Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

Ewan
By the next morning, however, I was focused again on the journey. Eating breakfast with Eve, I felt my bike beckoning. I was terribly anxious to go and get it sorted for the very last time. It felt like Christmas Day or some other big event. From the moment I'd woken up, there had been a sense of something quite special about the day. As we sat eating breakfast, I turned to Eve. "Look," I said. "I'm just going to have to go and pack my bike."
"All right, go and be with your bike instead of me," Eve joked. And having not seen my wife for nearly four months, I left her sitting at the breakfast table on her own, so that I could head upstairs and sort my bags out. My bike had temporarily become third party in my marriage and I needed to honour an appointment with her.
Long Way Round   Ewan Mc Gregor and Charley Boorman  p298

[Biggles]

But you need to use that word "normal" warily if you're talking about bikes and bikers. A normal person looks at a motorcycle, appreciates in an instant that the machine's natural resting position is on its side, and concludes that no one in his or her right mind would ever want to be aboard such a contraption. It will go to ground as hard and fast as it can, taking you with it. I conclude, therefore, that anyone who knows that obvious fact and yet rides anyway is by definition abnormal.
Surviving such grim odds, a counter-theory has it, is a positive bio-feedback mechanism of the first order. To ride 1,000' in a straight-line safely is an actual feat in the Herculean sense. To do so you've had to coordinate each of the five senses and all four extremities in perfect coordination. If you make it, you're awash in endorphins. The hero's medal is yours. If you don't make it, the sport wasn't for you. Here's a band aid, or a ventilator.
Robert Higdon  Riding South Series  p#06   http://ironbutt.com/higdon

[Biggles]

My guardian angel is another superstition of the road. Over the years I'd been involved in many disasters. I'd got away from them with wonderfully positive things happening as a direct result, so I knew it was more than just plain luck that had kept me alive. I'd been shot at twice, arrested, jailed, hit by a van and suffered dysentery, malaria and dengue fever. My bike had nearly blown up with me sitting on it, and I'd survived an accident that broke seventeen bones in my body and filled my eyes with broken glass. I'd also managed to slip three discs in my back, which was both agonising and debilitating at the time. I suppose that lot doesn't sound very lucky, but the question for me in the end was always, could I still ride my bike, and therefore carry on with the adventure? So far, I had always been able to, so I had to have guardian angel didn't I?
From Totillas To Totems   Sam Manicom  p22

[Biggles]

I'd not forgotten travelling in Australia though. It's a huge country covering many latitudes, and as a result the 'in season' times for fruit and vegetables would keep happening as I rode. That meant there was always going to be cheap but good food available. I ate well so long as I didn't mind eating lots of whatever was on seasonal offer. Using bulk-bought pasta or rice as a base, I could always conjure up a sauce of some sort to go on top. I did get a bit tired of eating green cabbage for a while, but when I was near a fishing port there was always plenty of interesting food to be had.
Sometimes I'd not even had to pay to eat in Australia. Many of the jobs I'd done were paid in food and with somewhere safe to sleep. Perhaps we'd be able to do the same sort of thing in the USA. I didn't mind the thought of this. Even though being paid cash for labour was very nice, frequently a job was simply fun because it gave me a chance to do work that I'd never done before. I learnt a lot and by this time had had over thirty different jobs.
From Totillas To Totems   Sam Manicom  p35

[Biggles]

But borders apparently make a difference. Even in these times of international travel, the driving styles of truck drivers seemed to change from one country to the next. The only thing that their driving style seemed to have in common was the desire to get 'there' wherever 'there' might be.
In India, trucks and buses are the kings of the road and you just have to get out of their way. If you don't, you end up as a grille ornament and the drivers won't care a jot. They are on a mission and if fate has decreed that you are going to end up as an addition to the flamboyant decorations on their trucks, so be it. In Colombia the truck drivers seemed to have an amazing ability. As soon as they climbed behind the steering wheel of their 18-wheelers, they became trainee grand prix drivers. Overtaking on corners? Not a problem. On the brow of a hill? Why on earth not? Overtaking a vehicle that's driving a kilometre an hour slower? No problem, even if it takes twenty minutes and you send oncoming traffic scuttling for the roadside bushes as you do it. It's a pride thing. In Australia, the giant Road Trains wouldn't even notice if they hit you. Those guys blast across the outback on steroidal autopilot in trucks towing over a hundred tons in three or four trailers in a vehicle over 50 metres long. On a bike, to them, you'd just be another bump in the road. But here in Mexico, what on earth was going on?
From Totillas To Totems   Sam Manicom  pp60-1

[Biggles]

