"Patrick Turner" wrote


Yes, that movie like all movies mucks about with
the procession of events in Bert's life, but 2 hours isn't long
enough to have everything in it.


No, but I think it got the flavour over quite well. The bit that
irritates me is the actual speed runs are over all too quick at the end!



But I think you'll find Bert's Indian was the fastest anyone got an
Indian to go.


Sure.


Plenty of much faster bikes now, some with triple harley engines and
so
on...

But Bert was just a low key poor ******* from a backwater country,
and he just goes to the US to go a little fast, and at a rather
advanced
age.

Its a risk, life.


No, not always - life on the end of a silly games console is low-risk
compared to climbing on a (what?) thirty year old, hand-built bitsa bike
and punching it 200mph on a salt flat....



Hubert Opperman, the great Australian cyclist of the 1920s and 30s
said as he got older, " when your'e old, you have to be careful.
An old man is like an old tyre, and might be designed to stand the
pressure, but
maybe it'll burst. One never knows..."

He died on his exercise bike at 91.

What a man!


This bloke was a bit of a *geezer* too:

http://www.bikereader.com/contributo...nd/murphy.html


That Nero was somethin.


Quite tiny, standing next to it actually!



IMHO, the Suzuki lacks the appeal of a large mainly amateur built v
twin.


Of course...


In the old days they still had to learn that revs with an over square
engine that breathed well was the only way to real speed,
but when they built something to rev, old materials shattered too
easy,
and at 125mph, an engine seizure can make life very precarious.


Today it's mostly a question of fuelling and ignition mapping - damn
near anything'll do a hundred if set up for it!



I'm now quite happy on my push bike, well away from the roads if
possible.


**** bicycling - far too dangerous! ;-)