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#91
General Discussion / Re: From the Library
Last post by Biggles - Dec 24, 2025, 01:31 AMWhen the sun is at the correct angle, your shadow races next to you as you fly along. The dark shape is your own hair streaming a mobile portrait in the medium of light on asphalt. It's a peculiar sight, but the start it gives is not like when you catch yourself in a mirror. This one is almost someone else, mysterious, featureless, perhaps even fearless.
When everything is going just fine, you can raise your weight off the saddle by standing on the pegs and the air itself seems to carry you; the smells of countryside or suburb or industrial fief are immediately upon you, then gone. There are uncanny presences all around. Rotting pumpkins, manure, road salt, Spanish moss in humid wind, a scent like a million burning tires in the yellow sky over Newark, pine, oyster shells. Some will never get a name. Not half of them would reach you in a car, even with all the windows down. This weekend, for four miles, I had the odour of cigarette in my nostrils, from the lit end hanging out from the pickup truck ahead. Then again, some smells just tell you you are riding much too close behind.
The Perfect Vehicle Melissa Pierson p232
When everything is going just fine, you can raise your weight off the saddle by standing on the pegs and the air itself seems to carry you; the smells of countryside or suburb or industrial fief are immediately upon you, then gone. There are uncanny presences all around. Rotting pumpkins, manure, road salt, Spanish moss in humid wind, a scent like a million burning tires in the yellow sky over Newark, pine, oyster shells. Some will never get a name. Not half of them would reach you in a car, even with all the windows down. This weekend, for four miles, I had the odour of cigarette in my nostrils, from the lit end hanging out from the pickup truck ahead. Then again, some smells just tell you you are riding much too close behind.
The Perfect Vehicle Melissa Pierson p232
#92
General Discussion / Re: Christmas 2025
Last post by ACTCapo - Dec 23, 2025, 10:55 PMMerry Xmas everyone. Ride well!
#93
General Discussion / Christmas 2025
Last post by kwaka - Dec 23, 2025, 04:21 AMAll the very best to you and yours from me and mine as we celebrate the season to be jolly!
Have happy and error free riding adventures going into 2026 and beyond.
Thank you for supporting and carrying the torch that was started those many, many moons ago.
Take care out there and look after one another.
Have happy and error free riding adventures going into 2026 and beyond.
Thank you for supporting and carrying the torch that was started those many, many moons ago.
Take care out there and look after one another.
#94
General Discussion / Re: From the Library
Last post by Biggles - Dec 23, 2025, 01:23 AMSince I come from a family that found anything more technical than changing light bulbs a job for experts, my love of motorcycles is not mainly based on the engineering miracles that send others into raptures. And although I feel a fascination born of both envy and the exotic appeal of foreignness for those mechanically oriented souls who are fearless in the face of exploded diagrams and who have obviously divined the mysteries of tools, always in possession of the proper implement for any job, my kind of admiration starts from outside.
Thus, to me, some of today's Japanese crotch rockets look a bit too much like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to command high aesthetic respect, not to mention the fact that they call up in me the vestiges of a vague childhood fear of toy robots. The genesis of their design can be traced back to Astro Boy; the mammoth tanks over which riders stretch like figures clinging to missiles, the impossibly wide rear tires, the squashed, biomorphic tails remind me of a sight from which I always recoil- the over-pumped, steroidal practitioners of obsessive bodybuilding. But they are a hell of a lot of fun to ride.
The Perfect Vehicle Melissa Pierson p216
Thus, to me, some of today's Japanese crotch rockets look a bit too much like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to command high aesthetic respect, not to mention the fact that they call up in me the vestiges of a vague childhood fear of toy robots. The genesis of their design can be traced back to Astro Boy; the mammoth tanks over which riders stretch like figures clinging to missiles, the impossibly wide rear tires, the squashed, biomorphic tails remind me of a sight from which I always recoil- the over-pumped, steroidal practitioners of obsessive bodybuilding. But they are a hell of a lot of fun to ride.
