From the Library

[Biggles]

"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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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

[Biggles]

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