Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

It might surprise some people when I say that I travel without a tool kit. It sounds foolhardy, I know, particularly in view of the fact that we sometimes end up in pretty remote places. There's a reason for it though. If you're completely self-sufficient and never need to stop except to fill up your tank with gas, you could do an extensive journey in a country like Brazil without ever really interacting with people, particularly in the rural communities you pass through. And that would be a shame. Cities are fascinating, and talking to city dwellers can be instructive on many levels, but what you experience and learn from them is just part of the story, in any country. If I didn't need to stop when some relatively inconsequential thing went wrong with my motorcycle, I wouldn't have the unplanned encounters in small towns and villages that often give me most satisfaction.
Tough Rides: Brazil  Ryan Pyle  p128

[Biggles]

Our journey involved traveling several thousand kilometers around a country of very variable development. For someone like me, who loves problem solving, all the planning that has to be done to take into account all the things that could go wrong on a journey like that is quite the opposite of the logistical nightmare many people might consider it to be. I enjoy setting schedules and being a task master, because I believe that if you want to achieve things in life, you have to set yourself a series of small tasks that eventually enable you to accomplish the larger, life-changing goals. Sometimes, when it's really hard to keep going, you have to remind yourself that each step takes you closer to where you want to be, and the only way you're going to get there is to keep taking those steps.
Every journey stretches and changes me, and after every tough experience that breaks me down, I emerge stronger and more confident in my own abilities. We expected our circumnavigation of Brazil to last for 60 days. I knew that on any one of those days something could go wrong. But I knew, too, that if we made it safely to the end, we would not only have achieved what we set out to do, we would also have learned something about Brazil and about ourselves that we hadn't known when we left Rio de Janeiro just two months earlier. As we left our hotel the Iguazu Falls on the morning of day 48, I knew that was the larger goal on this occasion. To me, it was a goal that seemed eminently worth achieving.
Tough Rides: Brazil  Ryan Pyle  p138

[Biggles]

We had spent 61 days on the road in Brazil and at the end of our journey I could honestly say that not a single one of them had been disappointing. There were plenty of days that were exhausting, and some when I didn't think I could have hauled my motorcycle out of the mud just one more time even if my life had depended on it. But even on the worst days, we kept moving. And, for me, momentum is what adventure is all about- moving forward every day, both physically and in terms of having new experiences, learning new things, and meeting new people. In all those respects, and many more, Brazil had far exceeded my hopes and expectations, every day for 61 days.
In the past, I've found it difficult to settle down to 'real life' again after the long journeys I've done. But, for some reason, it was different this time. Instead of struggling with a transition period when I didn't want to do anything because nothing was as exciting as what I had been doing while I was away, I started taking meetings almost immediately after my return to Shanghai.
Tough Rides: Brazil  Ryan Pyle  p169

[Biggles]

My first terminal case of showroom lust was caused by one of those Indian motorcycles, a machine built for Indian by Italjet with a chrome tank, motocross bars, and a loop frame. I loved that bike and would sit on it and beg mercilessly for one. My parents were both teachers, and Dad had just enough cash on him to pay the $1.50 to sharpen the saw chain. Plus Dad considered it exorbitant to pay more than 20 bucks for a family meal, a hotel room, or a set of tires. He was not opposed to spending slightly more than that sum on rototillers, purebred beagles, and shotguns, but a new motorcycle was not and never would be part of Dad's fiscal priorities, means, or intentions.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  p9

[Biggles]

Hunter S Thompson
When the Ducati turned up in my driveway, nobody knew what to do with it. I was in New York, covering a polo tournament, and people had threatened my life. My lawyer said I should give myself up and enroll in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Other people said it had something to do with the polo crowd.
The motorcycle business was the last straw. It had to be the work of my enemies, or people who wanted to hurt me. It was the vilest kind of bait, and they knew I would go for it.
Of course. You want to cripple the bastard? Send him a 130-mile-per-hour cafe racer. And include some license plates, he'll think its a streetbike. He's queer for anything fast.
Which is true. I have been a connoisseur of fast motorcycles all my life. I bought a brand-new 650 BSA Lightning when it was billed as "the fastest motorcycle ever tested by Hot Rod magazine". I have ridden a 500-pound Vincent through traffic on the Ventura Freeway with burning oil on my legs and run the Kawa 750 Triple through Beverly Hills at night with a head full of acid.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  p28

