the guy pulls the wagon off to one of the side tracks that make up the immense railway terminal, half a kilometre from the station. He unhooks it and goes away.
I jump down onto the tracks and walk over to where he's stopped his black engine. He asks me for 500 dollars to take the Princess' wagon into the station, and another 500 for the stationmaster. The deliberations last hours, but the bastard laughs and won't accept the 100 of the last 150 dollars I have left. The other possibility is to find some strong, steady arms able to hold the Princess up when she comes off the floor of the wagon. But they ask me for 50 dollars each, with a minimum of 10 men.
They have a kind of union, commanded by a boss who is the one that negotiates with me. They have me cornered, but there's one thing I make very clear-I don't have 500 dollars. My whole capital amounts to 150 dollars, and if I give it all to them, I'll still e stuck in Cameroon. It's a war of nerves, but finally, when it's about to get dark, they give in. They want to go home with something, and I'm offering them something: 10 dollars each.
Finally, nine hours after coming into the station, I manage to get the Princess onto the ground. It takes another while to get the bike over the rails to the street.
I ride the last 250 kilometres and reach Douala, on the shores of the Atlantic.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p110
The third morning they come back. They bring packs of cookies, but there's no sign of the officer. By mid-afternoon I start to protest loudly. I shout louder when I see they're submissive, but they're more scared of the officer, and they ask me not to pass.
At five they leave, ashamed of themselves and apologizing. It's my third night at the border, but I know it isn't their fault. On the fourth morning they come back and finally take me to M'bini where I'm arrested by the border commander. He takes away my passport, the keys to the bike, and kicks me out of his house. I move into a small hotel, and the commander has me at his mercy for four days. Every morning I have to go and stand outside his door and wait.
Finally, on the fifth day, he lets me in. He's sitting with three friends on some moth-eaten armchairs. He shouts at me, insults me, threatens me, and makes me publicly apologize for bothering him when he's so busy.
And I do so. Because this is a lesson I've learned: it's better to swallow my pride rather than have a brainless animal with no scruples swallow up me, the bike, and my future, all in one go. These are the rules of Africa. After my public humiliation, stamped passport in hand, I take to the road again. I pass the village of Kibangou and continue.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p114
There's no moon, but it's very damp and hot. I'm wearing sports shoes, shorts, and a sleeveless shirt. I have to hurry to get through the difficult exit formalities.
In this country, all passengers at airports have to give a currency declaration, prove that they changed their money legally, and then completely undress in a changing room in front of a guard so he can see nothing is being hidden. They explained to me that they even make you separate your buttocks to make certain.
The freeway is also in darkness. As it's getting late, I accelerate to 70 miles per hour. Suddenly I enter a roundabout. The darkness, tiredness, the lack of signals: the crash is tremendous. The front wheel hits the cement border, and I take off like a jet plane. When I come down, I'm on 1,200 pounds of metal that is no longer vertical.
We roll 30, 50, 70 meters. The bike slides along in front of me, bouncing off the cement, with pieces of bodywork and sparks flying out in all directions, and making an infernal racket of metal being filed down. My body follows her, like a sack of potatoes, with no will of its own, dragged along the asphalt.
I finally stop.
I get up. "I'm fine, I'm OK," I say to myself. I try to get the bike up, but I can't because my left hand won't respond. I use my leg as a lever and manage it. I try the starter. It takes a while, but finally the engine responds.
"It's all OK, just a fright," I say to myself over and over and try to get into gear, but the clutch lever has gone. I get off and push. I'm only 200 meters from the airport. "I'd better not miss the plane," I say to myself "I'd better get some repairs done in Mauritius or Madagascar, rather than stay here in Tanzania to get them done."
I park the bike right by the glass doors of the central hall. I cross the hall and reach the counter. Philippe looks sees me, and gives a shout. "Mon Dieu! What's happened to you?"
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p119-121
Before long I am crossing the Iran-Pakistan border and find myself in Baluchistan, the dustiest, ugliest, and most depressing desert in the world. This region is the refuge of Afghan guerrillas, so I put pressure on the Princess, urging her ahead, with the intention of reaching some village before nightfall. A mound of soft sand makes me lose control. Body and bike whirl through the air and we both lie on the searing sand. I have a few skin scratches, and the Princess has a broken windshield.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, appears a decrepit truck. Several men with thick black beards and turbans on their head get out, their Kalashnikovs in their hands. They are Taliban guerrillas. They share food and water with me, and we all stay there for the night.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p156
From horizon to horizon there is not a soul in sight, but the guerrillas- if they really do exist- are said to appear out of nowhere, like spirits. I manage to keep up my speed, and everything's going fine, except for the sun that beats down helmet and the helmet that burns my brains out. The terrain is mercifully hardy and I don't sink into the sand, as in the Sahara. Then the front wheel of the bike catches in a pile of stones, and the bike, with me astride, somersaults through the air.
After making sure I have no broken bones, I start to pick up the Princess, but she is sprawled on a clump of sand, in a clumsy position, and try as I might I cannot straighten her. A truck drives up and stops about 50 yards away, and a group of men get out, bearded, armed with Kalashnikov rifles. They are Afghanis- Mujahideen or Taliban rebels. I'm a dead man, I think to myself.
They all babble at me at the same time, in Farsi I suppose, pointing at the bike and the horizon, but I don't understand what they are saying. They approach, and I brace myself. They take their rifles off their shoulders and lift up the bike. Then they sit down in a circle and invite me to join them. They take out a large amount of food and water, serve me a generous helping and we sit there eating.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p158
There are many things that have happened to me that for space reasons, I did not include in this narrative, but that doesn't make these experiences less valuable.
Through my journey, my life consisted simply of moving forward, from Alaska to the Himalayas, from Cape North to Tasmania, from Bourbon Street to Manchuria, from Cape of Tribulation to Tierra del Fuego, from the tomb of Christ to the mines of King Solomon. I was Chinese in China, Russian in Russia, Christian at The Vatican, and Muslim in the lands of Allah. I was a poor man in Calcutta and a wealthy man at the Champs Elysee. But, above all, I was a wanderer. Along 460,000 miles (735,000 kilometres) of highways, roadways, rivers, seas, mountains, steppes, jungles, deserts, and even swamps, I experienced everything that I possibly could, and I always did it with only one intention: to feel myself alive.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p222
I am not the Marco Polo on motorbike that some newspapers have called me. I'm not even- for God's sake- the last of the romantics, as a French magazine described me.
I am only a man, a little bit crazy maybe, who believes deeply that whoever does not invest in dreams is not living reality.
In the end, the world I have known has gone away forever. This book is already a period piece, almost a historic novel. Now I shall say good bye to all of you, my friends. I am going to dream of my roads, my enchanted forests, my yellow and desolate deserts, and the legends of distant cultures that I found at each turn of a wheel of this never-exhausted motorbike. This book is dedicated to all of you, wherever you are. Most importantly, it is dedicated to you Monica, because without you this world that I love so much would not be worthwhile.
The Longest Ride Emilio Scotto p222
Folks often ask me why I ride, how it feels, and why I would take off for hours, or even days with no specific destination in mind. I have no easy and quick answer for them. Often it is uncomfortable, lonely, exhausting, and dangerous. It can also be uplifting, sensuous, enlightening, and inspiring. It can be all of these, or something never before experienced and completely unexpected.
Motorcycling is a part of my life, a part of my soul, but it is so much more than just transportation. Would folks understand if I told them that my soul cries for it? Would they comprehend if I said that how they choose to view the world determines what they experience in it? Would they believe if I cried out that the world is magic? That the mundane threatens to overwhelm only because it is so much easier to find? Could they see? Would they see?
Life Is A Road Daniel Meyer p xvi
I felt it coming before it actually happened. I let off the throttle and eased toward the left shoulder just before the action started. Hard braking and intense manoeuvring were not going to be effective yet, the standing water and driving rain would see to that. Traffic was suddenly tightening up, and everybody was moving way too fast for the conditions. It goes without saying that they were not giving me any space. This was going to be ugly. Call it intuition, gut feeling, or maybe magic. Whatever it is, once again it called and I listened... and lived.
Suddenly the sound of crunching metal and squealing tires assaulted my ears. An 18-wheeler slid into my lane, covering the space I had just vacated. Barely behind me a mini-van hit the wall. In front of me a pickup slid onto the shoulder backwards, scraping the concrete barrier and sliding along the space in front of me, blocking my avenue of escape. This entire mess was moving at about 60 mph. A hair's breadth separated me from death, and even that piddling distance would not have been there had it not been for my early reactions.
In the dilated time that was spread before me a detached part my brain notes that there is a car sliding in front of the big-rig, and the driver is out of the action completely. She has both hands over her face, and has trusted her fate to her car's ability to drive itself. Probably not good.
All of this mess is sliding together, my small island of space collapsing in on itself with annoying rapidity... I have survived the initial assault, now I must make good my escape. One chance remains, there is a small space in between the leading (back-wards) pickup, the 18-wheeler, and the driverless car. if I can get through there, I will still be taking my chances that there is not a car in the middle or right lane that will clobber me, but I can think of few things worse than what is coming at the moment.
Life Is A Road Daniel Meyer p17
I aim vaguely for the hole and mash the back brake. This results in an instant tail slide. Normally this would be setting myself up for one of two conditions- laying the bike down and sliding along with it, or a "high-side" when I let off the brake or scrub off enough speed and the rear wheel grabs again.
In a "high-side", the bike will typically violently straighten up and throw the rider off in the direction of travel. Even if the bike does not land on or tumble over the rider, these are bad. This one would be worse; it would be directly in front of an 18-wheeler. Death and death in this case. The Devil wins. I find that a bit distasteful.
Violently twisting the throttle as she begins to whip around for the high-side. Now I have not done this since my dirt-bike days, and I have never done it on concrete or with a bike that weighs in at about a half a ton with me and fuel, but the result is the most gorgeous power-slide I have ever done. This is a controlled slide, using the power-slipping of the rear wheel to moderate the violence of the bike's attempts to straighten itself out. I do not want to get bucked off directly in the path of a sliding 18-wheeler.
I slide heavily to the right, cross in front of the big truck, over-correct and facing the direction of travel, with The Dragon idling smoothly beneath me. Yep. The Dragon and I understand each other.
Life Is A Road Daniel Meyer p18-9
Fifty yards ahead of me where the sliding mess finally came to a stop I see the truck driver running up and down the side or his rig with a flashlight, peering under all the axles. I've a pretty good idea what he is looking for (me) so I toot the horn at him and casually wave as he looks up. He immediately drops the light, grabs his chest with both hands, and nearly falls over backwards. He turned out to be OK (no serious injuries in the wreck either), he was just so sure I was smashed underneath his truck, he said he thought I was the devil himself standing there on my black beast.
Sometimes the Devil wants to dance.
I was forced. No choice or quarter was given.
So I danced with the Devil.
But I was leading.
Life Is A Road Daniel Meyer p19
An engine oil change, tire inspection, final drive oil replacement, new air filter and new brake pads were on the list of things to do. I was also installing yet another set of driving lights so I can actually see the local wildlife just before impact. This required a fair amount of disassembly of the motorcycle and to make the work easier I had the bike on the lift and jacked about ten inches into the air.
I had just finished the final drive oil change, and had dribbled a bit of the amazingly sticky and slippery gear oil on my shirt. Gear oil travels- that's what it is designed to do- and a little bit dribbled somewhere will soon spread all over the place. I wear old, torn up tee shirts when working so I just shrugged, removed my shirt, wiped the rest of the oil off of me, and tossed the shirt into the rag pile.
The heat was really starting to kick up now and I was sweating profusely. Born and bred here in Texas, it rarely bothers me and I just kept right on working. I finished installing the new relay for the lights, and was ready to begin the installation of the light-bar itself.
Those who know me know that I am passionate about my music. While singing along to the inspiring tune from my very good mp3 player in the garage, I retrieved the driving-lights and hardware from the workbench. As I stepped around the bike with the light-bar the music took hold of me and I executed a series of dance steps and maybe even a turn or two.
That was when I realized the wife was watching...
Life Is A Road Daniel Meyer p75-6
Hmmm. Cool engine, less volatile fuel. I guessed that he was flooded. I also guessed that if the bike did not start with the next try his battery would be gone.
I know bikes and I did not want to try to push start anything in this heat. I still had my hand on his engine, mainly for balance as I was kneeling. "Hold full throttle and try again." At that moment a truck whooshed by and I closed my eyes against the dust just as Kevin pushed the start button. The V-twin instantly grumbled to life. It sputtered a bit on the odd fuel, but it was running.
"Jheeze!" He was looking at me with an odd expression on his face. "Thanks man, I really appreciate this!"
I stood up and headed for my bike. "I'll follow you to the next station."
I chuckled as I put on my helmet and gloves. As he had driven off I overheard him saying to himself, "Never had someone 'heal' my bike before, nobody's gonna believe this."
As I followed him to the next exit I started thinking about the events of this encounter from his perspective. If he had not seen me go by the first time, or pulling off the road when I did stop I could see how the entire encounter could appear a bit.. .well.. .surreal.
He fuelled up. "Well thanks again! You've got a nice bike." The massive gleaming black and chrome Valkyrie always gets some comment. "Where are you headed anyway?"
I looked out at the blazing sky, back at the road, took a deep breath, and smiled. "West. Just west."
I nodded to Kevin and stuck out my hand. "I'll see you on the road!"
As he carefully shook my hand he said, "I don't doubt that at all."
Some miles down the road I burst out laughing. I had just realized I was wearing one of my favourite shirts. A simple black "T" shirt with white lettering. It has a paraphrase from Shakespeare on it... my favourite... kind of my motto, "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Life Is A Road Daniel Meyer p86-7
As I passed an oncoming car, a brown furry missile shot out from under it and tumbled to a stop immediately in front of me. It was a squirrel, and must have been trying to run across the road when it encountered the car. I really was not going very fast, but there was no time to brake or avoid it- it was that close.
I hate to run over animals, and I really hate it on a motorcycle, but a squirrel should pose no danger to me. I barely had time to brace for the impact.
Animal lovers, never fear. Squirrels can take care of themselves.
Inches before impact, the squirrel flipped to his feet. He was standing on his hind legs and facing the oncoming Valkyrie with steadfast resolve in his little beady eyes. His mouth opened, and at the last possible second, he screamed and leapt! I am pretty sure the scream was squirrel for "Banzai!" or maybe, "Die you gravy-sucking, heathen scum!" as the leap was spectacular and he flew over the windshield and impacted me squarely in the chest.
Instantly he set upon me. If I did not know better I would have sworn he brought twenty of his little buddies along for the attack. Snarling, hissing, and tearing at my clothes, he was a frenzy of activity. As I was dressed only in a light t-shirt, summer riding gloves, and jeans this was a bit of a cause for concern. This furry little tornado was doing some damage!
Picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a t-shirt and leather gloves puttering maybe 25mph down a quiet residential street... and in the fight for his life with a squirrel. And losing.
I grabbed for him with my left hand and managed to snag his tail. With all my strength I flung the evil rodent off the left of the bike, almost running into the right kerb as I recoiled from the throw.
That should have done it. The matter should have ended right there. It really should have. The squirrel could have sailed into one of the pristinely kept yards and gone on about his business, and I could have headed home. No one would have been the wiser.
But this was no ordinary squirrel. This was not even an ordinary pissed-off squirrel.
This was an evil attack squirrel of death!
Life Is A Road Daniel Meyer p110-1
Somehow he caught my gloved finger with one of his little hands, and with the force of the throw swung around and with a resounding thump and an amazing impact he landed square on my back and resumed his rather anti-social and extremely distracting activities. He also managed to take my left glove with him!
The situation was not improved. Not improved at all. His attacks were continuing, and now I could not reach him.
I was startled to say the least. The combination of the force of the throw, only having one hand (the throttle hand) on the handlebars, and my jerking back unfortunately put a healthy twist through my right hand and into the throttle. A healthy twist on the throttle of a Valkyrie can only have one result. Torque. This is what the Valkyrie is made for, and she is very, very good at it.
The engine roared as the front wheel left the pavement. The squirrel screamed anger. The Valkyrie screamed in ecstasy. I screamed in... well... I just screamed.
With the sudden acceleration I was instantly forced to put my other hand back on the handlebars and try to get control of the bike. This was leaving the mutant squirrel to his own devices, but I really did not want to crash into somebody's tree, house, or parked car. Also, I had not yet figured out how to release the throttle... my brain was just simply overloaded. I did manage to mash the back brake, but it had little effect against the massive power of the big cruiser.
About this time the squirrel decided that I was not paying sufficient attention to this very serious battle and he came around my neck and got IN my full-face helmet with me. As the faceplate closed partway and he began hissing in my face, I am quite sure my screaming changed tone and intensity. It seemed to have little effect on the squirrel however.
Life Is A Road Daniel Meyer p111-2
Finally I got the upper hand. I managed to grab his tail again, pulled him out of my helmet, and slung him to the left as hard as I could. This time it worked, sort-of. Spectacularly sort-of, so to speak.
Picture the scene. You are a cop. You and your partner have pulled off on a quiet residential street and parked with your windows down to do some paperwork.
Suddenly a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a torn t-shirt flapping in the breeze, wearing one leather glove, moving at some incredibly unsafe speed, on one wheel, and screaming bloody murder roars by and with all his strength throws a live squirrel grenade directly into your police car.
I heard screams. They weren't mine.
I managed to get the big motorcycle under directional control as I dropped the front wheel to the ground. I then used maximum braking and skidded to a stop in a cloud of tire smoke at the stop sign at a busy cross street.
I would have returned to fess up (and to get my glove back). I really would have. Really. But for two things. First, the cops did not seem interested or the slightest bit concerned about me at the moment. One of them was on his back in the front yard of the house they had been parked in front of and was rapidly crab walking- backwards away from the patrol car. The other was standing in the street training a riot shotgun on the police cruiser.
So the cops were not interested in me. They often insist to "let the professionals handle it" anyway. So be it. That was one thing. The other? Well, I swear I could see the squirrel, standing in the back window of the patrol car among shredded and flying pieces of foam and upholstery, and shaking his little fist me. I think he was shooting me the finger.
That is one dangerous squirrel. And now he has a patrol car.
Life Is A Road Daniel Meyer p112-3
I stepped outside into the warm winds and my soul cried. If you are a motorcycle rider, as opposed to just a motorcycle owner, there is no way that you can NOT ride on a night like this. I bungied my heavy leather jacket and winter gloves on the back seat, and took off into the night winds in nothing more than t-shirt, jeans, and light leather riding gloves. I grabbed a pair of clear wrap around glasses and left the helmet stabbed onto the backrest.
"Safe" was not a demand of my soul tonight.
Riding the winds north was pure pleasure. The brisk tailwind made the ride calm, quiet, and smooth. The temperature was perfect and as the speeds increased my soul began to sing.
Occasional waves of clouds would briefly obscure the view, but mostly the sky was clear, the stars were intense, and I could see the universe spread out in amazing detail above the highway. This night the atmosphere was so clear I could see galactic clouds with the naked eye. From my perspective the highway led straight into the stars, and I aggressively twisted the throttle and sped into the sky.
