Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

As we rode into the shade of roadside trees, it was like plunging into an icy pool from which we emerged, aglow with gratitude, into the sun again.
In a car, of course, you see the passing landscape through a glass darkly, but on a bike you feel everything, and are at one with that landscape: with the daisies and primroses nodding in the verge, with that little garden bright with primulas and petunias, with that stern young man trotting a horse through a lavender field, with that stork rising from the mirrored lake and, miracle of miracles, with that elderly couple waving from a passing car, who turned out to be the ones from Santiago we had met at breakfast the day before, hundreds of miles from here.
Mind you, they were not the only ones waving: car drivers were forever hooting, waving and giving thumbs-up signs as we rode along.
Possibly because of our astonishing charisma, of course, but more likely because, loaded up and riding north, we were symbols of those two great feelings of modern life. First, the sneaking suspicion that there must be more to it than sitting behind a desk to pay a mortgage.
And second, that longing to just pack up and go.
The Road To Gobbler Knob  Geoff Hill  pp71-2

[Biggles]

I suddenly realised with a cold shock of horror that I was going a little too fast, then braked a little too late.
I may have hit gravel or a patch of slippery road, but the next thing I knew, I was bouncing down the road with my head banging rhythmically off the tarmac.
Thankfully, it was in a helmet, and the rest of me was still in my protective jacket and trousers, though Clifford had taken his off in the humid heat of late afternoon. If I had taken mine off, as I had been planning to the next time we stopped, if there had been a truck coming the other way, if the bike had landed on top of me or if there had been something in my path more solid than the ditch, my life would have ended there and then.
Even as it was, the damage, as I got groggily to my feet, was considerable: my left shoulder was in agony, and most of the skin had been stripped off my left elbow and forearm. On my right hand, the bones of my knuckles gleamed through the blood and bits of tattered flesh.
The Road To Gobblers Knob  Geoff Hill  p139

[Biggles]

At noon the next day, we walked around the corner to the friendly neighbourhood X-ray clinic to see why my neck was still sore five days after the crash. He did my shoulder first, and the good news was that nothing was broken, but as he hung up the first plate of my neck, my heart missed a beat.
For there, right across the third vertebra down, was a definite line.
He looked at it, tutted and scratched his chin, then left the room. He had obviously gone to get a spinal injuries consultant, and my mind ran wild. I had a hairline fracture, but could go on carefully. Or I would have to get treatment here, but it could take weeks or months. Or we would have to fly home, leave the bikes and gear here, and continue the trip in the summer, or next year. Or I was destined to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair, or an iron lung. If they still had iron lungs.
All this in the couple of seconds before he came back in and said: "Funny mark on the plate that, isn't it? I'll do another one."
On the next one, of course, there was nothing.
The Road To Gobblers Knob  Geoff Hill  pp148-9

[Biggles]

The only time it came close to falling, though, was at the hands of the English admiral Edward Vernon, who attacked it with 25,000 men, 2,000 cannon and 186 ships.
Facing him was one of the most remarkable heroes of any age: Bias De Lezo, who as a young officer in the Spanish navy had already lost his left leg, his right arm and his left eye in three separate battles. De Lezo had a mere 2,500 men, natives armed with bows and arrows, and so confident was Vernon of success that he had already minted victory medals. Feeling it ungallant to defeat only half a man, he had ordered the medals to be cast with all of De Lezo's bits reinstated.
Remarkably, Bias won the day, although at the cost of a fatal wound in his remaining leg, and today a statue of him stands, although only just, at the foot of the fortress of San Felipe, having cost the city an arm and a leg less than it might have done. It was, in retrospect, possibly a good thing that he died when he died, for had he continued in the same vein, he would almost certainly have died of old age and loneliness as a solitary ear.
The Road To Gobblers Knob  Geoff Hill  pp165-6

[Biggles]

