Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

Other experiences were unquestionably real but weird bits of luck. Like the time, walking down a road in Onchan toward my house, that I noticed a little boy dressed up in a cowboy outfit. He was on the sidewalk, dragging a broomstick between his legs- performing one of those feats of imagination that are effortless for little kids, turning a stick into a horse.
So there I was, having come from Alberta- real cowboy country in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies- to be here on the Isle of Man. But the first time I imagined coming here, I was that little boy’s age. I looked at that kid and couldn't help but see a weird reflection of my own life. All of that was going through my mind. Then, as I reached the corner, I realized the little boy had been walking (in his mind, riding) down Alberta Road. Alberta Road. How weird is that?
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p68-9

[Biggles]

That article concluded with what is arguably the most bucolic crash report ever:
It was A J. Steven, on his Humber, who, endeavouring to take the bridge "all out" was unable to negotiate the curve, and in order to avoid what Jake de Rosier would call being caught "bending", ran down a narrow lane leading into the waters of Sulby Stream and the rich, herb-laden pastures thereby. Amid these pleasant surroundings he stopped his machine, falling off somewhat and having made sure no limbs were numbered amongst the lost, got on the road once more.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p74

[Biggles]

The Bandit is a good bike, really, but it feels like a huge lump to me. Its been a long time since I've ridden anything at all, and it’s so different from the bikes I've been racing that it takes me a long time to get comfortable on it. Still, it is my first real lap of the course on a motorcycle of any kind. I concentrate on staying in Steve’s wheel tracks. Up on the Mountain it's foggy and raining, and my visibility gets worse and worse until discretion gets the better part of valor and I let him get away. After a while, I flip up my visor and realize that half the fog was inside my helmet. I pick up speed and find Steve parked and waiting for me farther down the Mountain, down out of the fog.
...
Over the next few weeks- it takes that long to get around to putting the CBR on the road- I ride the course on at least a dozen different bikes- pretty much anything that's been taken in on trade and has fuel in the tank is fair game. I start to feel that I know the course, maybe not as a distinct, sharp series of turns and bends, but in the way you might come to know a person; they become generally but not specifically predictable. 
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p87

[Biggles]

On one of those shopping trips, I pull the bike up to the store just as a mother is leaving, pushing a baby in a pram. At the sound of the bike, two little hands wave above the rim of the baby carriage. The kid gets a grip and pulls himself up so that his wide-eyed gaze meets mine for a few seconds, until he falls back. The mother looks from her baby to me, smiles and shakes her head. I point at the carriage and then at my own chest, using sign language to say, "That's exactly what I was like!"
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p88

[Biggles]

Dodging cars, I walk down through the corner to look for more hazards on the exit. There I notice a commercial florist’s bouquet that's been tied to a concrete fencepost with ribbon. It's been there a long time, I can tell. There's a tiny white envelope attached to it; the kind that comes with any basic commercial bouquet, which would normally contain a card with a message from the sender. I slip finger into the envelope, which has been softened by the elements. Its empty. No card. No clue who it might have been for, or from, I realize that there is some faded writing on the envelope itself It says, "34th milestone (Kates)"
Something about this one, in particular, sticks in my mind. Sometime later, I walk down the Strand in Douglas and look in on a florist when it hits me: It wasn't that someone put the bouquet there, they, phoned it in. That was why there was no message in the envelope: there was no recipient, at least no one who needed to read anything The florist had just written the delivery address down on the envelope, and gone out and tied it to the fence. The people, friends and family who gather in small groups to place the more permanent memorials are- at least in part- doing something for themselves. Getting “closure” to put a pop psych label on it. But whoever phoned in that florist’s order was doing something very different. He or she was never going to see the bouquet. The flowers were to be placed by someone with no connection to anything. And really, except for me, they were destined to go almost unnoticed. It was less a public thing than a private message to an anonymous rider, as if he was still out there somewhere, lapping the course. Something about that flips a neuron in me, and I suddenly realize that, read as a collective, the hundreds of memorials are not sad. Although they often express loss, "You’ll be missed” not one of them condemns the TT. If anything, they celebrate it as the high point, which it was, of every life thus recalled.
I don't want Steve polishing my memorial here either. But I cannot think of any place I'd rather have one.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p94-5

