Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

It was during our stay in Agadir that the registration of the Elephant expired.  Our solution to this was to pay the renewal over the net and have the label recovered from our redirected mail by Jo’s sister Pauline.  The replacement label was then scanned and mailed through to us along with the registration paper itself.  At a photographic shop I had the scan printed to scale on photographic paper, trimmed the image and had it laminated.  The completed facsimile was then fitted to the label holder and was so good I left it there until renewal time.  We had found a good hotel at a reasonable price with secure parking for the Elephant so we stayed on in Agadir until Jo’s back was in fair shape for travel. 
Each day we walked a little further to give her some exercise.  A few days we overdid it and had a set back, but her improvement was steady.  Once she was walking three or four kilometres we knew our medical crisis had been averted and it was time to go.  We finished our stay at Agadir with a New Year's Eve dinner and a bottle of Moroccan wine followed by a walk along the crowded waterfront for an ice cream.  It was 34 years since the New Year’s Eve we had met in Sydney and I had given Jo her first pillion ride on a bike.  A lot had changed in the intervening years, but not so much as you might think.
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 105

[Biggles]

Although the road surface was often treacherous, with gravel on almost every corner, the riding was a pleasure.  There were stunning sights at every turn that kept us interested and kept drawing my eyes away from the challenge of the road.  As we climbed higher through the valleys we found many kasbahs.  Some were ancient and crumbling back to the earth.  Others were still in use.  All were spectacularly sited in commanding hilltop positions.  On days like this we felt the freedom of the road as a real and powerful force in our lives.  The idea of being out on the road, free to go in any direction, with no deadline or agenda, had always been a romantic notion and a little adolescent and silly.  A day of riding in the Moroccan mountains, even on a cold day, was enough to make us feel like we were teenagers again, off on a road trip when everything was new and exciting.
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 108

[Biggles]

The wind that had brought rain and snow to the mountains blew itself out across the desert creating a sand storm that limited visibility to less than 100 metres.  We had never been in a sand storm on a bike before and life became difficult in new and interesting ways.  We kept our helmet visors down to keep out as much dust as possible but they became coated with dust inside and out.  To get them clean and return some visibility, we were forced to stop and wipe down the inside of the visors every twenty minutes or so.  The fine dust got in everywhere and we kept all of the vents on our suits closed up to keep it out.  Unfortunately this also kept out the cooling air with obvious consequences.  By the time we got to The Palmeraie Hotel at Zagora we were keen to get out of the sand-blast and get ourselves and the bike indoors.  Like many older hotels, The Palmeraie was happy for me to park the Elephant in its foyer.  The Palmeraie was also like other old hotels in other ways.  The windows didn't seal and our room was covered with a film of gritty dust.  When the gusts of wind hit our second storey room, the windows shook and banged as though they were about to be blown in and the dust was so thick in the air in the poorly-lit hallways that it hampered visibility. Not that any of this was too much of a problem for us.  We had Elephant secured and an acceptably comfortable room, and we managed to find a cold beer and some very tasty food.  In our simple world view, things were just fine.
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 111-112

[Biggles]

In El-Kelaa M'Gouna, we shared our overnight stop with a group of about 16 bike riders from the UK who were spending a week riding dirt bikes in Morocco and following the Paris- Dakar Rally which was scheduled to pass through Morocco not far to the east.  They had only been in the country for one day and one rider already had an arm in a sling with little likelihood that he would remount his bike.  They were all heartily disillusioned because they had just heard the announcement that the rally had been cancelled for 2007 after three French tourists were shot by terrorists in Senegal.
The Elephant wasn't interested in their skinny-bummed KTMs, so in the morning we left them to it and continued to the east and into the mountain gorges.
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 116

[Biggles]

The proprietor of the Oasis Hotel had kindly let us park Elephant in the storeroom and had come around to open the door when we returned from exploring the mountains.  With our limited French and his limited English we struck up a conversation.
“Why are you in Morocco?” he asked.
“Oh, we're just looking around,” came the reply.
“Oui, touristic.”
“Oui touristic.”
“So, where have you been?”  We opened our maps and pointed to the pink highlighted line and date annotations that showed our travels.  He studied it closely and asked questions about places and towns.
“Amazing,” he said. “You have seen more of Maroc than me!  Where will you go next?” We looked at each other, realising we had not yet discussed our next destination.
“Perhaps we will go to the south.  Another rider we met in Agadir is down there and he says it is very cheap and there are no tourists,” I said, and looked back over at Jo, who shrugged. “Or,” I continued, we might go north to the Riff and look at the Atlantic Coast” He considered this lack of certainty for a few moments then gave a broad smile.
“I think I understand,” he said.  “You are not tourists, you are voyageursl”  His words hit us like a bolt of lightning and made us grin from ear to ear.
“Yes!” we blurted out in unison.  “We are voyageurs!”
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 117

