Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

We had travelled far to reach Timbuktu, many thousands of miles from home. It worked well - just the two of us together. Since the day we met over a decade before travel was a large part of what we were about. I had always shunned the idea of anything more permanent; the mere thought of domesticity frightening me to death.
I once jokingly said to my mother that the day Ness and I started washing-up together would be the end of us as a couple. But the journey was changing me. I had more love and respect for Ness than ever before, but even more than this we were sharing things - emotions, experiences, hardships - things which cemented us together, things which no-one else could ever know, share or take away from us.
Our feet sunk into the deep, deep sand which formed a hollow, like a drift, between the town and our hotel. As we slowed I looked up into the sky, a sky bursting with stars. I felt so utterly at peace with the world, with the girl who was holding my hand.Then I heard it one more time, that familiar sound, of baobabs whispering in my ear. But this time the old men of Africa spoke with a voice I could hear, and at last I knew, knew from the bottom of my heart. What better place? What better time? I took hold of Ness' hand and slipped off the ring, the thumb ring I had bought her in Djenne.
"That's a very silly place for a ring," I said as I gently placed it on the ring finger of her left hand and looked into her beautiful eyes.
"Will you marry me?"
She let out a gasp, flung her arms around me and cried, holding me tighter than ever before.
"Do you really mean it?" she sobbed.
I did. But quite when, how or where we would marry I had absolutely no idea.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p72

[Biggles]

The next day the sand took on an orange hue rather than the glaring, grey-white we had become accustomed to. It was a colour change that worried me. Fears that we may be heading deeper into the Sahara rather than closer to the lake nagged within me. Added to this we lost a spring from the side-stand and punctured the front wheel. By now we were running the tyres so soft (less than 5 psi) we had suffered tyre-creep and the inevitable ripping of a valve. Changing tubes was hot work.
We were also consuming petrol at an alarming rate. Thorny bushes and small dunes had made the going slow and exhausting. Any tracks in the sand looked far from recent. The sun beat down relentlessly. The horizon seemed to gloat from all of its 360°. A small antelope scampered in front of us, lifting our spirits, but all too briefly. A mild state of panic was rising within me. OK we had a GPS, but so what? In conjunction with a map that stretched from the Equator to the Mediterranean, it simply confirmed with astounding accuracy that we were lost.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p86

[Biggles]

Having limped into town we were in dire need of help. The engine was now seriously underpowered and in need of attention.
Phillipe had a Cameroonian policeman-friend who knew BMWs and thought he could solve our problems. Early one morning I picked him up as planned. He jumped on the back armed with a toolbox and directed me through the maze of streets to the engineering district. In the space of a few hours the Bear was in pieces, his cylinders and pistons lying on the ground in the thick orange dust. I had given up trying to intervene for fear of causing offence. though I could have wept when the local mechanic started drilling the crankcase The purpose of this demolition was to create new threads for the loose cylinder studs. I limply offered a rag in an attempt to prevent the engine filling with swarf. To give them their due I did see calipers and micrometers come into play as they used lathes to fashion the insert; a kind of homemade helicoil. Once the bike was all back together with valves reset and a fresh change of oil I could not believe the difference these bush mechanics had achieved.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p99

[Biggles]

Jan fetched a photograph and handed it around. "Still, least we don't these buggers here."
It was one of the goriest photos I had ever seen. A man lay on the floor of a forest, on his side, knees drawn up in the foetal position, but his body was
actually inside a snake. The photo omitted his head but you could clearly see his legs, still dressed in shorts, and his bare torso. Locals had slit the snake
open to find him. Jan explained that it was a photo from Indonesia. Drunk, the man had laid down in the forest to sleep. The snake, an enormous python, had crushed him with his coils before swallowing him whole. You could see that some of the man's skin had turned black and tendons were bared under his knee where the snake's digestive juices had begun to dissolve his limb. His wife had reported him missing. Days later people talked of having seen a huge bloated snake. The snake was duly found and slit open to reveal the awful truth.
"You know what the moral of that story is," someone quipped. "If you're going to get pissed in Indonesia make sure you fall asleep with your arms outstretched."
We all laughed nervously, inching a little closer to the fire.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p125

[Biggles]

