Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

Here I will resort to the old bike-parked-in-front-of-landscape shot. Because what a bike- and what a landscape. The motorcycle is a new BMW R1200GS, and this was our first adventure together. Strangely, BMW did not offer the bike in red this year (are they insane?), so I had to have it painted- because all my motorcycles have been red. I've never been comfortable driving a red car, you understand, but it just seems right for a motorcycle. And I didn't want to settle for a silver, blue, or (gasp!) yellowish-orange one. After having the paint done, and the accessories installed- Jesse luggage cases, Motolights on the front for extra conspicuity, GPS (Dingus III), power for the radar detector- I finally brought the new bike home in late November. I stood looking at it in my garage for a while, and wondered, "Where will we go together?" My two previous 1200GSes had certainly carried me far. For the Snakes and Arrows tour in 2007 and 2008, my two 'working bikes' had been a 2004 1200GS, with over 70,000 kilometres (42,000 miles), and a 2007 model, with over 60,000 kilometres (36,000 miles).
Far And Away  Neil Peart  p114

[Biggles]

But on that busy Sunday in Deals Gap, the traffic alone was enough to slow our progress- we were stuck in a halting parade of Harleys and clones all the way through the 318 sharp turns, switchbacks, and tricky hairpins. That kind of riding was way beyond the limited cornering clearance of such 'fashion statement' motorcycles, and apparently beyond their riders, too. But at least they'd be able to say they had ridden the Tail of the Dragon. And eventually even those leisurely cruisers drew ahead of us because we were crawling behind one wobbly neo-biker who looked the look, but most assuredly could not ride the ride. (My Harley-riding friend Dave has a sticker on his helmet that reads "$20,000 and 2,000 Miles Does Not Make You a Biker"). This specimen of fragile masculinity could not bow to letting us by- but at least we would not be having any conversations with the cops in the bushes. (Though they must have been snickering to themselves as we passed.)
Far And Away  Neil Peart  p131

[Biggles]

Altogether, in those five days I rode 2,500 miles, and was glad to pull into my own garage, and get off that bike. As I have quoted myself before, "When I'm riding my motorcycle, I'm glad to be alive- and when I stop riding my motorcycle, I'm glad to be alive."
That, I hope, will never change.
And I felt pretty good about the trip- despite all the rain, cold, and violent winds (and partly because of them), it had been an action-packed few days. My careful planning had paid off in all the important little ways, like the bike preparation, route planning, and wardrobe changes. (I laughed when I was pleased to note that I'd had 'all the right gloves', always a critical detail in riding comfort. These days I carry three pairs: for hot, dry weather; wet or dry cool weather; and cold, wet weather.)
Far And Away  Neil Peart  p191

[Bodų]

I carry three pairs too, plus some waterpoof glove covers for heavy rain.  An average of 800km per day over five days is quite easily doable if you ask me.

[Biggles]

"Oh, the places you'll go," said Dr. Seuss, and for this traveller, there is no way I'd rather go than by motorcycle. And it too can be a time machine, taking me to places where the past seems alive, but carried forward into the present. And that present-- the day's weather, scenery, wildlife, and humanity- is experienced with raw nerve-endings.
As for the future, it's always right there- the road ahead of my front wheel. But so far humans don't really have a way to send ourselves into the future- with the sole exception of transmitting our DNA through the delightful medium of babies. Some might say creating something beautiful that endures is a kind of immortality, but even if a story or a song survives into the future, it can't take you with it.
Far And Away  Neil Peart  pp235-6

[Biggles]

Riding my own motorcycle out of the MGM Grand Arena that night after the show was certainly a novel experience (unique, even, as I have never actually left a show by motorcycle), and I confess that I was mildly thrilled at having our two motorcycles led by two Police bikes, with flashing lights and everything. (Nice to have them in front of me, for once, instead of behind.)
After the motor officers had smoothed our way out of town, Chris and I set out across the dark Nevada desert on Interstate 15. I was tired enough after two shows in a row, and that day's 340 mile ride across the Mojave Desert in 112° heat (and an outdoor oil-change ditto), but felt no drowsiness- I was both exhilarated and powerfully alert.
The Ducati's headlight behind me was pale and yellow, and easily lost in other following traffic, but I tried to keep Chris in my mirrors all the time. Occasionally I slowed a little to make sure there was still a single headlight behind me, and there it was- though suspiciously slow and far back. Finally I got worried and pulled over to the shoulder, four-ways flashing in that inky darkness, with speeding traffic roaring up from behind. I looked back and watched that single headlight come up on me, then cursed as I saw that it was a one-eyed SUV. Pulling the handheld device out of my tankbag, I saw a text from Chris. "Rear tire shredded. Calling AAA."
Far And Away  Neil Peart  pp256-7