[Biggles]

In practice for the 125 cc race, Hondas were dominant. When the race itself began, Ernst Degner’s MZ was the only non-Honda among the top six and he dropped out on the second
lap. For most of the race, every rider on the leader board was mounted on a Honda. For a manufacturer, it was a performance so dominant as to be nearly anti-climactic.
However, Taveri pushed Hailwood right to the end. After 113 miles, Hailwood won by a mere seven seconds. Phillis, Redman, and Shimazaki rounded out the top five. Looking back on it, it seems appropriate that Mr, Honda was given his first TT victory by the greatest motorcycle rider of all time. Needless to say, Honda won the team trophy as well. The Examiner said simply, "It was a devastating win for the Orient.”
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p109-10

[Biggles]

The 250 cc race was run later the same day. Based on practice times, this one was still up for grabs. MV Agusta claimed to have withdrawn its factory team, but the guys working on Gary Hocking's motorcycle certainly looked like the works mechanics from past years. Bob Mclntyre opened with a storming first lap, averaging nearly 100 mph from a standing start.
Hocking, on the MV, was close behind. On the second lap, Mclntyre went faster than any of the previous year's 350 cc racers. Indeed, his times would have dominated the class just three years earlier. Hocking dropped back to third, and then retired with a mechanical failure. Once again, every rider on the leader board was Honda-mounted. Mclntyre was denied the victory he deserved when, halfway round his final lap, his own engine expired. So Hailwood inherited his second win of the day, followed by Phillis, Redman, Takahashi, and Taniguchi, all on Hondas.
It took seven years, not the single year he’d hoped- but even Mr Honda couldn't have dreamed of the extent of his Isle of Man TT success when it finally came. Curiously, he himself did not return to the Island until after he'd retired. Then, before devoting himself to painting, he embarked on a final world tour, visiting the sites of all his company's most famous victories. He brought a Honda factory race bike for the cluttered private museum at the Bungalow, where it remains the most valuable exhibit.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p110

[Biggles]

When you read about the TT, you come across varied counts of the number of turns and bends on the course: 137,140; depending on who's figuring, it can be as many as 180. In clear weather, sightlines are good up on the Mountain, but three-quarters of the course is tightly walled and hedged in, built up, or overarched by trees. And there are many crests and elevation changes, so no matter whose count you believe, there are literally hundreds of places where the course disappears in front of you. Around a corner. Over a crest. Behind a fence or building or hedge. Climbing or descending into a forest glade. Here's the trick: most of the time when this happens, it happens at blind kinks that can be taken flat out. You don't have to slow down as long as you know where the road goes next. So far so good, but here's the other trick: every now and then, something that looks just the same turns out to be a tight bend that requires two or three down shifts.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p111

[Biggles]

When you first get to the Island and the long, long lap blurs into a series of undifferentiated bends, the knowledge that there are a few deadly traps scattered among them can be pretty intimidating. Frankly, the course seems unlearnable. Your initial reaction- at least my initial reaction- is that all those other guys must really have been riding on guts and reflexes.
Your second reaction is that you can’t do it, at least not at the speed you're going to have to go. It’s pretty depressing.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p111-2

[Biggles]

