|
  |
 Like your bike, like your life |
| Autor |
Beitrag |
Katrin
Besucher
 |
|
| Like your bike, like your life |
   
|
The vroom-vroom sound of vintage bikes sets the blood racing
There?s something so utterly romantic about riding a motorbike.
Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, made that notion apparent to readers all over the world, whether they had ever set their bums on the seat of a motorcycle or not.
He wrote: ?You see things 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 realise that through the 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.?
The motorcycle is for many a symbol of freedom, adventure, liberation. But for some people, riding a motorbike also gives a sense of unity and belonging, being part of a group of like-minded individuals.
According to the French book Tout La Moto, it is claimed: ? Bikers can be grouped into two classes: true bikers and sham bikers. The identikit of a true biker as seen by the other kind is of a roughneck, helmeted and booted, unshaven and with hands blackened with axel grease.
?The picture is complete if his bike is falling apart, held together with bits of wire, constantly breaking down but paradoxically continuing to run, and with a chain which, thank God, constantly needs adjusting, since the chain is the best means for dirtying one?s hands.?
This description gives a good idea of the one kind of patron of The 1000 Bike Show last Saturday and Sunday at Germiston High, East Rand, organised by The Classic Motorcycle Club.
The event marked the club?s 40th anniversary and was attended by about 12000 people.
Every year the show grows bigger, and this year 350 bikes were displayed in the ?Classic? tent, with hundreds more parked outside in the sun.
The weather was perfect for a fun-filled family day of bikes, beer, bands and burgers.
Tout La Moto describes the other type of biker as one who, ?wears a suit, rides rarely.
?His bike is all shiny and chrome. he needs to have chicks eyeing him.
?His handlebars are huge. His motor bike a phallic symbol because he is laden with complexes.?
Though there were fewer of the latter kind of biker in attendance and more of the former ? including members of such luminary biker gangs as ?The Mutts?, ?The Vesperados?, ?The Eezy Riders?, ?Da Cousins? and the ever-present ?Hells Angels?, there was plenty of shiny chrome and glittery plastic.
Bikers included those who prefer the more phallic objects (and those who believe that size does count), to the more refined, contained, genteel ?vroom-vroom? of the less audacious scooters.
On display in the Classic tent was a 1937 Brough Superior, one of only two in the country. The Brough Superior is known as the Rolls- Royce of motorcycles and was the bike of choice for TE Lawrence .
The 1000 Bike Show is a great place for bike lovers to follow the progression of the motorbike from its early days.
Who would have thought that we had so many vintage bikes and so many bike lovers in South Africa?
All pre-1936 bikes are considered vintage and are eligible for the annual DJ run, from Durban to Johannesburg. It took place this year in March.
There was also a great selection of Hondas, Triumphs, BMWs and Ducatis to view. Of course, there were also Harley-Davidsons of all shapes, vintages and sizes on the Harley stand.
The 1000 Bike Show is a fascinating event not merely because there are bikes on show from every age and era, of every make and manufacture, but because you get to bask in the passion of bikers.
As the writer of The Perfect Vehicle: What it is about Motorcycles, Melissa Holbrook Pierson, writes: ?Motorcyclists are what they feel like [profoundly sensual ? vroom- vroom ? and perhaps a bit primordial], and also what they look like [fearsome with a strange, deep beauty].
?Look at that engine, out for everyone to see, and those two simple wheels: what else announces itself so brazenly??
http://www.thetimes.co.za/Entertainment/....aspx?id=798978
|
|
13.07.2008 11:12 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Views heute: 4.408 | Views gestern: 18.460 | Views gesamt: 114.472.053
|