The Perfect Vehicle Melissa Pierson p216
#95
General Discussion / Re: From the Library
Last post by Biggles - Dec 22, 2025, 01:15 AMJanuary 2nd only comes around once a year, thank goodness. This year, 1995, marks my 46th birthday, by itself no great feat, but it was also the day that I embarked on my 30th birthday ride! I began this tradition in Cleveland, Ohio, with a ride on my brother's Vespa. He was in Korea and graciously left it behind. I assumed it was mine to ride and simply told my folks that this was Jim's gift to me. I don't know why they believed me but they did. So I threw my leg over the ugly thing and rode until my fingers were nearly frost-bit. It was a personal celebration.
Over the years I rode BMWs, BSAs, Triumphs, Harleys, Suzukis, and Hondas of my own, plus friends' Yamahas, Harleys, and Kawasakis when mine weren't running or in those lean years when I didn't own a bike (never again). There were rides in the rain, snow, slush and sleet as well as beautifully sunny days. The temperatures ranged from very close to 0 all the way to the 60s. I've been healthy as a horse and ready to go and seen the other side of that coin, too. In 1987 I took my birthday ride on my R65 Beemer only a few short weeks after being released from the hospital for open heart surgery. That was definitely the most painful ride of the bunch but also the most inspiring. I knew I was alive and had never been so happy about it! My birthday rides have been as short as around the block (during a blizzard where you couldn't see ten feet in front of you) to several hundred miles in the northern snowy mountains of Iran where it was very cold, slippery, and scary.
As the sticker on the back of my helmet says, "Motorcycles saved my life." Again and again.
The Perfect Vehicle Melissa Pierson p208
Over the years I rode BMWs, BSAs, Triumphs, Harleys, Suzukis, and Hondas of my own, plus friends' Yamahas, Harleys, and Kawasakis when mine weren't running or in those lean years when I didn't own a bike (never again). There were rides in the rain, snow, slush and sleet as well as beautifully sunny days. The temperatures ranged from very close to 0 all the way to the 60s. I've been healthy as a horse and ready to go and seen the other side of that coin, too. In 1987 I took my birthday ride on my R65 Beemer only a few short weeks after being released from the hospital for open heart surgery. That was definitely the most painful ride of the bunch but also the most inspiring. I knew I was alive and had never been so happy about it! My birthday rides have been as short as around the block (during a blizzard where you couldn't see ten feet in front of you) to several hundred miles in the northern snowy mountains of Iran where it was very cold, slippery, and scary.
As the sticker on the back of my helmet says, "Motorcycles saved my life." Again and again.
The Perfect Vehicle Melissa Pierson p208
#96
General Discussion / Re: From the Library
Last post by Biggles - Dec 21, 2025, 04:11 AMIf ever I wish to test the elasticity of my consciousness by posing fundamentally unsolvable conundrums along the lines of "Try to conceive of infinity" I have only to recall the night I stopped at a highway tollbooth and held out my money. The toll taker, a guy in his twenties, fairly started blubbering. Finally he squeezed it out with incredulity in his voice: "Did you ride that motorcycle here all by yourself?"
Every woman who rides in this country has been asked that perspicacious question at least once, and some so often they now amuse themselves with thinking up commensurately smart rejoinders: "No, I carried it on my head." "You've heard of the Immaculate Conception? Well, it's sorta like that."
The Perfect Vehicle Melissa Pierson p167
Every woman who rides in this country has been asked that perspicacious question at least once, and some so often they now amuse themselves with thinking up commensurately smart rejoinders: "No, I carried it on my head." "You've heard of the Immaculate Conception? Well, it's sorta like that."
The Perfect Vehicle Melissa Pierson p167
#97
General Discussion / Re: From the Library
Last post by Biggles - Dec 20, 2025, 10:14 AMI was encouraged to slow down only when I reached the Adirondack, whose trees and altitudes and gentle warmth made riding the perfect pleasure. I stopped for a root beer, from a brown bottle embossed with cowboys, and an ice cream cone, the kind of treats-from-the-past that are most appropriate to the area. I was growing about as relaxed as I ever got while travelling by myself, when I usually force myself to make a stop, even though my bladder had long been screeching for help or my stomach protesting its needs in minor sea squalls, and even then I would only pause long enough to get take-out sandwiches to eat in a few gulps outside on the kerb where I could be eye level with the Lario's carburettors.
