From the Library

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

"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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

"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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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