The Devil Can Ride, by Lee Klancher
I love this book, and so while I haven't even finished it yet, I want to tell you about it.
It's called The Devil Can Ride: The World's Best Motorcycle Writing, and it's just out from Motorbooks. Lee Klancher is the editor who pulled this varied selection of pieces together and I've got to say, he made some great selections. I really have to wonder how he even came up with some of them.
The writers range from the well-known, such as Hunter S. Thompson, Kevin Cameron, T.E. Lawrence, and Robert Pirsig, to others whom I have certainly never heard of, such as John Hall, Elena Filatova, and Jack Lewis. Far more important than who the writers are is what they write about.
Elena Filatova, for example, writes about riding through the ghost town zone around the disaster-struck Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
My trips to Chernobyl are not like a walk in the park, but the risk can be managed. Sometimes I go for rides alone, sometimes with a pillion passenger, but never in company with any other vehicle because I do not want anyone to raise dust in front of me.
John Hall writes from the perspective of one who was there as he describes the 1967 drawing together of the Heathens and the Pagans, two leading 1%er groups on the East Coast.
Like the dark legions of Muspell, we rolled out of the damp, wooden, dirt-floor garages in Maspeth and Greenpoint, Long Island. Out of the parking lots of all-night neon truck-stop diners on U.S. 1 in Rahway and Linden, New Jersey. Out of the dying corrugated steel and mining towns beside the quiet rivers in the rolling mountains of Pennsylvania. Out of the moonshine hollows of West Virginia and the second-floor crash pads over waterfront bars in Baltimore. Out of the mist-shrouded oak and hemlock forest of the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains, down the wide-open asphalt highways of the great Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and even down the quiet Saturday-morning streets of the nation's capital.
The Pagans were on the run.
Dan Walsh spins a tale of a ride in Mozambique and Tanzania, covering 2,000 miles in 3 weeks, often on stretches that were only alleged to be roads.
Three weeks, 2,000 miles. And one big off. Why do they always happen like this? A stretch of cement-powder-fine sand, get on the gas, repeat the mantra "I have never fallen off in sand when going too fast, only when going too slow." Next thing I'm slip-sliding away, still holding the bars, lost in a cloud of dust. Eventually, we stop. I hear a voice murmuring, "You're OK, Dan, you're OK, kidda," while my shadow groans, "Get off me, you fat bastard, I can't breathe."
You get the picture? Now, someone may quibble that this is not truly the world's best motorcycle writing, but frankly I don't care about that, it's all subjective anyway. This is some terrific stuff and I'm having a ball reading it. I strongly recommend you read it, too.
Comments
Thanks for the 'peek-in-the-window' on this book. Snoopy just got it. This will be interesting for me to catch his take on it.
Also, FYI, you know Texas is a Bandido state and 20 years ago, a Bandido wouldn't even say the name 'Pagan' as they wouldn't allow the name Pagan to be on their tongue, however, I just spotted a website yesterday that said Bandidos and Pagans were allies which shocked me. I guess I'll have to ask someone - but like I've been saying all along, the 1%ers aren't the same 1%ers you used to see 20 - 30 years ago. They're older, smarter and know when to bury the hatchet (if what I saw yesterday is true).
Looks like a "must read" Heading off to Amazon. Thanks.
Sounds like a must read.
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