An armoured truck drew up alongside, signalling for us to pull over. Police poured out of the back, as many as ten or fifteen, dressed in tight grey uniforms and black jack-boots, some of them women. One of the men shouted at us in Portuguese. We couldn't understand a word. I was trying to kick into neutral and turn off the engine but he was having none of it. He grabbed hold of my hands shoving them on the handlebars whilst his colleague stood inches away, legs apart, pointing his pistol at us. What was going on? What had we done wrong? I tried to stay calm but they all looked so deadly serious. The one with the drawn gun looked worryingly incapable of reason, driven by duty. The other frisked me violently looking for a weapon, hesitating when he found the breast pocket of my jacket bulky with passport and documentation.
"Soy ingles. Hablas ingles?" I said in desperation.
My pleas fell on deaf ears. By now Ness had been ordered off the bike. Satisfied we were unarmed I too was finally allowed to dismount. Our details were copied down and my driving licence and passport scrutinised whilst others in the team maintained their positions. One of the policewomen, backing away from us, gun still levelled, jumped as she backed into a lamp post. The whole sorry debacle was turning to farce. For the first time my eyes lifted to the periphery of the group.
The men there seemed older, wiser, their hair tinged with grey. One or two of them held clipboards and were making notes. Slowly it dawned on us. This was an exercise, a bloody training exercise, it had to be. After looking at our papers they thanked us, piled back into their 'tank' and left. I felt incensed and relieved in equal measure. We looked at each other, laughing nervously, wondering if the guns had been loaded.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p160

[Biggles]

At this particular crossing between Los Antigos and Chile Chico, close to the lake, our confidence was tested by a Customs officer slowly running his hand over the Bear's sheepskin seat.
"Que animal es?"
For a moment I was caught unawares.
"Sintetico" I replied.
I cursed to myself. Why hadn't I remembered their Draconian rules? Nothing organic, animal or vegetable, crosses the border. To lose our beloved sheepskin now would be nothing short of a tragedy. We had sat on that long dead animal for 50,000 miles. It had taken us twice through Africa. Please don't confiscate it now, I thought.
"Sintetico" I heard one of them say to the other with a grunt and a wry smile as he waved us through. Whether it was my made-up Spanish word or that he knew damn well the seat cover wasn't synthetic I guess we wil] never know. At Chilean borders from then on we donned the seat's rain-cover well in advance.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p200

[Biggles]

Not far from here we pulled off the road to sit in the dirt and eat a picnic lunch. Before we knew it a car drew up. Out stepped three well-built men of Amerindian descent. One of them stood over us demanding to see our passports. They said they were policemen, though none wore uniforms. He flashed me an ID card but it could have been anything. I stood up trying my utmost to look as though we were not to be messed with. I walked over to their car; nothing about it said police to me. My heart was pounding. Could this be it, the dreaded moment when we were robbed or beaten or worse? I showed them our passports but at the same time kept a firm hold. I acted tough and unfriendly. We simply did not know. Both of us could sense danger lingering in the air like some fetid carcass. I cleared up our food, trying to make it obvious we had knives, signalling to Ness we were leaving, quickly. I maintained eye contact with their leader as I straddled the bike. What else could we do? Ness was behind me in an instant. I revved up the engine and within seconds we were dust, speeding northeast. Overreaction? There had been something about them. Only hours before we had been stopped by police at a roadblock - "De donde vienen, a donde van?" (where you coming from, where you go?). They had been friendly and animated, wishing us well, whereas these guys were sullen, nervous even. Perhaps by tapping into that nervousness we had avoided or deflected their strike. Who knows? Who would ever know? Fate was as ever playing its hand.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  pp210-1

[Biggles]

A train took us from Cusco to the beginning of the trek. Ever since we had arrived in Cusco we lived in fear of being soaked, not by God but by irritating little boys with water bombs. It was that time of year, some festival or other, when all Peru's children had carte blanche to drench whoever they wished, especially tourists. The train, unfortunately, offered no protection. It simply served as a highly visible receptacle for a large number of tourists. In short, a target - a fact not wasted on any child in any village along the line. Water bombs flew through the windows with extraordinary accuracy at every stop. Riding the bike in the vicinity of Cusco was even worse. Children would lay in wait around every bend, armed not with bombs but with buckets of water the size of bins. To walk the Inca trail actually came as something of a relief, though we were scarcely any drier, what with the sweat from within and the rain from above.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  pp242-3

[Biggles]

