From the Library

[Biggles]

A few hundred motorcyclists got rowdy in Hollister on the July 4th, 1947 weekend. Townspeople admitted it had been no worse than what the cowboys did each year at the annual stock fair (and in fact the town staged motorcycle races in Hollister again just a few months later.)
A few days after the so-called riot, a photographer staged a photo of a beefy, threatening looking drunk, slumped on a motorcycle surrounded by empty beer cans.
Life Magazine ran it, triggering a media frenzy that lasted well into the 1960s. In a bizarre example of life imitating art, real gangs motorcycle outlaws were formed in response to those stories.
Bathroom Book Of Motorcycle Trivia  Mark Gardiner Day 62

[Biggles]

The Mont Blanc Tunnel is one of the longest and highest tunnels in the world, connecting the highway systems of France and Italy through the Alps. When a transport truck caught fire in the middle of the tunnel, the smoke and flames trapped about 50 people. Of those, 12 survived. All of them reached the mouth of the tunnel saying, "That guy on the motorcycle saved my life."
That man was Pier Lucio Tinazzi, an Italian tunnel employee who rode his BMW K75 in and out of the tunnel - a seven-mile round trip through choking smoke and fumes - to bring people out. On the final trip, he came across an unconscious driver who he could not get onto the back of his motorcycle. He refused to abandon him and dragged him to shelter in a small room off the tunnel. Both men died.
Tinazzi was posthumously awarded Italy's highest honour for civilian bravery, as well as the Federation Internationale Motocycliste (FIM's) gold medal for exceptional courage and service to the sport of motorcycling. Every year, several hundred Italian motorcyclists ride to the tunnel mouth on the anniversary of Tinazzi's heroic deed.
Bathroom Book Of Motorcycle Trivia  Mark Gardiner Day 69

[Biggles]

Long before there was a Daytona International Speedway, races and record attempts were held on the sandy beachfronts of Daytona and neighbouring Ormond, Florida.
At low tide the damp, hard-packed sand provided a straight, dead level surface that ran for miles. It was perfect for land-speed record attempts. In 1904, the pioneering aviator Glenn H. Curtiss rode his two-cylinder motorcycle 67.36 mph - a class record that stood for seven years.
In 1907, Curtiss returned to the beach with a motorcycle powered by one of his V-8 airplane engines. That motorcycle made about 40 horsepower - a heck of lot in the day. It reached a speed of 136.27 mph.
Curtiss' V-8 wasn't just the world's fastest motorcycle - it was the fastest thing on wheels, period. The daring young man held the land speed record for twelve years until Ralph dePalma went faster in a Packard car, also on Daytona Beach. That was the last time that the outright land speed record was ever held by a motorcycle.
Bathroom Book Of Motorcycle Trivia  Mark Gardiner  Day 96

[Biggles]

Kenny Roberts had been frustrated that his Yamaha-powered flat tracker was nowhere near as fast on mile tracks as the Harleys. Then Kel Carruthers stuffed a four-cylinder TZ750 road racing motor in a flat track frame. The bike had far too much power even for Roberts. Carruthers had to rig it with a "kill switch" that shut off one of the cylinders, or it would spin the rear tire all the way down the straightaways. Still, the one time Roberts rode it, he won on it.
That was at the 1975 Indy Mile. After wrestling with it the entire race, Roberts somehow found traction coming off the very last turn. The bike shot down the track and Roberts passed a shocked Jay Springsteen a few feet before the finish line. After the race, he blurted, "They don't pay me enough to ride that thing!" He needn't have worried, the AMA soon banned it.
Bathroom Book Of Motorcycle Trivia  Mark Gardiner  Day 128

[Biggles]

Mike Hailwood established himself as the greatest motorcycle racer of all time in the 1960s. With nothing left to prove on two wheels, he set out to become the Formula One car champ.
He won the European Formula Two championship in '72, driving for John Surtees' team. The next year he switched to McLaren and again showed good speed but crashed heavily at the Nurburgring, ending a promising car-racing career.
In 1978, Hailwood announced a return to the Isle of Man TT races, where he'd won his greatest victories. Between the late '60s and the late '70s, road racing had changed dramatically. Thanks to improvements in tires and suspension, cornering speeds were much higher. Racers now all hung off and put their knees down - a technique that was faster but far more physically tiring than the classic, tucked in style from Hailwood's championship years. Mike the Bike proved his doubters wrong when he won 1978 TT on a Ducati. Ironically the class he won was, also, called Formula One.
Bathroom Book Of Motorcycle Trivia  Mark Gardiner  Day 150

