Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

"Why cannot you be more like other people?" she asked. "Andrei was with another motorcycle tour this summer, and every morning they would leave together, and then in the evening they would arrive together. Why cannot you be more like that?"
"What nationality were these other motorcyclists?" I asked.
"They were German."
"Helen, now you understand the basic difference between Germans and Americans. The Germans are regimented, the Americans are free."
"Some regimentation is necessary," she blustered, "for a society or for a tour group to operate. You are too unregimented. You must learn to do what I, the tour leader, say."
"No, no. The American way is that we pay you, and then you do as we wish."
The discussion could have gone on a long, long time. Helen was obviously a Party member in good standing, with a good job. She enjoyed the perks that Intourist types had, and got to go on vacation to islands in the Indian Ocean every winter. She saw nothing, or would admit to nothing, seriously wrong with the way the Party ran things. Minor improvements could of course be made, but the basic Russian system was all right.
No Thru Road  Clement Salvadori p339

[Biggles]

Bringing us tea and little meat-filled pastries, she positively radiated youthful good health and happiness. She adamantly refused to meet my gaze. A pubescent 14, I judged.
My host took note of all this in a sideways fashion. Very nice no? he asked. Had I been in a larger town, I would have presumed that I had wandered into the local bordello, and that wares were being offered. This village was too small to support such an enterprise. But honesty being a good policy, I allowed to how she was an attractive person, a credit to her community and upbringing.
Did I like her? Now the questions were taking on a distinctly personal tinge. I looked at him; he smirked. It is difficult to define or describe a smirk, rather like pornography, but when it happens, you know it. Something was up.
Why? I asked, preferring to front the problem. Directness was not exactly a local trait of renown, and my host was startled. But he rallied quickly, as a good businessman should, and said that he would be willing to trade me the girl and his motorcycle for my motorcycle.
No Thru Road  Clement Salvadori p347

[Biggles]

I weighed-up my position; I lived alone and had a mortgage I could just about pay each month as long as I didn't need to eat or pay any other bills. I commuted to work on yet another little MZ125 that I'd scraped together £80 to buy and was dirt cheap to run, but even so, I still struggled to find money for petrol. But what was worse, was that life was suddenly quite depressing. Something had to be done and it was obvious that nothing was going to change unless I took drastic action. I quit my job and started phoning courier companies to enquire about work as a despatch rider and then applied for one of the many credit cards, whose application forms regularly dropped through my letter box, encouraging anyone, however poor, to get themselves into further debt. The card arrived and I immediately spent £850 on an old Honda CX500. It was quite a gamble, this was money I didn't have and in my current state wasn't able to repay.
Luckily for me though, the gamble paid-off, and I started work as a self-employed despatch rider within a couple of days of getting my new bike. Better still, I got paid in cash, weekly, which got me out of trouble with bills for the short term and meant I could eat almost regularly.
Test Rider  Julian Amos  p18

[Biggles]

Unless you're going for some adrenaline-fuelled world endurance to fill a week - Monday to Friday, with 2500 miles, and to keep it up week after week until you reach 30,000 miles is quite daunting! Breaking it down, to cover the 500 miles in a day you aim for an average of 50 mph for ten hours. Of course this isn't possible, because to average 50 mph you would have to do 100 mph for the same length of time you are standing still at traffic or filling up with petrol. It might be a bit easier if you'd got a windscreen, some doors, a hood or roof, perhaps even a heater, but with these luxurious provisions 500 miles a day everyday would still be exhausting. If you think about it, even the most basic old car becomes a lovely cosy way to travel long distances in comparison to a motorcycle during the winter months in Britain. I ended up on motorways a lot of the time trying to keep up about 80 mph to make up for 'down time' created by fuelling up and having five minutes here and there to try and get warm and ward off what seemed to be the ever-present possibility of hypothermia. I would do my best, which on a good day was 500 or even 550 miles, on an average day about 430 miles and on a bad day, about 380 miles.
Test Rider  Julian Amos  p39

