Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

Later that morning, as I was standing with Steve near the main tent, we saw Macka.  I knew him and Simmo from some of the previous Off Centre runs, where the New South Wales and Queensland BMW Club members would sometimes meet up.  I asked him if he remembered me, and he replied, "Of course I do."  At some stage during our conversation, Macka asked me if I was still with the same bloke, as he had met Ludo once before at the Urunga Pub.
Too many years of riding without ear plugs has shot my hearing to pieces, to say the least.  I thought he asked, "Have you still got the same bike?" to which I replied in all earnest that I had to get rid of it because it was too small, it wasn't fast enough etc.  Steve was a bit quicker than I in working out my misunderstanding.  Thankfully he did, as the conversation was going downhill  fast and in retrospect made me sound like a right tart!
The Perils Of Motorcycling  Alanna Gayko p104

[Biggles]

One day whilst riding the Super Glide, I came across our club President at the time, Steve Hill.  His 1920s Douglas had expired in the main street of Bellingen.  Knowing there wasn’t anything much I could do mechanically, the best offer was my mobile phone or a lift home to Nambucca Heads.  Steve rode my bike with me as pillion, enjoying himself immensely scraping the pegs.  Then he jumped on his GS Beemer, which has a trailer, to pick up his Douglas, by which time he was sorted.  It was too easy, with such a good setup for towing a motorcycle with a motorcycle!
The Perils Of Motorcycling  Alanna Gayko p114

[Biggles]

We went on another Just Girls trip, but this time we were heading down to Gloucester. The Sporty was off the road getting its gearbox fixed (no, I did not cause it to blow it up!). Instead I was taking the R60/5 with some of the northern girls. I got caught at a set of lights, with one of the girls riding barely ahead of me. As I put the Beemer into gear when the lights changed, the clutch cable broke with the bike stuck in gear. Having a 4WD and also a semi-trailer bearing down on you has a tendency to make your mind go blank, and I panicked.
The only other time I had a clutch cable break was when Mark (from SA) was riding my Beemer down Spit Road in Sydney. We were caught in the far lane and had to push it in gear across the traffic, which was an absolute nightmare. Unbelievably, I had a spare cable under the seat on that occasion which enabled Mark to get us back on the road. Anyway, the truckie jumped out of his rig and helped me get the bike out of gear, then pushed my motorcycle off the highway. You've got to love I truckies when the going gets tough. The 4WD changed lanes, nearly colliding with another car!
The Perils Of Motorcycling  Alanna Gayko p122

[Biggles]

Three guys were riding through the Coffs Harbour district in the middle of the night. One young fellow happened to be behind the other two riders when he hit a 'roo. It was immediately apparent that he'd done some major damage to his leg, but amazingly hadn't come off his Harley.
The pressing problem was how he was going to pull over, lacking the strength in his legs to hold himself up without doing even more damage coming off the bike. Consequently he took off after his mates down a desolate country road, somehow catching up and then indicating to them that he was in big trouble. They were able to help him stop, whilst they supported his weight and the bike without the guy falling onto his obviously broken leg. The guys also organised/ getting him to hospital, along with all the other things needed to be done after coming off second best to a ‘roo. You can’t do without your mates!
The Perils Of Motorcycling  Alanna Gayko p127

[Biggles]

I was making a fairly unsuccessful attempt to undo the oil dipstick when a guy who had done a U-turn pulled up to see if I needed a hand. He was towing an enclosed trailer with dirt bikes, and was obviously keen to help a fellow motorcyclist. I didn't have a problem as such, I just couldn't undo the oil thingummyjig. The guy came over, easily undoing the dipstick which I doing a wonderful job of tightening even more. I reassured him that I really wasn't that stupid, and he could have total faith that I would make the Territory in one piece (perhaps the bike as well). Since coming home my friend Glenn has given me some worldly advice which I shall remember forever more: “left - loosy, right – tighty”. Boy, did I feel like an incompetent fool!
The Perils Of Motorcycling  Alanna Gayko p129

[Biggles]

