A rather long passage by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) about roaring around on an old Brough Superior. Force yourself to read it, and it'll make you forget about Winter for a moment, and relish just enjoying the road. Enjoy! --Jeff


THE ROAD

T.E. Lawrence

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 ," 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 lordily 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's straightest and
fastest roads. The burble of my exhaust unwound like a 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 fact 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 ****** 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
Whitewashed 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 ****-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
*** 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 me 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 Hard's yard-pump. A cup of
real chocolate and a muffin at the tea shop: 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.

-end-

 

Corporal DB Shaw on Boanerges



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friedduck Thanks! I really did think only about motoring! That was quite enjoyable. I almost feel like I just took that ride myself!

Although it is certainly worth reading the entire excerpt, I think that the very last sentence will really hit home with each MINI owner!

On a related, but separate note: It is a shame to think that so many people do so little reading nowadays. This is a prime example of a great thing they might otherwise miss out on! I can be guilty of it myself - but I truly do love to read.