[Biggles]

Whatever, this sensitivity that increased in my own senses has certainly improved my capacity to understand what a  motorcycle is trying to tell me. The way the engine pulls through the rev range in different gears and how linear that sweep feels is a basic and maybe obvious starting point if you're looking at your own machine to get a handle on this. Then, there's the transient sweeps between those different sites, during accels and decels of different duration and speed. Concentrating on set speeds in different gears through those ranges too, especially in low gears at low rpm where, for instance, you might find yourself whilst crawling in slow moving traffic will show up imperfections in fuelling. Vibrations of varying degrees, as I mentioned a while ago travel through the foot pegs, handlebars, saddle and tank, and becoming familiar with these different types of 'rumble' takes years of experience. Everything from the most obvious bottom end bearing rumble through the pegs, to a little 'light' buzz in hard accels that tingle your finger tips and make the mirrors images 'buzz-out' momentarily are sometimes produced by a clutch, or a slightly harsher grind that could be an area that you can pinpoint within the driveline.
Test Rider  Julian Amos  pp60-1

[Biggles]

Once, I remember riding into a very sudden snow storm in Shropshire that forced me to stop as the visibility instantly reached zero feet. There was no shelter available, not even a tree to get under or behind, and so I crouched down by the side of the bike trying to warm my sodden gloved hands on the steaming engine cases, and keep my head and body down out of the driving snow. I'd been riding that morning for about four hours when I found myself in this spot, and my entire body was now shaking uncontrollably from the extreme cold. Just about everything I was wearing was soaked through and the ambient temperature had reached around minus 6. With the wind chill taken into account with a bike travelling at just 30 mph, the temperature must have been around minus 25 or so. In these early days, when working as a road mileage test rider, if you didn't show willing and push yourself to get out and attempt to carry on, there was the threat that someone else would do it instead, you'd lose your mileage bike then and you'd find yourself out of work yet again.
Test Rider  Julian Amos  p67

[Biggles]

The big square-paned windows looked out into the garden, and all four walls were covered in rows and rows of small framed watercolour paintings - all country views, I walked over to one wall to look at them and peered at the signature on the bottom corners, they simply read - Charles. They were all by Prince Charles and all were originals. I suppose this shouldn't have been surprising, considering where I was, but the sudden realisation of the situation came as a shock. I spent some time enjoying my privileged private exhibition, looking at each one in turn, then the door opened and Mark stepped in. "Would you like to come into the kitchen with the rest of us? Tea's up!" I followed him back up the hallway, past the door I'd come in through and on into the large kitchen. Two other chaps were there, and over a mug of tea I got an insight into the  behind-the-scenes life of a royal country house. One chap had been out to the cinema the night before with his own family and Prince Harry. Another was trying to get Harry's washing done before he returned to University the next day. The tea wasn't bad either and for the record, we drank from mugs - not bone china!
I returned to Highgrove several more times over the next couple years to pick up or drop off Prince William's bike, and was always bowled over by the way I was treated with politeness and trust, despite my scruffy riding kit.
Test Rider  Julian Amos  p92

[Biggles]

After a few days in Melbourne acclimatising to the high temperature and prepping the bikes, we all headed off northwards towards the furnace known as central Australia. A day later we arrived at the small town of Mildura, and set up our rolling workshop in the back of the local Triumph dealers in the town. We were now on the edge of what seemed to me to be the proper outback. Mildura was a pleasant little town that just a week before we arrived had been witness to 120 degree heat. The locals had had shirts and car bumper stickers made up that stated, 'I survived 120 degrees!' The temperature was still way up over 100 degrees now though, and for the first time in my life I encountered the sensation of having to keep my helmet visor fixed permanently in the shut position whilst riding. The air, even when riding along at high speeds, was too hot to breathe. The sun's heat was relentless and combined with the heat generated by the bike's engines in such close proximity to the rider, it would be easy to start suffering from heat exhaustion quickly.
Test Rider  Julian Amos  p101