Life Is A Road Daniel Meyer p123
Another hailstone thumped into the water covered ground nearby, and by the sound of it, was substantially larger than our usual dime and quarter sized stuff. I heard it whistle through the air before impact. The winds rapidly began to climb, a gust nearly blowing me over. This was about to get dangerous.
I eyeballed the tank and gauges on my beloved Dragon, and quickly pulled the bags off the back seat and arranged them to cover the hail-vulnerable parts. Just as I finished I was smashed in the left wrist by at least a three-inch stone. My hand instantly went numb, and I cursed and crouched on the left of the bike as the shooting impacts began raining down around me. This was going to be a bad one. I should have given up protecting the cruiser with the bags and pulled them over me instead, but it was too late for that now.
Life Is A Road Daniel Meyer p141
Beaten bloody and senseless, it took quite some time before I was aware of the break in the storm. The first obvious sign was the cessation of noise. I had not realized just how loud the hail on my helmet and the roaring winds were until they stopped. Blessed relief!
Cautiously I dropped the arm from my face and looked around. The sky was amazing. Purple and black clouds were visibly roiling overhead, and I could see white of hail falling like rain some miles away across the water. Everywhere that was not purple was a bright, deep, and somehow familiar green. A green that was not a good sign.
The landscape was even more bizarre. Hail rivers and drifts were everywhere! They made complicated patterns where they had flowed with the heavy runoff, and many could be measured in depths of feet! I could still hear some thunder in the distance, but everything was eerily silent except for the crunching of the settling and flowing hail. Carefully I pushed piles of ice back from my side of the bike and stood up. It took tremendous effort, as my exposed leg was not too keen on supporting my weight, and I had to be careful not to let The Dragon fall as I rose. She was none too steady on her stand.
Life Is A Road Daniel Meyer p141-2
I surveyed my situation and would have whistled long and low had I actually been able to whistle. It came out more as spitting blood and an agonized moan as flexing my lip caused my nose to throb in pain. I settled for a grunting, "Wow!" instead. I had stopped merely feet short of a line of large rocks and broken concrete separating the road from the water. I had travelled a number of feet down the shallow embankment from the road and I was within spitting distance of the water. There were drifts of hail against the bike and the rocks that had me pretty well bunched in.
Life Is A Road Daniel Meyer p142
Carl Stearns Clancy and Walter Rendell Storey arrived in Dublin on 18 October 1912, all set to conquer the world on their Hendersons. Except for one small but significant detail- Storey had never ridden a motorbike in his life. A fact which even the normally imperturbable Clancy admitted people might find a little queer.
Undeterred by such a hurdle, they did what any men in their right minds would do: saw the sights and went shopping.
They visited the Bank of Ireland in College Green which, until the passing of the Act of Union in 1801, had once housed the Irish Parliament; admired the Book of Kells in Trinity; bought woollen underclothes and waterproof shoes and gloves; and at City Hall registered their machines and secured UK licences for 10 shillings each. Clancy's verdict on Dublin at the end of the day: 'nearly everything at least 50 years behind the times'.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p2-3
Then, filling their petrol tanks to the brim for a shilling and seven pence, they set off for Phoenix Park so that Clancy could teach Storey to ride. It was, according to Clancy, a relatively successful lesson, 'By dark, he had mastered his steed completely, but we were compelled to leave our machines in a nearby house till morning, having no carbide in our lamps.'
The next morning, they affixed to the Hendersons two around-the-world pennants made by a pair of charming Irish girls who had befriended them on the transatlantic crossing, mended their clothes and adopted them as brothers, and set off at last on their grand adventure. Only to be stopped before they got to the end of the street by a policeman - 'a beautiful specimen of a gigantic, almost wax "Bobby"' - who insisted they get number plates for their front mudguards.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p3
And then it struck me: there were two things that had not changed a bit. One was the same urge that drove Clancy, me, Gary and all the bikers around us: the unstoppable desire to get on a motorbike and ride off with the sense of infinite possibility we had as children but lose as adults, and in the process forge the sword of our destiny in the crucible of adventure.
Since we were mostly blokes, maybe we were just victims of the bugger-off gene, which compels men to bugger off now and again. Resistance is futile.
And the other thing that had not changed, of course, was Clancy's boots, which were nestled in one of my panniers along with an around-the-world pennant which I would give to Dr Gregory Frazier in San Francisco some months hence.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p7
I climbed back on the BMW, filled with admiration for how Clancy had ridden the Henderson on these steep and winding Donegal roads with luggage on the back and Storey on the front; and wondered what he would have made of the sure-footed but nimble GS, never mind our armoured Gore-tex suits and state-of-the art flip-up helmets.
Although the Henderson engine was the fastest and most advanced motorcycle in the world, with a top speed of around 70mph, the 934cc engine made just 7bhp and the bike had only one gear and no front brakes. In comparison, our machines made 110 bhp from only a slightly bigger engine, never mind having traction control, ABS, heated grips, fog lamps, everything from average speed and mpg to the time of high tide in Hong Kong on the dash, and what I imagine would have been most astonishing to him, an electronic suspension system you could toggle on the move between Normal, Comfort and Sport, and within those modes set it for every riding load from
'Victoria Beckham on Diet' to 'Two Fat Ladies with Kitchen Sink'.
No, on second thoughts, what would have astonished him most was the fact that to fill the tanks of both Hendersons back in Dublin had cost him a shilling and seven pence, but to do the same with the Beemers worked out at about 92 quid.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p10-11
Warmed, fed and watered, we fell gratefully into bed. Gary and I took turns at keeping each other awake by snoring in shifts, and we rose at seven and were on the road at eight, heading for the balmy south. Before long, the temperature on the dash had climbed to a positively sub-tropical three degrees.
It is, I thought, remarkable how simple the pleasures of motorcycling are. The snow or the rain falls, and you're sad. The sun comes out, and you're happy. You crash and nearly kill yourself, and you're sad. You realise you're lucky to be alive, and you're happy again.
As were Clancy and Storey, for with an equally early start, they made a record 133 miles that day, proceeding speedily along splendid roads past assorted bleak moors, ravines waterfalls and assorted picturesque shepherds with story book crooks minding their enormous flocks, and stopping briefly in Gretna Green.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p25
As Gary was setting up his camera to replicate Clancy's photograph, a young man came wandering down the street clutching a coffee and stopped to admire the bikes and their burden of baggage. "You're not just out for the day on those, then," he said, then turned out to be a biker and IT technician called Oliver Stirling, and the first person we had met on the trip who had actually heard of Clancy. "Read about him in a motorbike magazine. What a fabulous thing to do," he said, heading off to work as another biker came over.
Bikers are always doing this, which makes travelling by motorcycling such a sociable experience. You don't really find Toyota Corolla drivers wandering over to other Corolla drivers and swapping thrilling tales of another day on the M25.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p35-6
Clancy arrived at the garage to find their bikes had been cleaned, topped up with fuel and oil, and the tool bags supplied with metric spark plug adapters and a road map, for all of which their good Samaritan refused payment except for a short ride on the Henderson.
It was hardly surprising. The Dutch are model Europeans, and bikers are always friendly to each other, generally stopping to see if another rider stopped by the roadside is okay, and nodding to each other when they pass which, along with the visored helmets, the armoured suits and the gauntlets, always makes me think of them as modern-day knights.
Or possibly ants, the only other species to nod at each other as they pass.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p52
What then followed was the worst ride of the trip so far.
Clancy set off at 5.30 p.m. on 'wretched roads' that shook him to a pulp, and by the time darkness fell at nine, he had only covered 60 miles. After an hour in which he saw neither a living soul nor a house, and now unable to see the holes and rocks in the road let alone avoid them, he fell twice, the first time smashing his light and the second almost breaking his leg.
He pressed on into the night, pushing the bike across countless rivers, until his nerve was badly shaken when the shadows at the bottom of a steep descent suddenly turned out to be a raging torrent.
"After a while I got so I didn't care - philosophically reflecting that one must die sometime and to die with one's boots on is very noble; so I rushed all the fords that came later, and surprised myself each time by reaching the other side alive. My dear old Henderson seemed to enjoy the excitement," he wrote in his diary.
With no moon and no lamp, he had to quit at last, and found a bed for the night in the 'crumbling village of Tordera, where, watched by the entire village, he had a late supper of coffee and toast'.
I wonder what he would made of the eight-lane motorway along which we sped at 80mph, or the smooth-surfaced side roads, bright with rapeseed, that led into Tordera.
Which, by the way, is still crumbling away nicely.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p83-4
In Italy
With the autostrada empty before us and a queue of cars and trucks coming the other way, it was like a perfect advertisement for motorcycling as we swooped and dived through bends as fast as we dared.
In the next half hour we were passed only once, by the driver of a scarlet Alfa who swept past us with a wicked grin, doing at least 130mph. As we were filling up at the next service station, a police car pulled up and the driver got out and walked over.
Whoops, I thought. "Nice bikes, guys," he said in flawless English. "The corners south of here are great, so enjoy them."
We laughed, and thanked him, and half an hour down the road we saw him pulling over a driver with Swiss plates, presumably to fine him for obeying the speed limit and then send him home for being more interested in money than the important things in life, like love, beauty and who won the football last night.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p88-9
Tragically, what he had been about to say - that Bassolino had cleaned up the city centre, dealt effectively with its traffic problem and was tackling the stranglehold of organised crime, was drowned out by a group of well-dressed businessmen nearby shouting at each other at the tops of their voices while waving their arms around so extravagantly that it could only be a matter of time before one of them took off and rammed one of the few pigeons who still bothered flying in Naples.
"What are they arguing about?" I'd asked Antonio.
"They are not arguing. They are discussing last night's football match," he'd said over a constant racket of honking horns and policemen blowing whistles at Swiss motorists who had actually stopped for a red light rather than, like local drivers, accelerating through it.
Like Clancy, we rode south for a few miles and took refuge in the cypress glades of what was once Pompeii, where he paid 60 cents admission and, armed with a local guidebook and a well-thumbed copy of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's "Last Days of Pompeii", fought off a horde of guides offering to show him around for a mere $20.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p109-110
As we were unloading the bikes, a local man pulled up on a dusty Africa Twin and came over for a chat. "Nice bikes, guys, although I prefer mine for off-roading he said. "What are the wheels on those?"
"The back's 17 inches, and the front's 19," said Gary.
"Hang on," I said, "does that mean the back wheel goes around faster and overtakes the front?"
"Aye, and it's happened to me several times."
Clancy, meanwhile, had left the Henderson in Naples and hopped on the express train for the four-hour journey to Rome after declaring the roads in Italy too wretched to even consider motorcycling because of the huge, square slabs left behind by the Romans and the dust which, when it was dry, clogged up the engine, and when wet turned to treacherous mud.
He would have been slightly surprised by the volume of traffic today, in a country whose government boasts a fleet of 629,000 official cars, ten times as many as the US government. And he would have been stunned to see the amount of motorbikes in Rome, from burbling Moto Guzzis through snarling Ducatis to the squadrons of buzzing Vespas.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p112
"So how did you get into biking, Alfons?" said Gary, changing the subject in the nick of time.
"It's a weird story," said Alfons. "When I was at university in Antwerp, I got a scholarship to Santa Cruz in California, so I flew to LA, got a car for $20 on one of those one-way delivery schemes, then got lost in the worst part of LA after dark and ended up in a street where all the lights were broken and all the shops boarded up.
"Suddenly I saw lights about a mile away, and when I got there I saw it was a pub. I pulled up to ask for directions, all these Hell's Angels piled out and swarmed around the car, and I thought they were going to kill me.
"Instead, they led me to the freeway, invited me back for a rideout the following week, lent me a Harley Sportster, then let me keep it for the three months I was there, so the moment I got home, I bought one, and I've been a biker ever since."
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p123
As the Bulow docked in Nagasaki, Clancy emerged on deck, breathed in the salt sea air, and almost certainly grinned with pleasure to see, as his Henderson was lowered onto the dockside, a sight he had not seen for some time: roads.
Indeed, as he cranked the engine into life for the first time in weeks and motored north, the roads were so good that not even being restricted to 15mph by culverts, mysterious 90-degree bends, rickshaws and pony carts dampened his spirits.
Around him was a country more delightful, beautiful, peculiar arid above all different to anything he had ever seen, particularly the quaint habit of locals to dash out of their homes and into the road when they heard his horn, thinking it meant the arrival of the fried fish salesman, the pipe cleaner or the clog mender.
Still, apart from kamikaze pedestrians, rickshaws and carts, he had the roads to himself, since he saw no motorcycles and only a single car in his whole time in Japan. It is, as you can imagine, much the same today.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p171
And so, at last, it was time to meet Dr Gregory Frazier, or Dr G, as he had become dubbed in our email correspondence. Or indeed Sun Chaser, the Indian name his grandfather had given him when he was four after his habit of running around the reservation chasing the sun.
It was a habit he carried into adult life: after a motorcycle racing career, he'd ridden around the world five times, the last time with a sixty-three-year-old grandmother of six who had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
Although she had never been on a motorcycle before meeting Dr G, she convinced him to take her around the world on the pillion in an adventure lasting fourteen months and covering nearly 30,000 miles.
In 2010, aged sixty-two, he announced that increasing costs, red tape and age had caught up with him, and he was giving up the gentle art of circumnavigation and was now going to spend the summers in the US and the winters in Thailand.
"It's likely I'll keep logging between 30,000 and 50,000 miles a year, but I simply plan on being more fiscally conservative and responsible during these lean economic times and less of a wastrel merely circling the globe," he said.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p191
"Sacramento always has and always will be dead, they'll tell you in San Francisco, and they sure are right," fumed Clancy, who at least got some solace when one of the dealers invited him to a hill-climb challenge on a nearby railway embankment.
When the dealer's well-known twin-cylinder machine, probably a Harley, got stuck, Clancy climbed on his machine whispered to the old boy to do his best, and the Henderson responded with pride, sailing past the dealer with ease in spite of the 14,000 miles on the clock.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p194
Since the roads were straight and empty and the sky was blue, I dumped my jacket in the top box and rode in shirtsleeves, savouring the sun and feeling like a boy on summer holidays.
Absolutely disgraceful and irresponsible, of course. Don't tell the Institute of Advanced Motorists, or I'll be thrown out; and whatever you do, don't tell Adelaide and BMW, since they think I'm working.
By lunchtime we were rolling into Ione, Washington which you'll be pleased to hear won the State volleyball championships three years running; and possibly surprised, since to call it a one-horse town would be a victory of marketing over reality.
The sole pub had long since closed, but the owner of the deli down the single street rustled us up some sandwiches and her husband rustled up a potted history of the town, which when Clancy passed through was a thriving railroad hub and wheat freighting town of several thousand souls served by six grocery stores, eight churches and three brothels.
Today the population was 340, and falling, because back then a grain farmer needed thirty or forty men to run his concern. These days he just needs a combine harvester and an iPad app.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p206
Further down the road, a series of billboards heralded the forthcoming week-long Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival, presumably culminating in a series of gala balls.
This, since you ask, is a celebration of the time of year when young bulls and rams are deprived of their family jewels, which are then fried and eaten as a delicacy known as prairie oysters. They are, by all accounts, delicious, but you'll have to take Rock Creek Lodge's word for it, since, although I've eaten everything from grasshopper to guinea pig, a chap has to draw the line somewhere.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p213-4
Richard led the way around a tight bend, only to skid on some gravel then tumble off into the grass ditch.
He and the bike were fine, but as Murphy's Law would have it, two cops in a patrol car came around the bend a minute later. Still, after they'd checked his driving licence and were satisfied he was legally entitled to fall off, they let us go.
Lucky it hadn't happened in Singapore, or he would have got life for damaging the grass.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p222-3
And then, at last, the holy grail: the only original 1912 Henderson in the world.
Of the fifteen or so Hendersons made in that year, John Parham knew of only three in existence today, and the other two had been restored with later parts, making this the only unrestored one, down to the original paint and tyres.
And while Paddy Guerin's Henderson at the start of our trip had been a 1922 three-speed model, this was the real deal, with 7hp, one gear, a hand-crank starter and no front brakes.
I stood there looking at the motorcycle which would soon be joined by the effects of the man who had ridden one of them around the world a century ago, and as much as I had marvelled at Clancy's courage in making the journey we had followed, I now marvelled even more when I saw the machine he had done it on. To contemplate it was the act of a madman, and to complete it the act of a hero.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p225
Naturally, now that we were handing back the bikes in couple of days, I had become almost proficient at riding mine. I could do tight circles at walking pace, and come to a dead stop at junctions, look around me, read War and Peace and then move off again, all without putting my feet down. Another million years of this, and I might even be able to go around bends half as fast as Gary did while he was standing on the pegs and taking a photo.
"You are getting better," he said when I mentioned it. "I actually saw you leaning into a corner the other day."
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p231
The weather, as it had been pretty much every day in the States, was perfect, and I rode in a T-shirt along the freeway savouring the perfect harmony between the hot sun and the cool wind on my arms, and as we turned onto the backroads for the last few miles to the Clancy home, the chill of plunging into the shade of trees, then the warm balm of emerging again into the light.
As I said right at the start of the journey, motorcycling provides the simplest of pleasures.
I was savouring, too, the visceral growl of the engine beneath me. On its own, it was just a collection of metal bits and bobs, but brought to life by the spark of ignition, it could take you to wherever your heart desired; in the same way that the spark of inspiration had made Clancy set out around the world, had made Dr G spend sixteen years digging up dusty magazine articles to write Motorcycle Adventurer, and had made me realise as I read it how wonderful it would be to recreate that same journey on its centenary.
In Clancy's Boots Geoff Hill p232-3
That same afternoon I blasted down the Pacific coast for a year of roaming the western U.S., drifting from town to town with only an extra change of clothes and a sleeping bag. Friends were off in college warning me on the dangers of motorcycling- I was never so content.
One accepts numerous risks when embarking on the two-wheeled path to salvation. We learn to tolerate unmerciful weather, from painfully blazing heat to tooth-clacking freezing cold. For the most part, we're invisible to other drivers, who run us over then claim, "Sorry, I didn't see the guy."
If that's not enough, as we lean blissfully through mountain curves, there's that nagging threat of what's around the next bend. Water, sand, or gravel spell loss of traction and an abrasive body-to-pavement slide as the layers of protection disintegrate, starting with our clothing, down to skin, meat, and bone.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p4
On the other hand, the wind in our face combined with blood draining from our brains under hard acceleration toys with our reasoning. Or maybe it's being swept under the influence of inertia and centrifugal force in a fast hard lean through the curves of a well-engineered banked turn that keeps us gasping for more. Winding out through the gears on a high-performance motorcycle is rapture.
