Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

I did a search for ‘F800’ clutch on a well-known motorcycle blog for adventure motorcyclists called ADVrider and, amazingly, came up with a complete DIY repair schedule. I printed it off at the hotel and when the guy from Hong Kong arrived with the new clutch, Colin and I put the pages on the floor beside us and followed the instructions step by step.
 I wrote a blog on the ADVrider site afterwards, saying that my brother and I were circumnavigating China on motorcycles and that the repair blog had saved our whole trip. The guy who'd written it, who goes by the online name of ‘Lost Rider', posted a response, saying that he'd seen our website and thought what we were doing was awesome, and that he was glad to have helped.
The Middle Kingdom Ride  Colin& Ryan Pyle  p211

[Biggles]

A week earlier, we'd been on our way to Everest when we'd had to take a detour to Lhasa to get my bike fixed and hadn't known if we were going to be able to continue with our trip. We'd had to deal with frustrations, anxieties, and added costs, and then we'd had to backtrack more than 600 km. It had all been worthwhile, because it had led to the moment when I stood in the shadow of Mount Everest with my brother beside me. I was really proud to have made it there, despite everything, and I don't think there are words that can adequately describe the enormous sense of achievement I felt.
Colin and I have talked about that day many times since then, and we agree that it was the most exciting and challenging day we'd spent on the bikes, as well as the most memorable experience of our lives. It took us nine hours to cover 75 km of incredibly difficult off-roading at an altitude of between 4500 and 5200 meters above sea level. It's a road well never forget.
The Middle Kingdom Ride  Colin& Ryan Pyle  p229

[ppopeye]

I've got PMS. (Parked Motorcycle Syndrome)

I like them all. But this is specccial

[Biggles]

The fact that I'm still happy after riding more than 500 km in the cold and rain must say something - I'm not sure whether it's something about resilience, cussed determination not to be beaten, a previously unsuspected tendency toward masochism, or the pure pleasure of riding a motorcycle through some of what must be the most gorgeous scenery in China. The landscape we rode through today was what I imagine Vietnam or Cambodia to be like.
The road was great too. It was possibly the most impressive example of road building I’ve ever seen in my life. Instead of winding its way around mountains via a series of switch-backs, it cut straight through them - bridge, tunnel, bridge, tunnel. Sometimes it was like riding through the clouds. The mountains are a lush green colour, and there are lots of tiny villages that seem to be suspended in  mid-air. It was a wonderful ride - apart from the weather.
The Middle Kingdom Ride  Colin& Ryan Pyle  p248-249

[Biggles]

My father even encouraged the project, more or less on the quiet. In his youth he had undertaken a similarly crazy journey - two thousand kilometres through Italy to the Ligurian Sea in 1905 on a motorcycle with no gears and no clutch! Carburation, ignition systems, the starting mechanism and slipping belt drives were the technical problems of that era. But the machine was amazingly reliable.
Far greater were the troubles caused by whip-lashing coachmen, shying horses, stone-throwing lazzaroni (beggars) and biting dogs. But the sensation he created was colossal - for example in Bologna: “The hotelier had the machine cleaned up and when I came into the restaurant, there stood the motorcycle next to the table that had been reserved for me. The numerous other diners were crowding round the vehicle whose red enamel and shining nickel trim made a grand spectacle”.
My father described this sensational journey in various newspapers and it is delight to read of the patent starting mechanism, the ignition problems and of course, many tyre defects.
In the final instalment of this 'account of a modern motorised journey' we read: “I had covered nearly two thousand kilometres and climbed over five thousand metres. It was a pleasure to contemplate the miracle of technology which had carried me like wings over hill and dale and which had justly earned the official rating 'Perfect'.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p1-2

[Biggles]

To this day I can't explain how it happened, but after only a few metres we ended up lying together with the bike in the ditch next to the customs house. The disgrace of it! I was horribly ashamed and the customs men were grinning all over their faces. Somebody muttered something about 'young fools' and a third party volunteered the following calculation, "It's sixty kilometres from Vienna to Kittsee. 13,000 divided by 60 makes 217 crashes. So you see," he opined cheerfully, "if this goes on all the way to India, there's not going to be much left of you.”
We gathered up our pantechnicon. It was so heavy that I couldn't get it upright on my own. Helpers and onlookers stood around with serious and sad expressions. I noticed at once that the forks were bent but I said nothing about it and we both reseated ourselves on the monster.
Amid hesitant calls of "goodbye" and "be seeing you", I got the machine moving and succeeded in getting out of sight of our friends without falling off again. Thank God, the India Expedition was under way.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p21

