Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

"What's been going on with Mr Towne's life?" Simon asked as we snacked on our rations, waiting for the signal to start. Third day of the rally and disaster strikes already.
"Puncture," said Clive. "Two hundred ks from the finish."
The tyres on all our bikes were filled with mousse instead of compressed air. It made them less likely to puncture, but if the mousse detached from the wheel rim it would shred and the tyre would collapse.
"You rode 200ks on the rim?"
"200ks on the rim." Clive shrugged. He was one of the most laid-back people I'd met on the rally. With a quiet optimism and hangdog expression, nothing seemed to faze him. He just got on with it.
"Fair play to you," said Simon. 'You're a legend."
Patsy explained they'd used every zip-tie and strap they had to keep the tyre on the rim for the haul to the bivouac.
"Got in this morning at quarter past four," Patsy said. "Late dinner, early breakfast. And here we are!"
"Excellent!" said Simon. "We'll see you in Dakar this year, for sure. What do you reckon, Pats?"
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p125-6

[Biggles]

We passed through several sections of fesh fesh [powdery sand], which never ceased to frighten me. However, I'd learned, from riding behind Simon the previous day, to find my own path of unbroken sand to support my bike and crossed the fesh fesh with relative ease.
I was making good progress, but many other riders were having much tougher time. Every ten kilometres or so we'd see a medical helicopter on the ground near a competitor being enveloped in bubblewrap for the flight back to the operating theatre at the bivouac. We'd experienced challenging terrain over the previous days. The dunes had been hard, but this stage had its own particular difficulties. As the road-book warned in its idiosyncratic translation, our riding would 'have to be fine-tuned to a maximum account (of) alternate fast stretches and navigational traps'. Those navigational traps ranged from hidden wadis to a sudden, unexpected large boulder on an open plain, which could easily spell the end for a motorcyclist travelling at high speed.
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p139

[Biggles]

Amidst the terrible pain a vision of my sister Telsche popped into my head, smiling at me and urging me to keep moving forward. It felt like Telsche, who died of cancer in 1997, was calling out to me, saying, "It's OK, I've been here and I'm looking after you. You'll be all right."
With Telsche watching over me I made good progress, climbing a long mountain pass to a plateau and then descending to another plain. The long haul to the end of the special stage passed surprising quickly, although every second I was begging for it to be over. By the time we reached the end, the pain in my right arm was so great I couldn't lift it. I had to use my left arm to hook my right hand around the throttle instead.
I rolled up to the finishing line of the special section relieved that the worst was behind me, but full of trepidation for the 282 kilometres of bumpy, potholed tarmac between us and the bivouac at Tan Tan.
As usual, the friendly official was waiting to stamp our time-cards and wipe our goggles.
"Hero!"
"I don't know about that. I've done my hands in."
The official looked at them and turned white. "Merde!"
I got off the bike, but couldn't remove my helmet.
"Aaarghh!" I yelped. The pain was getting worse. My right glove was stretched even tauter than before. I didn't dare remove it in case I couldn't get it back on.
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p146

[Biggles]

"Is this your first Dakar?" the doctor said.
"Yes. My very first. Not a good way to end it."
"Will you come back?" the nurse said after writing Bon Voyage up my arm.
"No. Never."
But the doctor thought otherwise. "I have just treated someone who has done it seven times and reached Dakar three times. After every year he vows it will be his last. And every year he comes back. Even when he is in the race he does not know why he is doing it. He does not even enjoy it, but he always comes back. Maybe you will too."
I'd heard similar stories many times before, but as I walked away from the medical tent I was absolutely convinced this would be my last Dakar.
"I'm so relieved it's over," I told Russ. "I'm so glad I don't have to go out into that dust again tomorrow. It's dangerous and crazy and I was frightened. I'm so relieved."
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p160-1

[Biggles]

Hanging around the bivouac gave me an opportunity to discover more about how the rally worked. It was an amazing operation, one that I couldn't help thinking was so successful because it was organised by the French. If we British had organised it our obsessions with health and safety would have allowed red tape to strangle the rally. The French organisers had the right mix of efficiency and laissez-faire to allow one of the largest sporting events in the world to keep rolling with the minimum of fuss. The logistics involved in moving several thousand people, a full catering operation, twenty-six aeroplanes, more than a dozen helicopters, thirty-five television editing suites and extensive medical facilities, including an operating theatre, through west Africa, across distances of up to eleven hundred kilometres a day, were jaw-dropping, so much so that armies would visit ASO to study its operations.
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p190