In Colombia we were only too aware that our journey from Ipiales to Pasto would have us pass through one of the most dangerous parts of the country. It happened also to be one of the most beautiful. I had never seen hills quite like these before. From a distance our road appeared as a mere hairline crack which presided over the deepest valley and gorge I had ever seen. Waterfalls, hundreds of feet high yet no wider than a man, tumbled headlong into the river below. Bridges spanned the falls in death-defying leaps leaving us giddy and dazed as we rode across. We had made ourselves a rule not to stop, but felt compelled to at least try to capture some of this magic on film. Eventually the valley broadened and we passed trees with wispy moss hanging like tinsel from every branch.
Pasto itself was an ugly town, sprawling over less dramatic hills. We wasted no time in riding through, pleased and relieved to escape from the crazy city
drivers. A winding road climbed back into the mountains.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p269

[Biggles]

The art of getting anything done on the road is to visit smaller and smaller workshops until eventually you meet a man covered in oil, working from a pit of a place, deep downtown. Then you are in business. There was no chance of finding a BMW brake pad, of course there wasn't, but once located, this man will succeed where all others have failed. We found just such a man. He took the old pad, sanded it down, cut a new one the right thickness from a supply of brake liner material, glued it on the original back plate and then left it in a vice for an hour. The pad served us well, all the way to Australia. By the end of the hour we were sitting eating huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs, though the Spanish words always made me smile with visions of 'revolting eggs') with the mechanic and a number of his mates who had wandered over to admire the bike.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p272

[Biggles]

For the next thirty kilometres we choked in the exhaust fumes of a hundred straining trucks, each and every one unwilling to stay in line. They were travelling way too slowly. We found ourselves constantly overtaking, becoming increasingly irritated. Our progress was painfully slow and I found myself riding with a little less care. Everyone else seemed happy to overtake blind, why shouldn't we? It was as though the collective stupidity was infectious. Then it happened, the nightmare scenario that no one who rides a motorcycle ever wants to find themselves in. Trapped on the outside of one truck, another was heading straight for us.
We had nowhere to go. The road was narrow. Had the oncoming driver seen us? All I could do was hug into our truck and pray. He pulled over just in the nick of time, inches to spare. I had broken the police riders' golden rule - 'never be the meat in the sandwich'. We had felt the wind of both trucks on either knee. I stopped and apologised to Ness. She had tears on her cheek. I hugged her tight, uttering a further prayer.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p273

[Biggles]

Seldom have I felt such genuine friendliness from a couple of strangers, and in a short a space of time. Eager for company they let us camp on the beach and use their facilities. They were your archetypal pair of bachelors who achieved nothing in the space of a day. Laid back does not begin to describe them. Life revolved around a thatched rondavel set back on the beach. Stanley would lie in his hammock under its roof. Dangling from a rafter close to his head hung a rope which he would pull to initiate a gentle swing. I have never seen a man and an object in such utter harmony; I swear he had been born in the thing. Chuck on the other hand would remain upright and talk of the need for some food. He would then potter about his 'kitchen', realise he had nothing in store, ask Stanley if he would like some beans. Stanley was just too nice to remind Chuck that beans was all they had eaten for the last few months if not years, such was the extent of Chuck's cooking. A huge cauldron of kidney beans which remained on the stove from one day to the next was periodically topped up and reheated but never, ever emptied or washed. The beans were quite delicious in a burnt sort of way. The resultant flatulence was more difficult to live with. No wonder the two of them slept on opposite sides of the road.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p297

[Biggles]

We had been hit by a wheel rim, which had spun off an oncoming road train, whilst riding the bike. Neither of us could fathom what had happened at the time. One second we were cruising along the Barkly Highway somewhere near Mount Isa, the next we had searing pains in our blood-covered legs whilst the bike was wildly out of control beneath us. Ness had been reading on the back, suddenly in bewilderment and pain she was screaming and thumping my shoulders. The road train had carried on, oblivious to its carnage. Somehow I had brought the bike to a controlled stop before we collapsed on the side of the road. It was at least an hour before a vehicle passed. The driver and his mate rushed us to Cloncurry some forty kilometres away. The remote little town thankfully had a hospital. In fact it was the site of the original Flying Doctors base. I had lost a chunk of muscle out of my right calf and Ness had sustained compound fractures to two of her toes.
As with any accident we had been lucky and unlucky. We were holed up in Cloncurry for days, sickened by our close-call and none too keen to get back on a motorcycle. But, given where we were, we had had very little choice. I can remember only too clearly the look on the doctors' and nurses' faces as we hobbled over to the bike, on our crutches, helping each other aboard before riding into the sunset.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p325

[Kev Murphy]

I have always been very wary of trucks. Many years ago an oncoming truck shed a whole tyre tread, and I was presented with a large, high speed flying flap of writhing rubber, which was approaching me at our combined speed of close to 200kph. It luckily passed over my head.