[Biggles]

Dave Nichols
During one of the druggy campfire scenes in the film, Peter Fonda takes a toke of marijuana and asks Luke Askew and Dennis Hopper, "Have you ever wanted to be anyone else?" Luke Askew squints in the pot smoke and slurs, "I'd like to try Porky Pig."
Hopper giggles, and Fonda just nods. "I never wanted to be anybody else." Well, of course you never wanted to be anybody else; you're Captain America, you're Peter friggin' Fonda, the standard by which all coolness is measured. In that moment, my friends, the die was cast, and the rebel in me found a voice. Without ever having thrown my leg over a motorcycle I knew that there was something about riding one that had freedom, with the feeling of the wind in your hair and bugs in your teeth.
By whatever name that feeling went, I wanted it.
As it turns out, I was right. Few things I've found in life give me the same sense of freedom I feel while blasting down the road on a motorcycle, especially if it's a custom chopper.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  p36

[Biggles]

John Hall
We used to tell him that he didn't need a throttle on his motorcycle- just an on-off switch. That's because the carburetor was either cranked wide open with the throttle nearly ripped off in his hand, or else he was standing on the brake pedal, all 230 pounds of him, trying to lock up the drum brakes and bring the screaming machine to a halt before he blew a red light and broad-sided a tractor trailer.
He blew head gaskets and burned valve seats, or just wrecked the thing and mangled it up like some dirt bike. Fortunately he had a Beeser, a British bike similar to a Triumph, manufactured by Birmingham Small Arms (BSA), and like Triumphs they were easy to repair and handled well. Had he tried some of his circus stunts on a hog, he would have wrecked a lot more often. It seemed his bike was in an almost constant state of repair- in someone else's garage. That's because we never let Willie work on his own bike. He had no mechanical ability whatsoever, and he fixed bikes, like everything else, to wretched excess. He could apply enough torque to rip the head off a boar hog; 1/4-inch aluminum bolts stood no chance against him.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  p65

[Biggles]

Adele Kubin
All of my life I had distrusted my own abilities. Things hadn't worked out as I hoped. I'd lost my family, my home, even my name. So I expected troubles from the cycle, too, and for some good reasons. My army surplus trike was built on a 35-year-old frame and a small budget with old tools and parts I'd scrounged from swap meets and out-of-the-way bike shops all over the West Coast. The smell of carburetor cleaner, fresh oil, and new paint reminded me that this was, after all, our maiden voyage. Something could indeed come loose, come out of adjustment, or fly apart. But it was my bike, and I wanted to ride.
More rain. I could hear the rumble of the other Harleys behind me. Once again I cursed the person whose idea it had been to put me at the head of the pack. Someone had decided that since I was the only female and with the slowest machine, I should be in front so they wouldn't lose me. I protested that I didn't know where the turn-off to Le Chateau was but to no avail.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  p108

[Biggles]

I was concentrating on the deer-ridden road in front when I realized the noise behind had shifted direction. Damn! I looked back... The pack had turned off. They were dropping away on a diverging road now 10 feet below down a steep stone embankment. Without really thinking about the consequences I cranked the handlebars, twisted the throttle, and launched off the cliff. Into the air I went, flying, on a homebuilt, World War II, three-wheeled Harley-Davidson. Not many people ever have that sensation, or the next one. Crunch! I landed with enough force to knock the wind out of me, but still rolling, and right in front of the pack where I had started. I could hear the hollering and hurrahs above the wind and engine noise. When I turned around, everyone was waving hands and cheering. I was stunned. What a stupid thing to do, and it worked! I rode on, benumbed, with a silly smile on my face.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  p108

[Biggles]