I was awakened at six by Clifford in the shower, singing "Gotta Get out of this Place" at the top of his voice.
It felt strange at first, getting back on the bikes, setting off and watching Tony's mileometer, which had lain dormant for so long, yawn, stretch and start counting the miles again. Half excited and half nervous, for the first few of those miles I became convinced that the bike would self-destruct or fall over without warning, or that the tyres would spontaneously explode, flinging me into the jungle to be impaled on the beak of a surprised parrot.
However, the only exciting thing that happened was that we were soaked by a tropical downpour, then dried by the equally tropical sun. And then, suddenly, it became glorious again: not only the feeling of fleeing Colon, but of being out on the bikes in the fresh air, and heading up the road again. Even if we were riding south for forty-three miles before heading in the right direction again.
The Road To Gobblers Knob  Geoff Hill  p199

[Biggles]

At the next table, a birthday celebration was underway, and on a small stage, a mariachi band was playing Johnny Mathis's "When a Child is Born".
"Bit early for Christmas, isn't it?" I said to the waitress.
"No, late from last Christmas. This is Mexico," she said.
"God, she's lovely!" said Clifford, picking up his camera. "I think I feel another photo coming on for the book of Pan-American beauties."
That night, as we were settling down to sleep, there came a knock at the hotel room door. It was Isidro, the boy from the garage down the road where Clifford had asked in vain for a charger. He had cycled ten miles home after work, borrowed his father's, and cycled back with it in the dark. "I will collect it in the morning," he said. "Just leave it at reception."
It was just another of the countless acts of spontaneous goodwill we had been offered every day of the journey.
The Road To Gobblers Knob  Geoff Hill  p245

[Biggles]

On my left as I lay there in the warm sun sat Tony, that fine motorcycle who had never let me down, the gouges along his left side evidence of what he had been through. In front of me stretched my boots, battered by the crash, baked by sun, covered in mud and drenched by rain, and trousers patched by a tailor in Cali. And on my right sat the tankbag, with the map of our route in the transparent pocket on top which had been a handy conversation point for South American traffic policemen, diverting them from their original intention of asking us for a bribe.
I looked at it, with the Pan-American Highway marked in red from southern Chile all the way up Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and the USA to where I sat at this moment in the sunshine of northern California, with the blue sky above, the sweet pines all around, a ladybird wandering over my knee and elk contemplatively chewing grass in the meadow there. Even on a map, which normally makes journeys look easier, what we had done seemed impossible, and it was not even over yet.
The Road To Gobblers Knob  Geoff Hill  p269

[Biggles]

I led the way out of town, passing two bears and a wolf on the way. Fortunately, they were in fields at the side of the road.
Unlike the huge female moose who leaped out of the roadside trees right in front of me. It happened so fast that I didn't have time to swerve, just duck to the left as her head flashed by an inch from my helmet.
"You missed death by a millimetre, man. It wasn't even an inch," said Clifford when we stopped for fuel half an hour later. "If you'd hit that monster, both of you would have been killed. She braked so hard that she skidded onto her bum, then jumped up and leaped across to the other side of the road in a single bound, followed by a calf."
He was right, though: we'd read enough horror stories of hundreds of people in Canada every year being killed or maimed for life, hitting moose in cars. On a bike, you had no chance.
"Well, that's another life gone. That's two I've used up this trip," I said, going in to pay for the fuel and buy us a Magnum bar.
The Road To Gobblers Knob  Geoff Hill  pp292-3

[Biggles]

I stopped the engine, got off the bike and stood there looking at the rutted gravel and mud road climbing into the mountains. Even from where I stood, I could see the impossible climbs and even more impossible descents, with sheer drops on either side. I had heard stories of hardened truckers setting off up this road, abandoning their trucks after a few miles, and walking back.
The part of me that wanted to get back on the bike and ride south to safety wrestled with the part of me that refused to be beaten by anything as I stood there, feeling sick with fear. But then I remembered all the times that I had felt sick with fear on the trip, and had carried on. And I remembered that courage is not the absence of fear, but action in the presence of fear.
I got back on the bike, took a deep breath, started the engine, and gave Tony a pat on the tank. "One mile at a time, chum," I said. "Every mile is another mile north."
It started bad, and got worse, but for some reason not quite clear to me now with the sane hindsight of calm reflection, I kept going.
The Road To Gobblers Knob  Geoff Hill  p305