But adventure travel on a motorcycle is more subdued. And although it can be a roller coaster ride of surging adrenaline, that's due more to the danger of unpredictable consequences exploring regions and countries where little makes sense to the uninitiated and sometimes unwelcome.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p4-5
One moment the air is damp and sweet with the fragrance of fresh cut fields. The next it is filled with angry flying insects swarming in a dark formation, obviously annoyed about running headlong into a pack of invading motorists. As they harmlessly bounce off my shirt and splatter on my helmet, I'm miraculously escaping without being stung. Suddenly, I feel a buzzing sensation of tiny furiously vibrating wings, right where I'm sitting, followed by several sharp stings in my left testicle.
The pain is incredible. Swatting the bee increases the pain. There is no shoulder to pull off on and I'm stuck between two giant tour buses trying to break the land speed record. One hand is down the front of my trousers groping through a manual checkup when the bus behind me decides to pass. I look up in time to catch an audience of fascinated tourists gawking at me, unaware of my predicament. As the bus slowly slides past, a few senoritas smile with a blush and men hoot while saluting with a thumbs-up.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p20
The best part of the day is in the early morning when my mind is most alert and I'm freshly saddled up with my gear cinched down and rocketing past the last traffic signal out of some crowded Mexican town. Choking clouds of filthy exhaust fumes disappear as the sweetness of the countryside fills my soul. There is no greater feeling of freedom.
It's always a welcome relief to stop at the end of a long day's ride and relax in a friendly family-owned hotel with the promise of a refreshing shower and exotic meal. But nothing tops the exhilaration of taking to the open road before the brutal heat of day intrudes. It's like a pleasing mystery unravelling, the unknown evolving into reality as one bizarre scene after another reveals itself with as much casual grace as utter confusion.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p22
I have not seen a car or human for hours. I daydream that I am the last man on earth. There is no hustle and nowhere I have to be. I can stop and dive into paradise, or continue slowly meandering, as a lazy leaf drifting down a twisting river, without worry. I can't recall what day it is; time is no longer a factor. I only think in terms of now. There is no before or after. I rejoice in the splendour of solitude, marvelling with the tropical sun. It's only early fall and I will travel through winter into spring, guided by summer rains of a distant southern hemisphere.
There is no place to be, no one to meet, and much to peer into. I'm often unsure of where I am but I know I'm always where I want to be. As in a dream, so deeply alone, my only companion is the shadow beneath my wandering spirit.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p23-4
Incredible forested scenery unfolds as I wind back up through the steep rocky hillsides surrounding a crystal blue lake ringed by snoozing volcanoes and mountaintops hidden in the clouds. The old Indian warned that the road is rough and narrow- that was an understatement. Hairpin turns are so sharp and continuous it's impossible to shift out of second gear for almost seventy miles. The best thing about bandit country is that there's no traffic and I have the mountains to myself.
An hour into the ride, whatever sickness that has been lurking kicks in and soon I slump over my gas tank wrangling for balance. Although the mountains are chilly I get by in light gear while sweating profusely. It's better to stop and rest but I heed the Indian's warnings. In this isolated territory getting caught out alone is a bad idea.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p41-2
When manufacturers call their rain suits waterproof, they lie. There is no rain suit made that repels water indefinitely. As any geologist will attest, water will ultimately have its way and travel where it wants. In this case, water wants to be inside my rain suit and make my situation miserable. Water has its way.
The initial phase begins with headwinds forcing chilling trickles around my rain suit collar and down my neck to the front of my chest, causing waves of muscle-tensing shivers. Next, persistent cross breezes push little streams around my wrists, past the cuffs and up arms. Drop by drop water seeps through the plastic zippers and to the brim with chocolate coloured muck.
Fortunately, this whole process requires a few hours, during which time I stay fairly comfortable. I started at three in the afternoon and it is now six in the evening and pitch black. I'm not only well soaked under the rain suit, but also visually impaired by darkness and freezing cold. Traffic is heavier than normal and the rain is only getting worse. The drenching is so strong that the only time it stops crashing straight down is when it blasts diagonally head-on. Combined with the wind, it feels like a crush of water pushing me backwards as though swimming upstream against a powerful current.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p66
Because of numerous daily assassinations carried out in Colombia on motorcycles by two-man hit teams wearing full-faced helmets to prevent identification, legislators have created special laws. When riding a motorcycle here, everyone must wear a bright orange vest with license plate numerals written in big fluorescent numbers on the back and front. If caught not wearing this vest, you'll be treated as a potential assassin. This is deadly serious in Colombia, with warnings of certain arrest if even attempting to ride back from the airport to the hotel without a vest. There's no place nearby to buy one, so using a sheet of white paper, I write my plate number with a black marker on it and tape it to my back, hoping this will suffice until I find a shop to have a proper vest made. It works; none of the lurking motorcycle cops on street corners looks twice.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p76
I am including only three excerpts from the kidnapping event, since it's not directly motorcycling action or philosophy. It's included here since it's central to the book as per the title.
They grow annoyed by my answers and charge, "Mentiroso" (Liar). Next, the Comandante's assistant delivers a swift boot from behind to the side of my head, causing an explosive ringing in my right ear. I don't want to take a beating on the ground and try to get up, which only provides a better target. Thus far I had complied with all their orders and had not given them any reason for abuse. From their political ranting it's apparent they consider me as an American, their enemy and responsible for their misery. They take great satisfaction in venting their rage, laughing while they kick and stomp my chest and back. They tire of it after a minute then drag me back to the loft, untie my hands, and order me to climb up.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p93-4
We march again for a few more hours to another confinement area where I am locked in an old abandoned wooden shed with nothing inside except a filthy cement floor surrounded by wasp hives and insect nests in the ceiling. These are the most hideous bugs yet, and they proceed to devour me without delay. The heat is unbearable.
Sealed inside the well-guarded perimeter and left to do battle with aggressive critters, I'm unable to brush them off fast enough before reinforcements join in.
Guards deny permission to relieve myself as before; instead, they hand me an empty jug and order me to remain inside. There's nothing to do but stand and wait. If I sit, the bugs attack twice as fast and it's a constant battle swatting them off.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p100
While waiting to be locked down after bathing, I lean against one of the wooden support posts holding up an outside wall of the ranchita when an unexpected explosion booms through the air. The noise is so loud I feel the concussion against my skin. Stinging debris sprays across the front of my body accompanied by the irritating acrid smoke of discharged gunpowder. My first thought is that someone had detonated a cherry bomb as the echo under the porch painfully resonates like a slap against my ears.
It takes a few moments to realize the pole I'd been resting against had disintegrated into wooden fragments and splinters across the front of my shirt and face. I'm baffled by what's happened until noticing one of the younger rebels, who had been carelessly cleaning his gun, sheepishly looking up at me with a "woops" expression.
Even stranger is my lack of reaction- I'm so numb over what has occurred in the past several weeks, I'm unfazed and merely shuffle back inside and fall asleep. Life has evolved onto a new level: I now exist within a psychological vacuum, without emotion, mentally withdrawing at every opportunity from this world of misery, my captors' and mine. They too, along with the local campesinos, live within a prison of despair.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p132-3
Liberated from other people's time schedules, chronic delays, and bureaucratic complications, I tumble back joyously into the freedom of the road and excitement of adventure that only motorcycle travel can create. Dark moments are gone and negative images are on hold. I emerge from a foggy haze and what was so frustratingly dancing at the end of my fingertips is now in the firm grasp of my heart. Even the slow pace of traffic is welcome. Inquisitive children at gas stations, gently banked turns through the mountains, and the sweet smell of fresh-mowed meadows all remind me of why I'm here. Tantalizing exotic fruit peddled roadside next to open-air restaurants serving sizzling local meals cooked on open fires once again tease me with the urge to lay down another mile.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p190
Ahead there's a string of monstrous semi-trucks spewing black clouds of filthy fumes big enough to command my immediate attention, and the race is on to the rapidly approaching curves. I'm back into the rhythm of duelling with multi-wheeled, rolling monolithic beasts hell-bent on ignoring little motorcycles. The lumbering danger quickens my pulse, reminding me that speed and agility are all that a motorcyclist has to compete with. As anyone who has ever travelled roads like these is well aware, size does matter.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p191
Traffic in Peru lives up to its reputation as some of the wildest in South America. Drivers play a non-stop, nerve-racking game of bumper-car chicken. The rules: vehicles travelling in the same direction must maintain light contact, barely tapping the next car's fenders. Amidst the synchronized chaos, horns are used in the same way that motorists in other countries use their brakes. Travel reports indicate Argentina is even worse- I can hardly wait.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p199
With nothing to hinder the relentless winds, blurs of blinding dust spin into malicious sandstorms, ending as unpredictably as they began. The abrasive crud accumulating on the outside of my body also accumulates inside my nose and throat. This irritates my sinuses but I'm more concerned about the air filtration system on the carburettor and effects of abrasive grit on the inside of my panting little engine.
Two-man teams of bored Transito police inhabit scattered isolated military outposts, sporadically flagging over unlucky motorists as a means to pay their rent. They usually wave me on: I'm too insignificant to bother with. If they do stop me, it's only to ask about my journey and relate a few tales of their own travels. Everyone is amiable in Peru, even the cops.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p200
We turn to plan B- finding someone to rebuild the factory shock. One man tells us to come back at five o'clock and he will have it done. I explain in broken, near impossible to understand Spanish, this won't work, it must be earlier. No problem, how about three o'clock? That's perfect. I can be on the road by five and only have a few hours of difficult night riding ahead.
Later that day, with the sun gracefully retreating below the horizon, I blast past the last tollbooth exiting Lima and ride onto the autopista, hoping for an overnight in Pisco. From there, I'll deviate off the Pan American Highway and spiral back into the Andes.
Yet in my hurry, I failed to inspect the rebuilt shock when we re-installed it and later discovered that all the mechanic did for the fifty bucks I paid him was clean it. Even though there was no improvement, there is still a bright side. At least toll roads in Peru are free for motorcycles and the government does something here that I found in few other countries- they repair their potholes.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p203
As the winds subside, a light ocean mist deposits a film of salt on my face shield, which I stop to clear every twenty minutes. During these moments, I shut down the engine just to savour the roaring silence. Marvelling at the enveloping chilly desolation, it's difficult not to linger. I love the desert as much as the mountains and the jungle, and am continuously captivated by the contrasts this planet has graciously offered its inhabitants. While a prisoner in Colombia I dreamed of these moments, knowing if I survived, I would one day complete this ride no matter how long it took. Once again, I eagerly plunge southward, overwhelmed in the pure ecstasy of feeling alive.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p204
There is a paved road leading to Cusco that would have been much easier to travel, so why would anyone intentionally set out into such extreme conditions? Because on a journey like this, challenges define life and make a man feel alive. Also, it's the best darn ride since departing California. Storybook Andean scenery opens like secret pages of ancient mountain marvels unfolding for only those who witness it firsthand. Grinning until my jaw aches, I peer outward through my face shield at the sharp multicoloured canyons and towering peaks above- it's as though I'm ricocheting through time with little to indicate what century this is. For hundreds of miles in all directions in the frigid mountain air, no two viewpoints are alike, rendering me breathless in awe of this natural phenomenon that I've only imagined. This is the reason to experience Peru and it's worth every second of hassle and discomfort.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p205
As the back end of the bike abruptly begins to sway, I'm not sure if it's due to a rutted road or my rear tire going flat. I don't want to stop and find out which.
The bike is too unstable to shift out of second gear and suddenly the road ahead leads downward. Yet this is a sword that cuts two ways; I'm rapidly descending but also out of control on frozen ground. My brakes are useless and all I can do is keep my legs stretched out, wildly paddling with my feet in an attempt to remain upright.
Within thirty minutes I'm exhausted from struggling for stability but at least I'm descending. As the foul weather lessens and temperatures climb, the frozen road returns to mud. Another mile down the steep grade, twinkling lights appear. Maybe a car, a truck, a farmhouse? At this point, anything means relief from shivering.
My rain suit is completely soaked but my electric vest pumps lifesaving heat.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p212
When my rear tire finally fails, within seconds, I 'm riding the rim, wobbling all over the road. I could possibly continue rolling at a slower pace but would quickly destroy the tire. I opt for running next to the bike, guiding it downhill toward the distant lights. For the last two months, people from around the world have sent emails wishing me well and praying for my safety- and maybe tonight those pleas were answered. There's no other way to explain how, on this miserable stormy night, the only other vehicle on this deserted mountain road happens to be a flatbed truck with a crew who have just finished unloading their cargo at a distant farm.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p212
Even though the road is well paved through open spaces and nearly all straightaways have zero traffic, we agree to a limit of sixty mph. Back in the States this would call for ninety mph cruising but here, I'm driving him crazy riding slow and eventually, foolishly allow myself to be drawn into matching his pace.
Suddenly out of nowhere bolts one of the thousands of dogs that chase motorcycles in South America. Unaware there are two of us, El Fido attacks the lead bike travelling at seventy-five mph. Unable to match the biker's speed, he slows to a fast walk, directly across path of my fishtailing Kawasaki 650, infamous for its poor braking ability. We're both lucky, as he barely leaps out of the way while my front tire gobbles up sections of tail fur.
Collision with anything at this speed means loss of control and a tenth of a second difference could've brought us both down. I consider how this might have ended.
There are no emergency helicopters here to whisk an injured biker off to high-tech trauma centres. I likely would lie here until a speeding truck or bus rolled along to finish the job.
My companion never notices or looks back, violating a cardinal rule to keep an eye on your partner. The lead rider should always keep track of the rider behind in his mirror, in case he runs into trouble. This distraction increases the hazard of riding lead, yet it is part of the responsibility that comes with that position, a reason I prefer to ride lead.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p218-9
The upcoming ride across the southern half of the Bolivian Andes will cover some of the most remote and scenic regions of the country. From here on, I'll be experiencing the Altiplano at altitudes of 14,000 to 17,000 feet, across hundreds of miles of salt flats and deserted plateaus. Vast segments are unmapped and those maps that do exist often disagree about where, or even if, there's a road. Even my GPS shows only open, high-altitude plains of barren landscape between international borders. Mostly, I plan to follow tire tracks in the sand or salt across immense, dry lake beds- tracks that may not show up in the rain.
There are several 300 mile stretches with no fuel available but my bike's range is about 260 depending on conditions. Even with a spare three-gallon fuel supply, if I take off in a wrong direction against a headwind, it could mean trouble.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p224-5
An extended stretch of windblown decomposed granite quickly becomes the worst washboard surface imaginable. The cross-grooves are from six to ten inches deep and are spaced wide enough to prevent smoothing the bumpiness by riding the tops a little faster. There is an inescapable, violent jarring at any speed with no relief from the relentless punishment of eyeballs jiggling so bad I can barely focus.
When the road is not washboard, it turns to soft coarse sand, without any visible warning in advance. A firm wrenching of my handlebars as the front wheel digs in signals its too late to slow down. What's left is to accept the new direction the front wheel is twisting into, and fight to remain upright. These stretches drag on for miles and, for the last few hours, I can't shift out of first gear without sacrificing control. Even at five mph, at this altitude it's an exhausting struggle to maintain a straight line.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p226
The first stretch of wet clay whisks the bike out from underneath me, sending us both sliding sideways, tearing a saddlebag off in the process. There's been no other traffic all day, so I'm alone trying to pick up the bike on a sloping surface I can barely stand on without slipping. With some serious grunting, I turn backwards, lifting with leg power, and just as I manoeuvre the bike upright, my boots slide and we both go down again. I use every bit of remaining strength on the next few tries until finally managing to put the kickstand down and rest for a moment before jumping back on to continue. There's a second to waste; I'm already behind.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p227
The final bouncing blast to catch the elusive Land Cruiser lasts only seconds, just long enough to build up enough speed to kick into third gear. Instantly the front end washes out from underneath me, and I shoot forward, head first over the handlebars, straight to the ground like an arrow. An excruciating crack is followed by silent, empty black.
At first I think it's Dutch being spoken, then Hebrew, then German. Somewhere in the swirling unconsciousness surfaces a soft familiar echo ... "I think he is still breathing." Finally, in a distinctive Kiwi accent, I hear a young New Zealander ask, "You spyke English? Can ya 'ear me, mite?"
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p233-4
When it's first switched on, the GPS screen features a series of rotating balls that spin around the viewer screen to indicate a search mode for satellites. I know from experience how fast those balls should rotate. Not only does the screen fail to cycle on time to the next phase of satellite signal strength readout, but they process in slow motion as the balls barely move. I recall reading in the manual that this unit should operate in sub-freezing temperatures. I can only guess that it must be more than ten degrees below zero. I chuckle at the thought of going for a motorcycle ride when it is cold enough to shut down an all-weather instrument like a GPS.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p238-9
I planned on staying in Santiago for three nights, but after only two, I yield to the familiar pull of the road and ecstatic rush of asphalt passing under my butt at ninety feet per second. Since the ordeal with Colombian guerrillas, the psychological aftermath has been gaining on me. I know the bullet I dodged will eventually catch up, however I figure if I keep moving, I can stay ahead of whatever is in store. At times, the turmoil feels as though I'm charging down a mountain trying to outrun an avalanche. For now, I need to continue on so whatever is going to hit will do so when I'm safe at home. Motorcyclists know the therapeutic effects of
twisting a throttle- I keep twisting mine to outrun the avalanche.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p246
Worse than predicted, the ride south on Route 40 becomes a steady fight to remain upright for 320 miles- average speed is twenty-five mph while I'm on the edge of control the entire time. The gravel is deep and loose, forcing my front tire in directions I don't want to go. There are twelve-inch-deep tire grooves carved down to solid clay. If I remain within them, employing total concentration, it's possible to hit third gear.
It's hard to believe what is happening as the fiercest crosswinds imaginable blast in laterally. A gas station attendant casually remarks, "You're lucky- the wind is not too bad yet." Still, it's as though enormous, invisible hands randomly slap me across the road without warning. With each explosive gust, I veer off uncontrollably across the deep ridges of gravel with outstretched legs, wildly wobbling back and forth.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p261
Although the road is solid enough to support speeds up to fifty or so, incredibly ferocious winds blasting in off the prairie force me to slow into a second-gear crawl. If someone had described these conditions earlier, I wouldn't have believed them. Even in the midst of a vicious gust, it's difficult to comprehend turbulence of such intensity. Leaning to the right as far and hard as possible, raging wind currents not only hold me up, they lift the bike off the ground, shoving us sideways. As the wind snaps my neck from side to side, I feel like a crinkled paper bag being smacked around the landscape. Why I've not been blown across the desert is beyond me. It's so crazy I laugh out loud.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p263
When gale forces revert to a tailwind, the silence sweeping in from behind evolves into a spooky tranquility. A light pressure against my back indicates the wind blowing faster than I'm moving forward. My curiosity aroused, I slowly increase my speed to seventy mph, trying to determine how fast the forward air is blowing.
Equilibrium is reached at seventy-three mph in a still pocket of air. If I'd wanted to, I could've kept a match lit. I raise my face shield and feel nothing. Dead calm.