Now my turn. I copied Birgit's, see-round-the-truck weave, and crashed into a pothole, front wheel slipping sickeningly on the gravel that had been thrown out of it. I'd been too close to the back of the truck to see it. I hung on tight and carried on trying to peek around the trucks. The truck in front changed down a gear with a jolt that closed the gap between us within a second. Too close! I'd had enough of this. With my headlight on full beam and my thumb on the horn I pulled out as fast as Libby's engine would let me, just as the road took a dip downwards. The extra burst of speed that gave me was enough to help me down the side of the trucks. I'd almost made it when one of the hated 4x4s shot into view like an evil black tank. It made no attempt whatsoever to make room for me and I was sure I'd had it. It didn't slow down and I swear it actually got faster. The thing was heading straight for me. Now I knew I'd had it.
Then luck took over. The first truck hit the next rise and changed down as he did so, and this allowed me a millisecond to get past. Made it! The 4x4 shot past as if this was just another day on their road.
From Totillas To Totems   Sam Manicom  p74

[Biggles]

In California
As with anywhere else, if in doubt, talk. It's usually a good rule. I approached the booth. The pasty-faced and heavily overweight attendant staggered
backwards out of his chair and shrank away from me as I loomed, dust-covered and leather-jacketed in front of him. The road-shocked, got-to-have-fuel, look in my eyes probably made the situation worse. If he could have backed any further away from me he would have. I tapped on the window - I might as well have shot at it with an AK47! He cringed as I yelled through the glass at him, "Hello, I need petrol. Can I pay with cash?" His eyes widened and it was only then that I realised that he must have forgotten to turn on his speaker system. Instead of understanding my words he was just watching my facial expression as I mouthed words of desperation at him. With hindsight, I must have looked like an escapee from a bikers' lunatic asylum. And anyway, did he know what the lip movements for the word petrol were anyway? The situation was getting out of hand.
Rule two, if in doubt think 'friendly' and smile, use sign language and show money. A smile on its own might have looked evil, but flashing the cash seemed to tone things down a bit. Then I thought, he probably thinks I'm shouting "Gimme da money!" at him. But the money flashing worked.
From Totillas To Totems   Sam Manicom  pp106-7

[Biggles]

I loved each opportunity to take the bike onto the dirt tracks. I loved the mind-teases the gravel and sand played with me.
I liked the fact that there was no way I could ride on 'autopilot' and my thoughts could only be on what the track was going to try to make Libby do next. I got a real buzz when something unexpected happened and I had to react without thinking. It might be a patch of soft sand or mud that suddenly had the back tyre fishtailing and scrabbling for grip. I always got a zap of adrenaline at those heart-stopping moments when the bike was almost at the point of disaster and then, yet again, its momentum, balance and power kicked in to carry me to safety. I also had a real sense of satisfaction when I emerged from the other side of each of these moments with the realisation that I'd survived on intuition. The bike and I had dealt with the hazard almost as one being. I'd learnt a bit over the years, but I've never forgotten the fear with which I rode my first countries through Africa.
From Totillas To Totems   Sam Manicom  p151

[Biggles]

Some weeks it felt as if she was keeping the points and condenser manufacturing industry alive. No one seemed to be able to work out what was causing the problem. We had run out of options and knew that Chris was going to be able to make or break the situation for us. It really wasn't fun for Birgit to have to ride never knowing when she was going to lose power.
Chris listened to the problem, listened to the bike, rode it round the block and then started to work on it. "Your backing plate is bent," he said. "If that isn't flat then you'll keep on burning points out. I have one in reasonable condition somewhere." It did the trick and in payment for the part, and a replacement mirror for one of Sir Henry's which had lost its ability to reflect, we helped Chris and Rebecca by tiling their bathroom. While I finished that off, Birgit painted the walls in their separate loo. A good trade all round, except I wasn't as sure as Birgit was about the deep purple colour chosen for the loo walls.
From Totillas To Totems   Sam Manicom  p180

[Biggles]

We also managed to replace the thermos that had got broken months before in Baja California. We'd missed being able to wake up to a cup of coffee and also stop along the way for a hot drink. But new thermos flasks were just too expensive on our meagre budget. We were mooching around one of the thrift shops when the assistant, an elderly white-haired lady called Muriel, came across and asked, "Anything ah can help you people with?" This was said with such a kindly voice that we said, "Well, yes, you don't happen to have any thermos flasks do you?" and explained why. "No dear, ah don't, but leave it with me, I can look through the stock. Where are y'all staying?" To our surprise, about three hours later Muriel turned up at the showground with a choice of three flasks for us to look at. We chose the 2-pint builder's flask that was made out of aluminium and had thick protective rubber rings around its skin. That would do nicely. From that moment on, each coffee was started with a toast to Muriel. I've always wondered if she went home and pulled the selection of thermos flasks out of her own cupboard. It wouldn't have surprised me. Thanks to her thoughtful effort on our behalf she'd improved the quality of our travelling life and in the months to come that thermos would be a lifesaver.
From Totillas To Totems   Sam Manicom  p189