At this point, I have to interrupt, "But its so featureless! I've been through there a hundred times and still haven't found a single landmark." The course kinks down and to the right- a blind approach with a wall on one side and steep berm on the other.
"How,” I ask, "do you time the turn-in?"
For a moment, Hislop looks at me as though he's wondering if he should give away a trade secret. Then he thinks, "What the hell, I’ll never ride the TT again anyway.
"Toward the end of the straight, you come to the crossroads, but that's much too early to turn in." As Hislop starts to answer, he closes his eyes, and leans forward in his chair. His hands float up, as if grabbing an imaginary set of handlebars. "You can't feel it at all on open roads but when you're flat out, there's a little rise after the crossroad. If you're tucked right down, you'll feel the bike come up..." eyes still closed, he exhales sharply, and lifts his chest- miming the tank hitting his chest, then lets his body sag back down for a moment. "As soon as you feel the bike settle back down," as he says it, his body scrunches into a tuck, "you throw it to the right, aiming at the end of the hedge." He opens his eyes, and looks at me with an expression that asks, Got it?
I wish Peter had been here to film. It’s been almost ten years since Hizzy last rode through that kink wide open. But when he told me how he'd done it, he hadn't been dredging up a distant memory- it was still right there, in his body. When he closed his eyes, he was there.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p119

[Biggles]

There’s a huge blue and white striped tent nearby and without asking I know its "the" blue and white tent I've been reading about since I was in high school, poring over accounts of the TT that used to appear in summer issues of Cycle. It’s the tent where riders go to await the start, have a tea in the morning, or a mug of soup when they stumble in half-frozen from a wet practice.
It's as familiar as can be. Two women of the grandmotherly type ubiquitous among TT volunteers tend a pair of enormous kettles. A plywood table sits in front of them covered with styrofoam cups. Milk and sugar are laid out. An oversized tin can has been turned into a sort of piggy bank; donations are welcome but they understand when you come creaking in a race suit that you probably don't have pockets, say nothing of coins for the tin.
I ash Andrew if he wants a cup of tea. He looks down. "No thanks.” He works full time at Padgetts, but he's only 16 or 17. This is the first time he's ever had a team pass. Despite (or is it because of) being Manx, he's awed. He doesn't seem sure if the tea’s for the likes of him.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p156

[Biggles]

Still, I'm glad to have a chance to review the launch procedure. Bikes are fired up in the pare ferme and then the stewards open a big gate onto Glencrutchety Road, There's no prescribed starting order to practice. Bikes pull out and line up two by two. Most riders are accompanied by two or three mechanics and friends, who help push them slowly along.
You pass a person standing in the road, supporting a plywood sign with a drawing of a crash helmet and the question, "Helmet Strap?" Then another person, with a chalkboard, which carries specific notices of the hazards of the day. This morning, it is a Manx haiku:
Heavy Rain
Standing Water- all around
Fallen leaves on road
Fog on mountain
High Winds
Be Careful
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p157-8

[Biggles]

There are two predominant schools of thought concerning the rider inputs that cause a motorcycle to turn. The Freddie Spencer school of thought holds that the rider’s position on the
motorcycle is key. Spencer’s arch-rival, Keith Code, runs something called California Superbike School. Code's position is that counter-steering: handlebar pressure alone- is what makes motorcycles turn.
At the Spencer school, they tend to rely on what your prof called “argument from authority" back in Philosophy 101. Freddie, they point out at every opportunity, is a triple World Champion; who ever heard of Keith Code? But over at the California Superbike School, they’ve gone the gadget route. They've created a motorcycle with dual controls. It has one conventional set, and a second handlebar rigidly mounted to the fuel tank. "Think you can body steer?" they sneer, "see how far you get on this.”
As usual in such political debates, once you've studied both positions, you realize they are making essentially the same case, though they see it from opposing perspectives. Each chooses to ignore their similarities, and focus on their differences.
Strip the rhetoric away, and you'll initiate a turn the same way, no matter where you learn to do it. At the approach of the turn, you shift your weight forward and to the inside. Most good riders take care of this early, because it gets awful busy very soon. As you reach the turn-in point, you will simultaneously transfer as much weight as possible to the inside, by hanging off the bike. At this point, the weight of your body is carried by the inside foot-peg, and by the outside knee, which is pressing against the side of the fuel tank (For simplicity, I've left out all the braking and downshifting that accompany most turns, and throttle control which is essential to balance turning forces between front and rear tires).
Then, magic happens. You push on the inside handlebar. Momentarily, you actually steer opposite to the direction you want to travel. This causes the motorcycle to fall down into a
stable lean angle, matched to the radius of the bend and your speed. Your knee makes contact with the pavement, which is usually incidental but serves as a gauge of just how fast you're going. (At this point you must be looking up through the corner, planning your exit, and you couldn't look at the speedometer even if you had one.)
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p176-7