[Biggles]

It was a relaxing way of seeing present day Melaka, in a tug of a boat guided by a man who must have been up and down this river ten thousand times. Thirty years, he told us. Thirty years he had been doing this and he still spoke with unbridled enthusiasm. Throughout our journey I was often surprised at the degree of routine people would accept into their lives. All over the world we had seen men stand outside of a bank, or sit at a desk, or admonish their sheep, or push a plough, hour after hour, day after day, year in year out. What anarchy would reign in the world if they dared question their contentment, if they were more like the two of us, but then who is the happier I wonder, who is the judge?
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p363

[Biggles]

However crowded our own cities and pavements become, we maintain that invisible force field around ourselves and our cars which, barring an accident, is never breached. That was simply not the case in the cities and towns of Bangladesh. Cycle-rickshaws filled the streets, wedged in like an interlocking jigsaw. Often, rather than use their dubious brakes, your rider would simply bump into the rickshaw in front, soon to be followed by a nudge or scrape from behind as someone did the same to you. Turning across the traffic required nerves of steel, or a belief in the divine, as motor rickshaws and taxis missed us by a whisker. On the whole this dodgem-car mentality was very good-natured and accepted by all. However, at times, tempers could fray as the tensions of living in such close proximity to so many others became too much to bear. We saw a number of fights between riders. The police, rather than maintain a dignified distance, would often add to the problem. We saw some puncturing the tyres with their pointed canes, out of sheer spite, no pretence.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  pp406-7

[Biggles]

Vehicle paraphernalia littered the ground. Tell-tale blue sparks confirmed what we were looking for. The welders looked up at our approach, their interest aroused by the bike with the huge tank. Of course they could weld it. In fact, our bigger problem was holding them back they were so keen. I barely had time to disconnect the battery from the bike's electrics and wrap a wet cloth around adjacent wires before the frame went under the welder's torch. It made me think of Neville back in Australia. He had been so careful not to overheat the frame for fear of weakening it too much. Now the thing glowed red, threatening to dissolve into a molten lump. Such a repair I know would not be undertaken by BMW back in Europe, certainly not without a complete dismantling, and the use of a jig, and how many hundreds of pounds might that cost? Our welding friend looked particularly pleased with his handiwork as he tried to focus on my face: welding masks or goggles were a luxury they didn't possess here. At first he wouldn't charge for his work. After much persuasion he would accept no more than twenty rupees, about thirty pence.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p430

[Biggles]

One very long day took us through Uttar Pradesh to Agra. Three hundred and eighty miles on Indian roads; we were fit to drop. I didn't pee in twelve hours despite countless stops for sickly, fizzy drinks. In one nameless village the usual crowd had formed around us as I felt the cold nectar trickle into the back of my throat. I heard a strange clucking sound as someone or something pinched at my bare arm. I turned and recoiled in fright. At first it was unrecognisable as a man.
He wore only under-pants, his entire body ghostly, plastered in white flour. His face was horribly dark and the fleshy entrails of a chicken were wrapped around his chin and forehead. He had that vacant stare of a madman as he clucked, pecking and poking. The village idiot, he made the most of his minute in the limelight, visibly scaring this visitor to the merriment of all around. I laughed, that falsest of laughs, wishing only that he, or I, should vaporise. I did the next best thing. We mounted the bike and with twist of the wrist we were gone.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p444

[Biggles]

The tea was piping hot and tasted divine. Encouraged by our obvious delight, the owner brought us a plate of delicious date cookies. Intent on pleasing still further, he disappeared to return with glowing coals. These he placed on one of his many qalyans, familiar to us from our time in Egypt as shisha or hubble-bubbles. Our host drew several deep breaths on the long coiled pipe. The coals glowed and the tobacco burned as smoke filled the decorative blue glass. He brought it slowly over to our table, placing it on the floor and handing me the pipe. I thanked him and took a long deep draw, filling my lungs with the purified smoke, sensing the buzz of some unknown weed. Sitting back in our extraordinary surrounds I experienced an overpowering sense of contentment.
We had ridden here under our own steam. A single road connected us from Bam to Varanasi to Sylhet to Chittagong but the changes had been immense. This has to be the ultimate joy of overlanding - being able to connect in the most real way, each and every part of our extraordinary world.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p467

[Biggles]