[Biggles]

At times we had just five metres of visibility and before long everything we owned was wet. On days like these I really 'love' biking (not!) but at least the BMs were now cleaner than they'd been for weeks. As usual, there was an 'up' side.
Birgit's bike really needed a wash after a bizarre incident at the petrol station in the Banff National Park where we'd stopped to fill up before setting off to explore the mountains and lakes within the park. She put the gas pump nozzle into her tank, as you do, and pulled the lever. All well and good until the tank was full and the lever jammed open. Within seconds fuel was shooting out over the sides of the bike, soaking her hot engine and splashing her enthusiastically as it did so. The attendant came rushing out, grabbed the nozzle from her and banged it, still shooting fuel, onto the ground. The flow stopped immediately. The attendant looked at Birgit and said in a very matter of fact voice, "Does that all the time darn it," and left her standing there in the middle of a lake of petrol. Fortunately, no one was smoking!
From Totillas To Totems   Sam Manicom  p228

[Biggles]

A guy walked over to us and said, "You two are the travellers aren't you?" He was a short man with a bulging waist. Between the open front of his jacket we could see that he had a shirt with two buttons missing and at some time he'd collected a food stain down it. His shoes were battered and his trousers didn't look as if they'd seen an iron since they were bought. I was a little suspicious of him but had thought to myself, "Well, he's not going to be too much trouble if he looks like this."
The he said, "I like to get the chance to talk with unusual people."
As we talked we had no idea who he was, but Dave put us right at the end of the day. The guy was a local millionaire. He ran a large construction company and had an unusual hobby. He collected military vehicles. "Bill has a warehouse full of tanks, jeeps, a half-track and he's just bought a MiG fighter jet. He's taking lessons so he can learn to fly the thing." Books and covers.
From Totillas To Totems   Sam Manicom  p242

[Biggles]

When I take a big trip, like a three-month drive across China, Pakistan, and India, the best way to go is by motorcycle. You see sights and smell the countryside in a way you can't from inside the box of a car. You're right out there in it, a part of it. You feel it, see it, taste it, hear it, and smell it all. It's total freedom. For most travellers the journey is a means to an end. When you go by bike, the travel is an end in itself. You ride through places you've never been, experience it all, meet new people, have an adventure. Things don't get much better than this.
I wanted a long, long trip, one that would wipe the slate clean for I still read The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, and I wanted to wean myself away from the investment business. I wanted a change of life, a watershed, something that would mark a new beginning for the rest of my life. I didn't know what I would do when I got back, but I wanted it to be different. I figured a 65,000-mile ride around the world ought to be watershed enough.
Investment Biker  Jim Rogers  p6

[Biggles]

It was Saturday afternoon when we arrived in the tiny village of thatch-roofed stone cottages and haystacks, its lush green slopes topping slate-gray cliffs. The post office was closed. We knocked on the door anyway. It turned out that the postmistress lived there— just as post-office officials sometimes did back in Alabama when I was a child. We told her we were travelling around the world and wanted to prove we had been here in Dunquin at the start. Ruddy faced, sixty, and plump, Mrs. Campion reminded me of dozens of Alabama churchwomen, pillars of their communities, who had clucked approvingly as I'd served as an acolyte in the Episcopal church.
Would she sell us some postcards, then postmark and date them?
She laughed with Irish delight at the whole absurd idea and invited us in for a cup of tea. She signed the cards, then a Gaelic student who was there signed them, and then we signed them, and then she stamped them. It was like a party. The official start!
Investment Biker  Jim Rogers  pp16-7

[Biggles]

On the road to Hami Tabith's bike developed a hole in its piston. This bike had done everything to us but lie down and die, and I had the feeling that that was near. It was a hole the size of a dime, and here we were in a country as large as the United States without a single dealer who sold BMW parts.
We threw her bike into the back of a truck we flagged down, hauled it into Hami, and began asking endless questions. Finally we were lucky enough to find a mechanic, who stayed up till four-thirty in the morning welding the hole. It had to be done carefully, with Tabitha supervising the work, built up thin layer by thin layer so it wouldn't blow out at a critical time. Here was where it really paid to have brought along a trained mechanic, someone who understood what she was doing. We didn't know if it would work, but there was no way to get a spare BMW part into the middle of the Taklamakan Desert. This is the kind of repair you make in the backwoods of China, Africa, and South America. It would cause a factory-certified mechanic to shudder.
Investment Biker  Jim Rogers  p64