James Stevenson
Knievel's plan for the jump was to start his motorcycle in the wings, gun it to seventy miles an hour, go up the ramp, take off, land on the far ramp, go out into the wings on that side of the arena, and somehow come to a stop before he hit the concrete sidewall of the Garden. "It can't be done," one of the men had remarked, out of Knievel's hearing. "He may be able to make the jump, but he can't stop." Knievel limped along down the middle of the arena, past the ramps- a somber figure, his face set and grim. Suddenly, lilting music began to play over the loudspeakers.
Around four in the morning of the day of the opening, Knievel made his first trial jump, landed, zoomed into the wings, and smashed into the wall, injuring himself (one of the handlebars went into his groin; his legs were bruised) and wrecking the front end of his motorcycle. There was talk of cancelling the show, but Knievel decided against it. The motorcycle was repaired, and thin strips of corrugated rubber were taped to the floor of the Garden; these, it was hoped, would slow him down so that he could stop a few feet short of the wall.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  pp142-3

[Biggles]

Dan Walsh
Three weeks, 2,000 miles, about half of it off-road. The worst of it is from Beira to Inhaminga. Slowest damn piste I have ever ridden, a narrow squeeze that's a river in the wet season and a bitch in the dry, a steeply cambered, granny-knuckled finger covered with slippery sand and jaw-clunking rocks. The day is lived through blistered feet on jarring footpegs, through aching wrists on slapping bars, through not-quite-numb-enough bum that's on and off that bucking seating. The bike winces "eeesh" as if it's banged its knee on a coffee table as we clip a pothole and ding the rim. I suspect the rear shock's burst. I know my kidneys have. Every time we hit a bump, I groan and the bike creaks. We sound like Steptoe doing star jumps. This is not sexy off-roading.
And then it rains. Proper tropical wet rain. I'm bone-dry and sweaty. I count to seven. I'm soggy-wet and shivering. Its like riding through a car wash. The sand turns to muddy clay. I spend an hour sitting in a puddle the size of Wales, smoking soggy cigarettes, stuck behind a stick-in-the-mud truck.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  pp152-3

[Biggles]

Jamie Elvidge
Everywhere we went in South Africa people would gather around our bikes, and the same was true out here in the Transkei. There came a moment, though, when the magnetism of those smiling faces suddenly became much more important than our destination. So we stopped. And we let ourselves be totally embraced by these kids with their magical sense of simplicity and joyful curiosity. At one point I was taking digital pictures of them and then showing them the screen. And they were so floored. I was so floored. I'd shoot and then they'd dogpile me. We took them for rides on the bikes; they asked us our names and we tried to pronounce theirs. I don't know how long we stayed, but we never made it near the beach, and when we finally did ride away we'd all been moved to the point of feeling shaken. These people had an inexplicable feeling of happiness surrounding them, yet they were very poor, their futures so limited. It was a kind of happiness that was new to us. Haunting, almost, because the purity of it seemed unobtainable.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  p174

[Biggles]

Kevin Cameron
By concentrating on this simple design, Guzzi was able to win and defend its championships for a long time. Eventually, despite the 210-pound weight of the 250 and 350 Guzzis, the horsepower of multi-cylinder competition from Gilera, MV Agusta, and others was beginning to tell. After sporadic adventures with V-Twins, inline threes and fore-and-aft fours (looking for all the world like miniature Offys), Carcano decided to go straight to the heart of the matter. If cylinder multiplication was the technology required, he would master it. The new Moto Guzzi would be a watercooled V-8. Transverse fours and sixes were too wide. Air-cooling could not scoop out the heat from the many recesses of such a complex engine. So it was done.
Two questions remained: really high rpm was still a mystery, and there were troubles with crank and rod bearings. Handling had been worked out a long time before for the remarkable singles, but with eight times the cylinders there was no place for the weight to go but up, both in pounds and height off the ground.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  p191

[Biggles]

Did you know that George Orwell was a biker? Do you know that his bike is supposed to be just where he left it, in a clump of bushes on the Scottish island of Jura? Would you like to go and track it down?
I had returned to Scotland to visit the Clan Macneish, and my two motorcycling brothers Donald and Iain were keen to show me around. A cartoonist can get overly attached to his drawing board, and the chance of a bike tour with a "Quest-for-the-Holy-Motorbike" was too good to miss.
Orwell had left London to live on Jura in 1945. He retreated to an abandoned farmhouse called Barnhill to write 1984. He would have had few interruptions. Barnhill is a remote and isolated building, 10 kilometres from the nearest neighbour and 40 kilometres from Craighouse, the one village on the island. Orwell's only transport was his bike, and I can assure you he was some rider. Just getting there was an epic trip.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  p212

[StinkyPete]

While not a motorcycle book, this seems an appropriate place to draw attention to a wonderful book that I've just finished.  It had me from page one, and the story follows two threads, one being Allan's life from a child, and the other is a narrative from his "escape" from the nursing home on the day of his 100th birthday party.   The two threads continue until they meet, followed by a twist ending.