[Biggles]

On the "business travel" side, I have been motorcycling to concerts for fourteen years- hundreds of shows and tens of thousands of miles- and have yet to be late even for a soundcheck, let alone a show. However, this time I would not have the 'support crew' of a bus and trailer in the general vicinity (following the interstates while I explored the back roads). No spare bike, no BMW Roadside Assistance and well-placed dealers, none of the 'easy' rescues available in North America and Western Europe. We would be pretty much on our own.
As I wrote to Brutus early on, when he was painstakingly researching and planning the journey (for about six months), "You know that a lot is 'riding' on this little venture of ours, and NOTHING can go wrong." He needed no reminding, but perhaps it was another kind of magical thinking to state it so plainly- a talisman to ward off the Evil Eye.
We did have a real 'guardian angel' watching over us. Michael installed satellite tracking devices on our bikes, and while he travelled by air, with the band and crew, he could check his computer screen and follow our 'breadcrumbs' (that's what they call the electronic tracks we left, in that curious, playful imagery that sometimes emerges from high-tech language- a contradiction that has fascinated me at least since writing the lyrics for our song "Vital Signs" in that style, in 1980).
Far And Away  Neil Peart  pp274-5

[Biggles]

And it was one Brutus and I- and everybody else- were worried about getting ourselves to in time. We only had one day off to get there, and would have to ride 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) the first day, to Mendoza, Argentina, to be close enough to the Chilean border to be sure of getting to Santiago good and early.
Up in the dark and away by sunrise, we rode off across the Pampas again...
In Buenos Aires, Brutus and I heard that 'somebody' (probably the promoter) was sending a car to follow us across Argentina. Brutus passed the word back, "Just make sure we don't see the guy- at the hotel, or on the road." He and I agreed, "We don't want to be like Ewan and Charley," referring to actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, who have made a couple of amazing motorcycle journeys, around the world (as seen in Long Way Round) and from Scotland to South Africa (Long Way Down) but they travelled with a van carrying a film crew, medic and security officer. Actually, of course we did want to be like Ewan and Charley (who wouldn't?), but without the 'retinue'.
Knowing we had a long way to go, we attacked the day that way. Brutus and I fell into the rhythm we had established on our first motorcycle tours together- changing the lead at every fuel stop, and hardly stopping otherwise. Several times on that long ride we had to use our spare gallons of gas to reach occasionally far-distant gas stations, but that was why we carried them.
Far And Away  Neil Peart  p287

[Biggles]

California, Labour Day weekend... early, with ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levis roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads in Frisco, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey peninsula, north of Big Sur. The Menace is loose again, the Hell's Angels, the hundred-carat headline, running fast and loud on the early morning freeway, low in the saddle, nobody smiles, jamming crazy through traffic at ninety miles an hour down the centre stripe, missing by inches... like Genghis Khan on an iron horse, a monster steed with fiery anus.
Hell's Angels  Hunter S. Thompson  p13

[Biggles]

One of the worst incidents of that era caused no complaints at all: this was a sort of good-natured firepower demonstration, which occurred one Sunday morning about three-thirty. For reasons that were never made clear, I blew out my back windows with five blasts of a 12-gauge shotgun, followed moments later by six rounds from a .44 Magnum. It was a prolonged outburst of heavy firing, drunken laughter and crashing glass. Yet the neighbours reacted with total silence. For a while I assumed that some freakish wind pocket had absorbed all the sound and carried it out to sea, but after my eviction I learned otherwise. Every one of the shots had been duly recorded on the gossip log. Another tenant in the building told me the landlord was convinced, by all the tales he'd heard, that the interior of my apartment was reduced to rubble by orgies, brawls, fire and wanton shooting. He had even heard stories about motorcycles being driven in and out the front door.
No arrests resulted from these incidents, but according to neighbourhood rumour they were all linked to the Hell's Angels, operating out of my apartment. Probably this is why the Police were so rarely summoned; nobody wanted to be croaked by an Angel revenge party.
Hell's Angels  Hunter S. Thompson  p57