[Biggles]

This poster announced the pending execution of two criminals. "What had they done?" I asked.
Brandishing long pig knives, said Mr. Li, these men in their late twenties had broken into a widow's house and robbed and injured her. They had been caught, had been found guilty, and were sentenced to die.
"Why the posters?" I asked. "Would there be a public execution?"
"No."
"How would it be done?"
With a pistol shot. Unless the robbers wanted a more brutal form of death, they or their families would buy the two bullets with which the police would execute them.
The police assigned the task would drive them around until a suitable burial site was found, at which point the criminals would be given the task of digging their own graves. There would be no coffins. Once their graves were dug, the bullets they had purchased would make a swift end of them. In contrast to the bold black ideograms on the white paper was a red check in the poster's bottom right-hand corner.
"What's that for?" I asked.
"It means the execution was carried out," whispered my informant.
Investment Biker  Jim Rogers  p77

[Biggles]

I was certain, the customs officers were going to tell us they were closing and that tomorrow was a holiday, come back Tuesday.
These civil servants, however, stuck with the job of processing us through till they finished, even though it took an hour or so of overtime. They presented us with a bill for the extra time, but I was delighted to pay and finish the hassle. If only border officials and bureaucrats in other parts of the world had the same can-do attitude! This is one reason Japanese are rich.
Grinning from ear to ear like fools, Tabitha and I drove to the Imperial Hotel in downtown Tokyo, across from the Imperial Palace. We pulled right up to the lobby- motorcycles muddy, spare tires hanging off our rear ends, fairings busted- and nobody batted an eye. Once we were in the sumptuous room, we were beside ourselves with disbelief and joy.
On the road we often had been immersed in practical problems: how to get across the next border, what the road ahead was like, where to stay, would there be gas in the next town, could we buy tires, the logistics of it all. Although travelling through exotic locales had often made us gape with astonishment, we hadn't awoken every single day and thrilled to our new location. But now that we had an interlude in a first-class hotel room in a First World country, we sank back and realized what we had just done.
Investment Biker  Jim Rogers  p91

[Biggles]

True to what we'd been told, the paved road out to Khabarovsk quickly turned into gravel- big, baseball-sized stones on which it was almost impossible to ride. Afraid we'd go down, we couldn't drive fast. At such a slow speed, when our wheels hit a grapefruit-sized boulder, the bikes would try to spin out of our hands and push us over. Driving was a constant battle with the road. Every fifty or seventy-five miles Tabitha fell over and I'd get off to help her. I got through this unscathed, but she again became ready to give up.
She might now have ten thousand miles of motorcycling experience, but very few motorcyclists had experienced conditions like these! Seduced by the new bike, she had come from Japan against her better judgment and her heart wasn't in it. The road was just too terrible, the thousands of miles ahead too great. "Damn it," said Tabitha, cranking up her bike after her dozenth spill, "I'm going home."
Investment Biker  Jim Rogers  pp113-4

[Biggles]

For the equivalent of twenty-five dollars he sold us the right to ride a freight train westward, to have a nine-by-forty-four-foot flatcar to ourselves.
"What about food?" Tabitha asked. "Water?"
"He says we'll only be on it a few hours."
The yardmen helped us load and tie down the bikes. We had the last car on a seventy-car freight train. What a hoot! We were glad the road had ended. Hopping a flatcar is to railroading what motorcycling is to motoring: roughing it. The rail-yard crews in the scattered crossings through which we passed were stunned to see Westerners and motorcycles on a flatcar.
Tabitha was glad for the respite, and I too, chuckled with delight. The wind blew in our hair, the breathtaking Siberian forests, fields, and hills sailed by, and the clouds presented their dazzling aerial stunts. This glorious ride could never happen at any price in the United States.
Investment Biker  Jim Rogers  p131

[Biggles]