Normally when driving at a rapid pace and spotting the shadow of a cloud on the ground ahead, it takes only seconds to overtake and pass through it. Today the shadow remains a few feet beyond my front tire as we travel at the same speed- continuing in unison until the wind shifts, then the shadow flashes behind me in an instant as though the world suddenly skipped ahead.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p268
The angular headwinds switch directions unpredictably, flinging me about while I struggle to maintain lane position. On the plus side, there's no traffic and the road is paved. Even with the throttle wide open, the seventy to eighty mph headwinds keep me at fifty. Gas mileage drops from fifty miles per gallon to the low thirties. I crouch behind the fairing, throw all my weight toward the gale-force blast, and hang on. When slowing down to stop for fuel, the moment I pull in the clutch, it's as though I squeezed the front brake. Once, I came to a complete stop without braking and actually started rolling backwards, blown by the wind. It's
far too intense to ride more than six hours at a time, but there are 1,200 miles left to Buenos Aires, and I want out of this madness.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p275-6
Waiting at a small-town traffic signal, above the sound of the engine's idle, I hear the dreaded noise that sickens hearts of motorcycle riders- metal to metal contact. The low-pitched grinding noise, barely audible above the roar of the wind, compels me to stop and inspect, hoping it's my imagination. Perhaps something caught in the fender. No such luck.
Motorcycles are not popular in South America and outside of major cities there are few shops that sell or repair them. Even in capital cities, Kawasaki dealers are rare. Argentina is more up-to-date and I keep my fingers crossed while asking around for a repair shop. Yes, two blocks down and turn right- a small miracle. Close enough to push and coast. A lucky day after all. The owner is a professional motocross rider who also builds motors, and is about as good a man as you'll ever find.
We unbolt the top end to check the valves and work downward from there. Finally we pull the timing chain and alternator to discover an ear broken off the crankcase and the balance chain tensioner is shattered into five pieces. No parts available in the hemisphere.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p276
The motocross team shows up to assist. Amazingly they reassemble the components in the correct order with no shop manual for technical guidance. To remanufacture the broken part, they saw off the end of a case-hardened wrench and weld it on to what's left of the original balance chain tensioner. Then they countersink the bolt hole inside the crankcase for the broken ear and use a longer bolt to hold it. The balance chain has stretched too far and won't adjust any further, leaving excessive slop. Add to that, the alternator is missing a magnet and out of balance. Still, I'm going to give it a shot, hoping it provides enough charge to keep the bike running.
A few hours later, I make it farther north to the city of Trelew where the lone motorcycle dealer only handles Yamaha. He says I may be able to order Kawasaki parts up ahead in Bahia Blanco, another 450 finger-crossing miles. The engine noises are getting louder, but I opt to roll those dice again and take a chance.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p276-7
A hundred plus is the norm and apparently without consequence, as I've yet to see a cop anywhere. Speed seems to be a popular though perilous pastime, despite the vehicles being packed with families. When cruising at 100 mph and encountering a vehicle in the distance they wish to pass, drivers accelerate to 120, get as close to the rear fender as possible, and then barely drift to the left to overtake at the last second.
Used to zero traffic, I allow myself to be lulled into ignoring my mirrors. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a two-ton rocket blasts by, close enough to buff the bugs off its bumper, using the rubberized fabric of my saddlebags as a rag. In Argentina, this type of driving is the rule, not the exception. Everyone drives this way as if this manoeuvre is taught in school. I ask myself if these maniacs are the same helpful folks I met earlier in roadside cafes. They had been so friendly. What happened to these wonderful people when they got behind the wheel of a car?
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p278
Nothing surprises me anymore. What was before considered bizarre is now the norm. Sometimes while lost in thought, I realize there is no baseline anymore. I'm no longer certain of who I am but, more important, who I'm expected to be. Nothing is written in stone and I feel as free as the winds of Patagonia. Reality is still foreign to me. It wouldn't surprise me to wake from a dream still a prisoner of the ELN in the mountains of Colombia. In moments of depression I still wonder if these are the final seconds before death. Am I awake or asleep? The avalanche is still closing in, and in times of open nightmare, I seek the only refuge I know- a twist of the throttle and another new town. At times, I sprint to outrun the lunacy.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p284
That is what I am doing when, over the popping of my engine and the wind whistling past my helmet, I suddenly hear a high-pitched grating sound. It's the kind bikers are always on alert for and dread.
My heart sinks while I hold my breath, straining to hear and identify the noise. It's definitely getting louder. I pull in the clutch to see if it subsides when the revs drop. No luck. I hear the grating more dearly. Oh no, I think, what the hell else can go wrong? When applying the brakes there's no discernable difference in volume or pitch until coming to a complete stop with the engine shut down. I tear my helmet off, and the muffled sound becomes a roar. Zillions of crickets, locusts, or giant bugs of some species are rubbing their legs, grinding their wings, or just talking loud in their unique pulsating rhythm. The sound fills my head. It's coming from every direction, yet I do not see a single insect anywhere. If somebody were standing next to me, I would need to shout to be heard.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p308
Following this string of lumbering boxes is maddening. I can't wait any longer. Truckers operate on narrow margins, with only three-foot gaps between front bumpers of one to the rear of another. Once taking on the pack, there will be no room to return to my lane if another vehicle approaches from the opposite direction. What the heck, here we go.
I kick it down a gear, hang the throttle open, and pull out of position, determined to pass a mile-long convoy of fellow frustrated motorists. Oncoming traffic forces me to weave in and out of my lane until I reach the front of the line of cars and the back of the monotonous procession of trucks. It's another now-or-never moment. I make it past the first dozen grinding monoliths okay, when suddenly an oncoming car appears over a slight rise ahead, closing in fast. There's no chance to brake, return to the rear, and get back into the correct lane. My only option is to nuzzle my right rear saddlebag as close as possible to the trucker's massive spinning trailer tires and hope for the best.
The approaching car manages two wheels on the shoulder, barely grazing my left rear bag while I fight overpowering hot-air currents sucking me under the trailer's belly. The deafening moan of the semi-truck's mighty engine is like a roaring animal inside my helmet, yet I seem to be in one piece. It's only a hundred miles more.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p313
A simmering situation with the leftist government in Caracas led by the staunchly pro-Castro strongman Hugo Chavez is unpredictable at the moment, and I'm apprehensive about riding through an area known for its support of the rebel movement in Colombia. There are rumours of impending violent civil war. I won't rest until I'm riding safely back in Panama again.
CBS News's 48 Hours television documentary has just aired, and it included my web site address, so I've spent the last eight hours reading and attempting to answer as many emails as possible until my eyes give out from staring at a screen so long. The emails number well into the thousands, with an even split between the U.S. and Canada. The documentary's producer told me the program will show again later, with a sequel. I'm astonished at the number of people taking time to write profoundly inspirational words of encouragement- and intend to answer them all. At last count the number rooting me on is nearing 15,000. I save and file each message.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p325
The drizzle finally subsides long enough to witness the renowned but elusive Amazon sunset as a pale indigo sky is soon ringed by huge billowing clouds. My favourite star in the universe sets creamy puffs ablaze into flaming orange with cotton-candy trails of flaring gases erupting outward from the depths of hollow canyons burning somewhere in the heavens. If I had to envision the first moment life sparked on earth it would be one exactly like this. The cosmos joins in this fiery,
roaring silence while the heavens make love in the shadow of the earth.
Teakwood decks brim with spellbound voyeurs standing shoulder to shoulder in solemn reverence to the commanding solar array beyond. Each mumbles tribute to their God for a gift of such majesty. Children stop playing, babies cease crying, and lovers grow closer as all are equally awed by this mesmerizing otherworldly scene.
Gradually daylight fades into black velvet night as the finale of cosmic orgasm subsides. Suddenly the overhead sky pops with diamonds cast magically across the void- precious sparkling jewels from Far And Away, yet near enough to caress like raindrops on the tips of my outstretched fingers.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p332
While making preparations for the departure to Panama, I am sad to realize that the most significant experience of my lifetime is ending. It isn't the amount of time I spent in South America. It's the intensity of that time, from enduring the continuous onslaught of some of the worst weather conditions this planet could conjure up, to surviving whatever the darker side of humanity could thunder down upon me. Through it all, there have always been people and places to make the journey worthwhile.
While seeking the pulse of mankind, I encountered spirit-tingling extremes tempered only by the blind justice of Mother Earth. I came to experience life as South Americans do, and in times of despair, often recalled the saying: "Be careful what you wish for".
In life's bleakest moments we should search for silver linings, now more than ever. The time I spent in the vengeful hands of a terrorist organization was like holding my finger in a light socket for five weeks. That brain-frazzling experience taught me as much about myself as well as the world around me. There is a lesson in everything- often the greater the pain, the greater the lesson. The hell my tormentors inflicted upon me can only be answered by one of two attitudes: vile hatred and desire for revenge, or patience and understanding for those born into the misery of poverty and exploitation. Once again, I have learned that living well is the best revenge. Yet while I am free, the rebels are still prisoners of their own misfortune and misguided deeds in the mountains of Colombia.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p333-4
At times, at the peak of frustration that travellers in strange lands so often endure, just when I thought I couldn't stand anymore, it was the sparkling eyes of a laughing, soft-haired child, the kindness of an ageing Indian woman, or the stunning splendour of the Andes that rocked my spirit and tugged me back eagerly into the wholesome embrace of a land of many faces. When I needed a friend most, one always appeared. There had invariably been someone or something to restore the fire of passion for this continent of such intriguing mysteries and sullen tragedies. My body and soul bear the fingerprints, bruises, and caresses of this magical kingdom, and although I will soon be on a plane out, I know my heart will never leave.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p335
Complications arose quickly in Manaus as the political situation in Venezuela deteriorated and, according to local reports, was headed for civil war. Several warnings from the FBI via email convinced me to fly out of Brazil directly into Panama. Problems of lengthy red-tape delays and a 2,700 dollar cost to ship a broken-down, 3,000 dollar bike didn't make sense. With a tremendous amount or clever footwork by Whitney Parsons from the Aspen Silver Company, my limping KLR was transformed into a bright yellow BMW F650GS in Panama City.
Even better, Brad flew in on time with his motorcycle so the two of us could ride back to California together. Although we had communicated only by email for the last seven months, we were finally ready. When we met in the Panama City airport, I squeezed him so hard I nearly broke his neck. He is the reinforcement I needed.
The cavalry arrived just in time.
Two Wheels Through Terror Glen Heggstad p339
"Sons Of Thunder" is a selection of a few pages from some of the editor, Neil Bradford's favourite writers.
D. H. Lawrence's relationship with his motorcycles was intense and the machine was the exhilarating means of escape from the constrictions of the army camp:
When my mood gets too hot and I find myself wandering beyond control I pull out my motor-bike and hurl it top speed through these unfit roads for hour after hour.
This feeling of release and exhilaration is one shared by all who have reached for the crash helmet, swept up the keys and opened the front door. The environment, climate and character of the road are all absorbed by the rider who makes corresponding physical adjustments to deal with the demands of every journey, whatever the length. This sensation is unique to the motorcyclist.
Sons Of Thunder p14 Neil Bradford
The modern motorcycle is a sophisticated construction with little in the way of roughly hewn edges such as the kick-starter, an inducement to injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, so well described by Matthew Crawford elsewhere in his book:
"Before taking that final kick, it is traditional to light a cigarette and set it dangling at an angle that suggests nonchalance. While you're at it, send up a little prayer for fuel atomization. You wouldn't be riding a motorcycle if you weren't an optimist."
Sons Of Thunder p14-5 Neil Bradford
Out in the early-morning street there is little traffic, for which the rider sends up thanks: on a bike, cars are irksome, their slow-motion ways infuriating.
Pulling out of the drive, the rider shifts into second, this time with the boot toe under the lever to push it up. The small jolt of increased speed from rear wheel is experienced in the seat, just as in the elastic pause when a horse gathers strength in its haunches before springing into a canter from the trot.
Sons Of Thunder p21 Melissa Pierson
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
I strolled back to the bike and sat astride it for a while, smoking, thinking, feeling a bit dislocated. The guy who looked after the car park walked over and said hello. He'd been admiring my bike, he said, rode one himself, and told me how he dreamed of hitting the road one day.
His name was Marc. He'd signed up for the Romanian secret service after leaving college "thinking I'd be tracking people down on my motorbike", but he'd been put in an office in a suit where he typed up reports all day until he could stand it no longer and quit. Now he was looking after this car park until something came up and he could afford to take his road trip.
"But with the money I earn here, maybe this is something I never get to do," he said, and held his shoulders in a shrug and turned his palms towards the sky. "But I dream about it all the time. You are living my dreams. You are a very lucky man."
Sons Of Thunder p169-70 Mike Carter
It had begun to rain again, with the odd low growl of thunder thrown in for the requisite Transylvanian ambience. Just as I was about to pull over and make camp, the forest ended and I emerged somewhere in the sixteenth century.
The main street of the Roma village - just hardened clay really, turning swiftly to mud - was full of horses, and oxen, pulling carts piled high with straw, the drivers in pork pie hats, ancient bolt-action rifles slung over their shoulders.
Wizened old Roma women in headscarves carried their grandchildren on their backs in slings fashioned from rugs. There was a hand pump in the street from which villagers were drawing water. People sat out on their steps to watch this strange creature pass, and scruffy, shoeless urchins chased after me.
I felt a tad vulnerable, uncomfortable. Five years earlier, I had been in Romania's most cosmopolitan city imagining I was in mortal danger. Now I was in the middle of the forest, in the middle of nowhere and darkness closing in, and I was drawing a crowd, many of whom were armed. It's not easy to be inconspicuous riding a 1200cc motorcycle through a Brueghel painting.
Sons Of Thunder p170-1 Mike Carter
Before I knew what was happening, a succession of small boys were carrying my luggage into the room. Shortly after, the entire village came round to see the stranger. There was lots of giggling and nudging and I poured my vodka into small glass tumblers and chipped mugs and then I cut my sausage into slices with my Leatherman and offered it around.
But they weren't too keen on the sausage and instead the woman of the house produced a steaming tureen of sour soup with pork and beans, and we slurped it and ate heavy, dark bread, and drank more vodka. They spoke Romanian and I spoke English and we seemed to get along just fine. Vodka makes polyglots of us all.
I went through my guidebook's conversations and essentials section and tried to ask my host in Romanian what his name was, but I don't think I pronounced it correctly as he kept pointing to his hat.
Sons Of Thunder p171-2 Mike Carter
The greatest hazard was still the horse-drawn carts that outnumbered cars in the villages. Weirdly, Romanian geese that, unlike any other geese I'd encountered on the trip, seemed to have a personal issue with the engine pitch of a BMW R1200GS.
Some distance off I'd spot them pricking up their ears, or whatever it is that geese prick up, and start to spread their wings- an avian version of "you wanna piece of me, huh?" By the time I drew alongside them, they would be in a right old flap, squawking and hissing and chasing me down the road. Once at a safe distance, I would pull over and watch other people on motorbikes pass by. Not a peep. Bizarre.
Sons Of Thunder p173 Mike Carter
I approached a bend. Fast. I couldn't see the exit. It was tight, and as I leaned into it, it got tighter and tighter. I couldn't touch the brakes. On a road like this, with loose shale on the surface, and potholes everywhere, it could have been fatal, my wheels falling away from under me. This is one of the most common causes of death on a motorbike: misjudging your speed coming into a bend.
I started to drift across the road, unable to keep in my lane. The bend showed no signs of opening up, smoothing out. On the far side of the road were spruce trees.
I looked at them. There was one in particular, thicker than the rest. I stared at it. The bike started to straighten, move upright. I headed for the tree. I went to hit the brakes. I was going to crash, no doubt, but any reduction in speed might make all the difference. The whole thing had taken perhaps less than a couple of seconds, but somehow time was stretched.
I remembered Kevin's words. Have faith. Look where you want to go. The bike will follow. It has to.
I ripped my eyes from the spruce tree. It was an act of will. And I turned my head to look at the bend once more. The bike dipped again, leaned in. I think I left the road at one stage, crossing the line on the far side, riding over needles and cones, trees flashing past. But I couldn't be sure, because all I was looking at was the road ahead, the bend opening up, my right hand twisting back the throttle, me whooping like a lunatic.
Sons Of Thunder p176 Mike Carter
"The fine will be eight million lei," the police officer was saying to me.
"But that's... that's about 200 euros," I replied, which a quick calculation told me was roughly the average Romanian wage for a month. I could feel my bottom lip trembling.
"You should not go so fast. This road very dangerous," he said.
"I'm sorry."
"No good. You under arrest. You get in car and we go to bank." I felt like the victim of a cashpoint mugging.
He ordered me to leave my bike by the side of the road and get into the passenger seat of the police car. Then we drove away heading for God knows where. After about 10 minutes, down a quiet country lane, the officer pulled over into a lay-by. Unless there was an ATM in one of the adjacent oak trees, which I was pretty certain there was not, I was guessing that this wasn't the end of the journey.
The officer switched off the ignition, slowly, deliberately, and turned to me, his gun nestling against his thigh.
"Okay. For you, for lei cash, there is 20 per cent discount," he said.
"Discount?"
"Yes. Consider it gesture of goodwill from the kind Romanian people."
As he was talking, he was fishing around in his wallet. He pulled out photographs. My prejudices started to resurface. I imagined they might be of bloodstained cells, or show corpses lying face down besides a lay-by, this lay-by.
"This my sister, she live London," he said, showing me a picture of a smiling woman toasting the camera with a large glass of red wine.
"You married?"
"No."
"I give you her address. She is very nice. Make good wife."
"I'm not looking for a wife," I said to him.
"You no like my sister?" he said.
"It's not that, it's..."
"How about this one?" He'd pulled another picture out. "She live Coventry."
"She seems very nice, too... Look, I'm flattered you think I might be good enough for your sisters, but I'm not interested!"
"Thirty percent."
"What?"
"Discount. Thirty per cent, as goodwill and because you think sisters very nice."
I laughed.
"What would the discount be if I married one of your sisters?" I said.
The policeman suddenly looked at me solemnly, gravely.
"Mister. You try bribe Romanian police officer? Is very serious offence."
Sons Of Thunder p177-8 Mike Carter
When Cycle World called me to ask if I would road-test the new Harley Road King, I got uppity and said I'd rather have a Ducati superbike. It seemed like a chic decision at the time, and my friends on the superbike circuit got very excited. "Hot damn," they said. "We will take it to the track and blow the bastards away."
"Balls," I said. "Never mind the track. The track is for punks. We are Road People. We are Cafe Racers."
The Cafe Racer is a different breed, and we have our own situations. Pure speed in sixth gear on a 5,000-foot straightaway one thing, but pure speed in third gear on a gravel-strewn downhill ess-turn is quite another.
But we like it. A thoroughbred Cafe Racer will ride all night through a fog storm in freeway traffic to put himself into what somebody told him was the ugliest and tightest diminishing-radius loop turn since Genghis Khan invented the corkscrew.
Cafe Racing is mainly a matter of taste. It is an atavistic mentality, a peculiar mix or low style, high speed, pure dumbness, and overweening commitment to the Cafe Life and all its dangerous pleasures... I am a Cafe Racer myself, on some days - and it is one of my finest addictions.
