Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

And if I had a magic wand and could have one wish granted, I would take Mike Hailwood with me on the Panoramica. Yes, we'd have a nice adventure on the Panoramica. As far as I'm concerned, Hailwood was the greatest ever. Back in his day, many races were run on urban circuits, which would have made him perfect for a road stretch like the Panoramica.
I'd love to go for a ride with Wayne Rainey. But, with him, it's more of a competitive thing. It would be great if we could square of, one-on-one, with the exact same bike and tyres. Rainey is one of the riders I admired most. In his day, Yamaha was much slower than Honda and yet he always went for it, he always believed utterly in himself. And, even though he was very fast, he hardly ever fell, so he was always in it at the end. There is no question that he and I have very different personalities, but for me he was one of the all-time greats. Rainey and Hailwood: those are the guys I'd look to measure myself against. And I like the idea, because taking on Hailwood indirectly means taking on his contemporaries, Agostini and Read, while facing Rainey involves competing with the likes of Schwantz and Doohan.
What If I Had Never Tried It   Valentino Rossi  pp274-5

[Biggles]

When we left for Japan, I dubbed myself "The Master", not in an arrogant sense, but because I had been going to Japan since 1996, and now I felt like I knew my way around and thus would make the perfect tour guide. My first task was explaining to them just why the Japanese are different from the Italians. For example, I wanted to prove just how kind, gentle and respectful the Japanese were. And the way I did it was by harassing the staff at our hotel and encouraging the others to do the same. The idea was that no matter how badly we behaved, they would still treat us well. "Smile and everything will work out," I told my friends.
They learned very quickly. They said hello to everyone, smiled and basically did whatever the hell they wanted for five days. In that time, we stayed five to a room, and we ate, slept, used the pool and never paid a single penny for anything. We were really shameless, we really took advantage of them. We would come down for the breakfast buffet and be as rude as possible. We would jump the queue, grab whatever food we liked, sit wherever we liked and be as rude as we liked. And, of course, we would always leave without paying and usually after having made a mess.
What If I Had Never Tried It   Valentino Rossi  pp281-2

[Biggles]

Our other favourite pastime on that trip was stealing. We would steal from the various shops around the race-track. We would only steal little things of course: stickers, gadgets, toy cars. Cheap stuff, nothing expensive. But that was also part of our sociological experiment. You see in Japan there is no such thing as theft. It simply doesn't happen. People leave their front doors open, their cars unlocked. And, for them, it was unthinkable that someone might come and steal anything. We really wanted to try their patience, test the outer limit of what they could stand. In the end, however, we got a bit discouraged. We would walk up to the cash register and put things in our pocket in plain view, without any intention of paying for them. They would just look at us, without saying a thing. It was weird and unsettling. So much so that, at the end, we would give back what we had stolen or we would pay for it. Eventually we realised that we had gone too far. It happened in 2001. Being superstitious, I took it as a sign. I had never won anything in Japan, not in 125, not in 250, not in 500. And the Eight Hour Race went badly as well.
"Let's try to behave well," we told ourselves. "Out of respect for Japan, let's stop being Italians!"
And so we did. In 2001, we didn't steal anything. And I won both the Grand Prix and the Eight Hour Race. And that put a halt to our experiments.
What If I Had Never Tried It   Valentino Rossi  pp283-4

[Biggles]

Sheene's character carried his fame. He had an overwhelming charisma. Call it star quality. Sheene's presence was so powerful and so magnetic that he had only to walk into a crowded room and you would know at once that he had arrived. His sharp-featured grin was easily the most noticeable thing in any company; his razor-sharp wit could reduce friends to helpless laughter and cut enemies to the quick. Barry had a knack of making everyone feel that there was something personal between him and them. No matter how small, it was enough to make everybody feel a little special, and for Barry to be forever special to them.
Barry Sheene Motorcycle Racing's Jet-Set Superstar  Michael Scott  p12

[Biggles]

The Queen Square flat was a well-trodden path for a large cross-section of the racers of the day. As Iris told me years later, there would be a steady stream turning up at the door in the evenings. Iris might be cooking the family tea, or bathing one of their two children in the big kitchen sink ('we had no central heating, so it was nice and warm there')- she would wave the visitors through to the workshop. As soon as he could, Barry would be in there too, steeped from earliest boyhood not only in the technical side of motorcycles, but also the racing milieu. And racing people, Frank told me once, are 'good people'. As everyone in racing would find out, Barry would run rings round them all.
Barry Sheene Motorcycle Racing's Jet-Set Superstar  Michael Scott  p19

