Motorcycle Quote of the Day

[Biggles]

It's me, your motorcycle,
my skinny friend, old vagabond.
Showing you the world,
many countries, and beyond.

I'm the one that you bought,
with money tucked away.
The one that shared with you,
wild Bohemian days.

I'm the one at your side,
on those cold rainy nights.
Watching you sleep,
waiting for light.

The journey then ends,
coming home, winding down.
How we have grown side by side,
mile by mile, town by town!

And now marching north,
American dream in your sights.
No more room for old friends,
Cast aside, price was right.
 
From your hands to a stranger's,
his chest puffed with pride.
But I'm sorry old friend,
I'll miss your touch when we ride!

And there will be others,
that last many more years.
My mechanics are faulty,
but I can still shed a tear.

In your mind I'm a memory,
of mad, crazy years,
Of wishing and dreaming,
of knowing no fear!

We peel back the memories,
both happy and sad.
The struggles... successes...
all the times that we had!

I speak to you now,
because of what we have shared.
Now I'm old, past my prime,
My soul I have bared.
 
It's me, your motorcycle,
my skinny friend, old vagabond.
Let's meet up again
and go further beyond!
 
- Your Indian Chief
Tracks And Horizons  Carlos Caggiani pp227-8

[Biggles]

I had to walk long and far to realize that those fancy tourists on the French Riviera were not enjoying themselves more than I was, travelling on my old motorcycle with little money. I learned that life is what we make of it, and money does not provide happiness, it simply provides comfort. These two things can easily be separated. We can be rich and unhappy, or poor and happy.
What's important is that we enjoy every moment we have right now, since these moments are fleeting, and they will mean nothing once the time arrives to leave this Earth. Life will occasionally give us a wake-up call so that we realize that advantage must be taken of every opportunity that is offered.
We, as humans, often take for granted the little things in life that surround us every day because they are either too close to us to notice, or they are too easily obtained. A blooming flower, a full moon, twinkling stars at night, a calm or enraged sea, the horizon... that distant horizon we continue to watch from the tracks we have laid in our lifetimes... a symbol that there is always something more...
Hopes... dreams... just beyond our reach.
Tracks And Horizons  Carlos Caggiani p240

[Biggles]

Cal. Drag bike racer.
So when we split up for the first time, when I sent her home, I got me a bike. I got me a Triumph and dressed it all out and everything. Beautiful, beautiful chopper. Went back to Florida and I still had my bike. I was going back and forth to work on it and everything. I kept my bike, in other words, when we went back together. And so times were getting tough and so I just- I sold my bike to pay for stuff for the house 'cause I wasn't working. Work is rotten in Florida. And so times were getting good again now. I got a good job and everything and I'm makin' out, coins in the bank, you know, and I say, well, honey, I think I'll trip down and get a bike. Some piece of junk that I can tinker with. So that's when my old lady says, you know, like, you ain't gettin' no bike. And if you get one it's all over again. The whole thing, you know. So I got salty about that, 'cause, see, I gave up my bike, man. I didn't have to give it up, man. She didn't tell me to get rid of it or anything. I gave it up 'cause we needed coins. And here we got coins again, well, I think I should have my bike. Right? Or else why should I have gotten rid of my first one, you know, the one in the beginning?
The Bikeriders  Danny Lyon  p64

[Biggles]

Rodney Pink. Motorcycle racer.
Everyone wants to be part of something. You want to carry a flag or wear an emblem or do something. I've seen this in my own club. People wanted to join my club because it has a reputation, a good reputation. Just they don't want responsibility or work. They just want to be part of something. And, you know, be able to forget it or just take it or leave it. And generally people that join most of the outlaw style of club are that sort of person. They want to be part of something and yet they don't have the initiative. They don't want to do anything. They do don't want to have any responsibility unloaded on 'em. Like an outlaw club will almost, almost I say, never promote anything. Maybe a dance is the biggest thing they'll do. You know, if they happen to dig it. Because as soon as you promote something, people get burdened with jobs. They have to take away from their baseball games and something like that. The average person that goes in for that sort of club is very low on initiative and high on talk. In my club you're constantly hung with a job. But you don't wear the colors unless you're working for it. And when you wear the colors you really feel like you're doing something.
The Bikeriders  Danny Lyon  p67

[Biggles]