Sons Of Thunder p183-4 Hunter S. Thompson
The Ducati 900 is a finely engineered machine. We all love Torque, and some of us have taken it straight over the high side from time to time - and there is always pain in that... But there is also Fun, the deadly element, and Fun is what you get when you screw this monster on. BOOM! Instant take-off, no screeching or squawking around like a fool with your teeth clamping down on your tongue and your mind completely empty of everything but fear. No. This bugger digs right in and shoots you straight down the pipe, for good or ill.
On my first take-off, I hit second gear and went through the speed limit on a two-lane blacktop highway full of ranch traffic. By the time I went up to third, I was going 75 and the tach was barely above 4,000 rpm...
And that's when it got its second wind. From 4,000 to 6,000 in third will take you from 75 mph to 95 in two seconds - and after that, Bubba, you still have fourth, fifth, and sixth. Ho, ho.
Sons Of Thunder p187 Hunter S. Thompson
No one told me to retard the spark. True enough, it was in the manual, but I had been unable to read that attentively. It had no plot, no characters. So my punishment was this: when I jumped on the kick starter, it backfired and more or less threw me off the bike. I was limping all through the first week from vicious blowbacks. I later learned it was a classic way to get a spiral fracture. I tried jumping lightly on the kick starter and, unfairly, it would blast back as viciously as with a sharp kick. Eventually it started, and sitting on it, I felt the torque tilt the bike under me. I was afraid to take my hands off the handlebars. My wife lowered the helmet onto my head; I compared it to the barber's basin Don Quixote had worn into battle, the Helmet of Mambrino.
Sons Of Thunder p201 Thomas McGuane
You might think that one motorcycle is much like another and they are all equally soulless, dangerous, thrilling. I'm not so sure. A biker would tell you that the motorcycle is the nearest humanity has come to imbuing an artefact with character and soul. A car is simply an envelope in which you are posted more or less efficiently from one place to another (albeit with the usual vagaries attendant on the mail services). With a motorcycle, the biker would argue, you attempt to harmonise, establish some sense of balance and rhythm, even mutual understanding. At this point I want to make clear just how apposite is that terse epithet bestowed upon every two-wheeled product of the Harley- Davidson factory in Milwaukee. A Hog is a Hog is a Hog. In certain situations - on a die-straight desert highway for example, or posing at an agricultural show or stationary at a gas pump, which is its version of the feeding trough - it is perfectly capable of behaving itself and concentrating on the matter in hand. But show a 1340cc Electra-Glide Classic full-dresser in glitter-fleck metallic crimson 200 miles of narrow, twisting mountain road with a loose surface, roadworks, instant 180-degree hairpins, radical gradients, ruts and gullies and it transforms into some jittery, darting, groaning monstrous thing with which you wrestle and fight, and the harmonies of those desert highways on which your relationship was founded become a distant dream.
Sons Of Thunder p223-4 Jim Perrin
"How d'you like the bike, son?" he growled.
At that precise moment I didn't like the bike at all, and the feeling was probably mutual. But this was American soil, the Stars & Stripes was flying, and I was being asked about the other great American icon. Sometimes you just get put on the spot:
"Well... (long pause, not for emphasis)... it's got character... the, er, saddle's very comfortable, I like the riding position, and the way the sound system volume turns up when you twist the throttle's... amusing. And I love the exhaust note...
"Yeah, yeah - offset crank - atmosphere at the expense of performance..." he responded, a little impatiently.
I'd dried up. He was watching me. 'What the hell?' I thought, and launched in:
"O.K. It's got performance half of what that engine size should offer, handles like a tank, steers like a wasp in a jam jar, push it hard on bends and neither you nor it knows where it's going, feed in the gas and it gets the message five minutes later, the gears are borrowed off a tractor..."
"Hold it right there!"
He held up his hand, reached in his pocket, handed me his card:
C. William Gray
Vice-President
Harley-Davidson Motor Company
"That's me, and you and I are having dinner together tonight to go through this thing in detail. You European riders are just aggressive. Chill out, man. Get in the hot tub. See ya later."
Extracting a foot from my mouth, I hobbled away at his command.
Sons Of Thunder p225-6 Jim Perrin
I even talk to my bike. "Come on, little hmar, don't fail me now!" was the superstitious battle cry that led Germans and Tuaregs alike to turn away, slightly embarrassed, tapping sides of their heads. Divvy as it sounds, it's even got a name - the Yamahmar, 'hmar' being the Arabic word for donkey. The parallels are obvious - both much-maligned beasts of burden, overloaded and abused by cruel owners. And I like donkeys 'cause they invariably wink when I say hello.
Yep, I love my bike. Which is good, because it's all I've got left. 'Dear John,' said Lou as she made a laughing-stock April Fool of me. Home no longer exists. So I'm packing my bags again, and hitting the road again, whistling 'Hey Joe' while pushing hard for motorcycle emptiness.
Sons Of Thunder p237 Dan Walsh
Honda-san, and later Mr Suzuki and others, knew full well that Norton, Triumph, MV Agusta and a dozen other factories had built their brand image at the TT, making millions by testing their engineering prowess against the gruelling Manx roads, proving that their machinery was both rapid and rugged. It was motorcycling's ultimate exercise in corporate PR.
And yet the event had the genteel air of an English village fete about it, with the discordant twist of death and destruction lurking in the shadows. The TT was run by old boys in blazers and enthusiastic ladies who might otherwise have invested their energies in the Women's Institute, They talked about the Island's capricious weather like they were getting ready for a spot of gardening, apparently unaware that fog and rain usually meant more accidents, more broken legs, more fatalities.
Tradition mattered on the Island, so practice went ahead whatever the conditions. As the chaps in blazers would say: 'No such thing as inclement weather, old boy, only inappropriate clothing.'
Sons Of Thunder p242-3 Mat Oxley
That long left turn where I made two of the overtaking moves I enjoyed the most in my entire career, is probably the most exciting stretch of a fantastic track that will forever be close to my heart. At Philip Island, there is the long initial straightaway, and following that you reach the ocean after a series of turns - some wide, some tight, with changes in speed and elevation. You reach the ocean and then you leave it behind, twice, before joining a long ramp which takes you straight up to the famous long left turn. But just before that, there is a very fast chicane: you arrive in fourth gear, at 200kph, go down to third gear and 170kph to negotiate the right-left change in direction and, finally, you take on that long uphill curve. On that long turn, you spend what seems like an eternity bent over, flying along at very high speeds, unable to see what's ahead. It is one of the most beautiful, fastest and difficult turns in the whole MotoGP tour. You have to be extremely accurate and sensitive to negotiate your way through it, and it's one of those spots where the quality of the rider makes all the difference. Just as, to me, it makes all the difference if it's the last lap or not.
Sons Of Thunder p257-8 Valentino Rossi
Instead of insulating its owner like a car, a bike extends him into the environment, all senses alert. Everything that happens on the road and in the air, the inflections of road surface, the shuttle and weave of traffic, the opening and squeezing of space, the cold and heat, the stinks, perfumes, noises and silences the biker flows into it in a state of heightened consciousness that no driver, with his windows and heater and radio, will ever know. It is this total experience, not the fustian clichés about symbolic penises and deficient father figures that every amateur Freudian trots out when motorcycles are mentioned, that creates bikers.
Riding across San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge on his motorcycle, the biker is sensually receptive to every yard of the way: to the bridge drumming under the tires, to the immense Pacific wind, to the cliff of icy blue space below.
"Se tu sarai solo," Leonardo da Vinci remarked five hundred years ago, "tu sarai tutto tuo" (If you are alone, you are your own man). Biking, like gliding, is one of the most delightful expressions of this fact. There is nothing second-hand or vicarious about the sense of freedom, which means possessing one's own and unique experiences, that a big bike well ridden confers. Antisocial? Indeed, yes. And being so, a means to sanity. The motorcycle is a charm against the Group Man.
Sons Of Thunder p266 Robert Hughes
I needn't have worried - the police roadblocks have simply moved the travelling salesmen to the other side of the mountain, and as soon as I left Ketama, it began - a car in the mirrors, lights flashing, horn blaring, closer and closer until it was alongside, swerving violently as its mirror-shaded driver waved a brick of hash, shouting, "Very best quality, come see my house."
Apart from the slight embarrassment of being unable to outrun a 25-year-old Renault 9, it was quite a laugh - a proper car chase. After a mile or so he gave up and passed the spliff baton to a 4x4, parked across the road ahead. As Ken said, hit the dirt, so I foot-down-wobbled past, onto the next. And the next. And the next. To be honest, it all got a bit much. After an hour of this nonsense, I'd gone from excitement to anger to jaded weariness - there's only so many car chases a man can take - even the Dukes of Hazzard had the occasional break from the action to splash around in the creek with Daisy.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p14
I was heading for Erfoud and the ironically named Hotel Majestic, a grubby little gaff notable only for the nosiness of its patron. He started slowly, leafing through my passport, graduated to watching me unpack and for the finale picked up a postcard I was in the middle of writing, examined the front and then started reading on the back in a Stavros accent, "Hello Mum and Dad, how are you?"
But people don't come to Erfoud for the hospitality, they come for the Erg Chebbi, Morocco's only section of rolling dunes. So the next morning I dumped the luggage, kinda guessing that within ten minutes of my departure the patron would be running round the lobby with my pants on his head, shouting, "Look! Now I am the Eengleesh man!", and took the surprisingly perky XT on the 36 km trek to the sand, dreaming crusty-demons-of-dirt fantasies in my motocross helmet.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p15
Once officially official, the next thing to do was to change the tyres, or more accurately, find someone else to change them for me. The XTs OE Dunlop Trailmaxes had squared off, and I was desperate to change into the Pirelli MT21s, mainly so I wouldn't have to carry the bloody things any further. Fortunately, I bumped into a Moroccan kid on a battered Cagiva motocrosser. Yes, he knew a local shop, yes, he'd take me there, but he's just on his way home for dinner, and would I like to join him?
So we had a pleasant hour in his apartment with his wife and extended family, and filled up with food and hospitality. We found the mechanic, who fitted and balanced the tyres, hosed clean the air filter and adjusted the chain (yes, all right, I know), all for a fiver. And when we were finished, the three of us went off together for coffee. Motorcycle City? Bite me.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p18
Once again it was me, the XT and Africa. On my right, the sparkling Atlantic, roaring to and fro; to the left, the desert, textbook Technicolor cathedral dunes crashing down into the water. And beneath me, the engine thumping and the knobblies strumming over fresh, wet, hard-packed beach. Forget everything else I've ever done, from riding a Harley through Vegas to blasting a Busa down the autobahns, this was the reason I learned to ride a bike. A real right-here-right-now moment.
And this shit goes on for 100 miles, which at 45 mph is more than two hours of slithering over slippery rocks, inadvertently jumping dunes, scattering angry gangs of seagulls, alternately axle-deep in sand or knee-high in the surf, past more shipwrecks and ramshackle fishing villages, until finally arriving at Nouakchott and tarmac and a hotel. And over a table of cold Chinese beers and fresh African fish we toasted the desert for letting us pass and tried to work out exactly how we'd just crossed the Sahara.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p25-6
Desperate, starving, and still broke, I explain to the manager that I need a room, a meal and a beer, but I'm carrying sterling. The hotel's full, but he'll find a staff room. The restaurant's shut, but he'll cook me a chop. The bar's dry, but he'll send boy and a bike. The bank's gone, but his brother has a bureau change. All he needs now is my passport as a deposit. I know what's coming, but I need to eat, drink, sleep. And when he announces next morning with a crocodile smile that the room rate's doubled and the exchange rates halved, I surprise him with a grin.
Four days late, I hit capital Conakry and an ATM. Funny how a little money makes everything alright. A bike cop stops and I'm ready for his "donnez moi un cadeau" tale of woe. Then thrown when he leads me to a hotel, negotiates a better room rate, lets me park up in the police compound. "And in the morning, we will meet and I will buy you breakfast."
Yeah, we'll see.
Next morning he buys me breakfast, leads me to my cleaned bike, and palms me a handwritten letter of safe passage. When he asks me why look like I'm gonna cry, I tell him I've been having a few problems with corruption. He looks genuinely sad. Apologises. And reminds me that people are especially tense because the country is at war.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p34-5
Out of the blue, Mike announces he's actually a motorcycle mechanic, and after ten minutes of grunting, knuckle skinning and double-Dutch cursing, he emerges from under the tank.
"I think maybe the problem is here."
Damn, an octopus - how the hell did that get in there?
"No, Dan, it's not an octopus, it's a carburettor. This is where the petrol goes." Stupid Dutchman. Petrol goes in the tank - everyone knows that. But just to humour him, I stripped the so-called 'carburettor', cleaned out the sand that was snagging the vacuum and, guess what?, good as new.
And what do you think caused the problem, Mike?
"Because your air filter is so dirty you could clean it with dog shit, maybe?"
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p44
The Grand Opening - me, the Swiss kids, Steve and a customs officer with a set of bolt cutters. It's a tense moment. Steve's been regaling us with horror stories - skippers jettisoning containers in high seas, containers arriving upside down, empty or full of illegals. The fear is that the Land Cruiser will have slipped the leash and slid about. We're expecting to see the XT embossed in a crushed Nissan beer can.
Lucky again. The bike's exactly as I left it, nailed down and strapped. It starts first time. Damn, I've missed this. It's only been two weeks, but that's long enough to start jonesing for two wheels, filled with that pre-test longing when any bike, every bike, even shit bikes are desirable. I took to hanging round bike parks, cooing at commuters. "A GT550, you say? Boy, that baby must really fly."
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p75
I ask if I can take some pictures. "Does your magazine come out in South Africa?" asks a feral-looking kid with funky dreads and a kungfu tattoo on his neck. Yeah, I think so. "Then don't take any pictures of the bikes. We don't want the owners coming looking for them."
The Desperado interrupts: "You can take a picture of me with my bike, but make sure you can see my cannon, huh?" He opens his jacket and spins round with his gun.
All across the bar, people duck, a reverse-rippled Mexican Wave. He laughs. "Er, are all the bikes stolen?" The Desperado calls up the table, the gist of which is "Whose bike is legit?"
No one answers.
The bikes are stolen from white South Africans, the old enemy. There's no guilt. The Apartheid regime funded, trained and armed the bad guys in Mozambique's thirty-year un-civil war. Bad guys who killed at least 100,000 people, mainly civilians, destroyed the railways, burned down hospitals, ran the country into the ground. As in Ghana, grand theft auto is small potatoes.
Last year the Johannesburg cops launched a cross-border operation, snatching and returning snide vehicles. The Mozambican government complained to Mandela and got it stopped - officially 'cause they considered it an illegal intrusion'. "The real reason," explains Bruno, "was that if the South Africans reclaimed all the stolen cars, buses and scooters, the country would stop. No one would be able to get to work in the morning."
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p87-8
Two klicks down the road there's a level-crossing sign. I dunno whether it's live or dead. I slow, the van behind impatiently overtakes, hurries onto the level crossing and gets hit by a very dark, very solid train.
The next bit doesn't make any sense. My eyes aren't expecting to see what they see, my brain doesn't know how to process it. I get off the bike and walk to the ticking, twitching van. The bike light shadows as much as it shows. "You'll be all right, amigo, I'll get help." The driver's side has been ripped off. "Can you move, amigo?" The driver's right arm's missing. "Can you hear me, amigo?" The driver's right leg's missing. "Wait here, I'll get an ambulance." The right side of his head is missing. "Are you all right, amigo?" He's very dead.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p92
Try to conjure up an appropriate deity. Papa Legba, Lord Shiva or St Jude. I settle for the Ghost of Future Dan - picture myself up the road with a belly full of food, mouth full of beer, ears full of soap. It works. An old man wobbles past on a bicycle burdened with palm oil. If he can make it, I can. An hour later I shuffle into Inhaminga's oil lamp-lit sandy streets. I find a pensao. The cook's just about to go home. She says she's not killing a chicken at this time of night. The chicken looks relieved and clucks off. Two hours later she returns with a plate of undercooked chips and a bottle of beer that stinks of mutton. I eat and collapse.
Kid next door's playing with his radio. Just as I'm about to bang on the wall, he finds 'King of the Road'. I drift off. Ain't got no cigarettes.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p95
Where to park? Bike bay on the left but it's full of scooters and commuters. And a Renault Sprinter. White-van man pulls up, sticks it in reverse and dominoes a Superdream into a CBR into a couple of Piaggios. Third time I've seen that in a week and every time it makes me more uncomfortable about the responsibility of an eight-grand bike.
The XT has brush guards and folding levers - the Fazer's got brittle plastic and vulnerable plumbing. Gives me the willies. Anyway, that bay was too scratty. Parking a flash bike in London means playing the 'Which one would I steal?' game. The idea is never to have the most desirable bike in the bay. Avoid CX500s. Sniff down unlocked RSVs.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p117-8
First exit, down the ramp, take care on the roundabout 'cause it leads to a builder's yard and is always awash with diesel, under the flyover, filter between the lanes and gas it just as a car noses across from the right. Nowhere to go. Lock front and back. And stall it. Clutch is so light I keep thinking the cable's snapped.
Hit the starter, nothing. Tap the gear change to check it's in neutral, pull in the clutch, swing in the side stand, nothing but a quiet relay click. Bugger. On with the hazards, reach for the kick-start. Er, what kick-start? Guess I'm still too used to the XT.
A cop pulls up. "Problem, mate?" Nah, just a dicky switch. "That any good? I'm thinking of trading up from the 600." Er, yeah. But it wheelies everywhere and makes me ride like a twat. "I've noticed." He grins and drives away. Inexplicably, the bike fires up. Home in time for tea. Bounce up the kerb to the pub, lock it to the railings.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p121-2
Came back, sold the knackered Tenere and bought a CR500 - the nastiest, hardest motocrosser available.
First time out, I vanned it to a track in Wiltshire. An old boy watched me unload and started laughing - "Evil bastards, those. This will be fun." It took me half an hour to start the sod.
First lap, first time I put it in second gear, it spat me off and broke my foot. The old boy couldn't contain himself - "That's the funniest thing I've seen in years." I was like, "Right, good, anyway I'm just off to the hospital." The bike was left in a mate's garage. I never rode it again. I was so scared and ashamed of it that I used to take the long way round to avoid walking past his house.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p131
Harleys are officially old. One hundred years old. Happy Birthday, Harley. Or Happy birthday, Davidson. The present president Willie G Davidson is son of co-founder William Davidson, father of Vice President Bill Davidson. Someone should get those Davidson women a book of names for Christmas.
It's a family affair. Willie and Bill smile for the cameras and unveil the 100th Anniversary, extra-special, all-new, revolutionary, explosive, never before see on a motorcycle, laydees and gennulmen we give you, ta-daaaa - er, a new paint job. And redesigned badges. Sorry, cloisonnes. Only Harley would fly the world's press all the way to Milwaukee to admire a new spray job. And only the Harley press would respond excitedly with low-whistles and flash-gun pops. Can't imagine Ducati doing that.