My most common nocturnal activity seemed to be standing on the toilet seat in motels, peering out of the bathroom window to check whether my motorcycle was still there. With no steering lock or a chain with padlock as my security, I was worried that the Stroke 5 might be wheeled off in the dark.
Suddenly, I was awoken midway through the night by someone thumping loudly on my door. It took a moment to orientate myself as to where the heck I was. Logically I knew someone was there, as I hesitantly opened the door with the safety chain still on. However, the sight of a big shadowy figure in the door frame terrified me! I couldn't stop screaming hysterically, meanwhile the guy was trying to pacify and reassure me that he was from the neighbouring motel room. He was able to blurt out that my bike was on the ground, which seemed to calm me down enough to venture outside with him. Sure enough my motorcycle was spreadeagled in front of the unit as petrol poured out, with all my remaining belongings from the saddlebags scattered about. They had also broken into my neighbour’s unit but were disturbed midway through their attempted robbery. He had contacted the police. It was fortunate nothing obvious was missing from my bike. Especially lucky for me was the fact that the mongrels hadn’t thrown a match on the bike as a departing gesture. It is the only time I have been interviewed by the in my pyjamas.
The Perils Of Motorcycling  Alanna Gayko p136-7

[Biggles]

My latest ride on the outfit was out to Nindigully Pub in Queensland for Rob Wynne's birthday bash. A big group of mostly off-road Beemer riders from Sydney, Newcastle and Brisbane were meeting up at the pub to help Rob celebrate another year down the gurgler...
The icing on the cake was a busload of girls turning up dressed to the nines in wedding and bridesmaid dresses obviously sourced from op shops, carefully coordinated with either stilettos or riding boots. They were on a long-distance pub crawl celebrating a hens' night. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert would have been proud as the girls piled out of the bus, under the watchful eye of their driver. He sported a red hard hat with a plastic cattle prod to protect himself from danger and help keep the ladies in line. Within a really short time, the bride-to-be was roaring off down the road as pillion on one of the Harleys. It became a familiar sight with the girls on the back of the bikes, their flowing dresses all pulled up out of harm's way.
The Perils Of Motorcycling  Alanna Gayko p157

[Biggles]

"A pleasure," he said, shaking my hand. "Have a good, safe trip."
"The pleasure is mine," I said, and it was. I was finding out that one of the best things about a motorcycle trip is that people you would never meet otherwise will come up and talk to you. "Won't you be lonely?" some of my non-biker friends had asked before I left.
"I doubt it," I had said, and on the ride down I never was.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p23

[Streak]

"Riding a motorcycle is like my yoga. It's a practice in mindfulness, being aware and in the moment"

[Biggles]

Still, you wouldn't ride a bike if you didn't want to cultivate a bit of an outlaw status. I was working on my Entrance, one of the most important aspects of being a biker. You come into town and cruise slowly down Main Street- rump, rump, rump, cough-REVVvvv-rump- rump (obviously a high-powered machine, dangerous if not for your expert control)- and at the end of the street do a slow U-turn and come back to the cafe.
You back the bike up against the curb, taking long enough that you know all eyes are upon you, take off your helmet, put your sunglasses back on, and walk toward the door. You use the Strut: shoulders back, head high, just a hint of pelvic thrust You step inside the door and, chin still high, moving only your head, survey the room (even if it only has four tables). Then you take off your dark glasses and hook them in the left-breast pocket of your leather jacket the way fighter pilots do in the movies. Don't look. This is crucial. If you have to fumble for the pocket, you've blown it and you might as well get back on the bike and leave. Okay, by this point the men are cowed, the women trembling, and girls behind the counter moaning softly.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p26-7

[Biggles]

Near the end I found my guide, a local in a red Dodge pickup truck who led me at 65 through a bunch of bends marked slow, and slowed to 25 for some that were not marked at all. I was happy to follow. I had learned a long time ago that on the back roads the fastest car would never be an out-of-state Porsche; it would be a dusty Ford Tempo with a bumper sticker from the hometown radio station. Horsepower was no match for local knowledge.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p29

[Biggles]

Friends told me of their neighbour, a professional woman in her late forties who had started to ride. Short and soft spoken, she is not an immediately commanding presence. One Sunday during a ride she and her husband stopped at McDonald's. She was in full leathers and thought nothing of it until, with her burger and fries in hand, she had to get through the long food line-up to get to the ketchup station. She took a step forward and even before she could say "Excuse me," the line-up parted like the Red Sea. "It was wonderful," she said, "They thought I was a Biker!" Whether you're riding a cruiser or a dirt bike or a big touring rig, in the eyes of the world you're a bit of a hooligan or you wouldn't be out there. We reject it, we deny it, we explain at length that there is a difference between a Rider and a Biker, but we secretly relish it. We like the idea that we're mad, bad, and dangerous to know.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p33

