From the Library

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

(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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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