[Biggles]

The bike I'd ridden to Spain was a pre-production Rocket 3. If you know this machine, you'll know that it's no shrinking violet, and during its development at this time, it hadn't been easy to keep such a huge and unusual machine unnoticed. It was a bit like trying to hide a baby elephant in your back garden. On several occasions whilst at petrol stations, a small crowd would gather to look at the bike, and I'd have to say what I usually said as a last resort - that I'd built it myself at home from bits of other bikes and a car engine! This ploy worked every time, amazingly, and thankfully I never found myself being quizzed by a proper engineer or someone who really knew what they were talking about. The Rocket 3 is a huge cruiser style motorcycle with a wonderfully torquey and massive 2.3 litre engine. Once fitted with a screen and panniers (a production version in this guise came out later, called the Rocket 3) the machine makes a comfortable, and very fast, long distance cruiser capable of blasting across entire swathes of the continent at high speed in a single day. Due to its prototype form, I was, of course, expected to try and keep it away from prying eyes which wasn't easy on a trip like this, with so many fuel stops and a couple of overnights en route. I was slightly stunned too, when I picked the machine up from the workshop, to find it was roughly hand painted a very bright banana yellow colour!
Test Rider  Julian Amos  p119

[Biggles]

A couple of years later Howard Raymond Davies (HRD) was standing on a podium, having just won the 'Challenge Cup' at Caerphilly aboard another of the company's Sunbeams, when he heard that Archduke Franz Ferdinand had just been assassinated. Within a couple of months he volunteered to join the Royal Engineers where he served as a despatch rider, but got quickly fed up with this and applied for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps, where he trained as a pilot. As was the norm for those First World War pilots, he got s shot down, but luckily survived but was taken prisoner. When the war finished he made his way back to Blighty and discovered that everyone had presumed he'd been killed in action and that an obituary had been published in the May 1st 1917 edition of 'Motor Cycling' magazine. He kept a copy of this obituary in his wallet as a bit of a laugh for the rest of his life. He was of course keen to race again, and by 1920 he found himself back at AJS, where he'd started all those years before as an apprentice, this time though, he was there to race their bikes, and in 1921 won the Senior TT at the Isle of Man, riding the company's big port 350.
Test Rider  Julian Amos  pp131-2

[Biggles]

At home on that Friday night, now just two days before leaving, I sat scratching my head, looking at a map of the World spread out on the floor. The lounge and kitchen were full of my kit in various stages of packing, and sitting outside our cottage was the brand new Triumph Tiger XC - the build of which had just been completed that same afternoon. The engine wasn't even run-in, the odo showing just the 30 miles I had ridden the bike from the factory to my home, nervously going through a brief test of all the controls, engine 'tune' and handling. I couldn't help wondering if ever, in the history of adventure motorcycling, anybody anywhere had reached this stage of planning without actually knowing where they were about to be going, on a brand new bike that they'd barely ridden...
Test Rider  Julian Amos  p156

[Biggles]

Everyone on the island gets involved in the Isle of Man TT and bikers are welcomed with open arms. The police even turn a blind eye to some 'safe speeding' - and don't mind a bit of larrikin behaviour as long as it doesn't get out of hand. The authorities recognise the huge financial benefit this event brings to the island and have a sensible attitude to allowing people to let off steam. They let everyone know what is and is not allowed and, in the main, people comply.
But when we arrive on the island there is an undercurrent of sadness and foreboding. Some of the racers seem subdued. We soon learn that last year's champ, Dave Jefferies, crashed into a stone wall during practice a couple of days earlier. There is no room for error here. Skidding across the narrow country road, Dave and his bike snapped off a telegraph pole before coming to a sudden halt at the wall. He died instantly. As they say here, everyone knows the risks and you take your chances. A journalist once said the racers have 'balls the size of watermelons'.
Two For The Road   Shirley Hardy-Rix & Brian Rix  p13