[Biggles]

The story of Harley-Davidson and the domestic motorcycle market is one of the gloomiest chapters in the history of American free enterprise. At the end of the Second World War there were less than 200,000 motorcycles registered in the United States, very few of them imports. During the 1950s, while H-D was consolidating its monopoly, bike sales doubled and then tripled. Harley had a gold mine on its hands - until 1962-3 when the import blitz began. By 1964 registrations had jumped to nearly 1,000,000 and lightweight Hondas were selling as fast as Japanese freighters could bring them over the ocean. The H-D brain trust was still pondering this Oriental duplicity when they were zapped on the opposite flank by Birmingham Small Arms Ltd of England. B.S.A. decided to challenge Harley on its own turf and in its own class, despite the price-boosting handicap of a huge protective tariff. By 1965, with registrations already up fifty per cent over the previous year, the H-D monopoly was sorely beset on two fronts. The only buyers they could count on were cops and outlaws, while the Japanese were mopping up in the low-price field and B.S.A. was giving them hell on the race track. By 1966, with the bike boom still growing, Harley was down to less than ten per cent of the domestic market and fighting to hold even that.
Hell's Angels  Hunter S. Thompson  pp86-7

[Biggles]

A Hell's Angel on foot can look pretty foolish. Their sloppy histrionics and inane conversations can be interesting for a few hours, but beyond the initial strangeness, their everyday scene is as tedious and depressing as a costume ball for demented children. There is something pathetic about a bunch of men gathering every night in the same bar, taking themselves very seriously in their ratty uniforms, with nothing to look forward to but the chance of a fight.
But there is nothing pathetic about the sight of an Angel on his bike. The whole- man and machine together- is far more than the sum of its parts. His motorcycle is the one thing in life he has absolutely mastered. It is his only valid status symbol, his equalizer, and he pampers it the same way a busty Hollywood starlet pampers her body. Without it, he is no better than a punk on a street corner.
Hell's Angels  Hunter S. Thompson  p96

[Biggles]

We drove back to camp very slowly. The car was so jammed with loose six-packs that I could barely move my arms to steer, and each bump in the road caused the springs to drag on the rear axle. When we got to the Willow Cove turnoff the car wouldn't climb the dirt hill that led into the pines... so I backed off and made a fast run at it, driving the junker straight into the hill like a cannon ball. Our momentum took us over the hump, but the crash pushed the right fender back on the tyre. The car lurched far enough down the trail to block it completely, and stopped just short of crashing into a dozen bikes enroute to the store. It took some rough work with a bumper jack to get it moving again, and just as we freed the front wheel a purple truck came grinding over the crest and rammed into my rear bumper. The rhythm of the weekend was picking up... a huge beer delivery, the rending of metal, greedy laughter and a rumble of excitement when Sonny told what had happened at Williams' store.
Hell's Angels  Hunter S. Thompson  p157

[Biggles]

For some reason I no longer have Bruno's card, but I remember him because he stole a full beer from me. I couldn't quite believe it, for he had gone to great lengths to make sure I didn't have any wrong impressions about the Gypsy Jokers. From time to time we would put our beers down on the trunk of the car we were leaning against. Just before he left I opened a fresh can, put it down and saw Bruno exchange it deftly for his own, which was empty. When I mentioned this to Hutch, he shrugged and said, "It was probably just a habit, one of those tricks you pick up from drinking in bars when you're broke."
Habits like these are widespread in outlaw society. The outlaws can be very friendly with outsiders, but not all of them equate friendship with mutual trust. Some will steal senselessly, out of sheer habit or compulsion, while others will take pains to protect a naive outsider against the more light-fingered of the brethren who are not to be pitied or censured, but only watched.
Hell's Angels  Hunter S. Thompson  p187

[Biggles]