[Biggles]

According to regulations, the Turkish military zone could only be crossed if we carried an armed soldier. We explained that, with our machine, this was impossible. We were promptly deposited, together with the bike, in the courtyard of an army barracks and abandoned like a suitcase in the left luggage office. After a few hours we gave in and realised that this was no way to get to India. We resigned ourselves to the impossible: a soldier took his place on the pillion and Herbert climbed up behind on the tent, and off we set, three up, bumping over the rough Turkish tracks. The strange load frequently threatened to tip over. My brow was bathed in sweat from sheer fear. At any moment I felt that the whole machine would break in half. I could not bring myself to consider such an ignominious end. "Did you hear what happened to those chaps who thought they could ride to India? Didn't even make it to Istanbul..."
 I couldn't let it happen. I gritted my teeth and drove the double load in first gear at full throttle along the dusty track. This went all right as long as the steppe remained level, but then it became undulating, and on the first rise, we stuck.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p30

[Biggles]

The soldier was the good old-fashioned sort. His orders were to keep his eyes on us all through the military zone, and he intended to stick to those orders, however many days it took. Eventually we hit on a solution that suited him too. First, I would ride ahead carrying the soldier while Herbert followed behind on foot. Sometimes I'd go just a few hundred metres, sometimes over a kilometre, just as long as we could still keep Herbert in view. As soon as he was no more than a speck in the distance, the soldier would thump me energetically on the shoulders and point back suspiciously at Herbert. I noted with amusement that the fortifications hereabouts must have been massive but so cunningly concealed that we never saw a thing except grass and a couple of storks! But leaving Herbert too long to his own devices always ended up making our Turkish escort decidedly jumpy, so I would rush off and bring Herbert back under the watchful authority. Then the whole game would be played all over again.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p30-1

[Biggles]

Istanbul is certainly a city full of curiosities. It is also the city with the worst road surfaces. If you haven't seen this, you can't begin to imagine it. You begin by cursing Istanbul's streets, then comes enlightenment, born out of sheer necessity: you ride on the tramlines. Some people are of the opinion that this is dangerous with a bike, but once the initial nervousness has been overcome, it works like a dream, providing that the weather is dry and that you avoid the points. I was very pleased when I learned how to ride the tramlines. It proved to me that I was at last in control of our monstrosity of a bike. Riding tramlines is a sport with a charm all its own - you glide along the smooth ribbon of steel as if hovering on air, gazing contemptuously sideways at yawning pits and holes a foot deep.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p33

[Biggles]

A small incident provided us with another example of Turkish phlegm. I had been riding a bit too fast and the sudden appearance of a deep irrigation ditch proved our undoing. Over the verge we went, whizzing through the air in a high arc into a field of onions where an old peasant happened to be working. No damage resulted from the crash but it must have seemed spectacular to an onlooker. I ended up at the old man's feet and was able to observe him closely. The engine which had stuck on full throttle in the crash was making a hellish din. The peasant gave us a single bored glance but carried right on working and paid no more attention to us. Time and again we encountered this complete lack of interest, the very opposite of insatiable childlike curiosity, and it was quite hard to understand.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p38

[Biggles]

Even before dawn the next day the temperature was already at a ferociously high level and the glowing red bail of the sun gave us the impression of some dreadful scourge. We made ourselves face-masks out of linen which we wore under the front of our tropical helmets, hanging down to our chests, with big round holes cut out only tor the eyes. Short trousers and sleeveless shirts also proved an agony the midday heat. Long trousers and long sleeves would have kept off the heat better.  Seeing the Bedouin going about muffled up to their noses like skiers in a snowstorm, we realised that warm clothing, especially wool, gives protection against heat as well as against cold. That's why in the heat one should put clothes on rather than take them off, but we were not yet wise to these desert tricks.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p48

[Biggles]

