Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

So I crutched around and found a Rambler American convertible for sale for $200- white with bright red vinyl interior. I loaded the bike in a trailer, hooked the trailer to the bumper (not wise, in retrospect, but it held), tossed in my books and clothes, and headed towards the setting sun. At the western end of the Pennsylvania Turnpike I picked up a bearded hitchhiker who, it turned out, lived in Monterey. How convenient! The car worked flawlessly, if a bit slowly when climbing over Berthoud Pass in the Rockies on US 40. But with two of us driving and putting in long hours, we were there in five days. I kept the Rambler, though using it little, until I got my degree, at which point I sold it for $100. I remember it fondly.
Scrapiron, for that was the hitchhiker's moniker, and I became fast friends and riding buddies, and we attended the last official Death Valley Motorcycle Rally together, in the fall of '67. Which has nothing to do with this story, but I just threw it in for historical purposes.
From then on cross-countrying was done strictly on motorcycles.
101 Road Tales  Clement Salvadori  p230

[Biggles]

Then it was east to Cairns, on the Great Barrier Reef, and a wonderful place to camp on the beach. I met three Australian motorcyclists and decided to go up together to Cape Tribulation. The only trouble with Cape Trib was that to get there we had to cross the Daintree River, and the ferry only ran at high tide on Sunday. Once across we were committed for seven days. Good fun; we'd live off the land, and our sidecar man had a fishing rod, crab trap, and even a .22 in his hack. No problem, and all scoffed at our companion who bought twenty pounds of granola.
On the dirt road to the ferry we met some motorcyclists camping, including Geoff Lea, who had beat me there by going from Perth over the top of Australia. Small world. But he had places to go to the south, we had to catch the ferry, so the meeting was short.
We crossed the Daintree, got our front wheels jammed on sticky muddy roads, and camped in the most beautiful places. We ended up eating the granola quite thankfully, as rod, trap, and rifle produced nothing. However, the fields were full of hallucinogenic mushroom which added marvelously to the effect of the granola chapatis that were every evening's fare.
101 Road Tales  Clement Salvadori  p234

[Biggles]

Around this neck of the woods that I inhabit it is easy to get a ride together. We have a couple of Internet-savvy groups in the area, and all someone has to do is to type in that he's leaving from the Templeton park at nine o'clock on Saturday morning, and two to ten people will probably show up. Unless it is raining.
More immediate, of course, is the telephone. Of an evening, having just seen that the morrow's forecast is bright and sunny, I can call up Larry or John or whomever and say that I am going to McKittrick for chicken-fried steak, want to come along? I usually get company. Riding buddies are nice; on a day run they make the whole scene a little more interesting. And when I stop, they are there to race benches with me.
I don't always like company. If I have to go 2000 miles in three days I'll go by myself, thank you very much; he who travels alone travels fastest.
101 Road Tales  Clement Salvadori  p288

[Biggles]

There are more than 40,000 police jurisdictions in this country, with the FBI and other agencies covering the federal angle, down to state and county and local. My town of 24,000 denizens has 29 sworn officers on the payroll, providing protection 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And after ten years, I have not gotten a ticket in this town.
Although I did get stopped one evening, with that stomach-sinking feeling as my mirrors turned red. Oh, my God! What have I done? What am I in for? How much is this going to cost? All that negative stuff. But the cop only stopped me to tell me my taillight was out- no fix-it ticket, no nothing, he just wanted to make sure I didn't get rear-ended.
There can be a lot of friction between motorcyclists and cops. The classic contretemps was when the BMW Riders' Association, as do-gooding, law-abiding, authority-respecting a lot as ever twisted a throttle, held its annual bash down in Graham County, North Carolina, a few years ago, and the sheriff decided that these were a bunch of bad dudes and dudettes who should be harassed out of the place. He was a stupid cop.
101 Road Tales  Clement Salvadori  pp292-3

[Bodø Glimt]

the cop only stopped me to tell me my taillight was out- no fix-it ticket, no nothing, he just wanted to make sure I didn't get rear-ended.

I once advised a cyclist on Anzac Highway his taillight wasn't working at some bizarre hour of the morning and he just said "I know, but what can you do?".