Funny Sonny, twenty-eight. Ex-Hell's Angel. Member Chicago Outlaws.
And when I came up, there was this, you know these little caterpillars that fly through the air? They soar through the air from tree to tree on webs, on a little web. One musta got caught in my hair, a long green one. Musta been the size of a good pencil. So here's Aggie, all the girls fixin' food, they're all eatin' and I walk over there with this caterpillar. And I put it on my tongue. Now if you ever tried to swallow a caterpillar, what you gotta do, there's a thing to swallowing a caterpillar. You know how they're barred, like how you say it? They're barred a little bit, like you can't go against the grain on 'em or something. That's how they use themselves to crawl along the ground. Well, you face him out. Face him out on your tongue. So he's crawling forward. And then you gotta put him way back on your tongue. And then try to swallow him. He gets down here, he starts crawling back up. 'Cause by now he's hanging on. He knows he's on his way down. He's gonna hang on for dear life. And Aggie seen all this. Now I swallow, the caterpillar is gone out of sight. Open my mouth, show everyone he's gone. Then I know he's crawling, I can feel him crawling back up my throat, see. So I got my mouth closed, and you know, it's closed and everybody's eating. And I'm at the table and everybody's eating, we're talking and I open my mouth just a little tiny bit and this little caterpillar comes crawling out of my mouth. About four people got sick see, then I yelled to everybody, I said, ah, you get away from me, caterpillar. So I crunched my teeth down on him and I chewed him up and I swallowed. So I had a lot of food to eat that day. Everybody got up and quit eating their food. Sheesh, that was good. That's when I really met the Outlaws, really met 'em good.
The Bikeriders  Danny Lyon  p71

[Biggles]

Bobby Goodpaster sixteen. Motorcycle racer.
Some guy came in and bought a new bike and traded off his old bike and it was in a basket. It was a 175 Harley, all taken apart, completely. And he says, you can have that if you put it together. It was all in a basket so I took it. Well, it took me half a year to get it together, but I got it all together all by myself. He didn't help me a bit. I did every bit of it, and I got it running, and I used to ride up here all over the place, and then he sold it, you know. I was crying and everything, and he says, well, I'll get you another one pretty soon. So he got me a mini-bike, automatic clutch and everything. Boy I really thought I was  something with that thing.
The Bikeriders  Danny Lyon  p79

[Biggles]

Frank Jenner, age 25.
So I came up to a stop sign. And stopped. That blew the cop's mind. It was a lieutenant that was following me and I couldn't lose him. That blew his mind. He didn't even stop. He crashed right into me. He smashes the rear fender out, but fortunately, you know, I could tell at the last second he was going to crash so I had already gunned it again. So he crashes in the fender, but it doesn't quite hit the wheel and we go up in a wheelie down East Avenue. In each gear I haven't got time to shut off the throttle, so there are the two of us, going down East Avenue on a wheelie. I just about get going in third gear and look up ahead and here are these three more county sheriff cars. Before there had only been the Brighton cops and the city cops. But now the third, the county black, big black county sheriff. And they're coming down the road three abreast. A flying wedge. I swear to God. And they're a whole bunch of 'em coming up on me from behind too, man. I hear the cycle cop off in the distance. And the curbs are too high to jump, you know. So it was a nice kind of residential area. I just said, this is it, went over, and parked the bike and waited for 'em to catch up to me.
The Bikeriders  Danny Lyon  p83

[Biggles]

First things first. If I was going to travel the length of Route 66, I needed the right kind of transportation. A sleek saloon car would have been too dull; a 4x4 too plush. In many people's eyes Route 66 requires either a convertible or a fat Harley-Davidson. But neither seemed right for me.
I did my time on bikes in my youth, but I felt that like most other things of joy, the motorbike had become lifestyled and corporatised, a packaged form of rebellion of which I wanted no part. So, with the Chicago skyline looming in the distance, in a dirty backstreet squeezed between semi-derelict buildings and empty spaces strewn with boulders and rubbish, I met my steed. One hundred horsepower of mean, throbbing heavenliness: a Boom Lowrider LR8 Muscle. Officially, it was a trike, but for some reason I'd never been able to say that word. I'd always said 'bike'. Whatever I called it, though, it was a thing of absolute beauty.
Billy Connolly's Route 66  Billy Connolly  p27

[Biggles]