[Biggles]

Touring castles in the UK is a bit like visiting churches in Europe - you've seen one, you've seen them all. But then we find Doune Castle near Stirling. We walk into the ticket office and souvenir shop and are met by the guard. He produces two half coconuts from under the desk and does a very fine impersonation of a horse riding up to the castle wall. Then, in a very bad French accent, he says, "I wave my private parts in your direction." Briefly thinking we have walked into a lunatic asylum, we soon realise this is the castle where Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed. Before getting to see the castle proper, we have to browse through the photo album of the movie shoot and the guard tries to sell us a couple of bottles of Holy Grail Ale. This is when being on a motorbike has its advantages. "We have no room," is the answer whenever we are offered something we couldn't possibly want in our wildest dreams.
Two For The Road   Shirley Hardy-Rix & Brian Rix  pp34-5

[Biggles]

The Eurotunnel is the way to travel. We ride the bike onto the platform and then onto the train. We just stand by the bike for about 30 minutes and then we are in France. When the doors open we ride straight out and onto the roads of Calais. The road is great and we arrive in Brugge without missing a beat. We find a square with lots of activity, but the problem is we don't know where we are.
Two For The Road   Shirley Hardy-Rix & Brian Rix  p43

[Biggles]

Pic du Midi de Bigorre, at 2872 metres, is the highest peak in the Pyrenees in this part of France. The road starts out tight and twisty and gets tighter and twistier the further we go into the national park. We hope that the higher we go the cooler it will get. We pass with ease cars as they wheeze up the steep hills, and we settle into a steady rhythm using the bike's low-down grunt to effortlessly overtake them. Occasionally, we come to villages and as we slow down the heat builds up and becomes almost intolerable. We battle on and the road gets so narrow that cars must stop and crawl past each other. In places it's only wide enough for a single car. I take care and hug my side of the road. Up here there are few safety rails. One slip off the paved surface would see you plummet hundreds of metres into oblivion. I slow to second gear and ensure I leave plenty of room for oncoming traffic around blind corners. At one point a car hurtles towards us on our side of the narrow road, the driver lighting a cigarette. I get closer to the edge and prepare to take evasive action as he sees me at the last minute and swerves violently back to his side of the road.
Two For The Road   Shirley Hardy-Rix & Brian Rix  pp69-70

[Biggles]

At one point, we follow a tilt-tray tow truck down a steep hill. The driver touches his brakes and instantly goes sideways. Undoubtedly, there's something on the road, and the driver holds out his hand to warn me to go slowly. Down the hill there is a policeman standing on the side of the road. I immediately think it's another police check, but then see a semi-trailer on the side of the road and we smell diesel. That is a lethal combination - a diesel spill and a wet road. A car is approaching from behind too quickly. He brakes and instantly spears off the road and into an embankment, nearly taking out two cars chugging up the hill. The bike tyres want to go in two different directions at once. I'm down to walking pace and preparing to cop a slow-speed fall. We get through okay, to the amazement of the police officer and tow-truck driver.
Two For The Road   Shirley Hardy-Rix & Brian Rix  p89

[Biggles]

It is time to turn away from the coast and head inland to the Goreme Valley in Cappadocia. Coming down a hill, we see a Polis Trafik Kontrol point. We get waved in. We expect them to check our papers and the carnet for the bike and then wave us on. Not today. The very officious policeman tells us we were speeding.
"Do you know," he says in a very thick accent, "you were doing 87 kilometres?"
"But it is a 90-kilometre zone," Brian says.
"Yes, and you were doing 87 kilometres - that is a 64-million-700-thousand-lira fine."
"But it is a 90-kilometre zone."
"Yes, and you were doing 87 kilometres."
This conversation is getting us nowhere. Eventually we work out that motorcycles actually have to travel at 20 km/h less than the posted speed limit. This is the first we've heard of it. When we crossed the border from Greece, we were told the speed limits were 50 km/h in towns, 90 km/h on the roads and 120 on the freeways. Brian does his best to explain this, but the police just keep quoting the road rules. They are interested that he is a policeman in Australia, but don't see that as a reason tor leniency. There is no way we are going to get out of this one. After arguing the point to no effect, we hand over 65 million and don't get any change, but we do get a receipt. Lesson learned.
Two For The Road   Shirley Hardy-Rix & Brian Rix  pp138-9