But then again, can't imagine Ducati selling sixty percent of the big bike market in the US.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p145
A trucker sits down, arms sleeved in faded road tattoos, sunglasses perched Rommel-style on his mesh cap peak. "Brother-in-law had one of those Kawa-sarkis." Don't tell me - broke every bone in his body, wife carries him around in a Thermos, talks through a straw, eats through his bum. "I guess."
Peckerwood follows me out. His perfect Peterbilt fills my mirror. There's a poster of a missing child on the side. That's common enough, but it seems like this fella is showing off, not helping out. I decide he's a jinx and give him the slip in a town called Enigma, home to the Mona Lisa, Gregorian trance chants and smiling cats.
God throws his 'Rays of Sun through the Clouds' trick. I run over a snake. A butterfly lands in my mouth.
The next town's called Climax. I stop to take a picture of the sign. "What's so funny about that?" straight-faces the Sheriff. A nine-hour, five hundred-mile day and I'm still in the same state. Georgia on my mind? Georgia tattooed onto my rosy-cheeked arse. I collapse in Donalsonville. When I close my eyes, all I see are black-on-white road signs.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p176-7
There's even a UFO museum. It's free, but after five minutes I still want my money back. Until a nipper runs past and right into the perfect gag. "Did those aliens come from Mars?" All together now - No kid, they came from Uranus. I've never been thrown out of a museum before.
Britain has climate, America has weather. I leave Roswell with a greasy sweat on. An hour later, the dazzling desert sunshine turns purple then turns horizontal white. Snow? Snow, and wind, wind so fierce it has the bike slapping like a sail as we dodge car-chasing tumbleweeds the size of scribbled thorny dogs.
I stop for a smoke and a snivel. A cop pulls over. To check I'm OK? Er, no. To throw a cheap gag. "Know why it's so windy in New Mexico?" Go on. "Cause Texas sucks and Arizona blows." Right. Thanks.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p184
Stroll back to the bikes, stretch out, one foot on my front tyre to gently rock the hammock, watch the yellow moon sparkle on the waves and drift into dreamy sleep.
Yeah, right. After an eighteen-hour watch in a wind-lashed, salt-stung crow's nest, fending off the amorous advances of a lonely bear from Portsmouth, I'm sure a hammock is heavenly. Otherwise, it's just sleeping in a rope bag. I feel like an old lady's shopping. I try to enjoy it, I try to concentrate on the lullaby wash of the waves, but you can't fake sleep. When dawn hits my cross-hatched, cross-patch face I give up, rub seawater in my eyes, pour coffee up my nose and get back on the off-road.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p194
Until I hit Mexico City. Just as I'm congratulating myself for toasting the crush hour with 'old couriers etc' nonsense, I get pulled. Two smiley cops point to my number plate and say something like 'No circulo' and 'Jueves' No traffic on Thursday? Bugger. A speed-read, quick-forgotten by-law to reduce congestion, they've set up a scheme to limit traffic based on number plates. No ones or twos on Thursday, no threes or fours on Friday and so on. And it's Thursday. And my number plate ends in a two. And bugger. Sometimes a little local corruption is a good thing. Truth is, I have broken the law. I am riding illegally. In England, corruption involves four figure donations to the appropriate election fund. Here, it's more democratic - it's chump-change figures, so everyone can join in. The cop gives me a lollipop and we haggle. "One hundred dollars." Five. "Ten." Done. Best of all, he gives me a receipt. Next set of lights, another cop points at the plate and blows his whistle - I flash my chits and, bingo, he apologises, smiles and waves me on. I think I'm gonna like this city.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p199
In between, a summer's worth of spicy jungle mountain roads compressed into one green, dizzy day, buzzing on nothing but the bends, motorcycle emptiness and high on histamine after a giant wasp flew into my shirt and stung me like a taxman. Like a small boy on a swing, like a little girl dancing on her dad's feet, that relaxed, that happy, lolloping side to side, side to side, side to side for mile after mile after mile, and if this isn't nice, what is?
And the second truth. For many British riders, the US coast-to-coast is the biking dream. Which is good, but this is better. Beautiful beaches, belting roads, tasty trails, bouncing bars, punny people. Really. These are the days that must happen to you. Viva Mexico.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p204-5
I don't like to generalise, but for these bastards, I'll make an exception. Hondurans are the worst drivers in the world. Shit and slow is one thing, but these maniacs are shit and fast. Their preferred road position is wheels on either side of the centre line. Which I suppose gives them fighting chance of avoiding the children and dogs, cows and taxis dashing out from the verges with the fatalism of suicide bombers.
The road whistles through palm forests, industrial sprawls and dramatic mountains. I only know because I keep stopping to smoke and calm down. When I'm riding, I don't see a thing - too busy looking round oncoming buses for the inevitable head-on double overtake. By the time I reach the US garrison town of Comayagua, I'm a nervous wreck and decide to call it a night. Though it's only afternoon.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p226
Pull over, though I don't know what I'll check. Oh, right. Even I understand that the rear brake disc shouldn't be, er, on fire. For some reason, the smoke and red glow don't completely convince me and I still feel the need to touch it, just to make sure. My fingers sizzle and stick to the calliper. Bugger.
Seems I've been watching too many History Channel stories about heating machine guns. Why else would I decide to pee on the brake? I've got no water and I can't just sit here, nowhere. I start the splash, then panic that the heat will travel back up the stream and scald my willy, so pinch the end and this running interference turns the stream into a spray. Just as I spot the farmer. At a very basic level, there's something deeply wrong about saying "Good afternoon" to a man with a machete in his hand when I've got the lad in mine. A lad that's pissing all over my boots, bags and bike. I guess from the look on his face that he agrees.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p228
Next morning I email the boys at Bike magazine for advice. "Yep, it sounds like the bearings; yep, it's dangerous; nope, you shouldn't ride" says Stevie Westlake. I try to find a mechanic, but no one's innarested in helping this barely comprehensible anglo with a weird bike. Their advice- 'Managua'.
I have me a big decision. Should I stay or should I go? Managua's over a hundred miles away - not country-backwater miles, but Pan-American Highway miles down the main truck route from LA to Panama City. If it goes shit-shaped, if the buggered bearings crunch too hard against spindle, if the disc gets jammed in the caliper, it could be sorta fatal.
What's the alternative? Live in Esteli for the rest of my life?
Managua or bust. As stupid calls go, this is right up there with riding across a Saharan minefield and cuckolding a stone-cold killer. At least it'll give me something to write about. First, I'll change my pants – my gran impressed upon me the vital importance of always wearing clean pants in case of an accident. I guess it stops any confusion about which set of skid marks the investigating cops should measure.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p230-1
On my own again, On The Road again. Everything's going well, and I should be in Cali by early afternoon. 'To make God laugh, tell Him your plans,' say the Mexicans.
Heading into another armed village, the bike cuts dead. Nothing. Coast downhill to an army post, smile "Buenos dias" so they won't shoot me, try to think of something useful to check. Two boy soldiers wander over, chatting happy shit ("You know Meek Jagger?"), gurning for photos, while I unpack the tool kit and scratch my arse. "Good bike," nods one and slaps the tank. The lights come back on, it fires up again. We look at each other and laugh.
What to do but keep going? Maybe I can find a mechanic in Cali. "Please, bike, don't break down" prayers whinge pathetically round my lid. Heading out of another armed village, the bike cuts dead again. Coast uphill to a muddy verge and try to think of something useful to check.
This has happened once before, all the way back in New York State; trying to leave a snowy Albany gas station, turned the key and nada. What did I do then? Had a smoke, kicked it, tried it again? What's the connection?
Slow as Homer, tumblers fall in my daft head. Albany. Bogota. Albany. Bogota. Planes? Planes. Damn. I bet I haven't properly reconnected the battery. I haven't.
That's all it is. Maybe I really will make Cali.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p268-9
An hour out of town I guess I catch a branch in my chain, 'cause I hear it snapping. Two hours out of town, and the rain just won't stop, so we do. We wring out and I glance at the sprocket. It's got fewer teeth than MacGowan's grin. Guess that wasn't a twig. Bugger.
Next day I stick Brian on the bus and the bags on Trys and limp back to Quito, hoping the slipping chain doesn't jump off the sprocket and through my leg. By the time we get back to the Turtle's Head, I've two clutches. "That'll be you stuck here then," says Albert.
He's right. There's a BMW dealer in Quito, but despite the liveried logos and shiny new 1200GSs in the showroom, the spares department is empty as a Soviet shop. I play my cheat trump card and call BMW GB's David Taylor for help. He just happens to be visiting Panama City. And they just happen to have a chain and sprocket set in stock. "I'll Fed-Ex it tomorrow."
That was two months ago. The parts were sent, snared by Ecuadorean customs and swallowed whole. Two months of emails, phone calls, websites. Two months of "no se puede". Two months without the bike, watching the rain fall hard. This town can drag you down.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p277-8
A BMW dealer service should smoothly reassure like an opium draught. These monkeys have me spooked like a face at a dark window. Despite the shiny showroom floor and flapping liveried flags, the workshop is run by backstreet abortionists. That's not a white lab coat, it's a butcher's apron. First, they fit new sprockets, but not the new chain. Why? They shrug. Er, it's normal to change them at the same time. They look at me like I've got my lad in my hand. 'Manana.' No, today. Then I catch them oiling a freshly waxed chain on the outside. Er, it's normal to oil a chain from the inside. They look at me like I've just stuck my hand down their sister's pants. Praise the Lord and pass the knitting needle.
A quick test trip round the car park, once I've fixed the newly sloppy clutch, shows that the front brake doesn't, despite a dickhead's too-strong handshake, and the newly slack throttle's got maybe half a turn's play and needs wringing like a wet towel. I hate to think what happened inside, hidden under the engine casings. Smile and say thanks and get out of their harm's way.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p287-8
The bike shudders, dragging its arse like a dog that's been hit by a car, and stops dead in the outside lane. Trucks and buses parp past and rasp round. Two lads from the Indian market help me bounce the bitch to the safe side. Nothing to do but smoke, shrug and murmur 'I wonder what the hell's wrong with the back brake?' as Gatorade splash sizzles into sweet steam.
For appearance's sake, I dig out the tool kit. Trying to prise apart the lock-jawed pads, I snap a screwdriver, which makes me burn my hand, which makes me bang and scorch my head on the pipe. The market claps like they're watching Punch and Judy. All I need now is a rake to stand on. Painful, but works a treat. What to do but wobble off?
There's an urban myth that medical students play a game, an aesthetist's relay, where they jab each other with ketamine and see who can run the farthest before the sleepy drugs kick in and the muscles collapse. That's how this trip feels. Not if, but when. I'll see just how far south I get before the bike nods off.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p288
While I relax in a picture-perfect paradise, the Dakar deteriorates daily. A squeak becomes a rattle becomes a knock. It's not a bike, it's a game of KerPlunk, and any moment now marbles and straws will clatter out of its bottom.
"Sounds like yer bearings are bollocksed, lad." His name's Ian, he's a 61-year-old farmer from West Yorkshire and he's travelling the world on an Africa Twin. 'I told them I were going for four months. That were in '99. She's not best pleased. Shall we have a look at that hub?"
I've been riding this luck too long. And what once felt pleasingly punk-rock now grates as dumb. Big trips mean taking more responsibility. Rather than bitching about bad services and depending on the kindness of strangers, I should be grown-up enough, organised enough, knowledgeable enough, to fix my own problems. Until I sort that, I'm still half stuck at home.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p288
This is the world's Wild West, the edgy West End where deserts, mountains and oceans collide with a jagged scream that settles into a soothing spray; where skies are so high, it's disorientating; deliriously, delightfully dizzying. This desert's defined not by its cities or towns but by the empty spaces in between, by the dramatic pauses between the noisy people.
I'm in love. In love with this road and the way it makes me feel. Bubbling, warm, soulful, real love that sings inside like Otis. Slip-slide down a dirt track and up a cathedral dune 'cause I want to look down from the gods. When the bike topples sideways in soft scrunch, I don't bother picking it up, but keep going on foot.
Collapse outside a cave and look. Two buzzards watch me from the wooden arms of a giant, paganised cross...
Three days later I hit Lima. Off the bike, this sophisticated city of eight million seems too quiet. I miss the deafening wind rush, the anonymous momentum, the stimulation that stretches thoughts like gum as riding alerts interrupt every internal conversation. The Road works.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p294
Happy with the company, concerned about the compromises, we're all prickling with 'Who's faster? Who's smoother? Will he mind if we stop to pee? Will they mind if I stop to smoke?' nonsense. Irrelevant meta-clutter that becomes just that as soon as we stop worrying and start riding.
The sign reads El Camino Sinuoso, the winding road, but it could read 'The Most Beautiful Road in the World'. Ten minutes out of town and we already know this is gonna be very special. Smoky ochre hills concertina like folds on a bulldog's neck, and as we climb into the Andes there are snowy peaks above, sandy desert behind and below, the road falling away like coiled rope.
Magnificent views, rubbish riding. The Dakar's under-steering and 'umm?' vague. Stop for a smoke and kick the tyres. They're proper hot. "When did you last check the pressures?" asks Dick. Umm? He whips out a digital gauge: 18 and 23. He whips out a compressor. And the bike's transformed from squelching in wet wellies to strutting in slutty heels. Air pressure, you say? Who knew?
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p297
They're celebrating a tap - the first time they've had running potable water in the village. I'm expecting some interest, but I'm overwhelmed by the no-angle hospitality. The bike's surrounded by 'Who? What? Where? Why?' questions, handshakes and hugs and I'm showered with shots of chicha.
Halfway through my second cup of cold sick, my host reminds me how this moonshine is made - the raw maize needs an enzyme to break it down before it will ferment. An enzyme found in human spit. Old women chew the grain for hours then spit it into barrels. A gurning gummy granny offers me a refill. How could I say no?
Dick and Jane follow me down, English hesitancy drowned in grubby kids' kisses. Three lads produce a table and chairs and we're sitting targets. Kids on knees, hanging off arms, climbing over heads. "Will you dance with me?" a pigtailed girl whispers in my ear. Why would I say no?
Exhausted by the hokey-cokey, dizzy from ring-a-ring o'roses, half-cut on granny phlegm, we hit Cusco just as the setting sun's backlit the red roofs like dashboard light. An hour later we're plotted up in the Norton Rats pub, admiring owner Jeff's '74 Commando. Two hours later we're in a back room with a pint, a pie and pipe of Peruvian pollen, chuckling along to 'Easy Rider'.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p300-1
The gang's all here. Dick and Jane on their banana-yellow VW camper van GS1150, Nutty Jerome from Richmond on his matt-black KTM Adventure with Akropovic horse-scarer, and expat Jeff, our leader, owner of the Norton Rats pub and a very shiny '74 Commando.
A proper bloke on a proper bloke's bike, with a proper bloke's tank badge, kick-start and pretty, ponytailed pillion. We're all proper jealous, this old Brit iron making our Teutonic plastic look as desirable as disposable razors.
And damn, does he know it. The old boy double keen to prove that his old girl s still got it, he charges away, bouncing up steep-as-spires cobbled alleyways, down 'it's not a road, it's a storm drain' short cuts, and out into the Sacred Valley. It ain't what you ride, it's the way that you ride it, fatty.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p303-4
(In Chile)
But something's not quite right.
First, the border crossing was just too damn easy. Polite professionals in coordinated uniforms helpfully guided me through the immigration process, asking logical questions and entering the answers into a working computer. No daft 'I heart Disco' hand-me-downs, no 'Favourite Spice Girl?' non-sequiturs, no 'Not if the day starts with a "t"' bureaucracy, no $50 white boy tax corruption. It's shockingly normal. And after nearly two years in Latin America, normal feels very odd indeed.
Then there's the roads. Two hours in, and I've still not met a car on the wrong side. Drivers actually wait until they can see it's safe before over-taking. They've got odd orange lights on their corners that blink when they're turning and rear red lights that flash when they're stopping. Which is a damn good idea, 'cause they stop at the oddest places - traffic lights, 'Give Way' signs, even pedestrian crossings. Even when there are no cops watching. It's really freaking me out. Normal is the new odd.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p326
In the beginning, Buenos Aires was all good. After two years On The Road, the cultured, cluttered, clued-up capital of the deep, deep south was the perfect pissed-up pit stop. Truth is, I needed a rest. Long-range, long-haul, long-time-from-home travel is liberating, stimulating, astonishing, but tiring too. Behind the fizzy spectacles, the friendly strangers and the laugh-out-loud lunacy is a background hum of stress. Border stress, breakdown stress, "Bloody hell, that was close!" stress. Every time a child, a dog, a lorry-load of llamas swerves into harm's way and misses by 'Sheesh!' inches, the stress volume gets cranked another notch. And the whisper becomes a nag becomes a 'this one goes to 11' shriek. A shriek that sweet home Buenos Aires shushes and soothes away with a randy cuddle and a brandy-stained kiss.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p340
Email from the family. "Why aren't you coming home, Dan?" Because I've spent the last months living in the Buenos Aires Ritz. Because my girlfriends have my telephone number but my bosses don't. Because I can get a rare steak, a real coffee and a cold beer at four in the morning in always-hissing cafe below. Because the bars never close.
Because I'm three days' ride from the Bolivian Andes, four days south of saucy Rio, five days north of the Ushuaian End of the World, and a million miles from any Gatso. Because licences and lids, shirts and shoes, speed limits and sobriety are optional extras for Argentine riders.
Because down here, Numero 10 Diego Maradona is more important than Benedict XVI. Because down here 'tango' means a stylised, sensual knife-fight-in-a-brothel dance, not sugary crap in a can. Because down here 'revolutionary' means the angry poor invading the presidential palace, not a really small phone that's also a camera.
Because down here 'Visa' means three free months in a new country, not a lifetime of dreary debt.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p342
Motorcycle travel doesn't really make a lot of sense. Expensive and exposed, often filthy and frustrating, there's no obvious reason to pick two wheels over four.
More comfort, more room, more security, and no one ever fell off a Jeep, right? Maybe on paper. But we don't ride on paper. We ride in Mexico. "In a car, you're watching a movie - on a bike you're starring in it," as some cowboy poet slurred. A starring role that's maybe produced by the rider's unique opportunity to be two things at once - sat still while swooping swift, heavily armoured but completely exposed, dagger-proof and always vulnerable, fully concentrated and miles away. And I've gone again, haven't I?
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p357
The bike - a drum-braked, twin-shocker junkyard knocker, a Honda XL185 of indeterminate age. Like all old peasants, no one's too sure exactly when it was born. And no one really cares. This a barely working bike, an errand-limping bike, a hobbled donkey bike that's slumped beyond the standard snotter, rotter or grotter. I know teenage Irish tinkers who'd turn their gluey noses up at this old knacker. But right now, it's perfect. I'm not trying to shave a tenth off a lap of Laguna. I'm just popping out for a ride. "You gonna take me home, sweetie? Sure, sweetie."
I jump on. The seat falls off and the rusted-through tank stains my shorts. Mike talks me through its idiosyncrasies. "No key, no brakes and there's a problem with the clutch." It slips? "It slipped off." Oh, I see. Guess I should have spotted the missing lever. "You sure you've ridden a bike before, sweetie?" Yes, sweetie.