I'd already had a great time in Atlanta, then things got even better. Having broken the banjo badge I usually wear on my lapel, I went into a shop to buy a new one. It was a funky wee shop, full of esoterica and built with Route 66 travellers in mind. The owner, Gene, who was a really friendly guy, had heard I was on a bike and asked me about it.
"Actually, I'm on a trike," I said.
"Can I see it?" I let Gene sit on the trike - because he asked me nicely - then he invited me to his home. He said I could visit any time I liked and that he'd take me up in his aeroplane. I'm very tempted to return to Atlanta just for that. We returned to his store and I bumped into a woman from York. She'd been following me around because her sister was a huge fan, and she asked for an autograph. When I'd finished writing a wee note and signing it, she thanked me, then dug something out of her bag.
"Here's some decent tea," she said, holding out four Yorkshire teabags. "You'll have trouble getting a decent cup of tea as you go along Route 66."
I don't recall ever meeting so many nice people in such a short space of time. Atlanta was an absolute joy.
Billy Connolly's Route 66  Billy Connolly  pp103-4

[Biggles]

For the first time since leaving Chicago, I was back on an interstate. Riding in torrential rain, it was quite heart-stopping at times, especially when passing trucks. With the spray and the shit flying everywhere, it was tough going. And as I've said, I'm a poser, so I don't believe in riding in the rain. I don't want to be wringing out my underwear every time I stop. I've seen some guys who are even prepared to ride in the snow, but that's a different trip. That's pure sado-masochism. I like the fun of bikes. And this was no fun.
But I made it to Springfield. It was a totally crap night by the time I reached the hotel, but I told myself that something good would come of it. I'm a great believer in carrying on and not stopping just because it's raining.
Billy Connolly's Route 66  Billy Connolly  p104

[Biggles]

The rain battered down, drenching me until I was freezing wet and shivering. Then, mercifully, Mike, the director, offered to take over on the bike. He rode twice the distance that I did and was nearly drowned by the spray of passing trucks. It was terrifying. Driving along on a three-wheeler with your arse eighteen inches off the ground as forty-ton trucks come whooshing past is not fun. It's not a game for children at all. But Mike did it, and we all arrived in St Louis to tell the tale, so I was a happy boy. It felt like a good day's hard work.
Billy Connolly's Route 66  Billy Connolly  p140

[Biggles]

Fortunately, my mood, which had got more than a bit dark at the cemetery, immediately lightened as I rode west from St Louis and Route 66 entered some of the most pleasant, verdant country along its entire length. Scenic wooded drives through hills and valleys, far from the superslab of Interstate 44, gave a tantalising impression of what riding the road must have been like in its heyday. But the weather was still remarkably turgid and dreich (a Scottish word for dreary) as I pulled up at my next stop, a wolf sanctuary in Eureka, Missouri.
Billy Connolly's Route 66  Billy Connolly  pp172-3

[Biggles]

Wiley's a perfectly pleasant man and he gave me the full guided tour, but I couldn't summon up much interest. In fact, as I listened to him talking about oil and the process of getting it out of the ground, I almost lost the will to live. That might seem ironic, given that there would be no Route 66 without oil, but it just held no fascination for me.
So I said goodbye to him, got back on my bike, and headed for Oklahoma City, which was still about ninety miles away. It was a harsh ride: long, straight roads pointing all the way to the horizon. Whenever I crested a hill, the road would stretch out in front of me again, as long and as straight as the previous stretch. The monotony and emptiness were quite extraordinary, and by the time I reached Oklahoma City I was ready for dinner, bed and a long sleep.
Billy Connolly's Route 66  Billy Connolly  p238

[Biggles]

The road was dying. Nevertheless, some wonderful people were trying to keep it alive, and in some places they were succeeding. In others, like Shamrock, they most certainly were not.
The next morning, I asked the waitress if I could have two fried eggs over easy and some bacon. It seemed a fairly modest request, but she just shrugged and said I could only have what was on the menu. The choice was between some old thing that looked like an omelette or some wee shrivelled sausages - or both - served on a polystyrene plate with white plastic knives and forks and a polystyrene cup of coffee. Anyone who travels Route 66 needs to prepare themselves for a bit of that on the road. And if, like me, they're a bit spoiled, it gets hellish.
Billy Connolly's Route 66  Billy Connolly  p254

[Biggles]

I have a bit of a problem with art deco buildings in general.  They're interesting when you drive past, but that tends to be the end of the story. Take the Hoover Building in West London. Everybody raves about it, but how many of them have been within five feet of it? They've all seen it from a car, but then whoom, they're past it. That's fine - no one needs to go up and lick it to like it. But art deco lovers get on my tits. They're the kind of people who read Lord of the Rings and like movies about little ginky punkies attacking wanky wonkies. I wouldn't let my corpse be taken to a movie like that. And I feel pretty much the same about art deco. It's for dead people. You'd be amazed at the number of funeral parlours that are art deco. That's all I have to say on the subject.
Billy Connolly's Route 66  Billy Connolly  pp255-6