[Biggles]

While we ate we chatted to Daniele and heard about his adventure over many of the roads we had ridden ourselves.  As was often the case when we met fellow adventure riders, a bond formed quickly.  In some ways these conversations were very soothing for us.  Riders never ask each other the standard round of questions that non-riders need to give them a context for the relationship.  Much of the experience is already understood and the motivation taken for granted.  We had no accommodation organised for Marrakech and neither did Daniele so we exchanged global roaming numbers before he roared off down the mountain and we demolished the rest of our lamb.
Looking up from our plates, we saw a group of eight Honda Transalps cruising past, gleaming clean and carrying no luggage; their leader setting a conservative pace up front.  We finished our tea, paid a few dollar for our lunch and set off after them.
It seemed like no time at all before we were slipping by the shiny Transalps.  We waved each one as Elephant rumbled by; a behemoth among the spindly Hondas.  We imagined most of the riders would have rather tucked in behind Elephant’s broad arse and come along for a proper ride in the mountains.  That, after all, is what riding in Morocco is about.  That, and barbecued lamb chops by the side of the road!
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 120

[Biggles]

Through all of this, we had been rubbing along pretty well with our Tunisian hosts. Big bikes like ours were very uncommon in Tunisia, so we certainly got noticed wherever we went.  I am surprised that Jos’ arm didn't fall off as she spent so much time waving to folks of all ages as we passed through the countryside.  When we stopped, young fellows would come over to look at the numbers on the speedo.  I didn't have the heart to tell them how optimistic they were with our big luggage fit.  The guys always asked how big the motor was and the answer of 1150cc left them with a stunned look on their faces.
With our riding suits, helmets, incomprehensible language, GPS and communications setup, we might as well have been space travellers in some remote villages.  Here, even more so than in Morocco, we were a curiosity.  We were, however, clearly strangers and clearly on a grand journey, something easily understood by these desert peoples with their long tradition of respect for travellers.
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 142-3

[Biggles]

In Le Kef, I needed to do some repairs to our helmet wiring looms.  These were the cables that linked the speakers and microphones in our helmets with the intercom system on the bike.   We had worn out a set each because of the constant flexing of the main cable where it exited the helmet.  I went to a little hardware store and explained the problem to the owner with an engineering drawing and a few words of French.  He and his assistant went to work finding parts that I might adapt to my needs and after 30 minutes and several revised drawings assembled the selection of bits.
When I asked him how much, he handed me the parts and with a broad smile, said there was no charge and welcome to Tunisia.  We smiled back our most thankful smiles and shook everyone's hand before taking our paper bag of bits back to the hotel to start work on the helmet repair.
It was through small kindnesses such as these that North Africa became the place where we started to understand something of the transaction we were involved in each time we interacted with local people.  We started to say that we were pushed on by the kindness of strangers, and this was certainly true, but it was not the whole story.  We found that each transaction involved an exchange. We would offer our story; the story of strangers and an odyssey, and in return they would offer kindness and their hopes for the success of our journey.  In the final part of the transaction, we would take their wishes and add them to the others we carried with us.  Each time we told the story of our journey in return for a favour done, we carried forward the expectations of yet another soul.  For it seemed that the idea of the journey transcended culture and that there was a universal belief that to journey among strangers is an honourable thing; a thing worth doing for its own sake.
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 143-4

[Biggles]

In late January 2008, on a rainy Tuesday, we stopped at a busy, muddy intersection at a small market town in the south of the Riff Mountains.  The policeman on duty saw us stop and check the road in both directions obviously considering which way to go.  He left his post and walked over to us and signalled the question “Can I help?”  We confirmed the direction we needed to take.  He then indicated the broader question, “Where are you going?”  We told him our story in a few mixed words of English, French and Arabic, together with a lot of sign language.  A huge smile came over his face: “So, you and your wife go on your bike.  You go to all the world’s countries and see all the world’s peoples.  Good luck!  Good luck!”
Perhaps that night, I said to Jo, he went home to his little daughter and said something along the lines of: “You will never guess what happened today. A man and a woman came to our town.  They were wearing space suits and riding on a puny elephant with spindly legs and a funny snout.  They told me they were going to see all of the world’s peoples and all of their places.  I gave them gift.  I gave them a smile and a wish, and they said that they would carry it over the Riff, over the high mountains, across the endless wheat plains and through the forest of the bear.  And they said that they would take it to the warm Pacific and cast it into the air and it would float back to me.”
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 144-5