Rotter or not, I'm delighted to be back on a bike. Any bike. Three months is too long to be out of the saddle. Even a saddle that needs holding down with duct tape.
Rock it into neutral, clatter the spiny kick-start, give it some gas, crunch it into first and, woah, hold on, sweetie, lurch and go.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You Dan Walsh p359-60
The vast majority of the book concerns the under-cover infiltration of the Mongols motorcycle club. There are some bits directly relevant to motorcycle riders, rather than hardcore criminals.
I rolled into the parking lot of the In-N-Out Burger followed by Sue and Ciccone. Sue parked her truck and got herself ready while Ciccone waited in his car and I sat on my idling bike. Ciccone and I looked at each other across the parking lot and gave a thumbs-up.
Sue walked over to my bike and then, like something out of an old western, hopped onto one of the back passenger foot pegs as if it was Trigger's stirrup. For the uninitiated, any Harley-Davidson could rightfully be called heavy metal, and an FLHTC is heavier still. There was no way I was going to be able to hold up that bike with her big glow-in-the-dark white ass hanging off one side. Though I desperately held on, down we went with a horrific crash in the parking lot- me, my CI, and Steve Martin's revered Harley. It was a less than auspicious start.
From the ground where I lay, I looked up at Ciccone. Impossible to describe the look on his face. I think he wanted to laugh, wanted to apologize, and was praying to the ATF gods that this was not a harbinger of things to come. I picked up the bike and my ego and prepared for round two. As if I were talking to a six-year-old, I explained to Sue that there was no way I was going to be able to hold up a thousand pounds of motorcycle and her same time. She was going to have to use a different technique to get on the bike. She looked at me with a wounded expression but then took a deep breath and carefully got on.
Under And Alone William Queen p13-4
But by January 1998, I was no longer doing neo-Nazi investigations; I was now riding a Harley around the biker underworld of Southern California.
That's the one thing I didn't need to fake about my undercover persona: a genuine love affair with motorcycles. I've ridden bikes my whole adult life. I have a brother who bought a bike before me, when I was sixteen years old, a Triumph 650cc high-compression piece of crap. Somehow we got the thing running, but my brother was almost killed riding it. After I got out of the army and became a police officer in North Carolina, I bought my first Harley-Davidson. I was twenty-four. I've owned Harleys ever since, from hot-rod choppers to straight-off-the-showroom-floor stackers.
Since the beginning of the year, playing my Billy St. John role, I'd been riding an ATF-owned Harley-Davidson and hanging out with some Hells Angels in the San Fernando Valley, trying to gather intelligence for an investigation being run as a joint effort between ATF, the IRS, and the Ventura County Sheriff's Department.
Under And Alone William Queen p30-1
As I turned onto Valley Boulevard from the Long Beach Freeway I rolled on the throttle of my Harley. It wasn't long before the sea of bikes came into view: truly an awesome sight. There were easily eighty to ninety motorcycles lined up, standing curbside sentry in front of Tony's Hofbrau. Rounding that corner, I felt a sharp pang in my gut, the kind I'd felt in Vietnam. But there was no platoon to back me up, and no one else to look out for. The only ass on the line was mine.
I slowed the Harley down as I approached my target. Slowly, they came into view: dark, shadowy figures that seemed, at first glance, like some mob of grim reapers.
With no obvious place to park my motorcycle, I cruised past the hordes of rough, bearded, tattooed, black-leather-clad Hispanic bikers. Predator and prey, eye to eye.
Under And Alone William Queen p50-1
Shooting pool is a mainstay of the biker lifestyle. So is getting shitfaced on Jack Daniel's and being an asshole, but I decided to try pool first. It could be either my ride in or my ticket to the intensive care unit. I'd been shooting pool since I was a kid and figured I could handle the competition. But I couldn't help wondering if beating a few Mongols at pool would constitute some kind of disrespect. The first Mongol patch I played was good, but he only got off one shot before I ran the table. After sinking the eight ball, I looked up to see him coming straight for me with his cue stick clenched in his fist like a club. I straightened up and
tightened my grip on my own stick. To my shock, he lowered the cue and extended his free hand. He was the first Mongol to do so all night.
"Good shootin'," he said. "Name's Lucifer."
Under And Alone William Queen p55-6
I'd been inside for about thirty minutes when I heard the unmistakable roar of mechanical thunder outside. In just a matter of seconds the street in front of The Place was filled with black-clad Mongols on their iron horses.
A loud voice pierced that thunder: "Yo, Billy, let's roll."
I went straight to my bike, grabbed my helmet off the mirror, put it on, and mounted up all in one motion. I gave the kickstand a nudge with my boot. The blast from my pipes matched those of the pack, and with a roar like that of a squadron of F/A-18s, we were off. The pack moved in unison, and as a lowly hang-around, I assumed my position at the rear, sucking up the requisite amount of burnt motorcycle oil and exhaust. Every now and then I would have to duck out of the way of mirrors and other motorcycle parts that flew off the bikes ahead of me.
Under And Alone William Queen p58-9
Fire 'em up.
And there was a thunderous roar of Harleys: Pan-heads, Shovelheads, Evos, Softails, FLHTCs, and so on- as we began to roll out of the cemetery. More than 150 bikes formed into ranks, winding through the streets of Los Angeles like a great anaconda. Under Red Dog's direction, the sergeants at arms from the various chapters blatantly blocked intersections like rent-a-cops as the procession moved through the city. With impunity we blew right past real cops- stunned LAPD officers, overwhelmed California Highway Patrolmen- as well as red lights, stop signs, speed limits. No law had any bearing on this outlaw army. As we rode through one intersection after another at breakneck speed I realized that the Mongol Nation- like those shrieking warriors on horseback terrorizing the known world under Genghis Khan- were in absolute control of any territory they occupied.
Under And Alone William Queen p60
We were hauling ass one night on the 210 north of L.A. I was running better than 130 miles per hour when my astonishment Evel flew past me doing a good 20 miles per hour better. And he had Carrena hanging on the back! He later told me that he still had throttle left when he passed me but had started having visions of teeth, hair, and eyeballs spread all over the concrete.
The first time I saw Evel's bike-thieving skills in action we were in Pasadena, on a sunny afternoon, and the side-walks were packed with eyewitnesses. There were some sixty Mongols partying that afternoon at a trendy restaurant and bar called Moose McGillycuddy's. There were also four preppy, good-time Harley riders in the restaurant, and they'd left their machines in the parking lot, at the mercy of the Mongol Nation.
I watched as Evel and a few other Mongols walked straight to the chromed-out Harleys in the lot. In a matter of seconds, wires were ripped out from under tanks, engines were roaring, and the four bikes were speeding out of Pasadena, closely followed by a carload of Mongols carrying guns.
(John Ciccone, parked a hundred yards away on surveillance duty, managed to capture the whole bike-theft operation with his telephoto lens.)
Under And Alone William Queen p154
We trucked it to Needles without incident. I hunkered down low in the passenger seat to make sure that no Mongols spotted me on the road along the way. After gassing up in Needles we found an out-of-the-way location to offload the bike. Everything went exactly as planned. I threw on my patch, along with my other Mongol regalia, and fired up the bike. The plan was for Ciccone to follow me into Laughlin and break off just before I got to the Riverside Resort Hotel.
We were about five miles out of Laughlin when every- thing went to shit. First, I felt my bike starting to slow down. Even though I rolled the throttle, it got slower and slower. I began to smell something burning and turned to see that my back brake was seizing up. I pulled off onto the shoulder, and Ciccone stopped behind me in the U-Haul. I told him that I'd have to stay put until the brake calliper cooled or until I could get a pair of pliers to bleed it off.
At that very instant a Las Vegas Metro car rolled up. The cop asked me if I needed help, and explained to him that my brake had just seized up and that I needed a pair of pliers. He stared at me, then at Ciccone, then back at the U-Haul. Shit. I knew what was coming.
"Who's the guy in the U-Haul?"
"I don't know, I've never seen him before in my life. He just saw me on the side of the road and stopped to see if I needed help."
The cop wasn't biting. I tried to keep his eyes- and my own- on my mechanical problem.
"Got a pair of pliers I can use, Officer?"
The diversionary tactic didn't work.
Under And Alone William Queen p225-6
Adrian Scott lives in Melbourne. Having just obtained his L plates, he set off to ride his KLR650 on the Road Of Bones across Russia and down to Istambul.
The next day, after some final bureaucratic hurdles, I retrieved my bike from its container, re-assembled it (slowly) and rode back Vladivostok Airport whereupon I promptly disassembled it again for the promised flight to Magadan. But this time I had to reduce its footprint even further so that it might fit inside the hold of the small Soviet-era hulk that would carry us to Magadan. The Chief of Cargo was called, and armed with his official tape measure and plane specifications he gave my bike a thorough once over before shaking his head solemnly and saying laconically "Is too big for plane. Is not possible. Goodbye." Undeterred, I continued late into the night, reducing my motorcycle into so many small pieces that I could have posted it to myself. But I did eventually get the required approvals and three days later found myself on the tarmac at Magadan Airport, alongside the cargo crew desperately trying to retrieve all of the pieces of my motorcycle which had been packed in randomly with all of the mail and other parcels and supplies on this weekly lifeline delivery from the outside world.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p3
Upon checkout I asked whether I could borrow some tools to complete one final - but critical - maintenance job on my bike. By the time I had got to the garage there were two men (one a young mechanic) ready to assist - or rather, actually do the job while I watched. They worked hard and quickly had the job done. The young mechanic was clearly a motorcycle enthusiast so I offered him a ride. which thrilled both us for different reasons as he roared away, out of sight and then came skidding back into the garage, stopping just a few inches in front of us, transferring much of the rubber from my tyres onto the concrete floor.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p5
Suddenly my front wheel sunk into a deep patch of soft dirt more like sand - and I immediately lost control of the bike. My handlebars swung back and forth and buzzed in a wide arc before my eyes, triggering that sickening sensation, almost in slow motion; the voice inside my head saying "Now, there is nothing you can do, you are going to crash and this is really going to hurt." Oh bugger! But there was more to it as I felt a sharp tug at my left ankle. Jammed under my pannier, it had become the pivot; I was a human catapult and my head the pay load. Oh dear. And before I knew anything else, the ground rushed up to meet me in a bone crunching collision. My head slammed into the hard gravel of the road like the atoms in a particle accelerator colliding with six feet of cement. Colourful sub-atomic particles whizzed about inside my head in a wonderful show, like sherbet fireworks exploding against the blackness of my skull.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p6
The only issue now was actually riding the bike with an ankle was numb from the pain so I mounted the bike carefully, turned it on, held the clutch tightly with my right (wrong) hand while bending over from the waist to move the gear lever up into 2nd gear with my left hand before lurching off along the road. I could brake and use the throttle, but, apart from steering (with warped handlebars), that was the extent of my control. I would just keep riding until I found someone or ran out of petrol, whichever came first. And I didn't even think about in which direction to head, for turning back was never an option. So, injured, deeply depressed but faintly optimistic, I headed off deeper into the wilderness, another victim of the Road of Bones.
Then I began to think how lucky I had been - my helmet and safety gear had saved my life and my heavy motorcycle boots had probably prevented my leg from being completely snapped off. Slowly, and with a wry smile on my face, I began to whistle and sing...
Always look on the bright side of life...
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p8
The drivers were friendly and very interested in my bike. They shared their tea and food with me and I offered them what little I had but they refused. My Russian-English dictionary was invaluable as we worked through many topics. The older men in particular were very interested in Australia and what is was like to live there.
When I explained the concept of long service leave they all fell about laughing - these men all worked every day of the year hauling diesel and other critical supplies up and down the Kolyma Highway (or at least the sections where it was possible to drive). They were away from home for long periods and often slept in their truck cabins. There was certainly no regulation of driving hours, although each truck usually had two or more drivers (the machines ran continuously) and speed was not an issue as it was impossible to drive more than 40kph in even the best weather on these roads.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p18-9
This lifted my spirits no end - I had conquered the Road of Bones and was about to get through on the winter road to Yakutsk! I rode on - the channels got deeper and the mud thicker, the bike was struggling and so was I. I was drenched with sweat from the physical effort required to keep the bike upright and move forward. I made it to the corner. Almost there... I could see the end of the mud marked by a bridge and dry road ahead. I rode on for another few hundred metres until I reached a
particularly bad patch. I had to stop - the bike had lost traction and I was worried I was bogged. I looked down at the back wheel and found it covered in thick mud, but not bogged. I clicked into gear but the wheel just didn't move - no drive. I checked again. I got down into the mud and pawed as much of it away from the drive chain and frame to give the wheel some clearance - again there was no drive, no power to the back wheel. Bugger - what had I done? Why wasn't the wheel moving? I had been OK with minor mechanical issues up until now, but an engine problem three hundred kilometres from the next major town I did not need. I kept working at it - I was convinced something was jammed in the chain stopping it from moving. I spooned the wet mud out with my bare hands from every conceivable part of the bike. My boots and legs were covered in mud. I took off the luggage and panniers and tried again - nothing. I tried pushing in neutral and the bike moved forward including the back wheel so there was nothing jamming it- it just wouldn't engage in gear and drive forward.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p51-2
As soon as he slid his finger across his throat and said in his best English "ghum ovah" I knew that the game was indeed over. Lyo-ha carefully pulled the lightly baked clutch discs from the engine and showed them to me. These had worn severely from my incompetent riding and were now slipping over each other giving no traction and hence no drive from the engine. A search party was formed and they went scouring the auto-markets of Yakutsk in vain for replacement parts; for these were proprietary parts and the nearest Kawasaki dealer was ten thousand kilometres away in another country - but at least we had tried. After some complicated reparations, I managed to speak with my local dealer at home; he could have the parts within two days but then it would be over to an international courier to get the parts to me in Yakutsk.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p61
In the morning, Sergei cooked me a full breakfast and then he and Sasha escorted me out of town and to the ferry across the Lena - some hundred kilometres away. As I sped away across the countryside, my two week stay in Yakutsk didn't seem so bad after all; I had been rescued from the middle of nowhere by an incredibly generous and hospitable man and his colleagues. I had been welcomed into his family and shared many things with them, I had explored a frontier town, hopefully understood the Yakut people and their culture a little better, I had seen fabulous wealth in gold and diamonds, I had seen and touched ten thousand year old life in permafrost and been granted honorary membership of the Nord Brotherhood motorcycle club. What else could I ask for?
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p78
I spent the morning checking over my bike - it was amazing the number of factory-tightened nuts and bolts that had somehow loosened themselves in the course of riding over these rough roads. I checked each and every one and tightened many. Even the twenty seven mm nut at the top of the steering column was loose so that I could easily turn it by hand! I wasn't exactly sure of its purpose, but I suspected it was important and critical to be tight when riding - I had visions of the handlebars coming off in my hands as I tried (and failed) to corner a dangerous bend. As I went about my work the old lady owner was belting the living daylights out of the carpets that were hanging up in the yard for cleaning. She might have been old, but she sure packed a punch. Note to self: don't argue about the bill when checking out.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p85-6
There was stuff every where; tyres, panniers, bags, toolkit, helmet, jacket, nuts and bolts - all spewed out onto the platform in a hurry, for the train had to vacate its position to let others come and go. This was a busy station in a large city with many train services both long distance and urban. People came and went too, inspecting my work but not bothering me. It was hot and sunny - over thirty degrees - and I quickly worked up a sweat putting all the pieces back together AGAIN. I sure was sick of doing this job. Within an hour, however, I had it all back together and was riding down the busy platform dodging commuters and travellers.