[Biggles]

Five minutes later none of it mattered. I found myself going a little faster, a little faster, a little faster.  My memory of the country is a blur- bright creek, slender pines- grabbed in laser-glimpses between corners. I tried to ride fast and stay off the brake, fast and smooth, using the Duke's linear power. I kept it in third- there it pulls hard all the way from 30 to 75 miles an hour, and when you back off it's like throwing out an anchor. This is why riders love big twins. Then I blew by a slow camper, snapped down my visor, and dived into a bend at 80- and found everythingoingintoslowmo. Instead of feeling fast it felt as if I could get up, do a tap dance on the tank, smoke a Havana cigar, get back down, and finish the corner with time for a snack. Glorious. Better than drugs.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p52-3

[Biggles]

"Pull off when it starts to rain," the instructor had said at Safety School. "The road is slipperiest in the first fifteen minutes because the oil on the pavement floats on the water. After it gets washed off, the motorcycle will be stable on the wet asphalt. Be careful, though. If too much water collects in the grooves of the lane you may hydroplane."
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p84

[Biggles]

The 300 miles to Roswell felt like 3,000. All day there was a 40-mile-an-hour wind coming out of Arizona and I felt as if I was wrestling with the lat pulldown bar of a weight machine. After lunch I rode for more than an hour without seeing another car. I didn't see a cow, though the land was fenced. I didn't even get bugs on my visor. Nothing, just the wind and the sage and the yellow- flowered cactus. I honked my horn every once in a while just to feel homey, and talked to myself inside my helmet. "Ain't nobody here," I told myself, "Nooooobuddy." The day was defined by wind and emptiness.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p89

[Biggles]

Non-riders would always ask me, "Don't you think motorcycling s dangerous?" in the tone of a foregone conclusion. It could be, I agreed, but I was a conservative rider. Besides, I said, motorcycling is only one of a million ways you can die. You can just as easily go in your La-Z-Boy recliner. In the spring, or when I haven't been riding in a long time, I have a moment of fear thinking about what I'm going to do, but as soon as I'm up and riding, I'm fine. I would give the answer my father gave when people asked him, "Isn't mountain climbing dangerous?" "Sure," he said, "but at least you go doing something you like." Then in The Stone Diaries I read about a Canadian journalist named Pinky Fulham who was crushed to death when a soft-drink vending machine fell on him. He had been rocking it back and forth, trying to dislodge a stuck quarter. Apparently eleven North Americans per year are killed by overturned vending machines. The next time I approached a vending machine I did so warily. And the next time someone asked me about bikes being dangerous, I told them about Pinky.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p93-4

[Biggles]

When I first put on a full-face helmet, I have a moment of claustrophobia. I can hear only my own breathing and I feel like one of those old-time deep-sea divers. The boots, jacket, and gloves feel cumbersome too- they're shaped all wrong for walking, but once you are on the bike, the gloves curl round the handgrips; the arms of the jacket flare out and forward, the wristbands are at your wrist instead of your fingertips; and the boots are snug onto the footpegs, reinforced toe under the gear lever. When you hit the starter, your breath merges with the sound of the bike, and once you're on the highway, the sound moves behind you, becoming a dull roar that merges with the wind noise, finally disappearing from consciousness altogether.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p124-5

[Biggles]

Even if you ride without a helmet, you ride in a cocoon of white noise. You get smells from the roadside, and you feel the coolness in the dips and the heat off a rock face, but you don't get sound. On a bike, you feel both exposed and insulated. Try putting in earplugs: the world changes, you feel like a spacewalker. What I like best about motorcycle touring is that even if you have companions you can't talk to them until the rest stop, when you'll compare highlights of the ride. You may be right beside them, but you're alone. It is an inward experience.
I like the fact that 'listen' is an anagram of 'silent.'
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p125

[Biggles]

They have begun using Ducati workers- "Ducati people"- rather than models in a sophisticated marketing campaign designed to hail you as a Ducati person.
We stopped first at the engine assembly. No robots in this factory: engines are made one at a time by one mechanic. She- and it is mostly women technicians in this section- moved with the engine and a tray or parts as it travelled down the line. The workers reminded me of typesetters, hands instinctively choosing the right piece from the case.
The bikes outside had led me to expect a bunch of lean, mean sport riders, but these looked like moms making money for their families. We moved on to the line where complete bikes were taking shape.
I wondered which person had assembled my engine. Maybe the blond woman with her hair pulled back. And who fit the engine into the frame? Maybe one of the older men tuning the finished bikes.  Each bike is made, in effect, by a family of workers.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p154

