Do you remember when you were a boy of maybe eight or nine years old, and your bicycle was like the wind turned into steel? You launched yourself on every ride with a crazy desire to fly……..and the feeling of the wind in your face, your shirt stuck to your chest, the cold and the vertigo as you went down the slope, which almost disappeared beneath the black tires……and we never wanted this to end. What a wonderful feeling! As if suddenly we had grown wings and could fly on this steel Pegasus.
Maybe it is this incredible memory that continually drives us to look for the amazing sensation of speed, of freedom and of vertigo. Robert Louis Stevenson once said: “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move, to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.” And maybe it is this same freedom that we are trying to find when we sit astride a motorcycle. Because traveling light on a motorbike, just because you want to, is the closest you can get to paradise. Thomas E. Lawrence (better known as Lawrence of Arabia) said that “a beautiful motorbike with a bit of character is better than any horse in the world,” and Robert M. Piersig commented that when you are riding a motorbike, the frame through which you see the world briefly disappears and you come into full contact with everything. You are more than an observer, you become a part of the scene and the feeling of being completely present is overwhelming.
Following the establishment of the bicycle as a viable and popular mode of transportation, the American Sylvester Howard Roper bought one for his personal use in1867. He nevertheless found it to be too slow and fitted it with a two cylinder coal fired steam engine which he had invented in his spare time. This was considered to be the birth of the first “motorcycle”, even though it was a little ostentatious and Sylvester could not avoid becoming the butt of all the neighborhood jokes as he was always crashing.
Almost twenty years later, Wilhelm Maybach and Gottlieb Daimler built what could properly be considered a motorcycle in Germany that they called the Reitwagen. It was powered by an internal combustion engine allowing it to reach the staggering speed of 18 km. per hour. Even though Daimler (who would later become a partner in the famous Daimler-Benz company) used an engine invented by the engineer Nikolaus Otto (called the Otto Cycle Engine), he brought it into the limelight and converted it to become part of a very functional machine, and this really can be considered as the birth of the motorcycle.
Later, in Munich in 1894, Hildebrand and Wolfmüller unveiled the first motorcycle to be commercially produced on an assembly line, but this had only a short life and less than three years after it went into production the business failed due to lack of sales.
In 1902, the Frenchman Georges Gauthier invented the ‘scooter’, which proved to be very popular with young people throughout the twentieth century, as it was designed for city use, was not too fast and was known to be comfortable, economical to run and easy to drive.
On returning from Europe after the Second World War, soldiers from the United States were not impressed by the motorcycles built by Harley-Davidson and Indian because the motorbikes they had ridden in Europe were lighter and more fun to ride. Although custom motorcycles emerged to fill this gap, in the end Harley-Davidsons regained lost ground and ended up as the leader that they are today, symbolizing absolute freedom, unfettered speed, power and a certain veneer of rebellion and creating a classic style which is evocative of adventure and the open road. Since 1903 it has been working its magic on a community of adherents who, without fail become faithful and enthusiastic bikers, to the extent that it has become one of the best known make of motorbike. It has become a legend, and for many it is a way of life, a way of demonstrating love of speed and the codes of honor; the common spirit shared by devotees around the world is well known.
Whenever we think of a symbol of freedom, of speed and power we can’t help but think of the motorbike, which has its place as one of the ideals of the last century and this one, insofar as it brings us back in contact with the every day and the basic, the daily round, the traffic. All this combines to make us feel that, simply by turning the key in the ignition, we can fly to wherever we want to go, wherever our heart desires in its flights of fancy, just like Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda in the epic movie Easy Rider, in 1967.
Maybe this feeling is best summed up in these words by Melissa H. Pierson, in her book The Perfect Vehicle: What it is about Motorcycles: “From my mother I learned to write prompt polite thank-you notes for a variety of occasions. From Mrs. King’s ballroom dancing school I learned a proper curtsey and, believe it or not, what to do if presented with nine different eating utensils at the same place setting. From motorcycles I learned practically everything else.” |
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