[Biggles]

Slowly but very loudly, she tells us, "If you need a cuppa tea," she pauses, and forces a smile, as her brow wrinkles. She looks from one of us to the other to the other, hoping for some sign of comprehension, but were too bemused to react, "or summat to eat,” she enunciates- if anything even slower and louder- while miming the act of eating, "there's – tea – and – sandwiches - on at the - church hall!" One last searching look, hoping for any kind of comprehension. We re dumb-struck, but manage a few nods. She walks away.
"What's really funny about that," Jim says as she turns and disappears into the church hall, "is that when she walked up to us, we were speaking English!' I guess if you're from Kirk Michael, and you see strangers in front of Collister’s shop during TT week, you just naturally conclude they're Krauts, then make the assumption (common to all British, it seems) that loud, clear English is all that should ever be required to communicate with any foreigner.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p180

[saaz]

Charles Jarrott retired from racing in 1905 from what he described as 'racing over the never-ending road that led to the distant, in obtainable horizon'

[Biggles]

After hearing the first few pairs of bikes launch, the line starts to move back where we are. I've worked my way almost to the front. Past the chalkboard that reports conditions are essentially ideal all the way round the course. Past the plywood sign about the helmet strap. I’ve charged Kris with the task of confirming that I've not forgotten to wear the vest, that my leathers are zipped up (as a final touch, we seal the zip with a strip of matching duct tape) that my gloves and boots are firmly velcroed shut, knee sliders well stuck on, and that, most importantly, my helmet strap is, indeed, done up. He inspects them all, tugging and tightening, like one of those birds that hops around on a hippo. Paul restarts the bike, and he and Kris drift away to the side.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p184

[Biggles]

If you're just riding on the road, you take the contact between your front tire and the road for granted. It rolls along in the direction and at the speed of your travel, and that’s that. It’s
different when you're racing. Small bumps in the pavement force the front wheel up- a moment of very good contact between tire and road- then the tire is briefly airborne, until the springs in the front forks, and gravity, return it to the pavement. Even when the tire is in contact with the road, the soft rubber compounds of racing tires may or may not be conforming to the surface on a microscopic scale. The way these special compounds work, the surface area of the contact patch can be much larger than what you see with your naked eye. (Imagine rubber stretching over all the tiniest grain of the pavement. Now, flatten those mountains and valleys out.) The rubber sticks to that surface like a Post-It note- so it will pull itself off the road and roll without much resistance, but stick tight and resist sliding when the bike is at an angle. All those variables influence traction and determine a racer’s confidence that a violent steering effort will steer the bike around the corner, instead of cause the front tire to slide and make him crash. Over time (and its one of the hardest skills to learn as an apprentice racer) you get to feel, through the handlebars, what your front tire is doing down there on the pavement. This is what racers mean when they say a motorcycle is "giving good feedback ".
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p186

[Biggles]