[Biggles]

SIMON I didn't see a body, just a destroyed bike. But I knew from where it had happened and from the speed that I was riding out on an open plain - that it had been a very big accident. I noticed it was a Repsol bike, so one of the top riders from one of the top teams. He would have been moving much faster than Nick or me and I immediately thought: He's probably dead. It sent a shiver through me, but the thought of a dead rider lying by the side of the track left my mind just as quickly as it had appeared. Two hundred kilometres into the stage, there's not much else to do but press on. That's the problem. You can't stop. You can't even decide to slow down. No matter what you see out there, you've got to keep going. Otherwise you'll be a statistic too.
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p211

[Biggles]

When I thought of the hundreds of wives, girlfriends and families at home, waiting and staring at their computer screens, watching the Iritraq [SPOT] symbols just to see if their husband, boyfriend or father was still alive, I couldn't understand why anyone wanted to do the Dakar. At a time like this, it felt a very dumb race.
A grim-faced Repsol team manager held an impromptu press conference on the airfield. Caldecott [an Australian], he said, had crashed at about 11.30 a.m., about a third of the way into the special. The helicopter landed at five to twelve and he was confirmed dead two minutes later. Caldecott was the twenty-third competitor to die in twenty-eight Dakar rallies. Everyone was very subdued, but there was also a spirit of the show having to go on. We didn't have time to think too deeply about the tragedy. We needed to check the whereabouts of Simon and Matt; we needed to set up the pits; and we needed to prepare for the rest of the day ahead.
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p217

[STeveo]

There is a nice memorial to Andy Caldecott at his home town of Keith in South Australia.

[Biggles]

SIMON Shortly before darkness fell I reached the second refuel, 111 kilometres from the end of the special section. With only a handful of riders refuelling, and having lost so much time in the dunes and not seeing Patsy and Clive since they shot ahead, I felt I was lagging a long way behind the rest of the field. My fears were confirmed when the Euromaster rider I'd met earlier arrived while I was topping up my tank. Since I'd left him riding on his rim he'd found an abandoned KTM bike, removed its rear wheel, managed to bodge it on to his Yamaha, tied the brake calliper to the outside of his bike's swing arm and somehow made it work. Nothing, it seemed, was going to stop him finishing.
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p224

[Biggles]

"All right, boy?" It was Plummy. He'd turned up while I was sorting out my gas flow problems and he had a plan. Nick had rigged a full-power xenon headlight to his helmet. It was madness. He had zip-tied a huge high-intensity discharge transformer - labelled: 'Beware. 5,000 volts. Dangerous to Life' - to the jaw-piece of his helmet. The transformer was needed to punch a high voltage into the bulb to ionise the gas. But there was beauty in Nick's madness. Once it fired, the xenon lamp produced the equivalent of 150 watts of lighting power but drew only 35 watts from the batteries. Other riders had tried similar systems but had failed to find a way of firing up the bulb with the transformer mounted on the bike. With a longer cable the voltage drop was too great. Nick, who had spent months developing his helmet light, had worked out the only solution: strap the transformer to your helmet.
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p226

[Biggles]

SIMON We also heard an amazing tale about Tom, the South African Nick and I had passed without stopping. His bike broke down in the dunes after a piece of his carburettor fell off. Eventually, he stopped a truck. The driver said that he'd seen another bike some way back in the dunes. Tom took off his boots and started looking for the other bike, walking until he was too exhausted to take another step. He then lay down and went sleep. When he woke up, he walked some more, covering about twenty kilometres until he found the abandoned bike. He climbed on the bike. It started straight away. Wearing neither boots and socks nor helmet, he rode the abandoned bike back through the dunes in the dark to his bike, fitted its carburettor to his bike and rode out of the dunes. By the time he'd caught up with the rally he'd been going for forty hours non-stop.
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p249

[Biggles]