The Perfect Vehicle Melissa Pierson p162
The Perfect Vehicle Melissa Pierson p162
#98
General Discussion / Re: From the Library
Last post by Biggles - Dec 19, 2025, 07:40 AMThey had one book, and it was one I did not yet own.
One Man Caravan, 1937. With a dust jacket. First edition. The author's signature on the flyleaf.
I was feeling poor that day, and I decided the twenty-dollar asking price was too rich for my blood. I carried it around the barn for two hours, then told the friend I was with I was going to put it back. He looked at me like the feebleminded wretch I was and took it from my hands and wordlessly marched to the cashier.
On the way home I started doing math in my head. If Fulton was twenty-two in the early thirties, how old would he be now? Well, old. But it was just possible that he was living in the New York area.
I called the publisher of the book, Harcourt Brace. It had on file addresses for the author current to the fifties, the last of which was care of an airline at an airfield in Connecticut. I sent a letter off into space, fairly certain it would land in the modern equivalent of the lead-letter office, and forgot about it.
But I can never forget, a month later, the evening before New Year's Eve. It was powerfully cold outside, which meant you could feel the frigid air with your hand an inch away from my apartment's walls; in the winter I became like a heat-seeking cat, spending much of my time standing next to the special old gas stove in the kitchen that provided the apartment's only warmth. I was pressed up against its vents, staring absently toward the windows I had ringed with little white Christmas lights, when the phone rang. The voice on the other end was strong and clear, and it said, "This is Robert Fulton."
The Perfect Vehicle Melissa Pierson p155-6
One Man Caravan, 1937. With a dust jacket. First edition. The author's signature on the flyleaf.
I was feeling poor that day, and I decided the twenty-dollar asking price was too rich for my blood. I carried it around the barn for two hours, then told the friend I was with I was going to put it back. He looked at me like the feebleminded wretch I was and took it from my hands and wordlessly marched to the cashier.
On the way home I started doing math in my head. If Fulton was twenty-two in the early thirties, how old would he be now? Well, old. But it was just possible that he was living in the New York area.
I called the publisher of the book, Harcourt Brace. It had on file addresses for the author current to the fifties, the last of which was care of an airline at an airfield in Connecticut. I sent a letter off into space, fairly certain it would land in the modern equivalent of the lead-letter office, and forgot about it.
But I can never forget, a month later, the evening before New Year's Eve. It was powerfully cold outside, which meant you could feel the frigid air with your hand an inch away from my apartment's walls; in the winter I became like a heat-seeking cat, spending much of my time standing next to the special old gas stove in the kitchen that provided the apartment's only warmth. I was pressed up against its vents, staring absently toward the windows I had ringed with little white Christmas lights, when the phone rang. The voice on the other end was strong and clear, and it said, "This is Robert Fulton."
The Perfect Vehicle Melissa Pierson p155-6
#99
General Discussion / Re: From the Library
Last post by Biggles - Dec 18, 2025, 01:41 PMFor some reason, riding the interstates on a motorcycle confers automatic, if only temporary, membership in the brotherhood of truckers. Often in a car I've felt I was the sixteen-wheeler's enemy, annoyingly in the way of a proper eighty-five on a downgrade and chugging forty on the incline. But on a bike I've felt protected by trucks, given wide berth, leeway to pass, signals on the all-clear. Maybe it's because so many drivers are bikers too. Maybe it's because both vehicles become more like comrades than agglomerations of parts. Or maybe it's because everyone needs friends out there in the big bad world.
The Perfect Vehicle Melissa Pierson p151-2
The Perfect Vehicle Melissa Pierson p151-2
#100
General Discussion / Re: From Beyond the Library
Last post by ZigZag - Dec 17, 2025, 07:25 AMLeave it to me. I'll write to Gianni Infantino. He's in charge of handing out awards of dubious value.