Now that we had made it to Tehran the time had come to sort the bike out. We could not have it pouring oil like this any longer. It was a major job. Replacing the offending oil seal required removal of the gearbox and much printed off tips from the internet, posted by helpful 'anoraks' who had taken the trouble to share their experience. Thanks to the 'overland grapevine' we found the most incredible workshop. The capital's police force used BMWs and by the look of this workshop, crashed them on a daily basis. The staff were unbelievably accommodating, allowing me full use of their work space and tools. They even gave me a new rotor and took the old, worn clutch-plate into the motor markets to have a new one made up. At home one has trouble even setting foot in a BMW workshop, let alone taking it over.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p479

[Biggles]

Somewhere, not so far west of Urfa, we crossed the Euphrates. From here we began to see remnants of the Roman world. A bridge, built in the second century AD, took us over a narrow gorge. From a distance it could have been part of the land, it blended so perfectly. Closer to, magnificent columns drew us on to the bridge, its ancient cobblestone roadway arching over the water. We rumbled across. Nearly two thousand years old and still in use. A sturdy structure of immense beauty in keeping with the land. I tried not to think of the havoc wrought on our own modern world by the 'architects' of the last fifty years, but with comparisons of concrete motorway bridges flashing thorough my mind I found it sadly impossible.
From the bridge a spectacular road with a series of hairpin bends, took us to a curious mound known as Nemrut Dagi. As we walked the final half kilometre we met a Frenchman who enthused about the place, this was his fifth visit in as s many years. The burial mound, said to be the resting place of King Antiochus, was littered with gigantic heads of stone, the heads of gods, their sculpted faces looked stern and solemn, trapped for eternity in this windswept, desolate place.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p485

[Biggles]

South of Trondheim we entered a stunning landscape for which Norway is deservedly famous, that of the western fjords. Whereas further north the scenery was wild and raw, down here it was simply breathtaking. We meandered through, taking our time in this land of grass-covered roofs, glaciers and Trolls. There were even triangular road signs warning of these mythical creatures. Apparently they can be giants or midgets, kindly or fearsome and are the original inhabitants of this icy land, once existing in greater numbers than today, in a time before the ice retreated and humans came to settle. They have only four digits on their hands and feet, very long noses, a lot of hair and a bushy tail. They can change their appearance, taking on many forms including it's said, that of fine young maidens. That is why farmers' sons in these parts always check for a bushy tail first.  I hardly dared imagine the jokes in the Pub on lads' nights out in these parts.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p506

[Biggles]

When we came to leave in the morning I parked the bike outside of his house having ridden past the open door of his voluminous garage. We paid him his money and he looked longingly at the loaded bike.
"I'd love to go off on a really long journey, like you, but I can't," he mourned.
I looked back at his garage, inside of which he had two motorbikes, a snowmobile, a 4x4, a Mercedes car and a tractor. I said nothing but wanted to say.
Would you, would you really?
Here was the classic example of a man, like so many these days, trapped by own riches and possessions.
Live your dream, don't dream your life.
Bearback  Pat Garrod  p507

[Biggles]

This is sort of my trademark move, passing one idyllic spot after another before succumbing to exhaustion and landing on a big patch of ugly. I should write a guidebook: The Ugly Parts of Beautiful Countries.
If that book ever gets written, that spot in Greece will get four stars out of five. It was a gravel pullout with a view of nothing. It even featured an abandoned transport trailer that exuded the odour of rotting meat. Details like that are what make these places special.
As I munched on stale buns and runny Nutella, I heard the thumping of a loosely fitted piston with slappy valves. It sounded a lot like my bike. The racket came from a red KLE500, a smaller, European version of my machine. The rider turned to look at me as the bike flashed by, and I waved in greeting. Turning around, the rider pulled in to investigate - you don't see too many KLRs in Europe.
"You picked a great place to stop," said the rider as she took off her helmet to reveal soft, feminine features and long auburn hair.
Through Dust and Darkness  Jeremy Kroker  p19

[Biggles]

Before leaving the hostel I had asked the owner for directions to Ankara.
"Will you be returning to Istanbul?" he asked.
"I don't plan on it," I said.
"I mean, ever. Will you ever, ever be back with your motorcycle?"
"Uh, no, I don't suppose I will," I said. "OK. Then take the far left lane when you reach the Bosporus Bridge... and don't stop."
Strange. Now it made sense as I approached the end of the bridge. The far left lane was an express lane. It had an automatic billing system for collecting tolls.
Blowing through it triggered an alarm and spinning lights.
I looked around as if to say, "Does anyone else find that siren annoying?" I even cast a bewildered shrug with my free hand, but my other hand rolled on the throttle.
Through Dust and Darkness  Jeremy Kroker  p52