Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

A BMW dealer service should smoothly reassure like an opium draught. These monkeys have me spooked like a face at a dark window. Despite the shiny showroom floor and flapping liveried flags, the workshops run by backstreet abortionists. That's not a white lab coat, it's a butcher's apron. First, they fit new sprockets, but not the new chain. Why? They shrug. Er, it's normal to change them at the same time. They look at me like I've got my lad in my hand. 'Manana.' No, today. Then I catch them oiling a freshly waxed chain on the outside. Er, it's normal to oil a chain from the inside. They look at me like I've just stuck my hand down their sister's pants. Praise the Lord and pass the knitting needle.
A quick test trip round the car park, once I've fixed the newly sloppy clutch, shows that the front brake doesn't, despite a dickhead's too- strong handshake, and the newly slack throttle's got maybe half a turn's play and needs wringing like a wet towel. I hate to think what happened inside, hidden under the engine casings. Smile and say thanks and get out of their harm's way.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You  Dan Walsh p287-8

[Biggles]

The bike shudders, dragging its arse like a dog that's been hit by a car, and stops dead in the outside lane. Trucks and buses parp past and rasp round. Two lads from the Indian market help me bounce the bitch to the safe side. Nothing to do but smoke, shrug and murmur ‘I wonder what the hell's wrong with the back brake?’ as a Gatorade splash sizzles into sweet steam.
For appearance's sake, I dig out the tool kit. Trying to prise apart the lock-jawed pads, I snap a screwdriver, which makes me burn my hand, which makes me bang and scorch my head on the pipe. The market claps like they're watching Punch and Judy. All I need now is a rake to stand on. Painful, but works a treat. What to do but wobble off?
There's an urban myth that medical students play a game, an anaesthetist's relay, where they jab each other with ketamine and see who can run the farthest before the sleepy drugs kick in and the muscles collapse. That's how this trip feels. Not if, but when. I'll see just how far south I get before the bike nods off.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You  Dan Walsh p288

[Biggles]

While I relax in a picture-perfect paradise, the Dakar deteriorates daily. A squeak becomes a rattle becomes a knock. It's not a bike, it's a game of KerPlunk, and any moment now marbles and straws will clatter out of its bottom.
'Sounds like yer bearings are bollocksed, lad.' His name's Ian, he's a 61-year-old farmer from West Yorkshire and he's travelling the world on an Africa Twin. ‘I told the wife I were going for four months. That were in '99. She's not best pleased. Shall we have a look at that hub?'
I’ve been riding this luck too long. And what once felt pleasingly punk-rock now grates as dumb. Big trips mean taking more responsibility. Rather than bitching about bad services and depending on the kindness of strangers, I should be grown up enough, organised enough, knowledgeable enough, to fix my own problems. Until I sort that, I'm still half stuck at home.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You  Dan Walsh p288

[Biggles]

This is the world's Wild West, the edgy West End where deserts, mountains and oceans collide with a jagged scream that settles into a soothing spray; where skies are so high, it's disorientating; deliriously, delightfully dizzying. This desert's defined not by its cities or towns but by the empty spaces in between, by the dramatic pauses between the noisy people.
I'm in love. In love with this road and the way it makes me feel. Bubbling, warm, soulful, real love that sings inside like Otis. Slip-slide down a dirt track and up a cathedral dune 'cause I want to look down from the gods. When the bike topples sideways in soft scrunch, I don't bother picking it up, but keep going on foot. Collapse outside a cave and look. Two buzzards watch me from the wooden arms of a giant, paganised cross…
Three days later I hit Lima. Off the bike, this sophisticated city of eight million seems too quiet. I miss the deafening wind rush, the anonymous momentum, the stimulation that stretches thoughts like gum as riding alerts interrupt every internal conversation. The Road works.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You  Dan Walsh p294

[Biggles]