It is an error to think of the pillion rider solely as a passenger. Much depends on him and on his state of alertness. Just like the man in front, he has to be constantly aware of the state of the ground. He must know by the sound of the engine how hard the machine is working in the sand, and whether it is going to make it or is liable to get stuck. The main thing when riding through sand is to keep up the momentum. The watchword is "Don't stop!"
Whenever Herbert noticed that the engine was straining at its last gasp, he would nip off behind and get pushing. He did it so neatly that I often didn't notice that he was no longer on the motorcycle. This resulted in half comic, half tragic situations. When the surface eventually grew better and I chanced to turn round for a quick word with Herbert, he would have disappeared! This meant that the good chap had been left standing far behind in the desert, sometimes many kilometres back, all alone and callously abandoned by his friend. As far as road conditions allowed, I would ride back, but Herbert had many a long walk through the desert. Then he would begin to revolt and say, "Why don't you let me have a go up in front for once? Then you can see how you like pushing and being left behind and having to traipse along on foot..."
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p51

[Biggles]

Besides this, our hearts were set on actually sleeping in the desert. Night in the desert is overwhelmingly beautiful and can be described only with difficulty.
We stopped just where we were. The last explosions of the engine died away and an uncanny silence descended, but soon we got used to the lack of sound and enjoyed it. The ground was dry and we laid our sleeping bags in a hollow in the sand. A thin linen sheet was the only covering needed, not so much as a protection against cold as against venomous insects. Then we lay still. The sky was a gigantic hemisphere above us, the stars were brighter and more radiant than at home and the moon was almost painfully white.
The silence was so complete that we could almost hear it - paradoxical, but true.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p60

[Biggles]

We had scarcely left the last workmen's huts of Hadithah behind us than we became aware that the storm was still too fierce for the safety of our two-wheeled vehicle. Things had not looked so bad from the window of the cosy bungalow.
It took all the power of the machine and my sense of balance to brace ourselves against the violent squalls that came at us sideways and several times forced us to the ground. Sand got into our clothes, mouths and noses and behind our goggles. It was a most unpleasant ride.
We struggled on for eighty kilometres to the oasis of Hit, in the course of which we frequently lost our way and because of poor visibility made several long detours. In Hit we stayed overnight in a miserable caravanserai and were thoroughly unhappy with our wretched surroundings. After abandoning ourselves to luxury with the British in Hadithah, we were bound to be discontented. There is nothing harder to bear than a run of good days...
The following day, to our enormous relief, the storm dropped, and high time too, for our eyes were sticky with sand and sweat and our bodies in torment from the thousand pinpricks of lashing grains of sand.
Our clothes were heavy as lead with huge deposits of sand in every pocket and fold. I had burned my left leg badly when the exhaust pipe came down on top of me in a crash. Because the machine was so heavy, it had needed all Herbert's help get me free again.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p65

[Biggles]

I had got as far as picking up a pair of pliers, ready to prise the seals apart and dismantle the gearbox. I feared that the awful nerve-racking judder would start happening in first and second gear as well, and then it would be 'curtains'. All the same, I couldn't quite pluck up courage to undo the seals. Perhaps a miracle would happen after all. So we crawled all the way to Baghdad in the two lower gears. There was no miracle, but we did find the solution to the mystery. This solution was ludicrously simple and lay in a completely different area from the one I'd suspected. I'm almost ashamed to have to tell the story. As I was giving the machine a thorough check and clean-up in the yard of the Tigris Palace Hotel, I noticed that the back mudguard was bent and was clearing the back tyre by only a few millimetres. It must have happened as we were crossing an area of scree and had several collisions with large stones. At any normal speed it did no harm, as the back wheel could still move freely. However, when the tyre expanded in the heat and when its circumference was further enlarged at higher speeds in third gear by centrifugal force, then the blocks of the tyre tread caught intermittently on the bent end of the mudguard.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p78

[Biggles]

While in Baghdad we had heard of another motorcyclist somewhere ahead of us who was also intending to get to India. This made me a bit uneasy, because can honestly say, hand on heart, that competition is welcome? I would not have been too pleased at arriving in India in second place.
I was naturally all agog to find out more. Who was it? What country were they from? What machine were they riding?
At the border between Iraq and Persia, where we were held up for a whole day, I had plenty of opportunity to make inquiries. From the local records I was able to make out that the man's name was Walter Tonn from Hannover, riding a 750cc Indian-Mabeco with a sidecar. He had crossed the border five weeks previously. He had a massive start on us. Would I ever succeed in catching up with Walter Tonn? It seemed unlikely. Our light motorcycle compared very unfavourably with his heavier machine.
I confess that this business irked me very much, but in the meantime things turned out very differently and I am sorry that I grudged Walter Tonn his five weeks advantage. We did indeed catch up with him, and soon. We found him, and yet we didn't. In Kermanshah we stood by his grave - he had died here of sandfly fever and typhus about two weeks before.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p86