[Biggles]

Wednesday afternoons were bike days down at Brands Hatch, the Kentish circuit that was closest to home. Barry's asthma came in handy: on a regular visit to the clinic he managed to lay hands on a pile of appointment slips, all stamped and signed, but with the dates blank. He had doctor's appointments most Wednesdays after that. It was enough for him to be hands-on with the bikes; he had no idea he might become a professional racer. But he was practising for it all the same, at 13 belting round the fields surrounding the race-tracks on a 1OOcc Triumph Tiger Cub, and playing with his mini-bike and an old Austin Ten that Frank had bought so he could learn to drive.
The following year Frank bought him a Bultaco Sherpa trials bike, and for a spell he enjoyed club-level mud-plugging in Kent. Trials are demanding, severely testing the niceties of machine control, weight distribution and traction- feathering the clutch, flying the front wheel, carefully measuring the power. Barry, his contemporaries recall, was extremely good... the finesse came naturally, but the sport bored him, and he would lose points trying to do sections at breakneck speed or on the back wheel.
Barry Sheene Motorcycle Racing's Jet-Set Superstar  Michael Scott  p25

[Biggles]

The little factory racer was saved for special occasions- like an important national meeting at Brands Hatch, where two senior Suzuki GB men were present. One was the racing team manager Rex White; another was sales (later managing) director Maurice Knight.
White: "I'd seen Barry on the Bultacos. Now, on the ex-Graham Suzuki at Brands, he broke the throttle cable, and he actually won the race, pulling the carbs open with the cable wound round his hand. I said to Maurice, that's the sort of bloke we want on our team, if he's that determined."
White remembered it wrong- in fact he was beaten that day by Simmonds, but the point was made, and Maurice Knight later wandered over to the Sheene family in the paddock. Franko was sitting smoking on a wooden stool outside an old van and Barry was playing about with the bike out front. They were just like dozens of others there. I said I was Suzuki, that I was pleased with the way he had run the race. That's where the acquaintance started.
Both sides would benefit hugely in the years to come- and Barry would start working on that almost at once.
Barry Sheene Motorcycle Racing's Jet-Set Superstar  Michael Scott  p37

[Biggles]

The film shows the big Suzuki at high speed on the banking. For a heart-stopping instant it slews sideways a ball of smoke, then a jumble of flying objects hurtles past the camera. Barry came to rest in a crumpled heap 300 yards further on, still conscious, his left leg snapped at the thigh and folded behind him. He thought at first he had lost it completely. You can't see this in the long shot, but he tries to open his visor, to discover that his right arm is also broken. Then the big American ambulance rushes to the scene, way down the track, at the entry to Turn One.
Sheene recalled, the year before he died, how he came to, "completely compos mentis in every way. I just wanted them to take my helmet off, give me a cigarette,  and leave me alone to settle down. None of which they did."
Cameras rolling, treatment began almost at once before Barry had cheerfully reeled off his list of injuries- broken left femur and right arm, compression fractures to several vertebrae, broken ribs and extensive road rash on his back- adding impishly: "Apart from that- I'm fine." Later, he would say: "I lost enough skin to  cover a sofa" and as tellingly- "If I'd been a race-horse, they would have shot me."
Barry Sheene Motorcycle Racing's Jet-Set Superstar  Michael Scott  pp52-3

[Biggles]