I crossed the tracks with some tractors and cargo moving equipment and was suddenly on the streets of Novosibirsk, solo and dangerous - all I had to do now was ride down through Barnaul, to Semipalatinsk, across the steppes of northeast Kazakhstan to a remote and seldom used border crossing with China in the next eight days.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p102-3
It felt as if I had been spat out of a time machine, so stark was the contrast between where I had come from and where I was now. I had spent over a month in the far north east corner of Russia in remote parts of Siberia. I had lived on a diet of bread, tea, sausage and tinned food. I had lived with locals and shared in their difficult conditions, stayed in the occasional "hotel", bathed in muddy tap water, ridden through mud, bog, swamp and rivers, drunk too much vodka, shared feasts of the best local food with generous hosts, eaten freshly cooked fish straight from rivers, slept in police stations, Kamaz cabins, workers' camps, apartments and camped in derelict ghost towns. Now I was riding along the wide open boulevards of central Novosibirsk in the hot summer sun.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p105
By 9:30pm, however, I had made it to the outskirts of Semipalatinsk. It wasn't particularly well lit and there were absolutely no signs and when the road came to a fork I had to stop and ask for directions. I pulled up at a petrol station in the middle of an unofficial taxi rank. Out of the darkness came faces and bodies of all shapes and sizes. This was the place where the Russians had exploded over four hundred and fifty nuclear bombs - right up until the late 1980s - and it looked to me as if most of the guys here were a few chromosomes short of a full deck. It was like I had landed on the Island of Dr. Moreau. One man in particular was very peculiar - he had short hair on the top of his head, but big side burns and long curly hair from both the sides and back of his head down to his chest and I don't know how he ate without puncturing his lips - so badly arranged were his teeth. But he, like all of them, was extremely friendly and curious about me and my bike. It was as if an alien had landed and they were trying to make sense of it - that's impression I got anyway. Another man, dressed in a shell suit and looking the most normal, approached me. He was drunk and insisted I stay with him and his family - an offer I politely declined, but after asking about hotels three or four times it was clear I wasn't going anywhere. We talked about where I had come from and where I was going and they all inspected my bike in detail and were impressed. Some teenagers on motorcycles pulled up and also joined in.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p110-1
In the morning I awoke to find Mischa meticulously cleaning every inch of my bike with a small rag and a bucket of water. He worked from top to bottom and around both sides for at least an hour, scouring and scrubbing and washing until the bike looked almost brand new. I tried to help, but he wouldn't have a bar of it – insisting that I was his guest and this was a gift from him to me. I ate a huge breakfast of kolbasa, eggs, bread, jam, sour cream etc, etc, and was completely full by the time we headed into town to say goodbye to Bolyat and Olya (sans Lyuba of course). Then the torture of breakfast #2 began. I couldn't believe it, it was an even larger fare than I had just consumed. I didn't know how I was going to manage it, so I just ate very, very, very slowly, chewing each mouthful as much as I could before trying to force it down. I felt they were at risk of breaching the UN charter for the protection of human rights. It took me a full two hours to get through just a fraction of what they had laid out. Luckily they weren't too offended and packed the balance in big plastic bags as add-on luggage for my trip. There was half a loaf of bread, honey, nuts, biscuits, potatoes, tomatoes, eggs and more. This would be lunch and snack food for the next few days.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p121-2
I waddled down the stairs and flopped onto my bike, said my goodbyes quickly and rode off, following Mischa who had promised to show me the way out of town. But we weren't heading out of town at all. We soon pulled up at a large Russian Orthodox cathedral along the river bank near the centre of town. Mischa motioned that I follow him inside, so I entered the solemn space of the church vestibule facing the wall of icons common to all these churches. The priest was chanting prayers in deep monotones, seeing other people and trying to deal with their issues and requests. Mischa interrupted and politely dragged the priest over to meet me. He explained what I was doing and pulled out of his pocket four tiny golden crosses which he had purchased earlier. Mischa then gave these to the priest who blessed them and then carefully and earnestly hung one around my neck, singing softly in prayer as he did so. He then landed the other three crosses to me for safe keeping (one for each member of my family). Mischa definitely had a tear in his eye now and I was touched yet again by the depth of his feelings and his efforts to support and help me. We composed ourselves (well, Mischa did anyway) and I followed him in his car to the very edge of the town at the start of what looked like a barren and rocky desert. He stopped and got out, we gave each other a big hug, observed a minute's silence (a Russian tradition?) and then I was off across what turned out to
be a barren and rocky desert; this was the beginning of the Steppes.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p122
Omar rolled out a detailed map of Xinjiang Province which had pictures of famous and beautiful scenic locations for tourists plus a little descriptive text. I looked at each scene hopefully and asked Omar whether we would be going there - "No, that's not near our route" he said each time, or "That's close, but we don't have time to go there." He told me that Xinjiang has many beautiful mountain ranges, lakes and pastureland (where most of the scenes on the map were from) and the rest is desert. And where were we going I asked? "The desert"; we were headed along the southern Silk Road, across and around the enormous Taklimakan Desert. At this scale our journey (just in China) looked epic, and even though I had already ridden several thousand kilometres, this leg alone was going to be a few thousand more. It's funny- when I planned this trip I really had no comprehension of what riding a thousand kilometres would be like - distances between cities and across countries were just added up and averaged out in a mathematical exercise to spread the journey out over time. I had no real appreciation of the effort involved or the reality of relentless riding.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p133-4
He worked quickly with deft hands and had soon removed the engine oil, coolant and all of the engine bolts, placing the removed parts carefully to one side on the pavement on a towel. He worked in silence and alone but the engine cover just wouldn't come off - the long rod that runs vertically and turns on its long axis to push and pull the clutch plates was jammed in position, stuck to the plates preventing the cover from releasing. He tapped, pulled, pushed, inserted screwdrivers from many angles but it simply would not come off. It would move a few millimetres back and forth but no more. Undeterred, Mr. Fan persisted until finally after a couple of good thumps with my rubber mallet (I knew it would come in handy for something) the engine cover came off, and as it did, little pieces of broken metal fell from the open clutch and rained onto the pavement. Mr. Fan looked up at me slowly from his prostrated position and there was no need for words - his expression said it all; it was bad, very, very bad and wasn't going to be fixed quickly or simply here on the side of the road in a remote village.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p137
We found Mr Shu inside, crouched on his haunches, carefully re-assembling the broken pieces of my clutch plate cover, drilling out the broken and locked-in-place bolts and re-tapping the threads in each of the holes. It was painstaking work, had little chance of being successful in my estimation, and I couldn't believe he was even attempting it, but he persisted and told us confidently that he would have it fixed later that day! He then went on to show us a replacement long bolt (for the one that was bent and stuck in my engine cover) that had been fashioned earlier that day from a piece of scrap metal. It was an exact replica of the broken part but in shiny new metal - it was incredible and I couldn't get over the level of ingenuity here. I still doubted whether it would all work and unkindly reminded Mr Shu that I still had over ten thousand kilometres to ride to get to Istanbul and I needed any sort of repair work to hold up for at least that much riding. I'm not sure if he was offended or not, but he shook his head violently from side to side and let fly with a torrent of Chinese invective that Omar simply translated as, "Mr Shu says don't worry, it will be alright for you."
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p141
They went to work like a swarm of vultures devouring an animal left to die in the desert and soon all that was left of my bike was a skeleton frame - they had taken everything removable off to examine the wiring. I can't adequately describe how disturbing this was for me. There were at least six of them and each had removed different pieces and it was hard to see what system they were using to keep track of all the pieces and the bolts. How on earth would they re-assemble it all correctly? I tried to tidy up a little and keep things organised but I was outnumbered so retreated to the back seat of our car to eat a bread roll - my breakfast.
My bike has a moderate level of circuitry but I had no diagrams and these guys just kept going, checking circuit by circuit trying to isolate the problem. It took about an hour but eventually they stopped and started putting things back together which I took as a signal that all was better. I tried to help put everything back together properly but when they had finished one of the kids was still holding a few largish bolts which he handed over to me quickly.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p153
As soon as I shut off the engine I was overwhelmed by the immense silence and simple stark beauty of the mountains. The sky seemed a deeper blue up here and it was incredibly still and peaceful - a moment frozen in time for me. I had to pinch myself- for here I was, a rank outsider and amateur who had achieved this part of his unlikely plan - to be alone in the middle of the one of the highest and most remote mountain ranges in the world independently - it was wonderful and I felt special.
I thought about my family and wondered where they were and what they were doing at this moment. I imagined a perspective from space looking down at me here, and them, at home. It was a strange sensation and all at once I felt utterly alone but totally connected. I thought about how far I had come, all the wonderful people I had met and all of the help I had received so far: Vassily, Anton and the Caravan of Love along the Road of Bones, Big Mama and Zhenya in Yakutsk, the train crew across Russia, Mischa, Lyuba and Bolya in Semipalatinsk, Mr Shu in Urumchi, the boys in Kashgar and many others. It was already a long list and my journey had indeed been rich in experience for me.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p174
I stopped at the side of the road on a wide curve high above the plateau on a steep hillside and ate some of my biscuits and drank some of my lemon fizz. But as soon as I did I knew it was a mistake - it was if someone had initiated my own internal gastro launch sequence - my stomach was full of liquid propellant and it had just been ignited. I figured I had about ten seconds to find a suitable launch pad. It's funny how, even in times of great distress like this, where time is critical, you stop and consider things like "now, where can I go to do this in private?" I could not have been more alone, but I couldn't bear the thought of soiling the Pamir Highway so I scrambled down the steep and rocky hillside, loosening my pants as I ran, quickly locating a large flat stone upon which I perched and mercifully relieved myself. My backside hung out over the long valley like a piece of giant artillery and I sat squatting like a fat cane toad in the sun, waiting patiently for this horrible episode to end. Suddenly I heard the crunching of gravel and the heavy grinding of gears above me - I looked up and realised immediately that I was positioned in clear line of sight to the road as a big Kamaz full of road workers passed by, the men in the back smiling and waving to me as the driver honked hard on his horn. I couldn't move quickly, but did manage a small salute.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p181
By the late afternoon though, the mountains had closed in again and I was riding deep down inside tight canyons on a twisting dirt track teetering precariously at times just above the roaring Pyanj River. The road had deteriorated now to a pulverised mess of gravel, rocks and fine grey powder. Recent landslides frequently spilled out onto the track too, making progress difficult and slow. In places the rock walls went beyond vertical and hung out over the river and the road had been blasted out of the rock face creating gigantic and extended granite eaves which I rode under very nervously, accompanied by the frighteningly loud reverb from my exhaust. What held them up? My, that's a big crack isn't it? What was that creaking noise? Would the noise of a motorbike engine (not heard here often) vibrate the rock ceiling loose? I held my breath instinctively as I rode carefully under particularly large blocks of granite.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p208
My back wheel fishtailed violently underneath me and I fought hard to regain control. I lost traction and speed, got bogged deep and then fell over. I cursed again.
My chain and cogs were coated in tiny gritty granules like fresh sandpaper. The bike, with me on top was far too heavy to continue riding safely on the soft sand so I walked with the bike the last fifty metres or so off the dunes and I rode back onto the track.
I rode out high above the river; the track, carved into the mountainside narrowed, and became hard and rutted, dusted in a thin film of fine grey powder and sprinkled generously with loose gravel. I had to concentrate hard to steer a steady line, but when I did look up I was astounded to see a huge eagle gliding silently just a few metres above my head. It must have measured six feet from wing tip to wing tip. A thick beige stripe ran from one wing tip to the other in a shallow v-shape and then bled into its chocolate brown fuselage. It was majestic and I stopped to watch the beautiful creature glide effortlessly away, swept along by invisible eddies of wind.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p210
I ate two big bowls of thick delicious meat and potato stew with fresh bread and sweet tea with the other men. I never tired of these conversations where I explained what I was doing, why I was doing it and all of the other ancillary topics that spawned from them and tonight was no exception. A puzzled "Why?" was always the first question. Unlike almost everyone I met on my journey, I could, a) afford to travel, and b) probably travel anywhere I wanted and do anything I wanted - within reason. They knew this and the fact that I had chosen to come here and be with them now was astounding, and I sensed their pride as hosts by their unconditional willingness to share as much as they could of themselves and their culture with me and I felt privileged to be able to receive and experience it so directly. I reflected that like so many of my best experiences so far it was unplanned and spontaneous.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p211-2
I rode directly into the huge blazing orange fireball of the setting sun and had to shield my eyes dangerously with my left hand while steering and maintaining the throttle with the other – I was tired and getting lazy and should have stopped. The road widened into a vast expanse of wide smooth and unmarked fresh bitumen and I sped up excitedly for the last hundred kilometres or so into Dushanbe in the crimson dusk that had now settled over the countryside. Just as I started to enjoy the smooth, easy riding, I was flagged down by two pot-bellied policemen, who came running out from under a tree waving a radar gun at me. I had no idea what the speed limit was, but knew I had been riding too fast and had resigned myself to being fined, but once they realised I was from Australia the conversation quickly turned to kangaroos, Kostya Tsu and crocodiles and, after I had told them that I had come all the way from Magadan - which of course they knew of - I was beyond reproach and immediately elevated to the pantheon of Tajik folklore. I shook their hands and they both slapped me hard on the back before I rode off into the dusk.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p219
Dushanbe was a watershed in my journey; it had been a complete break from the relentless riding and the hardships of life on the road. I now felt completely rejuvenated, my previously flagging confidence now soared and I felt my mojo, conspicuously absent to date, had finally arrived. Riding was instinctive now - the bike simply an extension of my body as I glided over the landscape on my exhilarating magic carpet ride. The road continued to follow the narrow river valley and now rose above and away from the river. I hit some muddy road works in a busy but otherwise dusty village and then rode a lonely stretch of more difficult track before merging into a small secluded valley of striking Arcadian beauty. There were lush meadows filled with flowers and grazing livestock, a crystal clear mountain stream splashed gently over smooth rocks and ran away under a pretty stone arch bridge, an old carved wooden tea platform sat peacefully in a shaded glade by the riverbank and, in the distance, perched on a low hill overlooking this idyllic scene, stood an old stone farmhouse and compound. Beyond the bridge the road ended, abruptly forking at an obtuse angle into two equally unappealing stretches of dry loose gravel track, one rising steeply to the left, like an emergency truck stop ramp straight up the mountainside, and the other, which lead away more gently, but then rose up to meet an endless series of switchbacks slashed into the hulking mountains ahead.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p233-4
I cleared the village and rounded a hill high above the river and came to a temporary track, recently cut and graded that climbed steeply above the village. The track was loose, soft soil and I watched with some alarm as the fully-loaded jalopy bus ahead of me slid around on the treacherous surface, before being enveloped in the dust cloud that it spewed up. It was difficult to judge how long I spent on the track, or how high above the river it climbed, or how close I had ridden to the edge so intense was my concentration as I rode cloaked in a curtain of thick dust. Eventually, drenched in sweat and with my wrists throbbing painfully from the intensity of my riding, l emerged onto flat open higher ground where the track petered out into two feint tyre tracks as it crossed paddocks, orchards and fields. In a surreal scene, I came to a lone soldier who sat at an old wooden desk at the edge of an apricot orchard where he manned a checkpoint over a cattle grate. A colourful dilapidated gypsy wagon sat forlornly in the far corner of the orchard. He inspected my papers without saying a word, until I broke the long silence asking simply "Penjikent?" He laughed and told me to keep going. I rode on through a large plantation of tall maize being harvested by sinewy sun-dried women who worked rhythmically removing the precious cobs, unhusked from their stalks, in another age-old back breaking ritual.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p249
The last few days had been wonderfully stimulating and I felt rejuvenated both mentally and physically, but it felt good to be back on my bike, moving again, almost like this was my natural state now. And riding three hundred kilometres after lunch across the parched plains and thirsty cotton fields of southern Uzbekistan didn't faze me either; I was slowly clearing the bogeymen that I had carried like deadweight for so long. Then I thought about the multi-coloured springs, homemade parts and agricultural blobs of welded scrap metal that currently held my clutch together and a big warning sign flashed in my mind: proceed with caution.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p277
Eventually the desert receded, quickly replaced by fertile farmland and rustic villages as the road converged again with the Amu-Darya. This was the ancient Oxus - and today it still sustains a narrow corridor of habitation and cultivation running in a gentle arc to the north-west, where it peters out in a semiarid delta as it trickles into the rapidly receding Aral Sea. But the river here was full and wide and free flowing - albeit shallow and heavily silted - and I crossed it cautiously on a makeshift pontoon bridge of flat-bottomed barges, tied together and joined loosely by sliding metal ramps which sizzled like BBQ plates under the midday sun and moved dangerously underneath me as I negotiated each seam while battling the unforgiving and impatient oncoming traffic. But I didn't stop for fear of the rubber of my tyres and boots melting, and was soon safely across. I drove on through the modern, bustling but ultimately drab city-town of Urgench, before travelling the final twenty kilometres along the bizarre trolleybus route connecting the two towns. Massive and modern, it was an outrageous piece of expensive and unnecessary capital works designed solely to impress foreigners who had visited Khiva during its recent millennial celebrations and was now a white elephant.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p301-2
I squeezed the ignition and turned the throttle, but instead of the wonderfully comforting soft throbbing of internal combustion, all I got was a hoarse rasping cough and soft splutter and then a cold silence. I tried and tried and tried again with no success. Oh bugger. They both looked at me blankly, as if this was somehow not unexpected. I rested my arms on the handlebars and rested my head on them gently and closed my eyes - selfishly absorbed in my own misfortune. There was nothing left to do but push, so I mounted my bike and slowly heaved it forward with firm strides, pushing past my sleepy-eyed sentry and the now-bewildered hotelier. There was a large open area in front of the hotel where I paddled up and down repeatedly, desperately trying to build enough momentum for a clutch start- all of which ultimately failed. I looked at my watch - 8:45; I certainly wouldn't be meeting anyone, anywhere anytime today at this rate. Eventually my two comrades took pity on me and, without saying a word, came over and began pushing me tirelessly around the square until, after many failed attempts, the bike eventually groaned hesitantly into life. Exhausted, they stood breathless and steaming in the cold morning air, but smiled proudly as they waved me away merrily, and suddenly, I felt bad about my tainted perception of Nukus; I realised that like everywhere else I had been, people were almost always good at heart and predisposed to help a fellow human in need - the only difference here was the extent to which they had been worn down and hardened and had had the life almost completely sucked out of them by their environment and their bleak, empty prospects.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p318
In Iran...
But those first few minutes on the freeway were just a warm up act ahead of a mad main event as the half-crazed drivers of cars, buses and trucks all jockeyed for pole position in this deadly drag race across the desert. And it wasn't long before we passed the first of many fatal accidents; a crumpled mini-van and a battered family sedan lay near each other upside down on the rocky desert floor some fifty yards from the road, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers, emergency workers and distraught survivors. And it was difficult to understand how such an accident could occur on such a long straight stretch of one-way traffic across an empty desert; speed and driver error the only obvious reasons. But witnessing this carnage didn't seem to deter anyone, as our procession continued on at a breakneck 120kph (and this was in the slow lane). I could barely keep up, but, more afraid of the consequences of slowing down I pushed my bike even harder. And, with all the aerodynamics of a refrigerator, even a gentle cross breeze caught me like a wet sail and blew me around dangerously across, and then outside my lane. My arms began to ache from wrestling with the bike as I tried to maintain a constant heading into the teeth of the wind. I had never ridden so fast. I was in top gear and climbing through 6000 rpm, approaching the engine's red line - uncharted territory for both of us and, despite the emphatic assurances of the inscrutable Mr Shu - whose face I could see clearly now in my mind's eye - that nagging feeling that I was sitting on an time bomb that might explode at any minute filled me with a deep dark fear.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p352
But darkness descended quickly over the desert and it was a sprawling web of twinkling lights under an indigo sky that ultimately resolved into the large and surprisingly modern city of Shahrud. It also had a modern, well equipped and aggressive police force, most of whom greeted me at the end of the freeway explaining that it was in fact illegal to ride a motorcycle on an Iranian motorway. But with the cultural and language barriers just too high and too wide to bridge tonight, I was pardoned on account of my own ignorance and allowed to proceed. Navigating by instinct I negotiated a series of large roundabouts and found my way onto a bizarre avenue of pulsating neon palm trees, before finally emerging into the throbbing heart of Shahrud along a narrow dog-legged street clogged with traffic.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p354
"You want us to open up the engine?" he said bewildered.
"Ah... yes... please" I said, a little perplexed, wondering how I could have been any more explicit. "But what if we find something wrong?" he shot back.
"What do you mean?" I said - a little exasperated. "My clutch has been re-built with scrap metal by a little Chinese man who lives in a closet and works on the pavement under a beach umbrella. I've ridden thousands of kilometres across deserts, along rutted mountain tracks, through rivers and been bogged knee deep in sand dunes. My bike needs to be examined and repaired properly! That's why I came here!" - I was ranting now.
The office manager listened politely and with great restraint, sensing my growing frustration, and said calmly, "Well, you know, the clutch, it is a complex piece of the motorcycle."
"You're telling me... I stuck a wrench in there two months ago and almost killed myself!"
"You know, it is illegal to ride bikes larger than 250cc in Iran; we have never actually serviced a bike like this before..." he confessed. The Mexicans looked away.
"But I saw a bike like mine in your showroom!"
"Shipped here in error... it's only on display because we have nowhere else to put it and can't afford to return it. We don't know how it works."
"No problem, just do your best," I said cheerfully.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p363
Depressingly, I could now trace my remaining journey on a single map and could count the days left until I finished with my fingers. Whether the road actually got better from here was almost a moot point now; for I was certainly going to finish. The roads were all well made and paved, people spoke English, there was solid and reliable infrastructure, and barring any mechanical disaster or traffic accident, nothing really stood in my way anymore. The goal that had seemed so Far And Away when I set out from the Pacific shores of Russia up near the Arctic Circle and had then became a pipe dream, as I broke myself and my bike in the bogs and marshes along the Road of Bones, was now becoming a reality. It was a strange sensation that left me feeling melancholy.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p385
And I knew it was time to finish when, just a few days before the end of my journey, I came to a fork in the road where a muddy unmarked dirt track led off in one direction and a neat sealed and signposted roadway continued on. Where once I would have instinctively taken Frost's "road less travelled" I now craved the certainty and reliability of the big, wide easy path - the bigger the better - for sadly, the highways and freeways had now become my preferred domain; I had simply lost the desire or gumption to explore and take risks anymore.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p395