[Biggles]

The man with no neck drained his coffee, stood up to go on the night shift maintaining the pipeline, and noticed me.
"Say, you on that motorcycle out there, son?"
"Aye, that's me."
"Where'd you come from on that?"
"Chile."
He looked at me.
"Where's that at?"
"Oh, it's way south of here."
He paused.
"South of Vancouver?"
"Yeah, it's south of Vancouver all right."
"Hell, you've had quite a journey son." Satisfied, he went out, and I finished my chicken, staggered down the corridor, fell into bed and was asleep before my head hit my thoughts coming the other way.
The Road To Gobblers Knob  Geoff Hill  pp306-7

[perthcarpetcleaner]

Have you ever noticed?    Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac!

Never a truer word spoken
hahahah

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

[CallMeSteve]

and since I started riding my white ST1300 the world has suddenly become full of idiots 

[Biggles]

As we descended through the roseate dusk on our return flight, the Captain came on the blower. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Delhi. The temperature is 42 degrees," he said. "Now, that's an oxymoron if ever I heard one."
I.R. Dhillon drove us through the night back to our hotel, and we finally fell into our beds at 1.20 a.m. We had not slept for over forty hours, yet, insanely, Patrick took out his new shortwave radio and started learning how to work it, and I began to write down everything that had happened during the day.
The next morning the front page lead headline of the Times of India thundered: 'Petrol Price Raised Sharply', and below it the line, 'Not enough for a kick start'. Thankfully, closer inspection revealed the latter referred to the economy, not Royal Enfields, so we breakfasted on coffee and omelettes and set off in a rickshaw in the direction of Nanna's motorcycle yard.
Way To Go  Geoff Hill  p34

[Biggles]

"I think our hopes of leaving at dawn are fading fast," said Patrick, as Dilip went off to get the first round.
"Why on earth do you want to leave at dawn?" said Nanna, twisting around from the driving seat.
"To miss the heat and the trucks," said Patrick.
"And because it sounds good," I said.
"No, no, the truck drivers sleep all night and start at eight," said Nanna. "The best time to leave is at 1 a.m."
I looked at my watch. It was five minutes to midnight.
"Here's the beer," said Dilip, arriving back with four litre bottles of Kingfisher. "When are you chaps actually leaving?"
"I told them to start at one," said Nanna.
"No, no!" said Dilip. "It's far too dangerous to drive at night, because everyone drives with their lights off to save the bulbs. Also, the truck drivers never drive in the heat of the day. Best time to leave is at nine."
Several hours and beers later, when we finally did crawl into bed, we decided we would just leave when we woke up.
Way To Go  Geoff Hill  p39

[Biggles]

Beside the track for a deal of the journey lay the infamous Quetta to Koh-i-Taftan road, which we had discussed for so long, and which all the guidebooks had said not to travel on except as part of an armed convoy. But it seemed innocuous enough, with a teenager cycling whimsically along it, looking as if being kidnapped by bandits was the last thing on his mind.
In fact, the greater dangers lay inside our compartment. As darkness fell, Patrick, after successfully hot-wiring the ceiling fan into life using the two live flexes dangling from the wall, took to the flimsy bunk above, leaving me worrying that he would crash down on me during the night and end the trip, not kidnapped by bandits, but crushed by a falling Franco-Belgian motorcycle mechanic.
"And bloody good electrician," he muttered from above.
However, hubris is a terrible thing, and five minutes later the lights went out and the fan ground to a halt, leaving us in darkness with only the desert moon to guide the train through the night. Oh, and the railway tracks, of course.
Way To Go  Geoff Hill  pp63-4