Happy with the company, concerned about the compromises, we’re all prickling with 'Who's faster? Who's smoother? Will he mind if we stop to pee? Will they mind if I stop to smoke?' nonsense. Irrelevant meta-clutter that becomes just that as soon as we stop worrying and start riding.
The sign reads El Camino Sinuoso, the winding road, but it could read 'The Most Beautiful Road in the World'. Ten minutes out of town and we already know this is gonna be very special. Smoky ochre hills concertina like folds on a bulldog’s neck, and as we climb into the Andes there are snowy peaks above, sandy desert behind and below, the road falling away like coiled rope.
Magnificent views, rubbish riding. The Dakar's under-steering and 'umm?' vague. Stop for a smoke and kick the tyres. They're proper hot. 'When did you last check the pressures?’ asks Dick. Umm? He whips out a digital gauge: 18 and 23. He whips out a compressor. And the bike's transformed from squelching in wet wellies to strutting in slutty heels. Air pressure, you say? Who knew?
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You  Dan Walsh p297

[Biggles]

Sorry everyone- technical glitch- the story continues...

They're celebrating a tap - the first time they've had running potable water in the village. I'm expecting some interest, but I'm overwhelmed by the no-angle hospitality. The bike's surrounded by ‘Who? What? Where? Why?' questions, handshakes and hugs and I'm showered with shots of chicha.
Halfway through my second cup of cold sick, my host reminds me how this moonshine is made - the raw maize needs an enzyme to break it down before it will ferment. An enzyme found in human spit. Old women chew the grain for hours then spit it into barrels. A gurning gummy granny offers me a refill. How could I say no?
Dick and Jane follow me down, English hesitancy drowned in grubby kids' kisses. Three lads produce a table and chairs and we're sitting targets. Kids on knees, hanging off arms, climbing over heads. 'Will you dance with me?' a pigtailed girl whispers in my ear. Why would I say no?
 Exhausted by the hokey-cokey, dizzy from ring-a-ring o' roses, half-cut on granny phlegm, we hit Cusco just as the setting sun's backlit the red roofs like dashboard light. An hour later we're plotted up in the Norton Rats pub, admiring owner Jeff’s '74 Commando. Two hours later we're in a back room with a pint, a pie and pipe of Peruvian pollen, chuckling along to ‘Easy Rider’.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You  Dan Walsh p300-1

[Biggles]

The gang's all here. Dick and Jane on their banana-yellow VW camper van GS1150, Nutty Jerome from Richmond on his matt-black KTM Adventure with Akropovic horse-scarer, and expat Jeff, our leader, owner of the Norton Rats pub and a very shiny '74 Commando.
A proper bloke on a proper bloke's bike, with a proper bloke's tank badge, kick-start and pretty, ponytailed pillion. We're all proper jealous, this old Brit iron making our Teutonic plastic look as desirable as disposable razors.
And damn, does he know it. The old boy double keen to prove that his old girl s still got it, he charges away, bouncing up steep-as-spires cobbled alleyways, down 'it's not a road, it's a storm drain' short cuts, and out into the Sacred Valley. It ain't what you ride, it's the way that you ride it, fatty.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You  Dan Walsh p303-4

[Biggles]

(In Chile)
But something's not quite right.
First, the border crossing was just too damn easy. Polite professionals in coordinated uniforms helpfully guided me through the immigration process, asking logical questions and entering the answers into a working computer. No daft 'I heart Disco' hand-me-downs, no 'Favourite Spice Girl?' non-sequiturs, no 'Not if the day starts with a "t" bureaucracy, no $50 white boy tax corruption. It's shockingly normal. And after nearly two years in Latin America, normal feels very odd indeed.
Then there's the roads. Two hours in, and I've still not met a car on the wrong side. Drivers actually wait until they can see it's safe before over-taking. They've got odd orange lights on their corners that blink when they're turning and rear red lights that flash when they're stopping. Which is a damn good idea, 'cause they stop at the oddest places - traffic lights, 'Give Way' signs, even pedestrian crossings. Even when there are no cops watching. It's really freaking me out. Normal is the new odd.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You  Dan Walsh p326

[Biggles]