[Biggles]

Fighting the jammed throttle, I spun out of control. The bike wheeled around, somersaulted, then bounced off me. The big rear wheels went right over the top of me and something slammed into my ribs. My knee thumped hard into a crunch of bone and flesh on tarmac. Then I was lying on my back, staring at the sky. As I lay there, I wondered just how much damage I'd done to myself.
Desperate to stand up and just get on with it - because, of course, I'm a man of steel, a real hero - I was immediately told not to move, to stay absolutely still. Mike, the director insisted that I must continue to lie down. He wouldn't even loosen my bloody helmet, the bastard.
Billy Connolly's Route 66  Billy Connolly  p298

[Biggles]

Unlike the steam trains of my childhood, the big locomotive I met in Williams was powered by vegetable oil - like a gigantic fish supper - which was towed in a stainless-steel tanker behind it. Donated by all the restaurants and fast-food joints in Williams, the smell of the oil was something else. One moment there might be a whiff of fish, then it was kind of meaty, then veggie. But it was always a million times better than diesel.
Billy Connolly's Route 66  Billy Connolly  p334

[Biggles]

Ever since I'd started my journey on Route 66, I'd noticed a lot of people riding next to me on hired Harleys. Frankly, I'd grown to dislike them. Big, chrome-covered monsters, to me they had begun to look more like tourist buses with every passing day. The people who rented them were okay. Many of them were early retirement guys in search of freedom and escape after decades of hard work. But I also had a sense that they were buying into that corporate image of Route 66 that I mentioned at the start of the book. They all seemed to think that it had to be ridden on a Harley or driven in a red convertible. And that sort of corporatisation was exactly what killed the Mother Road. It had transformed the drive from Chicago to Los Angeles from a cobbled-together passage through small towns with family businesses into a sanitised procession along freeways interspersed with strip malls, fast-food chains and plastic motels.
Billy Connolly's Route 66  Billy Connolly  p348

[Biggles]

For the very last time, I swung my leg over my trusty steed - the trike that had carried me more than two thousand miles from Chicago. Then I slipped into the traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard and rode towards the setting sun. I enjoyed every second, every yard of it, but I remained very vigilant because I didn't want a repetition of an incident that had occurred a few hours earlier, when I was nearly wiped out on the Pasadena Freeway. Out of nowhere, a lunatic had veered towards me from my right-hand side and missed my front wheel by inches. Any closer and he certainly would have killed me. No doubt about it. I would have been mincemeat.   
Billy Connolly's Route 66  Billy Connolly  pp378-9

[Biggles]

Route 66 means many things to many people. Everyone who travels along it experiences it in their own unique way. For the dust bowl Okies, it was a road of escape and hope. For the beatniks, it was a road of self-discovery. For many millions, it was a road of new beginnings. For countless others, it was a road of romantic adventure.
I still wasn't quite sure what it was for me. It was too soon to assess such a long and varied journey. I needed time to take it all in, sift through my memories and work out just what Route 66 was really all about. But I already knew for sure that it had been quite different from the Route 66 I'd had in my head before starting my journey in Chicago. Some parts of it had been wonderfully alive; others had been alarmingly close to death; a few had already gone for ever.
Thinking back over the many miles I'd covered, the constantly shifting landscape had certainly made a deep impression. The deserts, the prairies, the hills and the canyons are unforgettable. But it was the people I'd met along the way who I would carry in my heart for ever: Mervin the Amish carpenter, Elmer and his bottle trees, Angel the barber, Roxann in the ghost town of Glenrio, and defiant Preston in Bronzeville.
Billy Connolly's Route 66  Billy Connolly  p380

[Biggles]

Simon [Pavey] sat me down on a sunny strip of mountainside grass for a pep talk. "I'm going to do it scientifically rather than having a rant and a rave," he said, "because there was a load of good stuff in the last couple of months, but I think there is definitely stuff we've still got to sort out.
"One of them is your mental attitude. The Dakar is all about mental strength. I've seen some awesome enduro riders get out there and fail because they haven't the mental strength and determination. I've also seen average riders go out there and make a name for themselves because they just don't give up.
"We've still got a couple of months to improve and we've got nine days in Dubai coming up. We'll all get loads from training in the Dubai dunes, but the one thing - the hardest thing - is to get a hunger in your heart so strong that you don't listen to the voice in your head shouting that it wants to stop."
"Mental attitude ..." I said, feeling rather small.
"Yup, mental attitude," Simon said. "If you want that finisher's medal."
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p48