[Biggles]

Unfortunately, after about five miles, we discovered just how low we were on fuel by conking out simultaneously.
"Well" I said, as Patrick pushed his Enfield alongside, "it's almost dark, we're in the middle of the desert, we've been thrown out of the country and we've run out of fuel!"
"At least things can't get any worse," he replied, as from the nearest dune came two swarthy Pashtuns armed to the teeth and with bandoliers crossed over their not insubstantial chests.
I turned to Patrick, but he was as speechless as I was. This was the end: murdered by bandits, as all the guidebooks had warned us.
The taller of the two stopped in front of us. "Sorry to bother you, chaps," he said, in an accent that owed more to Balliol than Baluchistan, "but do you need petrol?"
"We do, in fact. Yes, we do, actually," I stammered, as he and his compatriot pushed the Enfields around the dune to reveal a Mad Max encampment of mud huts surrounded on three sides by stacked barrels of smuggled Iranian fuel. One was dragged over, a hosepipe and a muslin filter fitted, and both our tanks were filled for the princely sum of fifty pence.
Way To Go  Geoff Hill  p66

[Biggles]

We were definitely in Bulgaria, where the cultivation of facial hair is a national pastime. And, it seems, motorcycle maintenance. In contrast to the Turkish mechanic who had fixed Patrick's pushrod for good by snapping it in half, the owner we asked to check my noisy front wheel bearings was a genius. Within five minutes, he had stripped down the entire wheel, declared the noise to be a wonky speedometer unit, re-greased the bearings anyway, given us a new spare oil can to replace the leaking one, which had left a trail of fossil fuel all the way from Delhi, checked our tyre pressures and reluctantly accepted the equivalent of 90 pence by way of payment.
Way To Go  Geoff Hill  p106

[Biggles]

It was evening, and shepherds everywhere were bringing in their sheep. As we rounded a corner, the belated stragglers of a flock dashed across the road. Patrick braked sharply, but he was already too late.
On an Enfield, the drum brakes are so bad that had he wanted to stop in time, he should have started braking three days earlier, at about lunch time. Enfields actually come supplied with a braking diary for just this purpose, so that you languidly fill a pipe of Old Throgmorton's Ready-Rubbed, take a fountain pen from the pocket of an ancient tweed jacket and make entries like: 'Wednesday, began braking. Saturday, hit sheep'. And so it proved. There was a sickening thud, the last sheep went sprawling into the ditch and Patrick and the motorcycle went sliding down the road on their side.
I cut the engine and raced over as he got groggily to his feet.
"I'm all right, I'm all right!" he said.
Way To Go  Geoff Hill  p109

[Biggles]

Part 2. Route 66
I started going out with a girl who seemed ideal. She was a quarter Indian, a quarter sexy, a quarter voluptuous, a quarter funny and a quarter vivacious. I know that's five quarters but, as my mother always says, there are only three types of people in the world: the ones who are good at maths, and the ones who aren't.
Several months of the relationship passed, and apart from the arguments, the slammed doors and the broken glass everything seemed perfect. Until the weekend I went away for a volleyball tournament and came back to find that she'd got religion.
Now, don't get me wrong. I've got nothing against religion. Apart from the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, corruption at the Vatican, child-molesting priests, sadistic Christian Brothers, proselytising missionaries, humourless fundamentalists, suicide bombers, jihads and sectarian murder, I think it's a wonderful thing.
Way To Go  Geoff Hill  p138

[Biggles]

