These are a few of my favourites. If you have any good ones you would like to share, please drop me an email (address on 'Contact' page).
Four wheels move the body. Two wheels move the soul.
This is my all-time favourite, and I have it inscribed on my iPod. However, another biking blogger - see list on the right - has already got it as his blog header, so I uncharacteristically restrained myself from using it. (Edit: this may or may not be true. I shall see.)
Bikes don't leak oil, they mark their territory.
A good rider has balance, judgment, and good timing. So does a good lover.
Young riders pick a destination and go... Old riders pick a direction and go.
Always back your bike into the kerb, and sit where you can see it.
Ride to work and work to ride.
The best alarm clock is sunshine on chrome.
A friend is someone who'll get out of bed at 2 am to drive his pickup to the middle of nowhere to get you when you're broken down.
Only a Biker knows why a dog sticks his head out of a car window.
Old bikes don't leak oil - they ooze character. (Or: they mark their territory.)
I'd rather be riding my motorcycle thinking about God than sitting in church thinking about my motorcycle.
98% of all Harleys ever sold are still on the road. The other 2% made it home.
If you don't have bugs in your teeth, you haven't been grinning enough!
You only need two tools: WD40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use WD40. If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape.
There's the V4 thing: there's just something about it that inline 4s don't have, and V-twins have too much of.
You start the game with a full pot of luck and an empty pot of experience ... The object is to fill the pot of experience before you empty the pot of luck.
Never trade the thrills of living for the security of existence.
Panniers can never hold everything you want, but they CAN hold everything you need.
Home is where your bike sits still long enough to leave a few drops of oil on the ground.
Don't ride so late into the night that you sleep through the sunrise.
Sometimes it takes a whole tankful of fuel before you can think straight.
Never hesitate to ride past the last street light at the edge of town.
If you don't ride in the rain you don't ride.
Well trained reflexes are quicker than luck.
If the person in the next lane at the stoplight rolls up the window and locks the door, support their view of life by snarling at them.
If you ride like there's no tomorrow there won't be.
Grey-haired riders don't get that way from pure luck.
Always replace the cheapest parts first.
People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs.
Never ride faster than your guardian angel can fly.
Remember folks, traffic lights timed for 35 mph are also timed for 70 mph.
Never ask a biker for directions if you're in a hurry to get there.
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, 'Wow! What a Ride!'
You don't stop riding because you're getting old, you get old when you stop riding.
I can remember the time when sex was safe and motorcycles were dangerous.
God didn't create metal so that man could make paper clips.
I ride a bike because travelling in a car is like having sex with your trousers on.
In a world with 20,000 television channels ...... get as far away from it as you can.
Careless torque costs lives.
Ride, eat, sleep...repeat.
Caution: Objects in the mirrors no longer matter.
Have You Hugged Your Bike Today?
You are on your own. You are not protected by two tons of steel, rubber, foam padding and safety glass. Neither are you steering two tons of guided missile toward other cars, people and property. If you are prepared to accept the responsibility of your own actions, then motorcycling can be both safe and thrilling. Riding is an art as well as a craft and no amount of explanation can take the place of experience. -
Theresa Wallach, Easy Motorcycle Riding, 1970
You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it, you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer, and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on. It's right there, so blurred you can't focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness. -
Robert M Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
There are moments on a motorcycle when all the glory of motion is distilled into one purposeful package. Chasing curves over a swelling landscape, a motorcycle enters the pure expression of physics and is bound to the road in a way no car will ever know. The rider and machine are literally balanced on the infinitely thin line where centripetal force meets gravity. Despite this state of suspended disaster, the sensation of risk is largely a sensation; the motorcycle is in harmony with the road, and risk comes overwhelmingly from other drivers. Any moment of travel on a motorcycle is a light and essential moment, an agile rebuke to a life conducted in one place. The raw force of the engine is not hidden beneath a hood, but alternately purrs and growls a few inches from the knees, demanding the consciousness of power. Sealed behind glass, insulated by climate control systems and music, the driver of a car knows nothing about the directions of the wind, the lay of sunlight, the small changes in temperature between a peak and a valley, the textured noise of differing asphalts, or the sweet and sour aromas of manured fields or passing pine forests. Engaged in all the senses and elements, balanced in the present tense, a rider on two wheels can taste moments of oneness with the road.-
Patrick Symmes, Chasing Che - A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend
I don't feel like going for a ride today ... Said no motorcyclist, ever.
Anon