SIMON Towards the end of the special, I stopped at a village to take some photographs and have a rest. Sipping my water, I heard another bike approaching. A Yamaha XT500, a relic from the 1970s, pulled up. A Dutch competitor called Henno Van Bergeik swung off it and started talking. He was an off-road fanatic with a garage full of XT500s, the original classic desert dirt bike. Every year he'd go off on a bike tour on his own. He'd crossed Mongolia and he'd traversed Algeria twice - once without a guide, just sneaking across the border and finding his own way through the desert.
Wearing old leather gardening gloves that had cost him maybe three euros, he was now doing the Dakar on a bike that first saw action in the race about thirty years earlier.
"This is the most organised holiday I've ever been on." That's the quote of the rally, mate, I thought as soon as he said it. We were busting our guts to get to Dakar in one piece, but Henno thought it was a leisurely jaunt.
"They give you the route every morning. They provide all the food and a place to sleep. There's water and fuel provided every few hundred kilometres. If anything happens to you, there are doctors and helicopters to rescue you. It's never been like this for me before."
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p280-1

[Biggles]

Disappointed that I'd beaten Olly, the kids and the rest of the party to the Meridien, I walked back to the hotel car park.
"CHARLEY!" I spun round and there was Ewan.
"Ewan! Great to see you!" I felt like crying as I hugged him.
"Great to see you too, mate. Well done. Congratulations!"
"I can't believe we did it. I thought we'd never get here. And now look!" Over Ewan's shoulder I saw Olly approaching with the girls. I ran over to her.
"I was so worried about you," I said as I hugged and kissed my wife.
"You've got your beard again!" said Kinvara as I bent down to hug her and Doone. "And you smell!"
I showed my wife and daughters my broken hands. The girls, were fascinated, wanting to know exactly which bones were broken.
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p289

[Biggles]

I was drinking beers with friends at a barbecue when, for no apparent reason, I blurted out: "I'm going to ride a motorcycle through Africa." As I recall, motorcycle travel was not a topic of our idle chat as we sat on eskies and plastic chairs in a friend's backyard. I couldn't believe the words had come from me. But the idea felt like it had been there all along, lying dormant for years, waiting for this moment. I sat stunned and speechless, as if some otherworldly force had gripped me by the shoulders and said: "You need to do this." In that instant, time stood still. It was only a brief pause, long enough for me to notice. And while my drinking buddies quickly forgot my momentary lapse of reason, I did not. I could think of nothing else: the idea both frightened and enlivened me. But at the same time, I also felt in complete balance, as though I had known all along that this was my life's purpose.
Ubuntu  Heather Ellis  p3

[Biggles]

Next was the dilemma of how I would carry my mountain of gear. But this, too, was easily overcome, as right there on the Yamaha shop floor was a set of suitcase-shaped thick leather pannier bags and a heavy steel frame. With some minor modifications they would fit the TT. They cost $500 and belonged to a Swiss motorcyclist who'd ended his ride around Australia just days before.
This was the first of many coincidences that unfolded soon after the idea of my ride had burst into my life. In the beginning I shrugged these just good luck, but as each day passed, little, almost indiscernible, things happened at every turn. I was on the cusp of a new life and tingling with expectation, and in this heightened state of awareness I began to notice these subtle hints of synchronicity.
Ubuntu  Heather Ellis  p10

[Biggles]

They talked amongst themselves with nods and the occasional sideways glance at me, which I interpreted as a mix of disbelief and respect. My perception of their good intent was felt as a physical thing, like an ever-so-slight pressure forced through the air, and I breathed it in.
"Do you know Lake Turkana?" I asked. "I'm going there to see the fossils of our first footprints," I said and pointed to their feet. The two men looked at their feet and then at me, confused. I hoped I had not insulted them.
"Big crocodiles in lake," one of them said.
They watched intrigued as I pushed the tube with its new patch back into the tyre. Moments before, I'd been a hopeless fool stuck in open scrub with a flat tyre that I could not fix and now I was like an old pro. I reached for the foot pump and once the tyre was inflated, the two men helped me lift the TT upright. I knelt to gather my things, and when I stood they had disappeared into the scrub as silently as they had appeared. I smiled at how things had worked out: help had miraculously arrived just at the very moment I needed it.
Ubuntu  Heather Ellis  p68-9

[Biggles]