"The One Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared" is a very good read indeed.

[Biggles]

"The One Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared" is a very good read indeed.

That sounds like fun- after all, it's the way I'm heading!   

[Biggles]

Jock Mackneish
We looked through the bushes down the valley. At the point where what had been the farm gave way to what still was the bush, there was lone alder tree. It was old and gnarled, and in the bracken at its foot was George Orwell's motorbike.
The man of words would have said something fitting. We could only manage gestures, nods, and an overwhelming sense of occasion. I knew: "This is the place."
Of the bike there was not much left. Forty years of exposure to the salt air had left only the engine, frame, and forks. A major restoration project for the devoted. Our devotion was perhaps more reverent.
We left it where it lay.
It was a 499cc Rudge Whitworth four-valve single, built sometime in the 1930s. There are probably quite a few still going. The lack of rear suspension would have made for hard going on that road. I don't expect the handling was all that wonderful either. It was what we would now call "agricultural." In the 1930s it was an elegant street machine. At no time would it have been easy, but I bet it was fun.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  pp214-5

[Biggles]

Jack Lewis
En route to Estacada, I stopped for gas, mostly to dry the stinging tears with which the sun was punishing me for riding east at dawn. I bought a Power Bar inside, walked up to the side of the bike and kicked down the start lever, which simultaneously started Honey and snapped off her sidestand bolt flush at the frame lug. I wrestled the foundered, sputtering motorcycle back onto her wheels and took inventory: one sprained ankle (my four times-broken left leg, which sprains in a high wind), one busted toe and a dangling sidestand spring, calling for its mother.
Great start.
The attendant goggled through the glass, but didn't say a word. Scary biker man, I guess, or just good entertainment.
Shut down the bike, sat on the curb, taped up my toe with electrical tape from the tool compartment in the tank, ate the Power Bar. Got warmer. Thought of roads sweeping through the Cascade range. Good to be home.
Good to be alive. Good to have a center stand. "Hmm."
"Bet I can still start that bike ..."
Yup.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  p242

[Biggles]

Steven L. Thompson
And still the pilot did not ride. Until, one New Year's Day, the pilot's wife died, losing a long and bitter battle with emphysema and mental illness. Sixty-five years old, exhausted by the struggle, his own health in jeopardy, the pilot hibernated through the lonely winter.
At Eastertime, the time of renewal, his son gave him a gentle ride through the cherry blossoms. Unused to the passenger's role, the pilot was disoriented at first. But soon, something he saw over his son's shoulders changed him. After the ride, the silver-haired pilot climbed off the BMW with a look the son had not seen for decades. It was the look of their joint past, the look the son remembered when the pilot returned from flying his bomber halfway around the world. It was not the look of a tired old man.
It was the look of the eagle.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  p261

[Biggles]

Michael Dregni
Irving went to work. He and his crew breathed on a Series B Black Shadow destined for Edgar. Irving ground a new cam profile for top-end speed, and Brown went out and rode the test Black Shadow 143 miles per hour (229 kilometers per hour) at the local airfield before he ran out of pavement. Happy with their tests, the bike was crated and shipped.
Now Edgar needed a rider. Enter Roland "Rollie" Free, a fearless Davidson hater who had seemingly sworn his life to battling the menace from Milwaukee. Free was an original. His mentor was O. K. Newby, the former captain of the Flying Merkel board-track race squad. Newby later teamed with Free riding a Wall of Death in Depression-era carnivals where a lion was turned loose in the barrel to take swipes at the rider as he circled the top at speed. As Free's friend Mike Parti later described him to Vincent historian Zachary Miller, "Rollie Free was a gentleman of the old school. He'd never swear in front of ladies, but he'd fistfight at the drop of a hat." Free had been devoted to Indians for outgunning Harleys on the track and countless duels on the street. He had set a handful of speed records on Indians, and combined with his distaste for all things Harley, he was the perfect man for the job.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  p274