[Biggles]

"And all the bikes are still built here, on the same site as the original factory. We have produced only forty thousand bikes, where Honda has produced eight million. Ducati is like the pumpkin at Halloween or the Christmas tree at Christmas." I think what Livio meant is that you could not imagine the motorcycle world without Ducati, that Ducati crystallized the spirit of motorcycling. Certainly part of the mystique of Ducati is that everything they produce derives from a race-bred engine and a race-tested frame.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p159

[Biggles]

“That was it. And it was stable. One time coming back from the coast through the desert in Nevada- you know the Big Basin?- you come over a rise and you can see the road stretching away for miles and miles. No turns. Well, I'd always wanted to ride at 100 miles an hour for an hour. To cover 100 miles in one hour. And I did, I put my head down on the tank bag and just held it at 100. No one else out there. Straight across the desert." Will smiled, and for an instant I could see the young librarian speeding into the empty space, stretching the moment to an hour he would have all his life.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p174

[Biggles]

My reading on Lawrence and Ulysses had naturally led to a little research on Lawrence and motorcycles, and in one sense his death a bike seemed inevitable. "Its my great game on a really pot-holed road to open up to 70 miles an hour or so and feel the machine gallop," he wrote to George Brough in a letter praising the firm's motorcycles. He told Charlotte Shaw how he rode down from Edinburgh averaging 65 miles an hour, hitting 90 miles an hour for 2 or 3 miles on end, "leaping" past Morris Oxfords doing a staid 30 miles an hour.
He called his motorcycles Boanerges- "sons of thunder"- and the thunderous riding was a compulsion: "When my mood gets too hot... I pull out my motor-bike and hurl it top-speed through these unfit roads for hour after hour." Like the pilots after the Second World War who formed the biker gangs in the United States, Lawrence felt his nerves "jaded and gone near dead, so that nothing less than hours of voluntary danger will prick them into life.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p176

[Biggles]

Once off the bike I knew I should stop. I got directions to the Energy Park Inn, and walked out to the bike already thinking of how cool the room would be and forgetting how top-heavy the bike becomes with a full tank. I swung it off the sidestand and-  aaurghh...  thump! tinkle-tinkle- I dropped it. The brake lever knob skittered across the tarmac. The saddlebags kept the bike from coming down on my leg, but gas was spilling out around me. I struggled but couldn't get the bike up (which way do you turn the bars? there's a trick to getting bikes up but I couldn't remember).
"Excuse me?" I called to the guy at the next pump. He had his back turned and I was muffled by my helmet. "Excuse me!..." I said louder (god how embarrassing- it's like those commercials: "Help, fallen and can't get up"- maybe they should have emergency beepers for elderly motorcyclists). "Help!!" I shouted.
"Oh .. .oh ... sorry," he said, grabbed the handlebar, and together we got the bike up. I was really shaken. Not because of the bike falling over but because the fall made me realize how far gone I was. I had no business riding around the block, much less blasting into the desert sun at 80 miles an hour with my brain completely poached. L was lucky I had fallen over at a gas station.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p190

[Biggles]

I had a lesson in aerodynamics that morning. As a car driver I had always laughed at semi trailers that sported swooping curves on their mammoth fenders or those spoilers on the top of the cab that made them look like bald-headed wrestlers. As if that would make a difference. Yet one of the first things you discover as a motorcyclist is that it's the shape of the truck, not the size, that makes a difference. Cube vans throw a fat blast of air that feels like it could punch you straight back off your bike. Somewhere west of Artesia I met an old moving van, completely squared off, like a brick wall chugging across the plain at 55 miles an hour. I hunched down a little, as I always do, when poum his draft hit me like someone swinging a sandbag. If I had not been holding on tight I would have been in the ditch. Those rounded corners on modern vans do make a difference.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p191

[Biggles]

Later, at a popular culture conference in Albuquerque, I would learn that helmets were not just a choice, they were a corner-stone of American freedom. The last session was "Biker Stigmatization" and by this point in the conference the room was divided: bikers on the left, riders on the right. I had already learned that I wasn't a "biker." I'm a "rider." Maybe just a wannabe writer who occasionally rides. I wasn't sure. These distinctions were becoming difficult.
Riding With Rilke  Ted Bishop  p207