[Biggles]

The most-watched jump in the movies was a stunt in the 1963 film The Great Escape. Although the film's star, Steve McQueen, was a skilled and aggressive motorcycle rider, the producers wouldn't allow him to perform his own stunts, so that jump was made by McQueen's friend and racing mentor Bud Ekins.
Ekins was a veteran Hollywood stunt man and one of the top desert racers in southern California. Although in the story, McQueen's character has stolen a German military-issue motorcycle, the stunt was performed on one of Ekins' Triumph desert racing bikes, repainted in drab military colours.
Bathroom Book Of Motorcycle Trivia  Mark Gardiner  Day 155

[Biggles]

The aptly named Rollie Free was a motorcycle racer as a young man but is remembered mainly as the subject of the most famous motorcycle photo ever. The picture shows Free, laying flat on a Vincent Black Shadow, wearing nothing but a bathing suit, on the Bonneville Salt Flats.
Free had set several speed records at Daytona Beach before going to the Salt Flats in 1948. That year, he set a record at 148 miles per hour but wanted to reach 150. 
Thinking that his leather suit was causing drag, Free stripped and put on a skimpy bathing suit. Lying horizontally on the Vincent's fuel tank, stretched out like Superman, he did in fact go 150. Although Free was the guy who earned eternal fame for the stunt, he later admitted that he got the idea after watching Ed Kretz do the same thing at a speed trial on a California dry lake.
In 1950, Free returned to the salt and pushed his record to 156. He survived a high-speed crash that Speed Week - thankfully while wearing full leathers!
Bathroom Book Of Motorcycle Trivia  Mark Gardiner  Day 160

[Biggles]

In 1979, Honda made an abortive attempt to build a four-stroke 500GP motorcycle that could compete with the two-strokes. The NR500 was one of the company's rare failures although it proved that the unique "oval piston" technology was viable. It was not until 1992 that oval pistons briefly appeared in a production motorcycle - the NR750.
The NR750 was Honda's "ultimate motorcycle" and the incredible motor (nominally a V-four but with 8 con rods, 8 spark plugs, and 32 valves) was only part of its over-the-top specification. It also had electronic fuel injection, a single-sided swingarm, carbon-fibre bodywork, magnesium wheels - and a $60,000 price tag. About 200 were made.
Bathroom Book Of Motorcycle Trivia  Mark Gardiner  Day 184

[Biggles]

"Mike the Bike" Hailwood was widely recognized as the greatest motorcycle racer of all time, based on his Grand Prix racing exploits and many TT victories in the 1960s. With nothing left to prove on two wheels, he became a car racer. Although he won the world Formula 2 championship, his car career ended when he crashed a McLaren Formula One car at Nurburgring. That crash severely injured his legs.
Mike retired to New Zealand. Years later, he announced he would return to the Isle of Man. In the interim, motorcycles had changed a lot. There were many who feared the worst. In practice, Mike was not the youthful hero people remembered; he was bald, he limped, he looked older than his years. But come the TT Formula 1 race, he gave Ducati one of its most famous victories. He proved the adage, "old age and treachery will always defeat youthful enthusiasm" when he returned again in '79, winning a fourteenth TT before retiring once and for all.
Bathroom Book Of Motorcycle Trivia  Mark Gardiner  Day 257

[Biggles]

When I looked at the map, Route 80 would be a good choice to get to Chicago. Straight East and West travel. It was the fastest and most efficient way to get a lot of miles in before I broke off and toured the country. The first day of travel was rather nice. It did have a shower or two and I found out that a poncho was not the best rain gear. It flapped in the breeze and it didn't cover my legs. Oh well. I decided that I wouldn't travel in a downpour. When you're travelling on a motorcycle for 8+ hours a day you find that you must change positions quite a few times. Sometimes you crouch over like a café racer, sometimes legs are fully extended to the pegs, sometimes you stand for a few seconds, just because. The Norton also had vibrations through the handlebars. After a while my hand became numb. It took my body about a week to adjust without becoming numb; the Norton wasn't the best touring bike.
Those Were The Days  Edward Walls p21