At one gas station, Olga, the lady attendant, said in broken English, "Look, I only can sell ninety-three to police or ambulance drivers."
"Yes, but we have to have ninety-three," I said, pointing at the seventy-four sign and crossing my two index fingers. In Russia, this all-purpose gesture means nyet- "I can't do it," "No way," or "Broken". I went on to lay my usual rap on her in sign language and simple English, using the map of the world to show our journey.
Hoping she could follow me, I said we had legitimate visas and that we had to have the right gas for these bikes or stay here forever.
Olga was firm. "I tell you, it is law. I no give good gas to nobody but police and ambulance drivers."
"I know we're an inconvenience," I said, "but our bikes must have ninety-three octane. By the way, do you like Western cigarettes? We don't need this carton of Marlboros."
Now 0lga was adamant. "Don't you listen?" she shouted, drawing herself up to her full formidable height. "Don't you hear? I tell you two times already. I no give good gas to nobody except police, ambulance drivers, and American travelers driving motorcycles!"
Investment Biker  Jim Rogers  p143

[Biggles]

At the BMW dealership in Berlin the mechanics were agog at how much damage we'd done to the bikes. The bikes looked as if they'd been through a war, banged up, with jerryrigged parts, fork seals gone, mud in every part, loose wiring, wobbly brakes, beat-up tires. They put a new crankcase in mine, and the head bearings were blown too.
We explained that these were the wrong bikes for the trip we'd just taken, that we'd needed cross-country bikes, their GS model, which had higher wheels and fenders and stronger shock absorbers. As it happened, both of our bikes were under their original warranties. BMW had never assumed they were warranting such hard riding, but with a smile the BMW executives said they would honor them. So they proceeded to rebuild the bikes, giving us thousands of dollars of repairwork in what seemed to be a salute to our trans-Siberian journey.
Investment Biker  Jim Rogers  p168

[Biggles]

Still looking for someone to carry extra provisions, we drove out to the local campsite. We moved from truck to Land Rover, asking who was going south, who would carry gear and supplies for a few dollars.
We met a French graduate student called Pierre who was going our way and needed extra cash. We'd form a partnership. In return for our paying his expenses, he was delighted to carry our tents, spare tires, water cans, and fuel cans in a battered pickup truck whose grill and lights were shielded by steel bull bars. His pockmarked face had a ready smile, and he seemed charming and civilized. He would make a fine travelling companion.
Investment Biker  Jim Rogers  p187

[Biggles]

We drove by a building that I thought was a school.
"No," said Jean, "it's a match factory. It's fully staffed, but it hasn't produced a match in years."
I asked, "The workers don't do anything?"
"They go in to work and sit," he said; "six employees and a boss— seven of them."
Twenty years before, the North Koreans, for whatever political reason, had decided to make a gift of a match factory to the Congo. The country had nothing if not wood, so I supposed it made a kind of sense.
Unfortunately, as with almost all statist endeavours into commerce, the factory turned out to be inefficient and non-competitive. The state couldn't sell the matches partly because the Congo, too, was tied to the overpriced CFA (Central African franc), and partly because nobody here knew how to make matches. This was a national enterprise, however, so the government wouldn't fire these workers. I remembered that Congo national airline had only two planes and more than four hundred workers, a similar statist boondoggle.
Every day these seven people came to work in the match factory, did nothing, took vacations for two weeks of the year, and returned to do more nothing. They hadn't made a match in twenty years.
Investment Biker  Jim Rogers  pp209-10

[Biggles]

Gas here wasn't expensive, simply unavailable, the way it had been cheap and hard to get in Siberia and Russia. But this made sense: Fix a price too low, and no one wants to supply it- not individuals, not corporations, and not governments.
We went back the next morning and got another ten liters. We drove to the other gas stations, trying to get more gas, but we had no luck. We came back to the main station later, precisely at the time the attendant had told me to.
No gas, he said with his usual shrug. Out of frustration I shouted, "What kind of country is this? Why isn't there any gas.
Which meant absolutely nothing to this guy- what kind of country was this? How can you not have any gas? It made as much sense as screaming, "Why don't you have any kryptonite? What kind of planet is this?"
Investment Biker  Jim Rogers  pp235-6

[Biggles]

One night Tabitha and I heard elephants making loud grunts and trumpet calls below us. These were young male elephants, about twelve years old, who travelled in packs because they were young bucks, a bit like our teenagers. When they were older than twelve they found a female and paired off, or whatever elephants did. We figured this would be a terrific chance to see them up close.
We climbed down, got a driver, piled into a jeep, and drove to the water hole to see them.
We were watching a dozen by the light of the full moon when something spooked them. They immediately charged, stampeding toward us. We were stuck, couldn't move- we were paralyzed. When they were fifty or sixty yards away it was clear that Tabitha, the driver, and I were going to be trampled underfoot. Somehow, at the last minute they veered away.
Later the lodge's owner told us elephants didn't like to step on anything squishy that would make them slip and fall. They avoid mud, slick leaves, and, I suppose, motorcyclists filled with slippery blood.
Investment Biker  Jim Rogers  pp245-6