His main rival for the home series was Mick Grant on the Kawasaki, and a fierce rival too. Grant, asked now what, of all their races, he remembers most, picks that Cadwell Park return. "It was just a few weeks after his crash. I mucked up the start, and most of the grid had gone. At that time it was either going to be me or Barry winning the race, though with his injuries it wasn't going to be him that day. But as I came through the field, the hardest guy to pass all the way was Barry. He got a lot of respect from me for that. He wasn't well, and the bones weren't mended. Had he fallen, he'd have been in bits again."
Mackay recalls Barry pitting after leading, barely able to stop the bike. He'd exercised all of his body, but neglected his hands and simply run out of strength there. "He was a physical wreck... just a blob of jelly." Sheene didn't make that mistake again. I recall visiting him at Charlwood after his other big crash at Silverstone in 1982. In his study, as well as an exercise bike that his legs were not yet strong enough to use, he had rigged up a pulley system, operated by twisting a steel tube, the width of a handlebar, with rubber on each end. He challenged me to twist this, lifting up a weight. I managed a couple of goes; Barry laid his sticks to one side and hoisted the weight skyward at record speed.
Barry Sheene Motorcycle Racing's Jet-Set Superstar  Michael Scott  p82

[Biggles]

With his cheek and his wit, his homely good looks and crooked-tooth grin, and the increasingly carefully tended long hair with its natural blond streak, the brave British bike racer's appeal fitted the fashions of the time and cut across class barriers. His ability to enjoy and exploit his two world titles were the foundation of his status as folk hero. When the fortunes of racing went the other way, it mattered not a jot to the stature of Sheene the Superstar.
This made him, in retrospect, an obvious choice for Faberge. They were selling an aftershave called Brut- a mass-market fragrance for the flare-trousered medallion-flaunting disco-flouncing peacock males of the age. Faberge had already secured massive popular appeal with everybody's favourite heavyweight boxer Henry Cooper heading the campaign, but 'Our 'Enery' lacked youth appeal. Not so Barry. The series of TV and print ads they made together had a catch-phrase that passed into contemporary folklore, recounted in Barry's distinctive Cockney twang: 'Splash it on all over.' For Barry, as a boost to his fame, nothing- not even the life-size cardboard cut-outs at Texaco service stations, and the TV ads he did for them with actor Michael Crawford- beat the great smell of Brut.
Popularity on this scale certainly didn't hurt his chances. Even so, it was sporting achievements that gave the depth to his vast and ever-growing public appeal. One measure of this came from the professional journalists who cover everything from football to snooker, the Sports Writers Association. In 1978, he beat the popular middle-distance runner, Olympic gold medalist Steve Ovett, by 470 to 436 points to be their Sportsman of the Year.
Barry Sheene Motorcycle Racing's Jet-Set Superstar  Michael Scott  pp123-4

[Biggles]

The helicopter flying instructors at Shoreham Airport, on the coast between Brighton and Worthing, were impressed by their latest pupil. He may have been on the older side, but his capacity and willingness to learn, and his possession of that magic understanding between man and machine, put him in the top bracket. "He could have trained for the Air Force, or become a commercial pilot," said Chris Bartlett, one of those who trained Barry Sheene.
Maybe it was something to do with turning 30, maybe a present to himself after a dismal year. Either way, late in 1980 Sheene became the proud owner of a second-hand American Enstrom helicopter, and threw himself headlong into training.
He'd owned a fixed-wing Cessna, and of course could fly it, but had never bothered to get a licence. Helicopters were something different- a real challenge.
Rotary-wing pilots will tell you, their eyes shining, just how much more difficult and involving it is to fly a helicopter than a fixed-wing aircraft. Barry was no different. In automotive terms, a helicopter is a motorcycle, a fixed-wing a dull old car.
Barry Sheene Motorcycle Racing's Jet-Set Superstar  Michael Scott  pp156-7

[Biggles]

Barry spoke very highly of his own technical sympathy and understanding, and few would contradict him. Here's one quote, from the mid-Eighties. "I'm much better at setting up bikes than I am at riding them. Most of my success has been because I've got the bike right." The statement carries a not altogether comfortable corollary; that Roberts may not know how to get his bike right, but his riding ability made up the difference. But this is too simple by half.
Kenny's thoughtful approach to racing and his understanding of his machine was as widely respected as his hard-as-nails riding. Yet here was Sheene saying things like: "Kenny Roberts can't develop a motorcycle. He'd have trouble developing a cold!" This was so heretical, so very Sheene, that it caught the imagination. At the time, I asked Roberts for his opinion. "If I'm so bad, and I'm beating him, then what is he doing?"
Barry Sheene Motorcycle Racing's Jet-Set Superstar  Michael Scott  pp165-6

[Biggles]

