Central America 1951

There is a need in one's life for flights of imagination, and there in my bathroom lies a well thumbed copy of a paperback book filled with pictures, photographs fit to dream on, especially if you ride a motorcycle with a big round headlamp, flat handlebars and those tight curving mudguards, so typical of the era. William Carroll's business went into bankruptcy during 1950, which crisis naturally prompted him to do the obvious thing: sell his home and take off on a motorcycle tour, more precisely a B33, a 500cc BSA single, the apotheosis of motorcycle engineering of the era. And he took off for the dangerous lands south of the Rio Grande.
Its a book of words and images that set a boy's mind to take off on flights of fancy- here today, gone tomorrow, especially when one has the modern equivalent of a B33 of one's own, lurking underneath the house. Copper Canyon, here I come!
Its the effect images have on the brain. You look and without warning you are sucked in, to a world perhaps that doesn't even interest you. And yet that image won't go away. For instance I would never want to see myself wrapped up for winter riding, dodging heaps of snow, yet the Aerostitch catalogue is utterly irresistible.

Big knobby tire, huge headlamp, scenic but not desirable, it all sets a even tropical brain to dreaming, while sitting. I can't say I care for the electronic gadgets offered in the catalogue, but Lord knows there are plenty of toys that I just know I will (would?) need on the road to Mexico... Dry bags to throw over the tank, tool rolls, and widgets and gadgets that cost less than an arm and a leg but are about as useful to my current style of riding as snow tires. Yet they make me dream, those masters of the soft sell make me dream.


So I flip the pages of Carroll's fabulous picture book and read of his detainment in Mexico at the Guatemalan border, his struggle through the ruts and rocks of the main highway to Tegucigalpa, a chance encounter with another rider on a Triumph, in the dust of Central America. He wears as illustrated here a sensible, and carefully thought out riding uniform of baseball cap, overalls and stout boots. Not a GPS in sight, and the Triumph rider he met was wearing similar ATGATT.

And after a money grubbing detour in Costa Rica to sell a few useful articles on railways and bananas, a sudden anti-climactic arrival at the Panama Canal. And all this illustrated by 175 pictures of that dreamy tour, which we currently find beyond our reach, if not beyond our motorcycles. Hell they look like twins, excepting of course a few accessories like mirrors, turn signals and front tag holders ($60 nostalgia option in the current New Bonneville catalogue!).

There is mention in the book of just how small his BSA appeared on the road to passersby. I suspect the author, who was lanky, made it look more so, as he appears positively crouched on the motorcycle in some of his pictures. One couldn't say the same of my Bonneville, until I suppose one comes across a fully dressed Harley, or a Gold Wing or some other sport tourer with all the bells and whistles. They make my 900 Triumph look similarly compact if compared across the decades to the BSA 500 of 1951.

And here I am enjoying the daily grind with all the security of a paycheck, a routine, a front door to kick my boots off in front of. A wife to soothe my fevered brow. This must be a good life, not on the road.

The long way home, not on the Pan American Highway, but on Card Sound Road, after a day riding the mainland.