"Why? You are close! Can't you see we need help?" I yelled as the boat sailed past.
"Take your clothes off. Let them see you are mzungu. Instead, you cover yourself. They will not come near the shore if they think you are African. They'll think you are a Borana. Borana kill Turkana fishermen all the time. It happens every day," he said and waved his arms above his head in a mix of anger and desperation. Sharif had already told me we could not light a fire, as the smoke would indicate Borana.
I was wearing a navy one-piece swimsuit and looked every bit the Borana bandit from afar as my skin was tanned a dark brown.
"Please stop! Please stop!" I pleaded.
"Take your clothes off," Sharif shouted again.
"Go. They should not see you," I said and when he walked away, I undressed and stood naked on the shore, leaving no doubt I was mzungu. The next boat was clearly visible and I waved my bike jacket vigorously.
The two boats sailed past but neared the shore about a kilometre away. I scanned ahead with the binoculars and spotted several dark shapes that appeared to move. The boats had stopped at the beach. They had seen us.
We were saved.
Ubuntu  Heather Ellis  p107-8

[Biggles]

Another of the four men, the tallest, moved to stand next to the oldest. Both glared at me with piercing black eyes. I stood my ground, leaving no doubt that I was fully aware of their intentions. Hidden on me and my motorcycle was US$2300 and they knew it. They knew that in order to travel I must carry some money and whatever I carried was more than they would earn in four or five years.
As I finished packing, one of my gloves fell under the TT. I stood and stared at it. The oldest man took a step closer and was only a few metres away. No one moved. The other three looked tense as though preparing to pounce and I stood ready to turn into a wild cat. I played out my defence. I'd squirt the pepper spray directly into their eyes. I'd dive for the panga and run for the exit at the back of the courtyard. Time stood still.
But just as quickly as the men had surrounded me, the mood changed and they moved away. It was as though for an instant they were possessed by some dark force. These men would maybe have been in their twenties during the bloody years of Amin and Obote. What atrocities had they seen? What massacres had they been part of? For a moment it had felt like they were back in that savage time. But with peace had come compassion. I was thankful their spirit was still true and I did not meet with a terrible, unspeakable end.
Ubuntu  Heather Ellis  p130-1

[Biggles]

Earlier, I'd skinned a viper snake from Leo's collection that had died the night before. I'd asked if I could have it, as I wanted to wrap its skin around the TT's handlebars near where I stored the panga.
"Go for it," Leo had said shaking his head at my madness. But it was not such a silly thing to do, as the viper is Africa's most poisonous and feared of snakes. I reasoned that as I travelled into Africa's interior, where people were deeply superstitious, the sight of the viper skin would fill them with fear and respect for my courage, as they'd assume I'd killed it. The viper, along with the panga, would add to my aura of protection and the TT's aura of strength and indestructibility.
Ubuntu  Heather Ellis  p164

[Biggles]

"It is not enough, but we help you anyway," said the third man, and his two friends nodded. "It is far to Kisangani. You will need it for food."
The young men gave their help because I needed it. This African way I had come to expect. While at first I was often seen as business, an opportunity to make money, attitudes quickly changed when people realised how far I had travelled and how far I still had to go. This often followed with the words "Long journey. Much courage," and of reverence for what my journey meant, both in hardship and in terms of a search of some greater, unspoken meaning. Their ways and words always empowered me, and the deeper I travelled into Africa the deeper was my admiration for their profound sense of what it means to be human. Africa was not so much an undeveloped world but one where people lived for today, for their family and friends, and showed a willingness to help a stranger lying under an upside-down motorcycle in the mud. This was ubuntu, I was coming to realise.
Ubuntu  Heather Ellis  p186

[Biggles]

"We worry for you. We not think you make it over the gullies. You very strong woman," said the Congolese driver as I pulled up beside him.
They were still waiting for their documents to be stamped by immigration and customs. Some did not have visas and the cargo needed to be valued and the appropriate customs fee negotiated. I faced no such delay and, after downing two bottles of warm Coke and eating several bananas purchased from the stalls selling not much else, I was soon cruising along the glorious smooth black tarmac to Franceville, a two-hour ride to the west. The road was perfection compared to what I had just endured and I opened the throttle in sheer exhilaration. The TT responded and leapt forward as giddy as a colt given the chance of a good gallop. After riding it through so much sand and mostly in first gear, I worried I'd done irreparable damage by overheating the engine or wearing out the clutch but it was just as strong and reliable as always. I'd asked so much of this motorcycle and it had never once failed me. The TT's big bore single-cylinder engine echoed loud and thumping as I rode down a tunnel of green through the thick tropical rainforest.
Ubuntu  Heather Ellis  p241

