I am spending today on the road myself, somewhere between my home in the Florida Keys and the State of New York. This excerpt from T.E Lawrence's book The Mint has been floating around in my head since I read it on the vintagent's site ( see my web list http://www.thevintagent.blogspot.com/ ) and Paul d'Orlean's superb website reminded me of this fine piece of writing. For more from the book and articles about the man known to most as "Lawrence of Arabia" check out this site: http://telawrence.info/telawrenceinfo/index.htm . My 2007 Triumph Bonneville is nothing like Lawrence's Brough Superior, nor am I in any way like Lawrence himself but across the arc of a century one might say we both enjoy the ride and he wrote about it better than ever I could.
T. E. Lawrence, The Mint
PART III
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16: THE ROAD
PART III
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16: THE ROAD
The extravagance in which my surplus emotion expressed itself lay on the road. So long as roads were tarred blue and straight; not hedged; and empty and dry, so long I was rich. Nightly I'd run up from the hangar, upon the last stroke of work, spurring my tired feet to be nimble. The very movement refreshed them, after the day-long restraint of service. In five minutes my bed would be down, ready for the night: in four more I was in breeches and puttees, pulling on my gauntlets as I walked over to my bike, which lived in a garage-hut, opposite. Its tyres never wanted air, its engine had a habit of starting at second kick: a good habit, for only by frantic plunges upon the starting pedal could my puny weight force the engine over the seven atmospheres of its compression.
Boanerges' first glad roar at being alive again nightly jarred the huts of Cadet College into life. 'There he goes, the noisy bugger,' someone would say enviously in every flight. It is part of an airman's profession to be knowing with engines: and a thoroughbred engine is our undying satisfaction. The camp wore the virtue of my Brough like a flower in its cap. Tonight Tug and Dusty came to the step of our hut to see me off. 'Running down to Smoke, perhaps?' jeered Dusty; hitting at my regular game of London and back for tea on fine Wednesday afternoons.
Boa is a top-gear machine, as sweet in that as most single-cylinders in middle. I chug lordlily past the guard-room and through the speed limit at no more than sixteen. Round the bend, past the farm, and the way straightens. Now for it. The engine's final development is fifty-two horse-power. A miracle that all this docile strength waits behind one tiny lever for the pleasure of my hand.
Another bend: and I have the honour of one of England' straightest and fastest roads. The burble of my exhaust unwound like a long cord behind me. Soon my speed snapped it, and I heard only the cry of the wind which my battering head split and fended aside. The cry rose with my speed to a shriek: while the air's coldness streamed like two jets of iced water into my dissolving eyes. I screwed them to slits, and focused my sight two hundred yards ahead of me on the empty mosaic of the tar's gravelled undulations.
Like arrows the tiny flies pricked my cheeks: and sometimes a heavier body, some house-fly or beetle, would crash into face or lips like a spent bullet. A glance at the speedometer: seventy-eight. Boanerges is warming up. I pull the throttle right open, on the top of the slope, and we swoop flying across the dip, and up-down up-down the switchback beyond: the weighty machine launching itself like a projectile with a whirr of wheels into the air at the take-off of each rise, to land lurchingly with such a snatch of the driving chain as jerks my spine like a rictus.
Once we so fled across the evening light, with the yellow sun on my left, when a huge shadow roared just overhead. A Bristol Fighter, from Whitewash Villas, our neighbour aerodrome, was banking sharply round. I checked speed an instant to wave: and the slip-stream of my impetus snapped my arm and elbow astern, like a raised flail. The pilot pointed down the road towards Lincoln. I sat hard in the saddle, folded back my ears and went away after him, like a dog after a hare. Quickly we drew abreast, as the impulse of his dive to my level exhausted itself.
The next mile of road was rough. I braced my feet into the rests, thrust with my arms, and clenched my knees on the tank till its rubber grips goggled under my thighs. Over the first pot-hole Boanerges screamed in surprise, its mud-guard bottoming with a yawp upon the tyre. Through the plunges of the next ten seconds I clung on, wedging my gloved hand in the throttle lever so that no bump should close it and spoil our speed. Then the bicycle wrenched sideways into three long ruts: it swayed dizzily, wagging its tail for thirty awful yards. Out came the clutch, the engine raced freely: Boa checked and straightened his head with a shake, as a Brough should.
The bad ground was passed and on the new road our flight became birdlike. My head was blown out with air so that my ears had failed and we seemed to whirl soundlessly between the sun-gilt stubble fields. I dared, on a rise, to slow imperceptibly and glance sideways into the sky. There the Bif was, two hundred yards and more back. Play with the fellow? Why not? I slowed to ninety: signalled with my hand for him to overtake. Slowed ten more: sat up. Over he rattled. His passenger, a helmeted and goggled grin, hung out of the cock-pit to pass me the 'Up yer' Raf randy greeting.