Long before the outlaws discovered La Honda, the free-wheeling acid parties were already cause for alarm among respectable LSD buffs - scientists, psychiatrists and others in the behavioural science fields who felt the drug should only be taken in 'controlled experiment' situations, featuring carefully screened subjects under constant observation by experienced 'guides'. Such precautions are thought to be insurance against bad trips. Any potential flip-out who leaks through the screening process can be quickly stuffed with tranquillizers the moment he shows signs of blood lust or attempts to wrench off his own head to get a better look inside it.
Hell's Angels  Hunter S. Thompson  p244

[Biggles]

"There's only two kinds of people in the world," Magoo explained one night. "Angels, and people who wish they were Angels."
Yet not even Magoo really believes that. When the party swings right, with plenty of beer and broads, being an Angel is a pretty good way to go. But on some of those lonely afternoons when you're fighting a toothache and trying to scrape up a few dollars to pay a traffic fine and the landlord has changed the lock on your door until you pay the back rent... then it's no fun being an Angel. It's hard to laugh when your teeth are so rotten that they hurt all the time and no dentist will touch you unless the bill is paid in advance. So it helps to believe, when the body rots start to hurt, that the pain is a small price to pay for the higher rewards of being a righteous Angel.
This wavering paradox is a pillar of the outlaw stance. A man who has blown all his options can't afford the luxury of changing his ways. He has to capitalise on whatever he has left, and he can't afford to admit - no matter how often he's reminded of it - that every day of his life takes him farther down a blind alley.
Hell's Angels  Hunter S. Thompson  pp266-7

[Biggles]

But with the throttle screwed on, there is only the barest margin and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right... and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporise before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it... howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica ... letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge. The Edge. There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others- the living- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.
But the Edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.
Hell's Angels  Hunter S. Thompson  p282

[Biggles]

When I saw the car versus bike challenges the TV lot had come up with, I didn't think the bike stood a chance of winning any of them. The first was a quarter-mile drag race the wrong way up Hangar Straight. There were some cones lined up to show where the start was and the finish line was a bridge over the track. I lined up and looked to my right, where it's not another bike, it's David Coulthard in a V8 F1 car! Bloody brilliant. I was on the Superbike spec BMW S1000RR. It has launch control, but I wasn't using it. I'm quicker setting and controlling it manually, balancing the throttle, clutch and rear brake. With all the grip and power the F1 car's got, I thought Coulthard would smoke me. It as my first time on a superbike since breaking my back six months earlier, but I got off the line much quicker than the car. I was pressing hard on the back brake, to keep the front end down, and leading the car up to the halfway mark. Coulthard was coming fast and he just beat me, by three-tenths of a second. The terminal speeds were 159 mph for the car and 157 mph for the bike. Everyone was amazed how close it was.
Worms To Catch  Guy Martin  pp37-8

[Biggles]

The idea, for those who didn't see it at the time, was to set the fastest-ever speed recorded on a wall of death. I was determined to do it on a bike I'd built myself and had started making parts for it on the milling machine in my shed.
We weren't messing, it was going to be the biggest wall of death ever, at least twice the size of any other in the world, and as the date got closer I was working flat out on the Rob North triple, my wall of death bike. Every spare minute I had was spent working on it. I felt this was the biggest thing I'd done in motorcycling, and a big part of that was down to me building my own bike. Riding the wall itself wasn't what made it special, whole thing combined- building the bike, the wall and the riding. Who is ever going to do that again?
Worms To Catch  Guy Martin  p47

[Biggles]

Push-biking
I learned that I know my pace. I know that when hills get steep I should get off and push for a bit, not kill myself every five minutes to make a climb, because if I do that I won't last. So I was pushing up hills in Ireland that I could ride up on a normal day's ride. You need a different mindset when you know you're cycling for 750 miles, or 2,745 miles. You've got to know that if you're only doing 3 or 4 mph and your heart rate rises to 180 or 190 bpm while you're crawling up the hill you're not gaining anything. You can walk at that speed and get your heart rate down. And you have the added benefit that it stretches your legs. I only walked for five minutes or something at a time, until the gradient slackened off, then got back on.
Worms To Catch  Guy Martin  pp118-9

[Biggles]