It does come down to something more than tub thumping. Motorcycle racing is the most personal of motorsports for engineering as well as egotistical reasons. A racing motorcycle is a very personal object. Bear in mind that by moving around on the motorcycle the rider adjusts the entire centre of gravity, changing the whole balance of what is already a very complex technical equation. It follows that each rider's physiology, and the way he moves affects the way the machine responds to him. When you are operating at the limits of brake, tyre and engine performance, pushing the envelope of the physics, these small matters can be very important indeed.
If Barry didn't like the way Kenny had the engineers build and set up a motorcycle, and he certainly didn't, this wasn't to say that the bikes were wrong. Just wrong for Barry. Racing at the edge is very much a matter of feel, and if the bike doesn't give it to you, then you cannot use your full riding ability.
Barry Sheene Motorcycle Racing's Jet-Set Superstar  Michael Scott  p167

[Biggles]

Ekerold saw him flash past Igoa, thought: "That was close". Then he saw two instant explosions. The first was Igoa's fuel tank, as Sheene's Yamaha hit the fallen bike; the second was Sheene's tank, as his disintegrating motorcycle somersaulted down the track. Simultaneously, Middelburg also ran into the wreckage. Ekerold's trousers were torn by flying debris, probably the front forks, ripped off Sheene's bike. The severity was unimaginable.
Keith Huewen was close behind, just in time to see the explosions, slamming on brakes and riding blind through a pall of smoke. He emerged to a horrifying scene, 'like an air crash'. Debris and smoking wreckage was strewn across the track. He'd stopped by chance alongside Sheene whose body was also smoking. Huewen was sure he must be dead. Trembling with shock, he returned to the pits with the dreadful news. Franko heard immediately, and went straight to the scene. As he approached, he met a white-faced Ekerold, who told him: "Don't go, Franko. You don't want to see."
But Frank had to go. Kenny Roberts had arrived by then, and carefully removed Barry's helmet. Other riders were standing around, some in tears. Marie Armes, wife of an official and a nurse by profession, inserted a breathing tube down his throat, very probably saving his life. Then Franko arrived, knelt beside him, cradled his head, and spoke to him. "Barry. Listen son. You're alright. Speak to me."
Amazingly, Barry responded, a faint groan. Frank kept talking, willing him to consciousness.
Barry Sheene Motorcycle Racing's Jet-Set Superstar  Michael Scott  p172

[Biggles]

Sheene didn't mean to let this slow him down. He told me in 1983: "I never for a moment thought about retiring after the accident. I just thought about getting back. It's not as if there's some psychological thing to get over. It could have happened to anybody. It wasn't as though I messed up a corner or made a mistake. If I'd done that, I'd think I was getting a bit dodgy. The injuries were purely mechanical, physical damage, and you can fix that."
Just part of being a motorcycle racer. His last big crash had been a huge step in his career. This one would effectively end his time as a championship contender, if not as a racer. But the injury, or more especially his conspicuous courage and good cheer in recovery, would serve him as before.
For as those X-ray-rays were flashed on the TV screens and the newspapers, followed by pictures of Sheene on crutches, interviews and profiles, something happened to reverse the souring trend of the previous years.
The fans loved Barry Sheene once again.
Barry Sheene Motorcycle Racing's Jet-Set Superstar  Michael Scott  p175

[Biggles]

Straight home, on the phone to Nigel Cobb, who told him that using crutches wouldn't damage his legs, though it would be excruciatingly painful. Never mind that. Sheene quickly learned how to 'quadruped' on crutches (having only had to deal with one leg at a time in the past), and presented himself for a fresh medical.     
He explained all this to me with a trademark one-up grin. "Dad was with me, and after I'd got the knack of the crutches, we went straight from the hospital back to the doctor at Gatwick. I could walk on them, but I couldn't stand up or sit down. So I said to Dad, when I go to sit down, you grab me and lower me down, and you drag me up when I have to get up, right, and I'll just keep giving you a bollocking.
"So we went in, and I go to sit down, and Dad grabs the back of my trousers and lowers me gently, and picks me up again to stand up. And I'd say: 'Look, Franko will you leave me now. I'm all right. You know I've been on crutches for ages.' A terrific two-man act. Dad's really great."
Barry Sheene Motorcycle Racing's Jet-Set Superstar  Michael Scott  p181

