The Mouse And The Motorcycle

Artwork by Mike Maihack

Graphic Novel

Just arrived today, my signed copy of the new graphic novel version of ‘Stealing Speed’ by Mat Oxley.

The original book is no longer available new except as an e-book, and second-hand versions change hands for silly amounts of money on eBay and Amazon. I was lucky enough to get a copy a few years ago and it’s an enthralling read. Part Cold-War thriller, part motorcycle history.

For those who don’t know the story, MZ works rider Ernst Degner defected to the West at the height of his battle for the 1961 world championship and sold MZ’s winning two-stroke engine secrets to Suzuki, while his wife and children were smuggled through the newly built Berlin Wall.

The following year Suzuki and Degner made history by winning the two-stroke’s first world championship and Japan was on its way to conquering the world of motorcycling.

It’s strange, I am a big fan of MZ motorcycles and the UK riders club continues to play a large part of my social life and the reaction of most of the club members I’ve spoken to is less cheering Degner for his escape from under communism and the subsequent thumbing of the nose by the Japanese, and more one of annoyance that he could do that to Walter Kaaden and the rest of his team mates and deprive MZ of their world championship. Not sure I can really blame the man for taking his opportunity for himself and his family, though.

Sadly, in the end it didn’t quite work out for him personally, and MZ as a racing power never quite recovered.

Original book cover

I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in that late 60s period and in motorcycles generally.

Mat Oxley's website can be found here 

Mat Oxley's books can be bought from here 

Lois Pryce - Adventurer

I first encountered Lois Pryce by way of her first book about riding the length of the Americas on a tiny Yamaha XT 225 Serow. It made much more sense than attempting to muscle one of the current crop of 'adventure tourers'

Her latest book, 'Revolutionary Ride on the Road to Shiraz the Heart of Iran', is out in paperback in Persian tile blue on 8th March.
 

Amerique

Champion

(Via: oldschoolracer)

 

Weekend Reading

Terribore

1937 illustration by Thomas Somerfield for 'The Raid of the Terribore'...from the days young people found adventure in reading.

(Via: thevintagent) 

 

Make Each Moment Count

Spotted at Waverley Train Station, Edinburgh

Non-Stop

Border Raid

As it was a pleasant morning today, Nicki and I took a wee drive down to Alnwick in Northumberland, ie. over the border to Englandshire. The idea was to pop into Barter Books for a look around and to have some lunch.

The book shop is located within an old Victorian railway station, with the cafe in the old waiting room. It's simply huge, and I haven't seen so many old books for sale in one place since our trip to Jerby Junk on the IOM a good few years ago.

If the sheer size of it all gets to you, there are a number of seating areas spread around the place where you can just stop and take a rest before getting on with the business of picking up a book or two or three.

Appropriately, for a former railway station there are model trains running on tracks laid on top of the bookshelves.

They also sell old vinyl records

Some of them are more expensive/rare than others

Some motoring first-editions

Surely enough manuals to sort any problem?

All told it made for an interesting day out.

USA GP

Comic Capers

Weekend Roundup

Explain the Attraction?

There are a huge number of magazines and books out there extolling the virtues of 'adventure travel'. A strange new phenomenon which seems to usually involve a novice rider going somewhere strange on their bike, getting into difficulties and being thoroughly miserable, before coming back home again and writing a book about how brilliant it all was.

The expectation (Ewan & Charlie)

In fact, next time you pass your local BMW dealer I would guess that more than half their stock falls into the 'adventure' category - GS, Paris Dakar etc. Buy the bike, and all of the lovely expensive accessories from Touratech, and you too can be a 'proper' adventurer just like Ewan and Charley, even if you never go further than the café in town. Image, it seems, is everything. Something that Harley-Davidson has known for a good long while.

The very issue mentioned

A good example of this phenomenon is Adventure Bike Rider magazine. A copy of this fine periodical that I read recently included numerous stories of derring-do, some in exciting foreign parts, adverts for the most eye-wateringly expensive kit I’ve ever come across, a number of ‘how-to’ articles on everything from what to wear to where to go and, my personal favourite, survivalist nonsense in case you are ever stranded far from civilisation and need to make a fire or drink something other than your own urine.

How to make fire the boy scout way

For when you run out of Perrier

Seriously, I sometimes think that this sort of thing must actually put off as many folk as it inspires. Who really wants to contract dysentery while riding a broken-down wreck on un-surfaced roads through a war-zone with the very real possibility of being shot at? I'll give it a miss, thank you.

Parked outside a hotel in Dijon, France

For the moment, I’ll stick to travelling in countries which have indoor plumbing and are not currently engaged in a civil war. Places which are not too dissimilar to the UK, except for the fact that it's far away, the food is a mite different and you can't always communicate with the locals. But then again that can be true of going to Yorkshire for the weekend! 

Krampus

Krampus was the opposite of Saint Nickolas in Germanic folklore. St. Nick would visit the good children with gifts and Krampus visited the bad children. The stories even told that if the children were exceptionally bad Krampus would stuff them into his bag and take them back to his lair. Merry Christmas indeed...