It’s about now that I start to really enjoy the ride, I lose- or at least compartmentalize- the "Oh my God this is fast" thought- I stop seeing the fences and hazards- I stop thinking how
useless one hay bale is when you're passing a telephone pole at 140 miles an hour. (The only one I notice in particular, and I'll keep seeing it until the end of practice, is a bale at the exit of Greeba, which has a hand-scrawled poster on it, reading "This is Joey's famous bale”. I think the story is that Dunlop clipped it with a footpeg, ripping it apart at God-knows-how-quick a speed I can see how he would’ve, as the last right turn leading onto the Bailacraine straight tightens deceptively, at a time you really want to begin accelerating. I just about clipped it myself, and the next time through I almost hit it again because I was thinking about the last time.)
The top of Barregarrow is another one of those places where you can t see the road ahead at all. The course drifts ever so slightly then kinks left around the church and its off down the bumpy hill. On open roads, with the churchyard wall just off your left handlebar, you've slowed down for it, but now I realize that I can ride through almost flat-out. Its a place where I can hold my own, the sort of challenge you'd only find here, and I love it. But this time as I barrel through, a dark shape breaks away from the hedge and it's a good sized bird, flying right into my path. I sense, more than see, an explosion of feathers, and my view is smeared. Instinctively, I roll off, tilting my head so I can look through a spot on the visor that's still clean.
Some guy on a 250 who must have been right behind me, passes, looks back, and shakes his hand at me. The gesture could just mean "Holy Shit!" or maybe he was miming shaking off the guts.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p188

[Biggles]

What I didn't know, and wouldn't until after my races, was that one of the first riders sent off in the previous session had a problem at the top of Bray Hill, just a few hundred yards down the road. His crash took place right where, in the infamous video, Paul Orritt’s bike shook, went into that wild tankslapper, and threw him down like a rag doll- a crash that was only funny because Orritt lived.
Colin Daniels didn't live. The long delay before I got to start was the time it took to clean the wreckage of his Suzuki GSX-R600 off the course. Even some of the TT’s most ardent supporters shuddered when they learned that his body- wrapped in plastic and stashed behind a nearby wall- was not moved to the morgue until after the session had ended, in order to keep the practice on schedule. In hindsight, when I put all that together, I realized why Steve was rattled. It happened right where my bike’s been shaking.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p189

[Biggles]

Once again, we stage on dry pavement, but by the time I launch, it's streaming rain. My practice partner passes me on the brakes at Quarterbridge. This is getting old. I concentrate on hitting the apex and a reasonable drive off the corner, the rear spins up in the wet, but the Honda holds its line, and I have a good run to Braddan church.
At the church, I notice something: the wake of the bike ahead of ahead. Maybe I have an epiphany, aiming for late apex, winding the throttle on, and letting the spinning rear tire slide around until I'm pointing down the road. Over the next few miles, riding the CBR as though it were a little dirt bike, I catch and pass several guys. No one passes me.
I close on my next victim at the top of Barregarrow. He's in black leathers- another Newcomer, I see by the orange vest. Even in this weather, the run down to the bottom of Barregarrow is in top gear. There's a hump where the road crosses a stream, and it kinks left around a building. It's the hump, not the corner, that limits your speed. The apex marker is a cast-iron drainpipe. The first time I came through here, I found it damned intimidating- and that was on a bicycle.
I know that I'm going to carry a lot more speed through here than this guy. I plan to pass him on the bumpy straight just beyond. But as I adjust my speed and commit, Mr. Orange Vest panics and brakes extra hard. Leaned over, in the rain, with the bike unsettled by the bridge, there's no way I'm stroking the brake, I literally squeeze through the gap, brushing the drainpipe with my left shoulder, "brushing" him a little harder with the CBR's muffler. When I look back, I'm relieved to see that he's still on his wheels.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p203-4

[Biggles]

So it was sweet when Mike [Hailwood], a genuine hero untainted by the TT boycott, came and beat Read in the TTF1 race. If people hadn't paid too much attention to the F1 class before, they did after that. And if his other races that year, including the Senior, were anti-climactic, it didn't matter. In ‘79, Mike came one last time, winning the Senior, on a Suzuki RG500. Soon afterward, Mike was killed in a road accident near his home. He'd gone out to pick up an order of fish and chips. It was a dark and stormy night. There was a truck in the middle of the road making a U-turn. Not a happy ending, I suppose, but good for the myth.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p218-9

[Biggles]