They were hoping I was a flash in the pan, giving them best. Open went my throttle again. Boa crept level, fifty feet below: held them: sailed ahead into the clean and lonely country. An approaching car pulled nearly into its ditch at the sight of our race. The Bif was zooming among the trees and telegraph poles, with my scurrying spot only eighty yards ahead. I gained though, gained steadily: was perhaps five miles an hour the faster. Down went my left hand to give the engine two extra dollops of oil, for fear that something was running hot: but an overhead Jap twin, super-tuned like this one, would carry on to the moon and back, unfaltering.
We drew near the settlement. A long mile before the first houses I closed down and coasted to the cross-roads by the hospital. Bif caught up, banked, climbed and turned for home, waving to me as long as he was in sight. Fourteen miles from camp, we are, here: and fifteen minutes since I left Tug and Dusty at the hut door.
I let in the clutch again, and eased Boanerges down the hill along the tram-lines through the dirty streets and up-hill to the aloof cathedral, where it stood in frigid perfection above the cowering close. No message of mercy in Lincoln. Our God is a jealous God: and man's very best offering will fall disdainfully short of worthiness, in the sight of Saint Hugh and his angels.
Remigius, earthy old Remigius, looks with more charity on and Boanerges. I stabled the steel magnificence of strength and speed at his west door and went in: to find the organist practising something slow and rhythmical, like a multiplication table in notes on the organ. The fretted, unsatisfying and unsatisfied lace-work of choir screen and spandrels drank in the main sound. Its surplus spilled thoughtfully into my ears.
By then my belly had forgotten its lunch, my eyes smarted and streamed. Out again, to sluice my head under the White Hart's yard-pump. A cup of real chocolate and a muffin at the teashop: and Boa and I took the Newark road for the last hour of daylight. He ambles at forty-five and when roaring his utmost, surpasses the hundred. A skittish motor-bike with a touch of blood in it is better than all the riding animals on earth, because of its logical extension of our faculties, and the hint, the provocation, to excess conferred by its honeyed untiring smoothness. Because Boa loves me, he gives me five more miles of speed than a stranger would get from him.
At Nottingham I added sausages from my wholesaler to the bacon which I'd bought at Lincoln: bacon so nicely sliced that each rasher meant a penny. The solid pannier-bags behind the saddle took all this and at my next stop a (farm) took also a felt-hammocked box of fifteen eggs. Home by Sleaford, our squalid, purse-proud, local village. Its butcher had six penn'orth of dripping ready for me. For months have I been making my evening round a marketing, twice a week, riding a hundred miles for the joy of it and picking up the best food cheapest, over half the country side.
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T.E Lawrence numbered the seven Brough Superiors he owned George I, II, III etc...after George Brough the founder of the company that was considered at the time (and to this day in many cases) to be the manufacturers of the finest motorcycles. "Boanerges" in the text is apparently a reference to the nickname given by Jesus to James and John, referring to the God of Thunder.
Boanerges' first glad roar at being alive again nightly jarred the huts of Cadet College into life. 'There he goes, the noisy bugger,' someone would say enviously in every flight. It is part of an airman's profession to be knowing with engines: and a thoroughbred engine is our undying satisfaction. The camp wore the virtue of my Brough like a flower in its cap. Tonight Tug and Dusty came to the step of our hut to see me off. 'Running down to Smoke, perhaps?' jeered Dusty; hitting at my regular game of London and back for tea on fine Wednesday afternoons.
Boa is a top-gear machine, as sweet in that as most single-cylinders in middle. I chug lordlily past the guard-room and through the speed limit at no more than sixteen. Round the bend, past the farm, and the way straightens. Now for it. The engine's final development is fifty-two horse-power. A miracle that all this docile strength waits behind one tiny lever for the pleasure of my hand.
Another bend: and I have the honour of one of England' straightest and fastest roads. The burble of my exhaust unwound like a long cord behind me. Soon my speed snapped it, and I heard only the cry of the wind which my battering head split and fended aside. The cry rose with my speed to a shriek: while the air's coldness streamed like two jets of iced water into my dissolving eyes. I screwed them to slits, and focused my sight two hundred yards ahead of me on the empty mosaic of the tar's gravelled undulations.
Like arrows the tiny flies pricked my cheeks: and sometimes a heavier body, some house-fly or beetle, would crash into face or lips like a spent bullet. A glance at the speedometer: seventy-eight. Boanerges is warming up. I pull the throttle right open, on the top of the slope, and we swoop flying across the dip, and up-down up-down the switchback beyond: the weighty machine launching itself like a projectile with a whirr of wheels into the air at the take-off of each rise, to land lurchingly with such a snatch of the driving chain as jerks my spine like a rictus.