Which was where things started to go what I believe is referred to in the trade as pear-shaped. You see, Harley-Davidsons are built for going from New York to Los Angeles in a straight line at 55 mph. They are not built for negotiating hairpin bends on steep, winding Donegal lanes at 0.5. Especially when the man in charge of gear selection has unaccountably picked second instead of first. That was me, and as a result of stalling the engine, I quickly found myself in the rarely used horizontal motorcycling position, while, behind me, Cate was sailing through the air with the greatest of ease to land on the part of her body normally used for attaching her to sofas.
"Oh dear!" she said. "I don't seem to able to get up. It's either because I am paralysed, or because this lane is so steep that my head is below my feet."
"I do apologise, dear," I said politely, "but even worse, there seems to be petrol leaking out of the fuel cap over the hot engine, so I may well shortly be immolated."
Way To Go  Geoff Hill  pp144-5

[Biggles]

I climbed on, zipped up my leather jacket, adjusted my shades, checked that I had a full tank of gas, and rode to Grant Park on the shores of Lake Michigan, where Route 66 began in 1926. Only to discover that Chicago had made it one way. 
As I was sitting trying to work out how much it would cost to dismantle the bike, post the pieces to LA, put it together and start from there, another policeman arrived on the scene.
"Can I help you, sir?"
"Good question. Is Route 66 one-way all the way from LA?"
"Nope. Just to the end of Jackson Boulevard."
Very helpful chaps, American policemen, unless you're a black down-and-out vegetarian mobster. I turned for one final look at Lake Michigan, the last of water I would see until the Pacific, and then started on the long road west.
Way To Go  Geoff Hill  p161

[Biggles]

For someone who had been on the old road for miles, it was a very peculiar experience finding a whole building dedicated and realising that you hadn't imagined it after all. The tour of a chronological history of the road was narrated by author Michael Wallis, in a voice as dark as tar and as sore as all hell about the way in which America had almost allowed its Main Street to die.
"The road brings us back to a time when the country was not littered with cookie-cutter housing developments, franchise eateries and shopping malls selling lookalike merchandise to people who have lost their own identity," he said. "This highway of phantoms and dreams is the romance of travelling the open road, the free road. Whenever we think of Route 66, we think of the road to adventure."
And so long as someone hums 'Get Your Kicks' or reads The Grapes of Wrath, the road still lives. Or even better, climbs on a Harley and rides off into the sunset.
Way To Go  Geoff Hill  p189

[Biggles]

There is something very special about travelling by motorcycle, and especially on that fresh spring morning, for since 0klahoma is a helmet-free zone, I had stashed mine and was enjoying the wind in my hair. I know, very irresponsible. If I had died, I'd never have forgiven myself. And Cate would have killed me. It is the simplest and most carefree of lives, I thought, as I rode along unburdened by the adult cares of mortgages, of rising damp and the falling pound. A life in which the only decisions are whether to choose the almond cake with lemon curd or the French Silk chocolate pie at the Country Dove in Elk City.
Mmm. Tough choice. I went for the chocolate, and it was the best so far. I know I always say that, but it's always true.
Way To Go  Geoff Hill  p191

[Biggles]

"Hell, I been travelling that old road for years."
"Really? What's your favourite part of it?"
"Right here. No parties, no bullshit, no nothing. Just peace and quiet."
"How long have you lived here?" I said, torn between continuing with the conversation and continuing with the pie.
"Three weeks. Pulled in right outside on a 1200 Sportster to let her cool down and the engine blew up on me. Got a job on an ostrich farm near here, so I can save up to get her fixed"
"Hell, that's funny," said the man at the table behind. "Me and Alice here were riding an FLH 1500 just west of Gallup when the engine blew on us. Got a lift here with some Navajos."
"Yeah," said Alice, "we was trying to outrun a dust devil. Doin' ninety and that critter was still sittin' on our shoulder."
It could only be a matter of time before the man behind Alice turned around and said: "Hey, it's funny you should say that, but..."
I got up and paid the bill.
Way To Go  Geoff Hill  pp228-9

[Kev Murphy]

Yep! That's the trouble with BS, it's self-propagating!