In the beginning, Buenos Aires was all good. After two years On The Road, the cultured, cluttered, clued-up capital of the deep, deep south was the perfect pissed-up pit stop. Truth is, I needed a rest. Long- range, long-haul, long-time-from-home travel is liberating, stimulating, astonishing, but tiring too. Behind the fizzy spectacles, the friendly strangers and the laugh-out-loud lunacy is a background hum of stress. Border stress, breakdown stress, 'Bloody hell, that was close!' stress. Every time a child, a dog, a lorry-load of llamas swerves into harm's way and misses by 'Sheesh!' inches, the stress volume gets cranked another notch. And the whisper becomes a nag becomes a ‘this one goes to 11' shriek. A shriek that sweet home Buenos Aires shushes and soothes away with a randy cuddle and a brandy-stained kiss.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You  Dan Walsh p340

[Biggles]

Email from the family. 'Why aren't you coming home, Dan?' Because I've spent the last months living in the Buenos Aires Ritz. Because my girlfriends have my telephone number but my bosses don't. Because I can get a rare steak, a real coffee and a cold beer at four in the morning in always-hissing cafe below. Because the bars never close.
 Because I'm three days' ride from the Bolivian Andes, four days south of saucy Rio, five days north of the Ushuaian End of the World, and a million miles from any Gatso. Because licences and lids, shirts and shoes, speed limits and sobriety are optional extras for Argentine riders.
Because down here, Numero 10 Diego Maradona is more important than Benedict XVI. Because down here ‘tango’ means a stylised, sensual knife-fight-in-a-brothel dance, not sugary crap in a can. Because down here 'revolutionary' means the angry poor invading the presidential palace, not a really small phone that's also a camera. Because down here ‘Visa' means three free months in a new country, not a lifetime of dreary debt.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You  Dan Walsh p342

[Biggles]

Motorcycle travel doesn't really make a lot of sense. Expensive and exposed, often filthy and frustrating, there's no obvious reason to pick two wheels over four. More comfort, more room, more security, and no one ever fell off a Jeep, right? Maybe on paper. But we don't ride on paper. We ride in Mexico. 'In a car, you're watching a movie - on a bike you re starring in it,' as some cowboy poet slurred. A starring role that's maybe produced by the rider's unique opportunity to be two things at once - sat still while swooping swift, heavily armoured but completely exposed, dagger-proof and always vulnerable, fully concentrated and miles away. And I've gone again, haven't I?
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You  Dan Walsh p357

[Biggles]

The bike - a drum-braked, twin-shocker junkyard knocker, a Honda XL185 of indeterminate age. Like all old peasants, no one's too sure exactly when it was born. And no one really cares. This a barely working bike, an errand-limping bike, a hobbled donkey bike that's slumped beyond the standard snotter, rotter or grotter. I know teenage Irish tinkers who'd turn their gluey noses up at this old knacker. But right now, it's perfect. I'm not trying to shave a tenth off a lap of Laguna. I'm just popping out for a ride. 'You gonna take me home, sweetie? Sure, sweetie.
I jump on. The seat falls off and the rusted-through tank stains my shorts. Mike talks me through its idiosyncrasies. 'No key, no brakes and there's a problem with the clutch.' It slips? 'It slipped off.' Oh, I see. Guess I should have spotted the missing lever. 'You sure you've ridden a bike before, sweetie?' Yes, sweetie.
Rotter or not, I'm delighted to be back on a bike. Any bike. Three months is too long to be out of the saddle. Even a saddle that needs holding down with duct tape. Rock it into neutral, clatter the spiny kick-start, give it some gas, crunch it into first and, woah, hold on, sweetie, lurch and go.
These Are The Days That Must Happen To You  Dan Walsh p359-60

[Biggles]

The vast majority of the book concerns the under-cover infiltration of the Mongols motorcycle club.  There are some bits directly relevant to motorcycle riders, rather than hardcore criminals.

