Been swimming in uncharted water. Poetry is undoubtedly exhilarating but I’m returning for an inflatable life jacket. By which I’m assuming my role as John the Baptist for metal things, for operating systems, for power tools and for the unconsidered technical minutiae of the kitchen. With Avus drinking tinnies in Western Australia I am resurrecting a subject certain to generate a blogwide storm of apathy. Motorbikes.Except they’re only the jumping-off point. The game is really aesthetics and started with a TV commercial. I am not a lover of these noisy intrusions and since 1984, when I first acquired a remote control, I have always pressed the Mute button when they appear. But there is no button to suppress, temporarily, the images.
In a lengthy commercial charting Honda’s contributions to powered travel a tantalising five or six seconds show a close-up of a Honda racing bike (ca. 1967) followed by a helicopter shot of that bike at speed on a dead-straight road flanked on both sides by lethal trees. My mind clicked up: “racing bike” and “beauty”.
Above is champion racer Jim Redman aboard a six-cylinder Honda 250 cc machine. The thrill for me lies in the sinuous side view of the fairing which starts at the transparent top forming Jim’s “windscreen”, draws backward awhile, rushes forward to accommodate the tips of the handlebars and then sweeps majestically back again – a curve that achingly proclaims velocity – to be unsatisfactorily resolved in two straight bits accommodating Jim’s knees and feet. No other bike has ever quite duplicated this line of beauty. Just thought you’d like to know.