[Biggles]

When traveling alone I stop when I'm tired, eat when I'm hungry, and I do not have to consider anyone else. Which may sound selfish to some, but the whole reason I am doing this is so that I do not inconvenience anyone else. I think it would be selfish and inconsiderate if I told whomever I was with that I did not care that he was hungry, that I was not stopping to eat.
Not that I don't enjoy riding buddies; there is lots to be said for them. Probably the number one reason is that you like his or her company a whole lot, and conversation is easy and interesting. Number two, perhaps, is the unspoken fear of a break down, be it a flat tire or a mechanical failure or an electronic crisis. When things do go wrong on a bike, I know very well that it is always more pleasant if somebody else is along with whom to share this little contretemps. And do a run for cold sodas while waiting for whatever.
However, in this current day and age of motorcycle technology breakdowns have become a very minor concern. My rear wheel seems to pick up a nail every couple of years, but the tubeless tire has pretty much reduced that problem to a half-hour inconvenience.
101 Road Tales  Clement Salvadori  p304

[Biggles]

As a corollary I do believe we should tax vehicles according to their weight. Gasoline isn't the only petroleum byproduct we deal with. How about asphalt, and the cost of road repair? I promise you, a thousand motorcycles with an average laden weight of 800 pounds, for a total of 800,000 pounds, do a heckuva lot less damage to the roadways than ten 80,000-pound trucks. Bikes can run day and night along US 101 and never dent the tarmac, while the thousands of big rigs moving through the Salinas Valley every 24 hours mean that the authorities are going to have to plan for fixing, even rebuilding, the road at regular intervals.
We motorcyclists consume a lot less gas than the average sedan or pickup, and our light weight means we have virtually no effect on the roadways or bridges. And we can put four bikes in a parking slot intended for one car.
Maybe the DMV should think about having zero registration fees for motorcycles and actually promote their use. What a daring thought! Motorcycles are, unless grotesquely modified with excessively loud exhausts, environmentally friendly, as they use less petroleum byproduct, and less space, than a car. Ride yours to work and tell your riding buddies to do the same.
101 Road Tales  Clement Salvadori  p312

[Biggles]

I well remember talking to a fellow on an organized motorcycle tour I was taking, and he confided that he had a problem. This was his third tour in five years, and each time he looked forward greatly to the adventure, bought new gear, loved the anticipation, but was troubled by the fact that on the first day of each tour his focus shifted 180 degrees and he began to think about getting home. The trip became a personal count-down, worrying about the diminishing amount of clean clothes, imagining things that might be going wrong at work, asking himself why he was spending all this money to be in Europe when he really wanted to be sleeping in his own bed. But six months after he got home, he would begin planning his next trip.
The beginning of any worthwhile journey is like riding into a sun-filled day, full of promise and wonder. All you want to do is to aim towards the horizon, with a host of superb roads and interesting adventures ahead. The accomplished traveler never wants to get to destination, just to keep on moving. But a vision of the stable can intrude.
101 Road Tales  Clement Salvadori  pp332-3

[Biggles]

Yesterday I had a shop put a set of Avon Azaros on the ST1100, and to scrub them in I took the 40-mile way home, via Las Pilitas Road. That's a nice rural road, running some seven miles through wooded hills, the occasional open field, only a few families living along there. The authorities have recently been kind enough to resurface the whole stretch, and the asphalt is narrow enough not to warrant a center line.
I turned off the straightish Pozo Road onto Las Pilitas, and that very feeling of the bike angling over caused a warm feeling in my body. We, the bike and I, headed up a little ridge, left, right, left, right, left, never staying perpendicular for more than a second. Crest the ridge, and we did the same going down to the Salinas River. I have taken all manner of machines over the road, from Harley Softails to dual-purpose singles and seriously sporty twins, triples, and fours. The style of the ride, as well as the rider, determines the angle of the lean. The rotational nature of a motorcycle makes the lean such a pleasure, always using power to the rear wheel; it is more banking than steering. Maybe I maintain a steady throttle in a bend, more often I'm accelerating, as I like to slow before the curve, then power through. Not too much gas, just enough to make the bike want to finish the curve by standing up straight.
101 Road Tales  Clement Salvadori  p335

[Old Steve]

Ain't that so.

I think you can get that feeling of just pulling off a corner perfectly at any speed, you don't have to be doing 160 km/hr.  Just fade wide, slow appropriately, turn in late, crease the apex, and slowly power on as you exit to straighten up and set yourself up for the next curve. And if you've done it right, even at the posted corner speed, don't you just feel the glow of having done it right.