I rolled into the parking lot of the In-N-Out Burger followed by Sue and Ciccone. Sue parked her truck and got herself ready while Ciccone waited in his car and I sat on my idling bike. Ciccone and I looked at each other across the parking lot and gave a thumbs-up.
 Sue walked over to my bike and then, like something out of an old western, hopped onto one of the back passenger foot pegs as if it was Trigger's stirrup. For the uninitiated, any Harley-Davidson could rightfully be called heavy metal, and an FLHTC is heavier still. There was no way I was going to be able to hold up that bike with her big glow-in-the-dark white ass hanging off one side. Though I desperately held on, down we went with a horrific crash in the parking lot- me, my CI, and Steve Martin's revered Harley. It was a less than auspicious start.
From the ground where I lay, I looked up at Ciccone. impossible to describe the look on his face. I think he wanted to laugh, wanted to apologize, and was praying to the ATF gods that this was not a harbinger of things to come. I picked up the bike and my ego and prepared for round two. As if I were talking to a six-year-old, I explained to Sue that there was no way I was going to be able to hold up a thousand pounds of motorcycle and her same time. She was going to have to use a different technique to get on the bike. She looked at me with a wounded expression but then took a deep breath and carefully got on.
Under And Alone  William Queen p13-4

[Biggles]

But by January 1998, I was no longer doing neo-Nazi investigations; I was now riding a Harley around the biker underworld of Southern California.
That's the one thing I didn't need to fake about my undercover persona: a genuine love affair with motorcycles. I’ve ridden bikes my whole adult life. I have a brother who bought a bike before me, when I was sixteen years old, a Triumph 650cc high-compression piece of crap. Somehow we got the thing running, but my brother was almost killed riding it. After I got out of the army and became a police officer in North Carolina, I bought my first Harley-Davidson. I was twenty-four. I've owned Harleys ever since, from hot-rod choppers to straight-off-the-showroom-floor stackers.
Since the beginning of the year, playing my Billy St. John role, I’d been riding an ATF-owned Harley- Davidson and hanging out with some Hells Angels in the San Fernando Valley, trying to gather intelligence for an investigation being run as a joint effort between ATF, the IRS, and the Ventura County Sheriff's Department.
Under And Alone  William Queen p30-1

[Biggles]

As I turned onto Valley Boulevard from the Long Beach Freeway I rolled on the throttle of my Harley. It wasn't long before the sea of bikes came into view: truly an awesome sight. There were easily eighty to ninety motorcycles lined up, standing curbside sentry in front of Tony's Hofbrau. Rounding that corner, I felt a sharp pang in my gut, the kind I'd felt in Vietnam. But there was no platoon to back me up, and no one else to look out for. The only ass on the line was mine.
I slowed the Harley down as I approached my target. Slowly, they came into view: dark, shadowy figures that seemed, at first glance, like some mob of grim reapers. With no obvious place to park my motorcycle, I cruised past the hordes of rough, bearded, tattooed, black-leather-clad Hispanic bikers. Predator and prey, eye to eye.
Under And Alone  William Queen p50-1

[Biggles]

Shooting pool is a mainstay of the biker lifestyle. So is getting shitfaced on Jack Daniel's and being an asshole, but I decided to try pool first. It could be either my ride in or my ticket to the intensive care unit. I'd been shooting pool since I was a kid and figured I could handle the competition. But I couldn't help wondering if beating a few Mongols at pool would constitute some kind of disrespect. The first Mongol patch I played was good, but he only got off one shot before I ran the table. After sinking the eight ball, I looked up to see him coming straight for me with his cue stick clenched in his fist like a club. I straightened up and tightened my grip on my own stick. To my shock, he lowered the cue and extended his free hand. He was the first Mongol to do so all night.
"Good shootin'," he said. "Name's Lucifer."
Under And Alone  William Queen p55-6

[Biggles]