[Biggles]

The road is pretty bad and the Iranian drivers are even worse than those in Turkey. We ride through more dust storms and I have to wipe the grime off my visor so I can see. We ride over rutted and potholed roads, but worst of all are the kamikaze drivers. The reality of just how bloody awful these drivers are comes to us on a reasonably straight stretch of road at the bottom of a hill: car into truck, head on. The car is wedged under the truck and it is hard to imagine the people getting out of the car alive. If they did they would have had horrendous leg injuries. From the tyre marks, it is clear they were on the wrong side of the road. Apparently, 20,000 Iranians die on the roads each year. The drivers are often on the wrong side of the road and think nothing of forcing us to the very edge as they cruise along taking the whole road as their own. In the towns and cities, they just pull out in front of you without even looking.
Two For The Road   Shirley Hardy-Rix & Brian Rix  p158

[Biggles]

"You should be safe from here," he says. "There is an army presence in the hills. They will watch over you. Be careful and make sure you are off the road by nightfall."
It doesn't take us long to find the 'army presence', but at first glance it is frightening. Brian spots it first: "Shit!" I feel his body stiffen against my chest.
"What? What?"
Brian tells me to look into the hills, and before long something glinting in the sunlight - a rifle. Before I have time to have a complete panic attack, I feel Brian's body relax. "It's an army sharpshooter," he says, pointing to a man hiding in the rocks.
Well, he and his mates aren't hiding too well. About every 500m we see sunlight glinting off firearms or the hat of a soldier partially hidden behind rocks high above the road. These are the sharpshooters protecting us as we make our way into Quetta.
The closer we get to the centre of Quetta, the busier the roads become. Donkey-drawn carts, push-bikes, motorbikes and cars vie for the restricted road space. We try to follow Peter and Dagmar, but it doesn't take long for us to get separated. Our saviour takes the form of a foreigner on a BMW GS Adventure, who leads us through the city to our hotel. We learn he is Andrew Fisher, a prison officer from Alice Springs.
Two For The Road   Shirley Hardy-Rix & Brian Rix  p184

[Biggles]

An attempt to get cash from an ATM creates a real 'blonde' moment for me. I put my card into the machine and try to withdraw 15,000 rupees, but the machine refuses to give me the money. Then it won't give me the card back. I can't believe it.
Brian checks the machine for one of the false-card rorts and says everything seems okay. By now I am sobbing. Brian moves into control mode and uses the mobile given to us by Rohan in Pakistan to ring the emergency-assistance number on the machine. I am getting hysterical, telling the man on the other end that the machine not only has my card, it wouldn't give me any money. He assures me that is not possible.
"We are visitors in your country." I am starting to sound shrill. "This isn't good enough. It is going to ruin our holiday."
Twenty minutes later, a nice young man from the bank arrives to sort out the problem. He opens the machine and there is no card inside. He starts to pull the card reader apart and demonstrates with his card how this machine works. The card doesn't go all the way into the machine. It can't possibly take the card. "Are you sure you don't have your card?"
I check my wallet and, sure enough, there it is safely tucked away in its normal spot. I burst into tears again. We apologise and make our escape, leaving a grinning technician who is sure to tell the story of the idiot tourists.
Two For The Road   Shirley Hardy-Rix & Brian Rix  pp217-8

[Biggles]