Once we so fled across the evening light, with the yellow sun on my left, when a huge shadow roared just overhead. A Bristol Fighter, from Whitewash Villas, our neighbour aerodrome, was banking sharply round. I checked speed an instant to wave: and the slip-stream of my impetus snapped my arm and elbow astern, like a raised flail. The pilot pointed down the road towards Lincoln. I sat hard in the saddle, folded back my ears and went away after him, like a dog after a hare. Quickly we drew abreast, as the impulse of his dive to my level exhausted itself.
The next mile of road was rough. I braced my feet into the rests, thrust with my arms, and clenched my knees on the tank till its rubber grips goggled under my thighs. Over the first pot-hole Boanerges screamed in surprise, its mud-guard bottoming with a yawp upon the tyre. Through the plunges of the next ten seconds I clung on, wedging my gloved hand in the throttle lever so that no bump should close it and spoil our speed. Then the bicycle wrenched sideways into three long ruts: it swayed dizzily, wagging its tail for thirty awful yards. Out came the clutch, the engine raced freely: Boa checked and straightened his head with a shake, as a Brough should.
The bad ground was passed and on the new road our flight became birdlike. My head was blown out with air so that my ears had failed and we seemed to whirl soundlessly between the sun-gilt stubble fields. I dared, on a rise, to slow imperceptibly and glance sideways into the sky. There the Bif was, two hundred yards and more back. Play with the fellow? Why not? I slowed to ninety: signalled with my hand for him to overtake. Slowed ten more: sat up. Over he rattled. His passenger, a helmeted and goggled grin, hung out of the cock-pit to pass me the 'Up yer' Raf randy greeting.
They were hoping I was a flash in the pan, giving them best. Open went my throttle again. Boa crept level, fifty feet below: held them: sailed ahead into the clean and lonely country. An approaching car pulled nearly into its ditch at the sight of our race. The Bif was zooming among the trees and telegraph poles, with my scurrying spot only eighty yards ahead. I gained though, gained steadily: was perhaps five miles an hour the faster. Down went my left hand to give the engine two extra dollops of oil, for fear that something was running hot: but an overhead Jap twin, super-tuned like this one, would carry on to the moon and back, unfaltering.
We drew near the settlement. A long mile before the first houses I closed down and coasted to the cross-roads by the hospital. Bif caught up, banked, climbed and turned for home, waving to me as long as he was in sight. Fourteen miles from camp, we are, here: and fifteen minutes since I left Tug and Dusty at the hut door.
I let in the clutch again, and eased Boanerges down the hill along the tram-lines through the dirty streets and up-hill to the aloof cathedral, where it stood in frigid perfection above the cowering close. No message of mercy in Lincoln. Our God is a jealous God: and man's very best offering will fall disdainfully short of worthiness, in the sight of Saint Hugh and his angels.
Remigius, earthy old Remigius, looks with more charity on and Boanerges. I stabled the steel magnificence of strength and speed at his west door and went in: to find the organist practising something slow and rhythmical, like a multiplication table in notes on the organ. The fretted, unsatisfying and unsatisfied lace-work of choir screen and spandrels drank in the main sound. Its surplus spilled thoughtfully into my ears.
By then my belly had forgotten its lunch, my eyes smarted and streamed. Out again, to sluice my head under the White Hart's yard-pump. A cup of real chocolate and a muffin at the teashop: and Boa and I took the Newark road for the last hour of daylight. He ambles at forty-five and when roaring his utmost, surpasses the hundred. A skittish motor-bike with a touch of blood in it is better than all the riding animals on earth, because of its logical extension of our faculties, and the hint, the provocation, to excess conferred by its honeyed untiring smoothness. Because Boa loves me, he gives me five more miles of speed than a stranger would get from him.
At Nottingham I added sausages from my wholesaler to the bacon which I'd bought at Lincoln: bacon so nicely sliced that each rasher meant a penny. The solid pannier-bags behind the saddle took all this and at my next stop a (farm) took also a felt-hammocked box of fifteen eggs. Home by Sleaford, our squalid, purse-proud, local village. Its butcher had six penn'orth of dripping ready for me. For months have I been making my evening round a marketing, twice a week, riding a hundred miles for the joy of it and picking up the best food cheapest, over half the country side.
====================================================================
T.E Lawrence numbered the seven Brough Superiors he owned George I, II, III etc...after George Brough the founder of the company that was considered at the time (and to this day in many cases) to be the manufacturers of the finest motorcycles. "Boanerges" in the text is apparently a reference to the nickname given by Jesus to James and John, referring to the God of Thunder.
Many of the hard core people use saddle enhancers to give them stamina but I find the Triumph stock saddle to be adequate as planks go. And the idea of buying electrically heated clothing, as desirable as that sounds this close to the deadline, seems absurd in light of the fact that all the rest of my riding doesn't come close to requiring such elaborate gear.