[Biggles]

Michelle Ann Duff
Read, now in sole possession of second place [of the 350 Junior TT], motored past a few moments later and waved. I sat, fighting back tears for what might have been, cursing my bad luck. It was at that moment that I glanced at the rear tire. I couldn't believe what I saw. I looked again, questioning what my eyes recorded. Big chunks of rubber, many an inch in diameter, were missing from the treaded face of the experimental tire, and the canvas showed through in numerous places. I stared in horror at the mutilated tire and considered what lay just up the road from where the crankshaft had broken: the Mountain Mile, the Black Hut, the Veranda, the three lefts before Windy Corner, the 33rd Milestone, and the drop through Kates Cottage to Creg-ny-Baa, all fast and demanding corners requiring a good rear tire. It could have been instant death, or worse still, permanent mutilation, should a tire have blown on any of these corners. I wonder to this day if the tire would have finished that lap, let alone another two at nearly a 100-mile-per-hour average had the crankshaft not broken? Looking again at the tire, I knew for sure it would not have gone the distance. The metallurgy failure had been a blessing. But what had caused the crankpin to fracture? It was not a common failure.
The Devil Can Ride  Lee Klancher (ed)  p294

[Biggles]

Travelling alone is challenging and liberating. There is no one to blame if things go wrong, or to confer with over decisions but nor are there arguments about which way to go with every fork in the road. We had travelled together in Southeast Asia for a month and enjoyed each other's company, happy to jump on a bus because we liked the name of the destination. You have to be comfortable with a companion in those situations, as you are together twenty four hours a day. The penalty for travelling as a couple is not meeting so many people, as there is always someone to talk to. I talked to her while riding. Nothing dramatic, just "Look at that- mind that truck!"
Triumph Around The World  Robbie Marshall  p25

[Biggles]

An important feature of early morning stops was fat-bastard breakfast diners. Eating is taken very seriously all over the States. A Tennessee breakfast typically consists of two eggs easy over (or is it over easy?), hash browns, sausage, biscuit and gravy. The sausage is a burger and the biscuit a bun. If you ask for a burger they put the sausage in the bun. Gravy comes in a separate bowl, looking and tasting like porridge with chewy bits. Syrup and blackcurrant jelly on the side- weird, but excellent value at about three dollars. One thing I learned early on is never, no matter how hungry you are, ask for a large portion of anything. For a light snack, I went to a Blimpy Bar for a tuna roll. It was two feet long and had the girth of a sumo wrestler.
Triumph Around The World  Robbie Marshall  p27

[Biggles]

The sun was snuffed out like a candle as spectators shuffled around looking confused. As the first enormous drops splashed into the gasping dust, I asked a leathery old Navajo Indian if this was seasonal weather. "Not in my lifetime," came his reply, and then he gave me the name "Rain Maker". I apologized for dampening the parade and joked that if I manage a repeat performance in the Sahara there could be money to be made. Tactical error. American Indians do not necessarily share the white American romance with the dollar. "Don't make money - make flowers," he said in all seriousness. My ex-father-in-law taught me one useful lesson. When you are in the shit, stand still. Do not spread it around. Regrettably, his words had been lost somewhere on the highway as I asked directions to the Strip- Mecca of gambling with the lasers and bright lights that have made Las Vegas so famous. He gave me one of those looks reserved for stupid white travellers. "You want Las Vegas, Nevada. This is Las Vegas, New Mexico." Well how was I to know there were two of them?
Triumph Around The World  Robbie Marshall  p33

[Biggles]

Leaving Guatamala city, I witnessed a grotesque obscenity. There was a shiny, bright McDonald's burger joint with an inflated clown leering down on to the litter-strewn pavement. Darkness had fallen on half a dozen barefoot kids asleep on the walkway framed by the light of the restaurant window. Those kids were more likely to fly to the moon than taste a Big Mac, but the sign represented the best begging patch in the city. The principle of that American dream was to provide cheap nourishment, especially for kids, but in Guatemala it was only attainable by the wealthy.
Triumph Around The World  Robbie Marshall  p64