Tonight we have some uninvited guests in our room: frogs. They have taken up residence in the toilet and sink. Brian uses half a water bottle to scoop a frog out of the toilet. I use the toilet and when I flush I turn around and see another frog on the wall. Brian takes this one outside and washes his hands, then finds yet another frog on the bathroom wall. An entire frog family has moved into our loo!
We delay leaving Agonda as long as possible before heading to Saligao to meet Peter Baird, the Kiwi we met at the Horizons Unlimited meeting in England. It is hard to leave this paradise and our three days turn into five. Peter is staying in a 450-year-old Portuguese mansion with his bosses, the Poms running motorcycle tours around India. They have 16 Royal Enfields parked in their lounge and bats living in the roof. There is no running hot water or flushing toilets, but there's lots of atmosphere.
Two For The Road   Shirley Hardy-Rix & Brian Rix  pp231-2

[Biggles]

Prem and Indra arrive armed with long bamboo poles and present us with one each. I can't help thinking that a gun would be a bit more useful than a stick against a wild animal. The safety briefing doesn't lessen our apprehension: "Don't turn your back on the tigers. If you see tigers, just stare at them and make a lot of noise. If you see an elephant, run like crazy. If you see a rhino climb a tree if there is one nearby. If not, find something big to stand behind."
I look across at Brian and wonder if he would be enough to hide behind. I don't have to speak. He knows what I am thinking and doesn't seem to appreciate it. Prem assures us that there shouldn't be any problems unless we have a chance encounter with an animal that neither the animal nor we were expecting.
Armed with our sticks and a lot of hope, we start down the track that disappears into the heavy fog.
Two For The Road   Shirley Hardy-Rix & Brian Rix  p246

[Biggles]

The Bangkok cargo hall is frantic, with people running in all directions and crates of all sizes being carted around on forklifts. When we finally get to talk to a real customs official, he tells us they don't need to sign the carnet to prove we will export the bike. We just have to fill in a form promising not to sell the bike.
Our crate appears on the forklift and we are horrified to see that there is a hole punched through the side and the left side handlebar is sticking out. I gingerly break away some wood and am relieved to find no real damage, and the bike is still standing upright. A worker produces a claw hammer and proceeds to break open the crate. A crowd gathers on the other side of a fence. There's nothing like an audience in the hustle and bustle of a freight terminal to ensure you lose screws or drop things in your haste.
Two For The Road   Shirley Hardy-Rix & Brian Rix  pp272-3

[Biggles]

We check with the bike shop and they let us know the part will arrive on the train at 7 p.m. We should come back at 8 p.m. to pick up the bike. We cross the railway line on our way back to the bike shop and hear the train's whistle. We hope the part is on it. Jiradet is at the station and when he comes back he holds the parcel high in the air triumphantly! His two mechanics have come back to work after their dinner to fit the part. Despite the fact they don't have the right tools, they fit it in 10 minutes. And the total price for all of this: nothing!
"Welcome to Thailand," is all Jiradet says.
Two For The Road   Shirley Hardy-Rix & Brian Rix  p291

[Biggles]

There is just one piece of advice we have for anyone who wants to take a motorcycle or car into Singapore: don't. Our carnet has been enough paperwork to get the bike into every country we have entered and some countries haven't even bothered with it. That is not the case for Singapore and we don't discover it until we actually get to the border.
It's Sunday and the border is quiet. We get our passports stamped and no-one bothers about the bike, so we ride over the bridge to the Singapore border. Our entry visas are issued and stamped into our passports and a young woman comes out of an office and takes the carnet. She takes us into another office, where we have to pay a permit fee to bring the bike into the country. Then we are asked about our 'International Circulation Permit' and we don't have one. We didn't know we needed this, as we've never even heard of it.
We are happy to buy one. They don't sell them at the border. We have to go to the Automobile Association in Singapore for this. It's Sunday and the Automobile Association is closed. And we can't take the bike there anyway, because we don't have an International Circulation Permit.
Two For The Road   Shirley Hardy-Rix & Brian Rix  pp299-300