[Biggles]

With rugged mountains plunging straight into the sea, it was like riding your favourite bike road every day without rounding the same corner twice.  Some of it was challenging.  West of Sparta the mountain road clambered up through dozens of impossible switchbacks but, with the long winter in the Moroccan mountains behind us, Elephant’s hairpin technique was close to faultless.  We found ourselves swaying through the hills as though we were performing a kind of swooping dance; a mechanical ballet with an Elephant in a tutu.
We spent hours riding in first, second and third gear (we had 6) entering the corners wide and deep, turning late and hard when I could see the exit then keeping plenty of power going to the back wheel to keep it planted firmly (you have to think about the physics sometimes).  This is the classic bike cornering technique designed to give the rider options and traction and to keep the bike coming out of the corners on the safe side of the road.  Failure to master this simple method has killed more good men and women than the plague.
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 163

[Biggles]

I  have never minded riding in the rain, or riding in gusty cross-winds, or riding challenging mountain roads, but all three together is different matter.  The road twisted itself into a tortured knot of switchback corners and the rain thundered down turning the hairpins into rivers and covering them in debris.  The lightning seemed to strike on top of us and the thunder hit us with a wave of energy that shook us to the core.  We climbed on.  The storm wind ripped down the valleys and hit Elephant with a hammer-blow each time we were exposed from the lee of a spur.  High in the mountains it started to hail.  Big clumps of ice smashed into our helmets and arms and Elephant struggled to keep a steady grip on the marble road.  My arms and shoulders started to ache and I realised that I was gripping the controls too tightly trying to make each input smooth.  I tried to relax by shaking my shoulders consciously to release the knotted muscles and I found myself talking to Elephant, murmuring soothing, wooing sounds, steadying nerves.
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 167-8

[Biggles]

The day was also eventful in other ways.  During the two days, the Elephant sat in the hotel's front garden under its cover.  Unfortunately it also sat with its parking lights on as I had inadvertently turned the key one click too far before removal.  It was a silly mistake that left our battery so flat it wouldn't run the GPS much less spark the ignition.  As has often happened in tight situations, a friendly local went of his way to assist us.  A delivery driver was having coffee when I went back into the hotel.  He brought his van around and parked in close.  We didn't have a set of jumper cables, but we found two lengths of 10 amp electrical cable.  From (bitter) experience I knew that these would not provide the power to crank the engine so we connected the cables and let the Elephant draw some power from the van for about 15 minutes, resisting the temptation to press the starter and smoke the cables.  When there was enough power in Elephant’s battery to give a bright ignition light, we unloaded the luggage and Jo and the van-man gave a big, running push while I jump-started the beast in 3rd gear. The engine fired easily and we were away!
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 183-4

[Biggles]

We often felt isolated by our complete inability to understand the Russian language and script but this was seldom a domestic problem.  Despite our complete lack of language, we always managed to find a bed and get fed, get repairs done on the bike, and negotiate our way through police checkpoints and border crossings.  We each had our areas of responsibility for the administrative tasks we collectively called hunting and gathering.  Jo was responsible for negotiating the accommodation while I parked the bike and kept it safe.  As she explained it, if she walked into a hotel or guesthouse, she probably wasn’t there to buy bread.  All that was required was to determine if a room was available, look at the room, signal acceptance, and negotiate the price using numbers written on a scrap of paper. 
A similar pantomime was played out in cafes and restaurants.  We would often walk around the tables and identify what looked good on other diners' plates then signal to the waiter that this was the dish we wanted.  It was a simple system and, if executed with a little good humour, generally got a good laugh from the locals and often an endorsement for our choice from the other diner.  In supermarkets Jo always stood back and let me make a fool of myself gesturing and smiling.  She had noticed that the women who inevitably served behind the counter were apt to find the foolishness of a bloke amusing, if not charming, but were not so well disposed towards charades by a female.
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 229

[Biggles]