I’d been inside for about thirty minutes when I heard the unmistakable roar of mechanical thunder outside. In just a matter of seconds the street in front of The Place was filled with black-clad Mongols on their iron horses.
A loud voice pierced that thunder: "Yo, Billy, let's roll.”
I went straight to my bike, grabbed my helmet off the mirror, put it on, and mounted up all in one motion. I gave the kickstand a nudge with my boot. The blast from my pipes matched those of the pack, and with a roar like that of a squadron of F/A-18s, we were off. The pack moved in unison, and as a lowly hang-around, I assumed my position at the rear, sucking up the requisite amount of burnt motorcycle oil and exhaust. Every now and then I would have to duck out of the way of mirrors and other motorcycle parts that flew off the bikes ahead of me.
Under And Alone  William Queen p58-9

[Biggles]

Fire 'em up.
And there was a thunderous roar of Harleys: Pan-heads, Shovelheads, Evos, Softails, FLHTCs, and so on- as we began to roll out of the cemetery. More than 150 bikes formed into ranks, winding through the streets of Los Angeles like a great anaconda. Under Red Dog's direction, the sergeants at arms from the various chapters blatantly blocked intersections like rent-a-cops as the procession moved through the city. With impunity we blew right past real cops- stunned LAPD officers, overwhelmed California Highway Patrolmen- as well as red lights, stop signs, speed limits. No law had any bearing on this outlaw army. As we rode through one intersection after another at breakneck speed I realized that the Mongol Nation- like those shrieking warriors on horseback terrorizing the known world under Genghis Khan- were in absolute control of any territory they occupied.
Under And Alone  William Queen p60

[Biggles]

We were hauling ass one night on the 210 north of L.A. I was running better than 130 miles per hour when my astonishment Evel flew past me doing a good 20 miles per hour better. And he had Carrena hanging on the back! He later told me that he still had throttle left when he passed me but had started having visions of teeth, hair, and eyeballs spread all over the concrete.
The first time I saw Evel's bike-thieving skills in action we were in Pasadena, on a sunny afternoon, and the side-walks were packed with eyewitnesses. There were some sixty Mongols partying that afternoon at a trendy restaurant and bar called Moose McGillycuddy’s. There were also four preppy, good-time Harley riders in the restaurant, and they'd left their machines in the parking lot, at the mercy of the Mongol Nation.
 I watched as Evel and a few other Mongols walked straight to the chromed-out Harleys in the lot. In a matter of seconds, wires were ripped out from under tanks, engines were roaring, and the four bikes were speeding out of Pasadena, closely followed by a carload of Mongols carrying guns.
(John Ciccone, parked a hundred yards away on surveillance duty, managed to capture the whole bike-theft operation with his telephoto lens.)
Under And Alone  William Queen p154

[Biggles]

We trucked it to Needles without incident. I hunkered down low in the passenger seat to make sure that no Mongols spotted me on the road along the way. After gassing up in Needles we found an out-of-the-way location to offload the bike. Everything went exactly as planned. I threw on my patch, along with my other Mongol regalia, and fired up the bike. The plan was for Ciccone to follow me into Laughlin and break off just before I got to the Riverside Resort Hotel.
We were about five miles out of Laughlin when every- thing went to shit. First, I felt my bike starting to slow down. Even though I rolled the throttle, it got slower and slower. I began to smell something burning and turned to see that my back brake was seizing up. I pulled off onto the shoulder, and Ciccone stopped behind me in the U-Haul. I told him that I'd have to stay put until the brake calliper cooled or until I could get a pair of pliers to bleed it off.
At that very instant a Las Vegas Metro car rolled up. The cop asked me if I needed help, and explained to him that my brake had just seized up and that I needed a pair of pliers. He stared at me, then at Ciccone, then back at the U-Haul. Shit. I knew what was coming.
"Who's the guy in the U-Haul?
 "I don't know, I've never seen him before in my life. He just saw me on the side of the road and stopped to see if I needed help."
The cop wasn't biting. I tried to keep his eyes- and my own- on my mechanical problem.
"Got a pair of pliers I can use, Officer?"
The diversionary tactic didn't work.
Under And Alone  William Queen p225-6

[Biggles]

Adrian Scott lives in Melbourne.  Having just obtained his L plates, he set off to ride his KLR650 on the Road Of Bones across Russia and down to Istambul.