Mechanical failure, a flat tire, freezing cold or some other meteorological catastrophe could all combine with simple exhaustion to kill off this attempt (if not myself) so I am open to failure and have alternative plans in case the things becomes impossible ( I have yet to visit the Outer Banks for example). However when I rode the 1,000 mile Iron Butt in 21 hours a year ago I found I was entirely up to the challenge as was the Bonneville. Now with 42,000 miles on the clock and new tires, chain and oil the motorbike seems as capable as ever providing I am. I have no electronics, relying instead on maps, a tank map case and use of major roads to keep things simple on the way up. The Overseas Highway, the Florida Turnpike, I-95, I-26, I-77, I-81.
I will promptly festoon his life with used underwear and smelly wool socks so we will be even. My wife understands my desire to take a break and go for a ride but the light of my life will no doubt be annoyed when I get home. We have never been apart more than 13 hours in the last year.
Cabs get their line in the area between the garage and the terminal building.
I used the parking lot that used to be reserved solely for employees and everything went as smoothly as can be. The squeaky wheel gets well and truly greased. To the benefit of all in this case. I hope the customer service training went as well for the deputies as it does, periodically, for us at the police department. 
I'm guessing the total trip will be about 2200 miles, as the Bonneville and I are taking the Auto Train home from Washington to Orlando to save 900 miles riding. My final destination depends on the weather and temperatures along the way but at this point it looks like it will be Binghamton, New York, 1517 miles from home. My first choice was coastal and congested and warmer by riding to Long Island, a destination I ultimately discarded for fear of traffic jams along I-95's major cities. while the second choice wil be mountainous with less traffic but colder, riding up Virginia to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on I-81. After the Iron Butt ride I hope to spend two days being insulted to death by riepe in Amish country or torn to pieces by stiffie's charming hounds. Then I will come home a wiser and sadder man. 
My tool kit for the ride will consist of some basic items, sufficient to tension the chain and handle a few simple roadside chores as needed but no more. Modern bikes do not lend themselves well to roadside repairs as the electrics are mostly electronic and the engines no longer run on bailing wire and hope...happily. I will have Ride On anti-flat goop in the inner tubes. As the Bonneville doesn't have tubeless tires punctures are a real problem and my solution is to call AAA ( I have the RV/ Motorcycle coverage) and get a shop to replace or fix the inner tube. If I ever ride to Alaska I will learn how to do the job roadside but it is a ghastly messy job replacing a tube. Tubeless tires are wonderful and usually easy to fix with plugs. If I get a flat the Bun Burner ride will be over.
In addition to a waterproof bag with my street clothes inside (no pink Crocs by special request of that fashion maven Jack "Toad" riepe) I will have my top case with my man purse and Iron Butt papers inside and that will be that more or less for luggage. I am not a fan of tank bags which give the motorcycle a cluttered feeling in my opinion but I did want somewhere to put my maps on display. Tank bags have a handy plastic window on top for just that purpose. Aerostitch has created a special magnetic Velcro frame for their map case which is designed to attach to the leg of their riding suits. The magnetic Velcro square enables the map case to go right on the tank. Aerostitch is run by people who actually ride motorcycles and it shows.
The whole set up is not cheap at $60 but it should work beautifully. This is important to me as I have-gasp!- absolutely no GPS. I loved satellite navigation while sailing but for this trip straight up a few Interstates I will be fine navigating the old fashioned way.
So far I have $930 for the motorcycle tires and chain, oil change, brake check etc... at Jiri's shop. About $200 at Aerostitch and $250 for the train ticket. Granted the bike needed new tires and was about ready for a new chain anyway but I have been working a great deal of overtime for this trip... Time to install the saddlebags after they have absorbed the silicone spray. Remove the old fashioned seat bolts. Triumph really does need to get this method modernized.
Every time I unbolt the seat I like checking my quality control sticker. "Triumph OK" it reads. That about sums this motorcycle up.
At the Shell gas station in Big Coppitt I turned south on Boca Chica road which winds through the mangroves for a few miles to a dead end at the beach. In this case we had to stop a little prematurely for construction work at the bridge that separates Geiger Key from Boca Chica:
The temporary traffic light was changing merrily on it's own, on a timer I suspect. I have never seen a light boxed up in plywood like this light tower:
It is quite the landmark. 
"...to prosper, increase and have good success." A vision statement for a church that includes those thoughts brings a smile to the lips of an unbeliever like me. 
There may only be one God, they tell us but s/he goes by many different names. 
Happily the used ones were nowhere to be seen. These are the Stations of the Cross, entirely familiar to a lapsed Catholic as myself. 
A ten minute pause and it was time to get back out into the blazing afternoon heat outside. 