Radical are a sports car company based in Peterborough. They started in 1997, making track cars powered by superbike engines. The cars were for keen track "day drivers", very lightweight, dead revvy and adjustable, so they were more like proper racing cars than modified road cars. And because they had motorcycle engines and fibreglass or carbon-fibre bodywork, they had good power-to-weight ratios. From very early in their history, Radical organised their own race series for owners, and they quickly started exporting around the world.
The company kept adding models, eventually making a road-legal car, all the time with bike engines, then, in 2005, they started using the Ford V8 engine in their SR8. That car- it looks like a modern Le Mans racer- holds the production-car lap record at the Nurburgring Nordschleife, the place I'd still like to go back to with a trick motorbike for a crack at the lap record. It's on the list.
Worms To Catch  Guy Martin  p130

[Biggles]

I was enjoying the Isle of Man TT less and less every year. It seemed like it was getting buried under more people, more bullshit, more mither. I still loved the racing, but it felt like it was harder to dig down to that through everything else. I enjoyed the 2015 TT, because I stayed out of the way and I had the dog out there with me, but I still drove home after the fortnight was over thinking, What am I doing? I wasn't there to make up the numbers. I'd gone faster than I ever had before, with a 132.398 mph lap in the 2015 Senior, and on the podium in the 600 race. So I was licking on, but I'd probably rather have been at work. There were good bits. I got to ride my bike around the TT course and walk my dog in the hills and go pushbiking, but I was going through the motions. I'd done it for years, and even though it's the Isle of Man TT, it's still only a motorbike race.
Worms To Catch  Guy Martin  p171

[Biggles]

Riding the USA Tour Divide bicycle challenge...
Later that night I was pedalling down a mountain pass in the dark when my pedal shot off for the second time and I lost the part that clipped to my shoe. Oh bloody hell. It was God knows how many miles to the next town, where there might not even be a bike shop. These clip-in pedals, designed to fasten to special cycling shoes, are only the size of a Ritz Cracker. I must have spent an hour scanning down the slopes with my head torch trying to find a bit of pedal to help me get by. It was only the end of the second day. I didn't know if my ankle being slightly out of line, and full of metalwork, was causing the bearings in my pedals to wear quicker, but I had tried to account for it with the angle of the clip on my shoe. I must have been doing something wrong, as it should've lasted longer than this. So now I had one good pedal and one slippery plastic sole trying, and failing, to grip on a finger of polished metal.
Worms To Catch  Guy Martin  pp184-5

[Biggles]

I left their shed at four in the morning and I was in Grants, where the Tour Divide trail crossed Interstate 40, which is part of the old Route 66, at eight. There was a big truck stop so I treated myself to my first shower since leaving the hotel in Banff. I was about 2,400 miles in and on my seventeenth day of riding, so I didn't know if I needed a shower or not, but I was going to have one anyway and it was mega. It cost me $11, though. I thought it was dear, but they gave me soap and the use of a towel. You had to book your shower, so while I was waiting I went in the diner and ordered summat called Chester's chicken. I was tucking into it when someone came to find me and told me my shower was ready. I took my chicken with me and sat naked on a bench in the shower, eating it. I caught the reflection of myself in a mirror and couldn't believe how much weight I'd lost. I was sat there, filling my face and thinking, Who's that? I looked like I'd escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp. If I hadn't have been biking I'd have been a fat bugger, the amount of rubbish I was eating.
Worms To Catch  Guy Martin  p239

[Biggles]

Riding the Tour Divide couldn't have been further away from the Isle of Man TT, both physically and mentally. It reminded me that most people are genuinely nice, when I was beginning to think that a lot of them were rude. I was getting the feeling that people had seen me on telly and only wanted to talk to me to tell someone else that they'd talked to me, and not because they were into what I was into or they had something interesting to say. America made me realise that it's not all like that. The people I met on the Tour Divide didn't know I'd been on telly a few times- they just wanted to help the person they'd just met, even though I smelt like a dead badger. They'd open their shop early, invite me in for a hot drink or fire the grill back up, even though they were just heading home, because they're nice people and they want to help other people. I've got manners and I ask for things politely- I think I'm a nice person, and I like it when other people are.
Worms To Catch  Guy Martin  p256