[Biggles]

I try to be sensitive to non-motorcyclists, but admit that I have no understanding of, for example, the people who rise long before dawn to drive down to Morro Bay, get on a fishing boat, motor out to sea along with 30 others, most of whom will become seasick during the day, tangle lines all morning, and come back with a few mackerel that, on cost per pound, would have been considerably cheaper to buy at a supermarket. But they love it; they must, otherwise why would they suffer so?
Which is probably what the driver in the Volvo is thinking as I motor past him during a major rainstorm. He is warm and snug, and the garage-door opener will make sure he doesn't suffer even one drop of rain. Whereas I am exhilarated, loving this low-key battle with the elements.
We all know that motorcycling itself is a many-faceted avocation. I am essentially into road riding, traveling, going places, be it the post office or the Dolomites. But within our clan the differences are major. The Iron Butt battalion is about as removed from the Orange County Chopper regiment as earth is from Cassiopeia. I sometimes ride long distances in a short time, but only to get some place. I can appreciate, to a minor degree, the guy who spends fifty grand on a custom bike which is absolute eye candy, but a misery to ride more than a hundred miles; he is into two-wheeled showmanship, in which the bike is the show, not the rider. As opposed to the super-bike racer whose talents are the show, as all those fully faired bikes look very much the same at 150 mph.
101 Road Tales  Clement Salvadori  p346

[Biggles]

Or Iran in 1973. I was traveling two-up on a BMW R75/5, and on a lonely mountain curve the rear-end went all squirrelly. I kept the shiny side up, got over to the side of the road, and had an inspection. The differential had obviously overheated and was ruined, the rear wheel moving sideways along the axle a couple of inches, with the inner race of a bearing actually welded to the axle; I couldn't even get the wheel off. This bike was not going anywhere, until a stake truck appeared and stopped. No common language existed between me and the driver, but he understood the problem, fortunately the bike rolled, in a wobbly fashion, and he had a plank, so we managed to get the bike up on the bed; he turned the truck around and drove us to a railroad station. Eventually a train bound for Tehran came along, and the bike was pushed on. All was well five days later.
Many of us limit our travels because we do worry about things going wrong; we shouldn't, especially in the U.S. In this day and age we have cell phones and towing plans that pretty much cover every possibility, but even when those might not work, we can pretty much rely on the kindness and good will of passers-by to help us out.
101 Road Tales  Clement Salvadori  pp373-4

[Biggles]

A friend recently emailed me some pictures of an absolutely lovely (my word) road in Bolivia, built into the side of a vertical mountain, straight up on one side, straight down on the other- and I would really like to ride that stretch of dirt. On a nice day, of course, as dirt roads on rainy days can be more than exhilarating- especially when there is a 2000 foot drop and no guard rail. The Yungas Road, or the "Most Dangerous Road" as some non-Bolivians like to call it, runs from the capital of La Paz northeast to the town of Corioco, and has been handling truck traffic since 1935- with a largish number of fatal accidents. Not from collisions, mind you, but just falling over the edge.
Maybe I'm a bit on the strange side, but the thought of riding that road is purely pleasurable. A bit of a risk, but a heck of a view.
Sitting there on the porch I thought of all the places that moon's light (yeah, yeah, it's reflected, I know) has shone upon, over the entire planet, and about how many I've seen, how many more I will, how many I won't. Motorcycles have taken me to see the moon over ancient Zimbabwe, over the ruins in New Mexico's Chaco Canyon. For me, going someplace most always involves motorcycles; I don't want to sit in a bus or a rented car, I want to ride.
101 Road Tales  Clement Salvadori  p380

[Biggles]

My Triumph and I limped into Georgetown in May of '76 riding on the last drops of juice in my battery. The stator had burned out in my alternator, just north of Kuala Lumpur. Usually I accepted these difficulties with good grace, but this one irked me constantly. For three years I had been carrying a spare of that very same part, but it was heavy, and in Singapore, I decided I would never need it. I wrapped it up and mailed it home. A week later, I needed it, and of course it could only be got from England. The Lucas company, one of my sponsors, had a shop in Penang, and they arranged to have it sent, but it would take a couple of weeks. So, as I waited while my two stators passed each other somewhere in mid-air, I took up residence at the Choong Thean hotel on Rope Walk, and went fishing off the esplanade.
Riding High  Ted Simon  p9

[Biggles]

One day, in a fit of sudden resolution, I went into a little leathergoods shop and bought a square foot of supple tan leather. With a fine Victorian stitching tool given to me by a friend in Buenos Aires I made a copy of the pouch I had lost. It took me most of one day make, and it was a first big step towards recovering my belief in the future. Almost immediately afterwards I learned that the spare part for my motorcycle alternator had arrived from England. The next morning, gingerly, holding my breath and shaking inwardly, I wheeled the Triumph out of the hotel into Rope Walk.
T'an, the boss, and the downstairs ladies watched with varying degrees of admiration and amusement. There was enough of a charge still in the battery to get me to the Lucas workshop. I kicked the engine over and it started faultlessly. I rode out into Campbell Street and, with all the panache of a middle-aged gentleman on a penny-farthing, made my way through the streets of Penang.
For almost a week after that I was immersed in motorcycle maintenance.
Riding High  Ted Simon  p32

