“Call me Ishmael”
On this day 200 years ago the whaling ship Essex was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in the middle of the South Pacific. This maritime story gave Herman Melville the idea for his classic novel Moby Dick. This 1928 Brought Superior SS100, also named Moby Dick recently sold for over £500,000. The name was given after Motor Cycling magazine tested it in 1931 and declared it “the fastest privately-owned machine in the world”.
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost – 1874-1963
Another motorcycle blogger is Vanessa Ruck who enjoys extolling the virtues of two-wheel travel. Particularly with an adventure bike such as the impeccable Tiger.
Madeline Smith & Nicky Henson taking a break from filming the 70’s comedic version of the 18th Century Henry Fielding classic novel. I don’t think the Norton motorcycle is period accurate…
For the reader rider. A motorcycle saddle and tank shelf system for your book perusing pleasure.
Ten Years
– as GeordieBiker nears its 10 years I’ve been looking into a way of memorializing the over 3,300 posts that have accumulated over its lifetime. I had a PDF document prepared which contains all 1,707 pages of blog posts (to date). It’s nice to skim through and reminisce on past rides, or musings, or image finds.
Gulliver holds a diminutive Honda C90 possibly used by one of the diminutive denizens of the scaled down island from his Travels. Unless it was his ride when amongst the giants of Brobdingnag…
My favorite poem? Possibly.
The Tiger by Nael age 6
He destroyed his cage
Yes
YES
The tiger is out
It means buying books and letting them pile up unread. The word dates back to the very beginning of modern Japan, the Meiji era (1868-1912) and has its origins in a pun. Tsundoku, which literally means reading pile, is written in Japanese as 積ん読.
This fella has the right idea: get the motorhome packed, hand a ‘sled on the back, and head into the back of beyond until this all blows over. As Thoreau said: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Just ordered this small book from Etsy of a collection of motorcycle inspired odes. It’ll make a change from the oily thumbed workshop manual…
Amusement Ride | more excitement and fun from the further escapades of the Harry Potter world. This time a roller coaster utilizing Hagrid’s Triumph sidecar outfit as the carriages. As we know I’m sure it’s not as good as the real thing…
Walden Wanderin’
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…
Herding Cat | Today is playwright Sam Shepard’s birthday. Born in 1943 he acted in, wrote, directed and won numerous awards for dozens of plays. I remember him for his role in The Right Stuff as iconic supersonic pilot Chuck Yeager. Shepard died in 2017 aged 73
Space Man | peering over the ‘bars like some Ray Bradbury character a modern desert sled pilot scans a desolate horizon and aims the Triumph Scrambler towards a distant point in the future.