[Biggles]

Olly, my daughters and Russ were all watching as Lee finished his first two laps in a very good time of less than two hours before sending me out on to the track.
Expecting me to take twice as long, they were all shocked when I did my first lap only nine minutes slower than Lee and my second lap faster than Lee had ridden his first lap.
With two steep hills and a large boggy stretch, the course had just about every type of terrain that the Welsh hills could throw at a rider, but I was taking it all in my stride and not getting ground down. When I first started riding off-road I crawled along the gravel road sections of courses, using them to get my breath back because I was so exhausted. But now I was pegging it along the gravel at 50 or 60mph, power-sliding around corners.
Steep hills that previously would have had me paddling with my feet, dragging the bike up the slope or hanging on for dear life, while better riders danced their bikes past me, weren't such a challenge any more. Now I was the one sailing up inclines, popping the bike from bump to bump, lifting a hand to wave at other riders as I passed them.
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  pp52-3

[Biggles]

I needn't have worried so much. Riding on sand for the first time next day, I was surprised at how easy it could be. Moving off was difficult, but as soon as I built up speed and the wheels lifted onto the surface of the sand, it was like piloting a speedboat across waves. At low speeds it was difficult to turn or gain any sense of control, but above a certain speed the bike felt sharp and responsive as it planed across the sand. The trick was to lean back and use my foot pegs to manipulate the bike, swinging and power-sliding the back of the bike around corners, rather than using the front wheel to turn, which was completely counterproductive - when twisted, the front wheel became a bulldozer.
I tumbled off the bike several times. Much to my surprise - I'd been expecting a cushioned landing in the sand - it really hurt. A couple of times, the front wheel sunk deep into the sand as I descended a dune, sending me flying straight over the top of the handlebars.
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p61

[Biggles]

In the foyer at 5 a.m., Olly and the kids were in Race to Dakar baseball caps and T-shirts while I was in my full race kit. Simon was running late, as usual, but after the panic of the previous night was calm. Even Simon's tardiness hadn't started me fretting.
Approaching the start area and the parc ferme in the taxi, my nerves kicked in. I already had a sweat on and I hadn't done anything yet. I started to shiver - partly the cold and partly a sense of doom. While Simon chattered away as if it were any other morning, I felt like crying. The little black cloud that had been following around for the previous few days had started to thunder.
Pulling the road-book out of my jacket's inside pocket, I attempted to feed it on to its spool on the bike's road-book holder. It had to be fed in absolutely correctly otherwise it would crumple. And it had to be kept tight on the spool, or it wouldn't fit into the holder. It was all over the place. I couldn't help laughing: here I was, about to start the world's longest and toughest desert rally, and my road-book was a mess. I'm already losing time, and I haven't even started.
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p92

[Biggles]

Still freaked out about navigating, I was spending more time peering at my road-book than where I was going. It took several more miles before I realised our route was lined by a continuous bank of spectators either side of the road, making the damned road-book redundant. What a relief. I started to relax, but was immediately shaken out of my short-lived respite when Simon came thundering up alongside me.
"Charley!" he shouted. "Pull over! Pull over!"
"What?"
"The bloody back brake is on fire!"
"On fire?"
"Red-hot! You got your foot on it!" I looked down at the disc. It was glowing bright red. Strewth, I thought, I've done seven kilometres and I've stuffed the back brake already. Not good.
"I can smell the brake dust!" Simon shouted. We pulled over and checked the brake. I must have been resting my toe on the brake pedal, but it looked OK. I'd been dragging on it only lightly, so the damage was minor. I put on my helmet, we moved off and at last I managed to shut out the world. The bull-shit stopped and freedom lay ahead. Just me and my thoughts. No one and nothing else intruding ... until all of a sudden Matt pulled over.
Parked by the side of the road, Matt's bike was roaring loudly. Oh God, what now? I thought.
"My throttle's stuck," Matt yelled. We were twenty kilometres into a nine-thousand-kilometre race, I'd almost burnt out my back brake. Now Matt's throttle was broken. What was going to happen next? These things usually went in threes.
Race To Dakar  Charlie Boorman  p100-1