[Brock]

I think that shop is still there. The RAAFies used to go there for parts for the Triumph and BSAs they managed to find when stationed at Butterworth. Some parts in the shop were still in their original wax wrappers

[Biggles]

When I got to Alor Star six weeks later I had forgotten about the Captain. Then the sign for Padang Besar reminded me, and I followed it as a duty to unfinished business. It never does any harm, I told myself, to have friends in the army, especially at borders.
The entrance to the army camp was unimpressive, a small shack beside a wooden barrier and a muddy track leading apparently to nowhere. A glum soldier in a green waterproof cape stared at me while I manoeuvred the motorcycle so that I could talk to him. There was often this odd hiatus when I stopped to talk to strangers, getting the bike into position, taking off the helmet so that they could see who they were talking to. It was prolonged this time because I couldn't find neutral on the gearbox. Eventually I had to stall the engine in first gear, which irritated me a little and perhaps put a sharpness in my voice I had not intended.
"I'm looking for Dylan," I said. "Captain Dylan."
It meant nothing to him.
"Dylan," I repeated. "He said everybody knew him."
"I don't know him. What Company?"
"I don't know," I said, beginning to feel foolish. "He said I would find him here, that's all."
I stopped at the sound of laughter from inside the hut. A voice called: "Tell him he's too late. They took him away already."
"Took him away?"
"He was shot."
A smooth brown face appeared round the doorway and, on seeing me, stopped laughing and became stern.
"Who are you?" it demanded. This is a question I have always had difficulty answering; earlier in life because I genuinely didn't know, and later because I knew too well.
"My name is Simon," I said. "I..."
Riding High  Ted Simon  pp49-50

[Biggles]

The second speaker ended his speech to a tumult of clapping. Three girls came on the stage wearing the costume, jewellery and make-up of the traditional Siamese dance. The musicians played and the girls danced, hips swaying and arms waving with the languid and sinuous movement of underwater plants. For this the diners interrupted their conversation. They watched the dancing with evident pleasure, and applauded the girls enthusiastically, betraying no loutishness whatsoever. Then the band returned to playing Western music.
Some couples got up from their tables and took to the dance floor. To my utter astonishment, in their conservative suits and chic dresses, they faced each other and began to dance with the same slow stylized movements of the temple dancers who had just disappeared. If a band of naked cannibals had danced the fox-trot around a boiling missionary I would not have been more surprised. It was such anachronism, combined with such an incongruity of dress, that made me know I was really in a very foreign country.
Riding High  Ted Simon  p59

[Biggles]

I've been erratic with these posts recently because other things (especially riding) have cut into my reading time.  This might get worse before it gets better, but I'll try to keep up the supply as frequently as possible.
--------------------------------------

At seven I was up and dressed to take coffee and dim sums downstairs. The weather was dry and bright, and the day seemed to be starting well until I saw that the tank-bag on the bike was sagging miserably on one side. It was normally plump and tightly packed and the hostile emptiness where something should have been was matched by the sudden hollow in my stomach. I knew instantly that the camera had been stolen, and realized in the same flash of thought how doltish I had been to suppose that the thieves would all be outside the hotel. And it was that, more than the loss itself, which almost dragged me right down. Would I never get it right again?
It was a mere formality to put my hand in the bag and confirm the theft. There was no chance, I knew, of recovering the camera. So why bother to mention it? I asked myself. Why not just wheel the bike out on to the street with a satisfied smile? Why let them all know that yet another improvident idiot had fallen victim to the national sport? First my documents and my money. Now the camera. Truly, I had joined the ranks of the despised.
Riding High  Ted Simon  pp79-80

[Biggles]

The last of Gopi's letters takes me to Marine Drive, and his friend Nasir, a wealthy sportsman who likes to race cars, owns a chain of cinemas and has a delightful Parsee wife called Katy. He has a room for me, is very hospitable, and offers to help with my motorcycle maintenance which has become urgent. The bike has now done 48,350 miles. There is a bad oil leak out of the rear pushrod cover and, after taking the top off and noticing the scoring and pitting, we decide we might just as well do a rebore and fit the new pistons I was carrying, as well as fitting new exhaust valves.
When I reassemble everything I make the stupid mistake of forgetting to reset the tappets. Tightening down the top I bend both the push rods. I have one spare with me, bend another one back. It works. Huge relief. It's not the only mistake I make. Three major cock-ups altogether, and I'm lucky to get away with them. Why am I making these errors? It worries me.
Riding High  Ted Simon  p112