[Biggles]

The tributes came from far and wide- by email, by post, and in the press, from rivals, friends, and from tens of thousands of fans. All reflected the same bewilderment, that a man who had survived so much and, as a result, been a beacon of hope to so many, could be struck down so cruelly, and so prematurely. He died almost exactly six months before his 53rd birthday. The memorial meetings, the annual charity ride to the Australian GP and similar events in Britain continue to this day.
Sheene, in his remarkable life, had done more than anybody to promote not only himself, but at the same time motorcycling and racing. Much more importantly, he had been an example of sportsmanship, courage, individuality, humour and humanity. In death, his popularity remained. He had been bigger than his sport, and in the end he was bigger than his own mortality too.
Rest in peace.
Barry Sheene Motorcycle Racing's Jet-Set Superstar  Michael Scott  p216

[Biggles]

A further 40 years would elapse before I visited India again. Goa was very different and I was no longer addicted to peace and love, hash cookies or psychedelics. A motorcycle had replaced the VW. I was writing a travel column and terrorists had attacked the Taj. Not the Taj Mahal but the hotel in Mumbai that, for a century, had played host to the rich and famous... and had become my haven in those first years of exploring the subcontinent; not because I was either rich or famous but through friendship with a kindly member of the family that owned the hotel. Now was my chance to repay hospitality with positive publicity. Fear of terrorism had killed dead the upper end of India's tourism. Yet how dangerous could India be if an ancient Brit could tour the subcontinent on a small motorcycle?
An Indian Love Affair  Simon Gandolfi  p16

[Biggles]

Memories come of riding for the first time after the crash. Dakar Motos is in a quiet Buenos Aires residential suburb. Lunchtime and the streets were empty. I managed half a dozen blocks at snail pace before returning to the workshop. Fourteen kilometres of thruway separated the workshop from my city-centre hotel.
Javier's wife, Sandra, watched as I dismounted.
"There's less traffic at the weekend,' Sandra said.
Is my fear visible now? And I need a helmet, side panniers.
The factory will be closed Sunday. But Saturday? Yes, the factory is open Saturday. The bike will be ready with its paperwork.
Saturday morning and the PR honcho supplies me with a silver helmet emblazoned with HONDA. HONDA similarly embellishes the back of a sleeveless jacket in thick blue denim. A photographer clicks away as I wobble a few timid circuits of the factory's parking lot. My progress is further immortalised on half a dozen mobile phones, pics to amuse middle management's offspring: Look at the fat old clown! A wheezing clown suffering from bronchitis. The driver of the hire car who has brought me to the factory will lead me back to the hotel.
"Slow," I order him for the umpteenth time.
Toll gates on India's highways have a bypass for bikes. I mislay the driver a the first gate. Maybe he decided to take a different road rather than pay. The traffic is thinner than I feared and I don't panic. Road signs lead to the city centre and Connaught Circus, then towards the railway station and a left on to the Grand Bazaar and the Jyoti Mahal. The hotel staff are pleasantly impressed...
An Indian Love Affair  Simon Gandolfi  pp27-8

[Biggles]

Janasi is the next major town south, 95 kilometres. A dual carriageway is under construction. Stretches of the old road have been ripped apart. Renewed stretches are deep gravel waiting for tar and diversions are rutted dirt. I hate dirt and I hate gravel. Dust clouds envelop crazed bus drivers in their fight for primacy. Dumper trucks are as scary as maddened elephants. My little Honda slips and slithers. This is not a fun ride, yet elderly bikers speed by, no helmets, beards henna-red with dust; insouciant women ride pillion, faces veiled, an infant or two clutched in their arms. This is their normality. It is not mine. I want to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
Terror is a lousy companion...
An Indian Love Affair  Simon Gandolfi  p37

[Biggles]

Francis rides north with me to Gwalior on his ancient Enfield Bullet, Miyuki on the pillion. The Enfield is slow and Francis mistrusts the engine. He worries that it is overheating, stops often; in the saddle, listens for malfunction, head cocked to the right and low. Meanwhile Miyuki is silent, only her eyes visible below her helmet. A pale blue scarf printed with tiny flowers covers the rest of her face. Gloves protect her hands.
In such company, my Honda Stunner seems a frisky racehorse as it bucks and bounces on the potholed diversions alongside the unfinished highway. It is more stable in the dirt than the Honda Cargo I rode the length of the Americas. I feel more confident in the saddle and the electric start is bliss - though, as expected, the seat is a pain in the butt.
An Indian Love Affair  Simon Gandolfi  p46