Throughout our 12,000-kilometre ride across this stunning land we had rubbed along with the ordinary Russians going about their lives.  In the remote areas the only foreigners we met were other adventure riders.  The locals were friendly, amazingly helpful, curious, cheerful and pleased that we had made the effort to come to their town.  We had often said that we were propelled on our way by the kindness of strangers, but nowhere was this more so than in the Russian Far East.  Although there was always the risk that Elephant would miss-step and put us onto the road, we were confident that the Russians would stop and otter genuine assistance. It was just that kind of place.
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 253

[Biggles]

We found, as we travelled, that the idea of the journey had a deep cultural significance that was probably universal.  To journey far among strangers was seen as an honourable thing, worth doing for its own sake.  Our arrival on Elephant underscored the challenge of our journey; its difficulties and, therefore, its specialness.  We learned to tell the story of our journey quickly and efficiently and use it as a kind of currency.  We used a map with graphics to show where we had come from without the need for language.  We ended our explanation by saying, or indicating, “And now we are here!” This usually elicited a broad smile.  The personality of Elephant was the final element in the transaction.
Elephant was so distinctive that a small fan club formed wherever we parked.  People waved as we rode by and grown men asked to sit in the rider’s seat to have their photo taken.  People often said to us, “That's my dream, too,” and we often spent a half-hour or more answering questions and posing for photos and videos when we stopped in the street.  We spent the time willingly even when we were filthy, exhausted and hot, because we understood that this was our part of the transaction.  And, for their part, people were kind to us, and true to their own belief in the idea of the great journey.  With these thoughts sloshing about in our heads we rolled on towards Vladivostok, looking forward to our arrival and the symbolic end of our odyssey; the end of our easterly journey; the chimera at the end of a continent.
The Elephant's Tale  Mike Hannan p 255-6

[Biggles]

It is indeed a vague measure of time.  In my case, the pointless wandering comprised an eleven year sleep of motorcyclelessness.  When I woke, I was in a dark hallway, stumbling forward with hopeful hands held out.  Then I saw a slice of light.  Closer, and I could see the title on the door from under which it spilled: “Bikes Here. Enter and Be Saved.”  Inside was such strangeness: Everything has changed!  At least on the surface- the great increase of riders, numbered in hundreds of thousands; the armored gear; the digitized, the carbon- fibered, the ABSed and GPSed, the piled-up complications of parts and pumps and suspensions; the listservs and forums ever-blossoming to encompass billions of words and countless thousands of clever avatars behind which masks were people who rode faster and braked better and knew more about more minutiae than was ever conceived of a decade earlier.  I reeled back.  For a moment.  Then, in the very center of the swirling din, I saw that what was elemental had not changed.  For it never could.  The joy.  The need.  The familial bond of blood.  The erotics of risk.
Finally, the realization that this all begins with miles.  And the consumption thereof.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing  Melissa Pierson p x

[Biggles]

He had not yet fully become what some small, potent seed in him had long ago foreordained he would be: a rider of singular talent and drive, one of the top long-distance endurance riders in the world.  He would soon shatter the record on a frightful, 5,645-mile journey on some of the most difficult roadways in North America, and he would do it so fast (a blistering 86.5 hours, ten fewer than his predecessor) that no one could name the person who could have kept him in even distant sight ahead.  When he finishes this ride, the first thing he does will be to conceive of something harder to do next.  There are other people like him, who live to ride the ever more challenging ride.  But few of them think they might like to become the first person to ride upwards of two hundred thousand miles in a year; few of them are as truly strange as to think they could sit in the saddle for an average of 550 miles every day of the year, Christmas and New Year's not excepted.  John Ryan is thus alone-far and away alone- at the head of a small group, the rabid mile-eaters, that is hidden in plain sight near the very heart of motorcycling.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing  Melissa Pierson p 2-3

[Biggles]

And so it is that long-distance riding can be seen as a proxy for the daily life-or-death struggle we were kitted out for as forest-dwelling hunters.  In its absence, we feel a need to find pursuits that exercise the same mental and physical capacities.  Or else they start to itch.  We want to feel fully alive, and fully ourselves.
In this way, riding to extremes takes humans home again.  The incomprehensibly extraordinary endeavour is nowhere better captured than in G. K. Chesterton's phrase “the immense act”.  Its undertaking is "human and excusable" due to the fact that "the thing was perfectly useless to everybody, including the person who did it”.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing  Melissa Pierson p 9

[Biggles]

