Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1978520 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Synopsis
Sorts out the myths, rituals, and attractions of motorbiking, tracing the history of the vehicle and its riders--especially women--and recounting the author's riding life.

Customer Reviews

Unusual book for reflective bikers
This was quite unlike any motorcycling book I have ever read. The storyline is not particularly continuous but I could not put the book down and I'm now reading it for the third time. Its got stuff in it about the author's emotional experiences which I find totally believable and can slide into myself. The historical side is not quite so well researched but Pearson's accounts of her own riding and her troubles and joys are great. I recommend it to other motorcyclists.

great! Get it!
This is certainly a book for anyone who recognises a biking culture other than the macho - tho' this is mostly due to Harley riding authoritarians who are clearly insecure in their masculinity.

Anyway this fine book opposes that hairy nonsense and also conveys some of the joys and fears of biking. The opening is a meditation on starting a bike and driving out - a closely observed exercise in noting the minutiae which we all recognise but need reminding of - and in such sharp detail as this, its a joy to read. It's an excellent reminder of how we might focus our being and minds on the daily motorcycling epiphany; that is, moments of heightened awareness set in the ordinariness of living, with the bike as catalyst.

Read it and you'll surely know what I mean.

The book (as does Jupiter's Travels) takes a different road from the sweaty macho brigade who have done much to diminish motorcycling, for the author, throughout most of this fine book, dicusses the beauty of the motorcycle and the art and practice of motorcycling. If you like a bit of men/women angst that's here too.

I loved this book, and if you're not a helmeted thug with a 10 watt brain, you will too.

The Wrapping is Better than the Contents
I found the book a well-written disappointment especially if you get to this book (as I did) by way of the Saharan sand covered pages of Ted Simon, Jonny Bealby and Helge Pederson. These days it may be necessary to go literally to the ends of the earth to get the material necessary to write a good motorcycling adventure book and this one really doesn't go that far. I was confused as to what Melissa wanted to tell me as the book flips around between a history of motorcycling, an occasional "Zen and the Art of" style, a motorcycle workshop manual and then to a manual on road traffic accident trauma reports. By not having a central theme, other than her own "religious experience" of discovering motorcycles, she has to go to a variety of disparate places to try to keep the interest of the reader. In my case she almost failed and do Americans really call Ducati bikes "Duck's"?