[Biggles]

A Harley or Honda Goldwing might be permissible in the Usha Kiran Palace car park, possibly the biggest of BMWs - 125s are an embarrassment. Particularly when laced with umpteen bungee rubbers. My Stunner waits in the shade beside a flower bed raised against the perimeter wall. A splendidly uniformed guard, my equally splendid room steward and two gardeners have come to watch me mount. I try for nonchalance: a quick smile for all and swing the left leg over the gear. The leg won't swing that high. So much for nonchalance.
The gardeners lift the bike round against the raised flower bed. The steward steadies me as I mount the flower bed's retaining parapet. Over goes the leg and I settle myself on the saddle. The room steward hands me my helmet much as a Plantagenet squire might to a knight at the jousts. Press the button and the engine purrs. The guard salutes and off I wobble in search of the National Highway to Agra. Of course I get lost; Indian cities are confusing.
An Indian Love Affair  Simon Gandolfi  p48

[Biggles]

We are stuck in Jaisalmer for four days. The engine on Francis's bike is in pieces. So is the gearbox. There has been much nodding during the disassembly, much pointing to this and that. Final conclusion waits on the elder brother's wife to translate. She is a business graduate and occupies a government office eight hours a day. An indeterminate number of indeterminate relatives share a modern house in the suburbs. Various bits of engine hide beneath beds and benches and the house smells of petrol. We have been invited to dinner - vegetarian, simple and lightly spiced. What and how we eat is of great interest. Everyone watches. Everyone smiles. Various women pass babies one to another. All conversation must go via the wife so conversation comes to a halt each time she goes to the kitchen.
We learn that her husband has developed various modifications for Enfields. What modifications is a mystery as the wife is no mechanic and her vocabulary is inadequate - however bikers ride even from Jodhpur to have their Enfields improved. Francis's bike is beyond improvement without a complete rebuild. It has been badly modified by a mechanic without understanding and the rebuild would take weeks as the parts must come from the factory in Chennai. Elder brother is returning the bike to normal and readjusting carburettor and timing. Francis should ride it slowly.
An Indian Love Affair  Simon Gandolfi  p70

[Biggles]

I cruise at 90 kph and cut inland to avoid Mumbai - why risk bronchitis? I pull in beside a sextet of cops for directions on which road to take.
An officer asks my age. "Seventy-seven, seventy-eight next week." I show him my passport.
The cops hand my passport round, yak and laugh amongst themselves. They are giving me an advance birthday present: permission to ride up the Pune (or Poona) Expressway (illegal for bikes). The police tell me which exit to take, that the exit road leads to a T-junction where a restaurant on the corner serves good food. A little weird being the only biker on a six-lane highway, somehow vulnerable, defenceless - if that makes sense. Ignoring the restaurant strikes me as bad manners: a fresh lime and soda and a bowl of Mongolian soup.
An Indian Love Affair  Simon Gandolfi  p82

[Biggles]

The country road from the Janjira ferry south twists through steep wooded hills and through river valleys - a glorious ride. I don't think of myself as a biker. I don't have the leathers or the decals. I've only changed a tyre once and I prefer paying a mechanic to adjust the chain. It's not laziness or incompetence, more that I enjoy watching a professional at his work and enjoy the usual crowd that frequents a bike mechanic's shop. Imagine those hours in Jaisalmer watching the Sikh brothers rebuild the antique Enfield's motor.
This is beginning to read as an apology for enjoying myself. Not so- simply that I am surprised at the fun I get from biking (given that I don't think of myself as a biker), and given that most people on the road (foreign or Indian) think that my riding a bike round India is remarkable. Most are surprised that I've survived. True, I was shocked the first couple of weeks. India's traffic obeys neither laws nor logic, however it does have a rhythm - or that's what I feel. Get with the rhythm and you enjoy the ride. Or perhaps the third fresh lime and soda has gone to my head. Maybe I should stick with beer.
An Indian Love Affair  Simon Gandolfi  p86