[Biggles]

The crisis affected us in various ways. We asked ourselves why we were subjecting ourselves to all this physical strain instead of staying comfortably home. Instead of risking our lives here under the burning sun in Persia, we could have been lying on a beach by a lake in our own country, with a nice girl. That would have been vastly preferable!
Thoughts like this are dangerous. Fortunately we recognised this in time and took counter measures to beat the crisis. This usually took the form of swearing at each other very violently by mutual agreement. We gave each other a thorough psychological shake-up: there was to be no weakening. Life must go on. Getting our grand destination was worth our best efforts. Gradually the fairytale quest cast its spell over us once more.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p87

[Biggles]

I never cease to marvel at these Semperit tyres. It must not be forgotten that our 'pantechnicon' was being carried on the pneumatic tyres of a light motorcycle. We were really a couple of irresponsible idiots, running heavily overloaded tyres on Asian roads, but these were pedigree tyres! The inner tube on the back wheel was constantly getting holes because of all the nails and we worked hard patching it, but the outer tyre suffered no damage at all.
It seemed very odd that we did not get a single puncture on the front wheel, considering we went thirteen thousand kilometres through Asia. Whenever Herbert felt homesick, I used to advise him to take a lungful of Viennese air out of the front tube! He actually did this on one occasion, in the Baluchistan desert when we were finding the salt dust and the heat so oppressive. "That's better!" he said. I fetched the pump in order to refill the tube, and as I looked up I saw Herbert staring happily into the distance, under the calming influence of home. "You try it!" he said, and so I took a lungful of Viennese air too and all the hardship of our journey suddenly became easier to bear.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p98

[Biggles]

A few days later the pernicious sandfly fever laid hold of me too. I felt as if my skull were full of hot molten lead. The optic nerves were affected and I saw everything through a red haze. Far off, everything was a mess of bloody purple.
 We often fell off and stayed lying there for hours. Once a Persian came by and helped us up. I was so feeble and was trembling so much that I was totally unable to pour petrol from the reserve drum into the main tank. The Persian helped it, then I just sank back into the roadside ditch. Thinking was a terrible effort, but sometimes I saw in my mind's eye that grave in Kermanshah where Walter Tbnn had made his last stop on the road to India.
No, no, no, the blood seemed to hammer through my brain
Somehow we managed to pull ourselves together and ride on. I can't explain how, but we did. We ate nothing, sometimes drank nothing for a whole day and then frantically lapped up another salty puddle. We seemed to be becoming less than human, but we rode on and on, as if in a dream, because we felt that it was only by constantly moving that we would beat the crisis. If we lay down, we were lost. Somehow, almost unconsciously, we even took a few photographs.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p106-7

[Biggles]

What takes only a few minutes to read here lasted in reality for many weeks. I have been unable to give you such a detailed picture of this part of the journey as you might have wished, simply because this great crisis took us so close to the next world. There are borders with the hereafter which no pen can describe.
The missionaries looked after us and got us well again, except for the sal jek sores which take a whole year to heal; and then came the day when, full of hesitation and expectancy, I felt able to set my foot to the kick-starter.
Together again, dear little motorcycle! If it had had any idea how much it meant to us! I believe it did know and was overjoyed to have us back. Fate was being kind to our bike too, kinder than to Walter Tonn's Indian-Mabeco in Kermanshah. So, I thought, sing us your steely song again, carry us onward, on to the south, on to our heart's desire at the end of the trail. Now, thank Heaven, we were back in the saddle. The sandfly fever had been a bad business.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p107-8

[Biggles]

It may have been some small consolation to our faithful machine to be surrounded by people whenever we halted at a Persian oasis. Here, the clean-up routine was completed without difficulty, since the strange vehicle was explored all over wherever the human hand could reach. What a wondrous race are the Persians! Their joyful child-like curiosity soon made us forget all our tribulations. They were particularly taken with the lovely red-enamelled Tyrolean eagle which I had mounted on the petrol cap as a mascot. They couldn't keep their fingers off it, and it really is a miracle that the Tyrolean eagle stood up to all that pulling and tugging.
During the Second World War the Tyrolean eagle and the motorcycle with it Iay in safe keeping in the Technical Museum in Vienna. It remained under the museum’s protection throughout the confused years of the Occupation, when some Russian or American might well have taken a fancy to such an unusual machine. My sincere thanks are due to the head of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Hofrat Dr Seper. These days I have the India Puch at home with me. It stands in my garage alongside eighteen other veterans. As anyone will understand, this motorcycle my favourite and the one I carefully maintain and keep in running order. It has to start on the first kick, as I have often claimed (and won bets with some who wouldn't believe me!). I ride out on the India Puch several times a year and it simply changes my outlook. As I like to say on returning from these excursions, "It keeps me young!"
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p115

