"Boa is a top-gear machine, as sweet in that as most single-cylinders
in middle. I chug lordlily past the guard-room and through the speed
limit at no more than sixteen. Round the bend, past the farm, and
the way straightens. Now for it. The engine's final development
is fifty-two horsepower. A miracle that all this docile strength
waits behind one tiny lever for the pleasure of my hand.
"Another bend: and I have the honour
of one of England's straightest and fastest roads. The burble of
my exhaust unwound like a long cord behind me. Soon my speed snapped
it, and I heard only the cry of the wind which my battering head split
and fended aside. The cry rose with my speed to a shriek: while the
air's coldness streamed like two jets of iced water into my dissolving
eyes. I screwed them to slits, and focused my sight two hundred yards
ahead of me on the empty mosaic of the tar's gravelled undulations."
"...Over the first pot-hole Boanerges screamed in surprise, its mud-guard
bottoming with a yawp upon the tyre. Through the plunges of the next ten
seconds I clung on, wedging my gloved hand in the throttle lever so that
no bump should close it and spoil our speed...
"A skittish motor-bike with a touch of blood in it is better than all
the riding animals on earth, because of its logical extension of our faculties,
and the hint, the provocations, to excess conferred by its honeyed untiring
smoothness. Because Boa loves me, he gives me five more miles of
speed than a stranger would get from him."
Excerpts from The Road, a chapter of The Mint by T.E.
Lawrence