The next day, after some final bureaucratic hurdles, I retrieved my bike from its container, re-assembled it (slowly) and rode back Vladivostok Airport whereupon I promptly disassembled it again for the promised flight to Magadan. But this time I had to reduce its footprint even further so that it might fit inside the hold of the small Soviet-era hulk that would carry us to Magadan. The Chief of Cargo was called, and armed with his official tape measure and plane specifications he gave my bike a thorough once over before shaking his head solemnly and saying laconically "Is too big for plane. Is not possible. Goodbye." Undeterred, I continued late into the night, reducing my motorcycle into so many small pieces that I could have posted it to myself. But I did eventually get the required approvals and three days later found myself on the tarmac at Magadan Airport, alongside the cargo crew desperately trying to retrieve all of the pieces of my motorcycle which had been packed in randomly with all of the mail and other parcels and supplies on this weekly lifeline delivery from the outside world.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p3

[Biggles]

Upon checkout I asked whether I could borrow some tools to complete one final - but critical - maintenance job on my bike. By the time I had got to the garage there were two men (one a young mechanic) ready to assist - or rather, actually do the job while I watched. They worked hard and quickly had the job done. The young mechanic was clearly a motorcycle enthusiast so I offered him a ride.  which thrilled both us for different reasons as he roared away, out of sight and then came skidding back into the garage, stopping just a few inches in front of us, transferring much of the rubber from my tyres onto the concrete floor.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p5

[Biggles]

Suddenly my front wheel sunk into a deep patch of soft dirt more like sand - and I immediately lost control of the bike. My handlebars swung back and forth and buzzed in a wide arc before my eyes, triggering that sickening sensation, almost in slow motion; the voice inside my head saying "Now, there is nothing you can do, you are going to crash and this is really going to hurt." Oh bugger! But there was more to it as I felt a sharp tug at my left ankle. Jammed under my pannier, it had become the pivot; I was a human catapult and my head the pay load. Oh dear. And before I knew anything else, the ground rushed up to meet me in a bone crunching collision.  My head slammed into the hard gravel of the road like the atoms in a particle accelerator colliding with six feet of cement. Colourful sub-atomic particles whizzed about inside my head in a wonderful show, like sherbet fireworks exploding against the blackness of my skull.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p6

[Biggles]

The only issue now was actually riding the bike with an ankle was numb from the pain so I mounted the bike carefully, turned it on, held the clutch tightly with my right (wrong) hand while bending over from the waist to move the gear lever up into 2nd gear with my left hand before lurching off along the road. I could brake and use the throttle, but, apart from steering (with warped handlebars), that was the extent of my control. I would just keep riding until I found someone or ran out of petrol, whichever came first. And I didn't even think about in which direction to head, for turning back was never an option. So, injured, deeply depressed but faintly optimistic, I headed off deeper into the wilderness, another victim of the Road of Bones.
Then I began to think how lucky I had been - my helmet and safety gear had saved my life and my heavy motorcycle boots had probably prevented my leg from being completely snapped off. Slowly, and with a wry smile on my face, I began to whistle and sing...
Always look on the bright side of life...
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p8

[Biggles]

The drivers were friendly and very interested in my bike. They shared their tea and food with me and I offered them what little I had but they refused. My Russian-English dictionary was invaluable as we worked through many topics. The older men in particular were very interested in Australia and what is was like to live there. When I explained the concept of long service leave they all fell about laughing - these men all worked every day of the year hauling diesel  and other critical supplies up and down the Kolyma Highway (or at least the sections where it was possible to drive). They were away from home for long periods and often slept in their truck cabins. There was certainly no regulation of driving hours, a/though each truck usually had two or more drivers (the machines ran continuously) and speed was not an issue as it was impossible to drive more than 40kph in even the best weather on these roads.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p18-9