[After the road was opened for public riding.]  Along the way we catch up to a huge crane truck loaded with at least twenty crashed bikes stacked up like cordwood. At Windy Corner, it pulls off the road to collect several more that have come to a stop in the gravel trap. On the Isle of Man, though there is no blanket speed limit, there are laws against reckless riding. To add insult to injury, every one of the riders of these bikes will be ticketed. By Manx logic, crashing proves they were riding without due care and attention.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p224

[Biggles]

Dear Reader,
If Hollywood picked up this story, the script would be rewritten so that, at the story's climax, I won. But you’ve already read the climax, such as it is, of this book.
For most Newcomers, and it was perhaps especially true for me, that the goal in a first TT is to come, to qualify, to be in the show. Having earned a start, all a Newcomer can

realistically hope for is to be around at the finish.
We live in a culture that increasingly sees in black or white. The only alternative to winning is losing. Everything is neatly labelled right or wrong. Its detractors put it simply: the TT is brutal. But the TT is not simple.
When all its nuances are appreciated, it is beautiful.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p228

[Biggles]

Once I'm underway, I push a little harder than I have been in practice, until I have a huge headshake. Then I go back to my baby steps approach. Still, I find myself carrying fourth gear
instead of third through the left-hander at Greeba Bridge and I carry a higher gear at Ballacraine, too. By the time I pass the Sulby Glen Hotel, David Jefferies (who broke a valve) has already coasted to a stop there and is having a pint.
So, I beat DJ.
I beat John McGuinness, too, the only way I ever will; his motor expires on the long Cronk-y-Voddy straightaway, I see and avoid the long trail of oil he left behind him.
Up on the Mountain I drag my knee in a long and satisfying way as I pass the Graham Memorial On my second lap up there somewhere, Jim Moodie (who had about half a lap's head start on me) catches me.
After the pit stop, I know that despite my best efforts, I'm running close to last. On the final lap, in survival mode, I ride just fast enough to maintain my concentration. Do I still qualify for a finisher’s medal I wonder, if I'm passed by the travelling marshals when it comes time to open the roads after the race? (Don't laugh! It happens.)
I'm held up a little when I catch some guy around the 32nd stone. He's got a little motor on me and opens up a gap, again, on the drop down toward Creg-ny-Baa, He slows me at every bend until, finally I get past him between Signpost Corner and the Nook. (Later, when I got the official times, I wondered if he prevented me from getting my "ton up' lap, but I don't think he accounted for more than a few seconds.)
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p232

[Biggles]

One morning there I was- with my computer on my lap, a coffee beside me on the carpet. In the middle of typing some altogether unrelated thought, I had a vivid, vivid sense of being out on the course, I was at Greeba Bridge. You get to the bridge after the beautiful flowing section past the castle. You throttle back a little at the kennels but then its wide open through Greeba village. The road wiggles but it's easy to see a straight approach to the bridge, which is in the middle of a sweeping left turn.
This is one of the widest, smoothest parts or the TT course. I never noticed it on open roads but there's a slight hump to the bridge, right on the apex of the turn. For two weeks, I'd been taking it in third and finally fourth gear, cautiously increasing my speed each lap. But every lap, I found myself with too much road on the exit. "Too slow!" I thought, time after time.
Anyway, sitting right there on the stairs, I felt myself braking later and less, downshifting only once, instead of twice. I saw the paint mark on the bridge wall that I used as my turn-in point. I felt my left knee on the pavement, gauging a steeper lean angle- and this is the important part- I felt the bike lift over the hump in the bridge and drift wide. But I held the throttle steady. Because suddenly I knew that the road, right there, was smooth enough and wide enough that the bike would settle, the tires would grip, and I'd get through, I knew I could carry 10 or 15 miles an hour into the next acceleration zone, which is at least a thousand yards long. There were seconds to be saved there. There, again, was my hundred-mile-an-hour.
But there I was on the stairs, not on the bike where I could do anything about it.
Riding Man  Mark Gardiner p246