[Biggles]

We spent the night of 7th to 8th October in the shelter of a deeply eroded wadi. Our larder was looking distinctly bare, for we had been so well-fed at Badi Massud's that we had quite forgotten to stock up on provisions. You don't think food on a full stomach. We made supper off a tin of sardines from our iron rations and for dessert we swallowed a couple of quinine pills, just for luck. Quinine gives you buzzing in the ears, so you can't hear very well, but the stars in the southern sky made the night so magically beautiful that we were yet again perfectly happy in that lonely place. We didn't bother to pitch the tent, but just spread it on the ground and lay down on it, with the power of almighty God above us and the silence of the desert round about us. It was indeed a wonderful life, and how we thanked our stars for the privilege of such a great experience when we were so young. To be sure, there were many things on our journey which we could take in only superficially, but we did so with wholehearted enthusiasm. I do not envy Americans who slave away their entire lives in order to go round the world in their old age. For them, such a journey is the fulfilment of a life, but for us it was an education. It is only today I realise how much we unconsciously learned which can never be learned in school or college.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p134

[Biggles]

Going by our maps and the distance we had covered so far, we estimated about another four hundred kilometres. That was going to be another hard slog and the motorcycle was giving me plenty of cause for anxiety. Because of our wild ride along the railway track and the constant bumping over stony ground, spokes in the back wheel had been snapping, one after the other remorseless regularity. Every morning I had a tricky time fixing the remaining spokes so that they were spread evenly around the rim, until my fingers were scratched and bloody, but it was no good. The back wheel was no longer round but was becoming more and more of an oval. Eventually I took nine spokes out of the front wheel and fixed them in the back. That was all right for another half a day but what would we have given lor a few dozen spokes! We would have exchanged everything we had on board, valued at several thousand Schilling, for a handful of spokes costing one or two Schilling, if only we had been able to buy them. But any shop selling spares was too far away to be readied.
We did not talk much during this time. Death was breathing down our necks, for, it the back wheel collapsed, we would be done for – finally done for. Herbert dragged himself for long distances on foot in order to take the weight off the machine. I drove as carefully as if I had had enormous eggshells on the axles instead of wheels, but it was all no good. The wheels went on getting squarer, and we waited from one hour to the next for the final collapse.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p149-50

[Biggles]

We were dead tired when we lay down at the roadside on a piece of flat ground and fell asleep immediately.
I must have been sleeping so deeply that I did not turn over very much, otherwise I would not be telling this story. I was awakened by Herbert grabbing my arm and hauling me vigorously towards him. His behaviour was enough to scare me, although I was still drunk with sleep. Could he have gone crazy? Anxiety was written all over his face and he kept holding me tight up against him, staring rigidly past me. Oh, I thought, a scorpion, he's seen a scorpion! Then I turned round too and looked where Herbert was looking. I saw immediately why I had thought for a moment that Herbert had gone crazy. He had that strange distant expression often seen on mad people of the quiet and dreamy sort. However, he was not mad: he really was looking into the distance. Two or three feet from where I had been sleeping, the mountain fell away vertically for several hundred metres, and below us lay the Indian plain spread out like a map. With great caution we packed up our sleeping gear and tiptoed softly back to the safety of the roadway.
India The Shimmering Dream  Max Reisch p164

[Biggles]

The hardcore lover of motorcycles, the one whose head turns at every growing sound that promises a bike will soon flash into view, can't help it. There is a peculiar kind of motolust that inspires some people to fill their garages with bikes and the "pre-restored" carcasses thereof and still be unable to resist the next one they see that has a for-sale sign around its neck. They go away for a weekend of riding and come back with new friends whom they stay up with half the night talking of bikes and other destinations at which they will meet new people who will phone them the following week to tell of farther destinations. The calendar fills; the season is not long enough. The pocketbook is rarely large enough, for bikes, like boats, are black holes in the universe of money.
The Perfect Vehicle  Melissa Pierson p18