In order to do this, to be unlike anyone else in the world, he has cleared the decks of all the ropes and anchors the rest of humanity laboriously collects in order to feel safe, or in order to trip over.  By his own account, he has "no career, savings, or health insurance, because I have chosen to ride instead of responsibly chasing my tail like everyone else."  He does not have a car, or a house, or a wife, or children.  What he does have, as of the end of that first bun Burner Gold, is a calling.  The allusion to sacred ordination is more than apt: Ryan often refers to a special class, that of devout motorcyclist.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing  Melissa Pierson p 15

[Biggles]

The people, and there are many, who simply don’t get LD riding seeing it in a place it does not belong: the standard motorcycling paradigm.  "Bikes take us to beautiful places (or adventuresome which in their difficulties are beautiful to a rider) that are experienced through the senses that touch the external world- sight, smell, sensation." But the way you must see this melodic variation on the motorcyclist theme is that the adventure is internal.  It aims itself toward the mountainous passes and river crossings of the mental and emotional landscape, as brutal and awe-inspiring and challenging as any route outside.  This inner country is rarely explored comprehensively, for the simple reason that the common structure of life has no quarter for it.  But engage the peculiar mechanics of deep time on a machine that focuses the mind like a laser at the same time it frees the bonds of the physical, and you go, fast, into infinite slowness.  Here is the lovely electrical charge of paradox; motorcycling taps deep into it.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing  Melissa Pierson p 26

[Biggles]

We talk, of course.  They are heading to Hyder, Alaska, and back.  From Florida.  In two weeks.  They met six weeks earlier, he says, referring to her as his fiancee.  That is how I come to think of them as Jack Sprat and his wife, for she is as round as he is lean.
Two weeks- for somewhere around 7,400 miles?  This means they will have to keep a pace of 525 mile days, every day.  They will become intimately acquainted with every rest area and gas station, but not much else, along a route that will certainly be slab all the way.  This they referred to as their vacation.  The man has done this kind of riding for a long time; it is the only kind of riding he does.  He has read all the books related to Iron Butt rides, but he has never documented his own; he has never bothered with the membership card.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing  Melissa Pierson p 110

[Biggles]

Gary Orr rode coast-to-coast non-stop, 2,232 miles, without ever putting a foot down- from San Diego to Madison, Florida- using a trailer hauling gas for his BMW K1200LT.  A November 2008 Rider magazine squib on the feat was titled “Depends?”
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing  Melissa Pierson p 115

[Biggles]

This was what I felt awakening in me, after my eleven-year sleep: the desire to feel again.  All that sensation- a throwing of self into a pile of leaves, game of tennis, pillow fight- is an animal expression of exuberance.  And exuberance is the lifeblood of childhood, the time we first understand and collect sensation.  To be exuberant, to ride, is to return to the best part of life; not to remember, but to re-live.  Hiding, in its physicality, connected me back with life, which itself is essentially and only physical- the body in space, the body feeling things.  Thus it connected me to my mortality, because at some point I would no longer be able to ride.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing  Melissa Pierson p 142

[Biggles]

Next Mike pulled out another certificate and held it up for all to see- even though they couldn't, the room was so large.  They knew what it said, in recognition of an incredible eighty-six hours and thirty-one minutes for a ride of 5,645 miles.  "We have our secret clubs," he intoned, "and you, John Ryan, will forever be in the secret UCC club."  As Ryan moved to leave his seat to receive due, Kneebone started tearing the certificate into tiny bits that fell like snow to the floor. He then reached down to pull out another, this one saying only, "under four days," a mathematical vagueness. 
Ryan, who had retreated, now got up again and this time took hold of an acknowledgment, in the only form the Iron Butt Association would give.  Those who knew the rest of the story, the one that would remain written only in wind on the slate of the memory, stood up in a body to give Ryan, standing by the podium with a shy, proud smile, a standing ovation.  A moment of effusion, and then they sat down.
The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing  Melissa Pierson p 177

[Biggles]

Ed Otto, who finished in tenth place on a touring  motorcycle in 1993, entered the 1995 rally riding a 250cc finished in twenty-second place, ahead of 17 modern, full- sized motorcycles!  This gives weight to IBA President Mike Kneebone's feeling that it is the rider that determines how well one finishes in the IBR, not the motorcycle.  The rider has to keep a clear head and be able to discern the best route from all of the available bonus locations.  The rider has to cope with bad weather, bad food, bad health, bad roads, and the other trials and tribulations of an eleven-day rally.  The rider has to be constantly sorting through options as the physical and mental stresses of the rally wear away at their soul.
Hopeless Class  Joel Rappoport p 40