[Biggles]

In any event, for all the night's discomfort I felt bright and optimistic in the morning, ate a few biscuits, and rode on. The land was flattening out and becoming more hospitable as I came to Udaipur, a big, busy, fortified city. I stopped only for a drink and to take a photograph of a poor woman and her babies camped on the sidewalk under a piece of cloth slung over some string. Not that there was anything unusual about her circumstances, but next to her was a sign advertising luxurious accommodations with central heating, and a movie poster promising ultimate joy and fulfillment, while behind her loomed an elaborate palace. The juxtaposition was too poignant to miss.
Riding High  Ted Simon  p116

[Biggles]

It wrenched my mind, standing there, to recall that I was the same person who, only a few months ago, was riding alone across the Bolivian Altiplano, more than two miles above sea level through a curtain of freezing drizzle. The day before I had fallen in a river and lost the last of the plastic bags I used to protect my gloves from rain. My hands were frozen tight, and the cold was reaching up my arms. My usual defence against cold was to sing, uproariously and defiantly, into the flying air- sea shanties and folk songs dimly remembered from the News Chronicle Song Book of 1937. For once the antidote failed. It became intolerable to continue, Rummaging in my mental attic for other remedies I came across a story told to me about an Italian climber who survived a four-day blizzard on a vertiginous alpine shelf while his companions perished. His method was rhythmically to clench and unclench his fingers- the only movement he could perform without falling.
I began to do the same on my handlebar grips. At first it was simply agonizing. Then a biological miracle occurred in my arms. Warmth flooded down to meet the cold. It was such a precise reaction that I could tell where the interface was at any time, felt it moving down past my wrist to the knuckles, then the finger tips. Soon my whole body was tingling with life, and I traveled on to La Paz in an invisible bubble of warmth and comfort.
Riding High  Ted Simon  pp160-1

[Biggles]

"You know I've got to. You know I'll be back in plenty of time."
She looked at me then with the venomous expression that I dreaded.
"You might at least say you're sorry. Why don't you say you're sorry?"
"I'm sorry," I said. I didn't sound sorry.
"You're not sorry. You'll be glad to get away from me. You'll be glad to leave that fat old frump you married by mistake. I can see you now, swanning around the country meeting glamorous women and talking your silly head off about your bloody journey- and all those bloody women you made love to. All those famous love affairs the whole world knows about..."
She was in a frenzy of hate and I was paralyzed with fury, incapable of doing anything to stop it, and even as she heaped on the abuse and I fought back, I was asking myself: How does it happen quickly? How can I be so helpless? Why can't I do something to stop the pain? Didn't I learn anything, after all?
"I'm getting out of here," I cried. "I can't stand any more of this."
"That's right," she said. "Run away, just as you always do. Just like you always have."
Riding High  Ted Simon  p203

[Biggles]

If our isolation was a predicament I was blind to it. I had not lived in my own country for twelve years, and I had spent four of those years on the road, proving that I was equally at home anywhere in the world.
"Perhaps you'll never be at home anywhere," people suggested but I rejected this idea and refused to think about it. How could I entertain such a thought when I was married and had a child on the way? As long as I wanted a home (and I fervently believed that I did), why shouldn't it be wherever we chose to have it? There would always be good people around anywhere. As long as we loved and cared for each other, as long as we got along, surely everything would be fine.
So I unconsciously extended the philosophy of the solitary traveller to include my wife, and forgot the lesson of Penang.
My idea of getting along was to be in charge. It was an easy mistake for me to make, so ingrained was my habit of solitariness. As an only son, with a father long since dead and a mother inevitably distant, however much loved, I knew little about the comforts and duties of family life, neither as the beneficiary nor the donor.
Riding High  Ted Simon  p205

[Biggles]

Just as a traveller is always picking up information from chance meetings with people coming the other way- tips about borders, money changing, the state of the road- in the same way, I am convinced, the body is also alerted to approaching changes in the environment. How otherwise to explain that nowhere in Africa can I recall having any health problems at all. And it is no coincidence, I'm sure, that my morale was high, and rising almost all the way. I started with many anxieties, and as they were revealed to be baseless, my confidence grew. I was so full of good stuff, so amazed and excited by my good fortune that sickness was just not in the cards.
On a purely physiological level there can hardly be any argument; the better you are adapted to your environment, the better your body will be able to resist prevailing predators and parasites.
Riding High  Ted Simon  p216