[Biggles]

I used this time to rest and to service the TT. I cursed myself when I found one of the hoses from the air box had disconnected. The hose had probably come off when I'd dropped the bike while riding in the sand as I crossed from Congo to Gabon hundreds of kilometres back. The inside of the air-filter was covered with grass seeds and grit. Dust had sucked straight through the top of the carburettor and into the engine. I felt like crying. I had been so diligent, bordering on obsessive, and had cleaned and oiled the air-filter daily, as well as changed the engine oil more often than I needed to, to prevent the premature wearing of engine parts. Days of hard riding through equatorial Africa, coupled with the intermittent diarrhoea I could not shake off, had weakened me and I'd become careless. It would have been a simple job to check the bike in Franceville. This lack of attention had almost certainly shortened its life. The only thing I could do was change the oil. Fortunately, I had collected four litres from the Mobil depot in Yaounde the previous day.
"I'm sorry," I said and patted the TT in apology. This motorcycle had always given me constant reliability that seemed to defy the laws of basic mechanics. If I were to believe my intuition the same way I did when deciding what road to take or whether a person was good or intended me harm, then the explanation for its reliability lay at a very deep level - far beyond sum of its parts, down to the deepest level of all, where trillions of atoms vibrate in perfect harmony to the ever-so-slight frequency generated by my own positively charged thoughts of devotion.
Ubuntu  Heather Ellis  p257

[Biggles]

"How da ya get on with the roadblocks? Any problems?" asked Brian, second man, who had thinning brown hair and looked to be in his mid-forties.
"No, I never stop, I just ride through," I said and helped myself to another chocolate biscuit as the two Scots looked at me in disbelief.
"Dinna ya know, an English guy got shot dead for runnin' a police checkpoint just the other day. The bullet went right through the back of his head. T'was a shame," Keith said. "The bastards are allowed to shoot anybody who does not stop."
"Bloody hell, I'll be stopping from now on," I said, and sat back on the lounge, silently thanking whatever it was that was keeping me safe, for what must have been the millionth time.
Ubuntu  Heather Ellis  p276

[Biggles]

I camped there for four days but it could have been four weeks, as I fell into a void where time seemed to stand still. I walked for hours along the beach, deep in thought as I tried to understand my journey and what it meant, if it meant anything at all. I questioned my theories about synchronicity - all those chance encounters and coincidences that had happened with such regularity. Maybe this is just what happens when you travel, because you are moving through so many experiences? Of course such things will happen, because life is no longer curtailed by routine.
Ubuntu  Heather Ellis  p294

[Biggles]

Visibility was down to several metres and I was nearly out of fuel. I switched the TT to reserve and prayed that I would soon reach a village. I needed somewhere to shelter out of the wind and sand while I poured the petrol into the tank from my ten-litre jerry.
Up ahead, I could make out a cluster of square mud-brick buildings, which looked deserted. Some were half-buried in sand from the Sahara, which was steadily encroaching southward. I pulled up beside one of the houses, sheltering from the wind, and was about to refill the tank when two Bidan girls, aged about ten with sand-matted hair, bare feet and wearing faded floral dresses, appeared beside me. They insisted I follow them to one of the mud-brick huts. The entrance was draped with an old rug to stop the sand blown by the howling wind. Inside, several women, two old men and quite a few children of various ages were sitting on a worn carpet. None were fat, so I gathered they were poor, somehow eking out an existence in the desert. With the endless drought, no decent rain had fallen for twenty years and most of the livestock in these villages and small townships had perished long ago. All the able-bodied men, forced by necessity, had left to work in Nouakchott, and sent their meagre earnings back to their families. This was the same story for all the desert towns.
A metal stand filled with glowing coals heated a small teapot, and a glass of sweet black tea was poured and handed to me.
"Shukran! I said and quickly sipped the tea, handing back the glass as was the local way. As I waited for the storm to subside, I entertained the Mauritanians with photos of my family and of Australia, and an hour later, after I refuelled, I continued on my way to Ayoun al Atrous, the next township lining the highway.
Ubuntu  Heather Ellis  p330