Those magnificent men on their flying machines

Many men have a special relationship with their motorcycles. For a long time, I could not get why they felt that way. I had ridden on motorbikes in my younger days and while I had loved the thrill of speed with the wind rushing past, I had not got hooked to that sensation. It all changed around a decade ago.

This post is a photo-essay about motorbikes and the guys who love them.

Introduction

In Italy, I live in Schio, in the foothills of Alps. Schio has a strong motorbike loving community and the Schio moto-club is almost one century old. We have regular motorbike rallies, of the vintage bikes and, of moto-cross with sport-bikes. Most of the pictures with this post are from two recent local motorbike events (Schio-Pasubio vintage motoraduno and Off-road moto-cross).

In the final part of this post, I also have a few pictures of motorbikes from India and Brazil.

A word about the title of this post.  Those magnificent men in their flying machines, was the title of a 1965 British film. If you have never seen this film, do look for it and watch it, it is wonderful. The film was about airplanes but it also fits this post.

From motorbike hater to lover

At the age when many men love motorbikes, I was content to read "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance". I was convinced that riding a motorcycle was a surefire recipe for an accident. These ideas may have been linked to the death of a friend's brother in a motorcycle accident.

For a long time, I held on to those ideas. When my son became an adolescent and many boys of his age were going around on their motorbikes, I insisted that I would rather help him buy a used car than a motorcycle.

And then, after crossing fifty, when most men put away their bikes and opt for the safety of a car, I suddenly discovered my passion for motorcycles. I can't pinpoint the exact moment when it happened but suddenly I realized that I loved watching and dreaming about motorbikes.

Probably, horse-riding is similar to motorbike riding at some level? Like motorbikes, often cowboys have a special feeling for their horses. I am not sure what Freud would have to say about this, but I am sure that you can guess it!

My passion for motorbikes started with vintage bikes. I remember coming across an exhibition of vintage bikes some 7-8 years ago, and I was completely taken by them. Since then, whenever there is a rally of vintage motorcycles, I go there to look at and admire the old models of bikes.

There was a time when there were just two kinds of motorbikes - the ones for normal roads and the ones for rocky terrains and track-roads. Today there is a larger differentiation in the kinds of bikes such as custom-made, cruisers, choppers, rat bikes, bobbers, sport, naked, trike and sidecar. I am not sure about the differences between most of them.

The motocross bikes are lighter and have robust suspensions. Usually they do not have head-lights or direction-lights. At the motocross rallies, I day dream about flying in the air on my motorbike in my next incarnation.

Bikes for an election rally in India

In 2015-16, I lived in Guwahati (Assam, India). Not just Guwahati, the whole of the north-east of India has a very strong motorbike culture. One day in Muchkhowa, I had seen a big group of bikers doing an election campaign for BJP (image below).

During my medical college days in Delhi, Royal-en-field and Bullet were the dream-bikes of most guys. Today of course, they have much wider choice of bikes in India.

A Bike-dad from Brazil

The next couple of images are from Baja beach near Abaetetuba in Para state of Brazil. A guy with his son had come to beach on his bike. First I saw their bike while they were sitting at the beach.

A couple of hours later, as the sun was going down, I saw them going away. This picture of them (below) on the bike as they leave the beach, is one of my all time favourite images.

Conclusions

I hope that you have liked some random thoughts and pictures about motorbikes.

I had a lot of fun putting together the pictures for this post, as I could spend hours looking at old albums and reliving the thrill of those moments.

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A Lazy Sunday and the Cyclists

While taking out Brando for his morning walk I discovered that our social centre was holding a cyclist meet. They do it by turns. A group of cyclists, mostly men in their seventies, hosting these meetings, organise groups of volunteers who offer drinks, cakes and other refreshments to everyone.

 

Other groups of cyclists from near and far converge, enjoy refreshments and then all go out the explore the surrounding areas on their bicycles. Yesterday it was our local cyclists who were playing hosts and people came from as far as 150 km, around 1800 persons in all. Making cakes and refreshments for all of them must have been a huge affair, but I didn't hear anyone complaining.

 

 

Each group of cyclists was wearing their group-colours and logos, and they looked great. One fellow who came to rest near me, told me that he had a hip transplant last year and this was his first cycle trip after the surgery. They were mostly men and I think that it is wonderful way to keep friends and spend time together, because otherwise we men have big difficulties in keeping social relationships.

 

Even though sports allow men to have social relationships, I think that our relationships with our friends are different from those of women, in the sense we rarely if ever, talk about our fears, pains and emotions. I believe that we men need courses on how to share what matters most to us, instead of worrying about showing off that everything is fine and we are not vulnerable in any way.

 

 

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Back from the walk I cooked some afghani chhole (chick-peas) and then made "panch phoren aloo" (potatoes). I had discovered the recipe on a food blog. Panch phoren is a mix of five spices used commonly in Bengal. I love some of these food blogs, they are really good at explaining recipes. Both chhole and aloo turned out to be quite good.

 

Then it was time to relax and watch "U, Me aur Hum", the first film of Ajay Devgan as a director.

I think that Devgan can be great director of serious films. His handling of serious scenes is good and some of the scenes are like tear-gas, with a wonderful Kajol. I didn't like the first half of this film and though I liked the song "Maine to maanga tha.." and Kajol in it, I think that it was placed very badly in the film. Their young son has just risked dying and Devgan has probably come back from hospital, to see Kajol dancing in that scene was a kind of unreal and cruel.

This afternoon was our picnic time. We went to the park for a family walk. There the group of elderly persons had organised their food festival, so we couldn't stop ourselves from eating some nice greasy local piadina-bread with ham, salami, etc. The park is so lovely with all kind of flowers, so I took lot of pictures.

As we came back home, we are both tired and full. The idea of going out to eat Pizza was no longer appealing. May be another day, we consoled Marco. I am reading a book by Alexander McCall Smith about a Scottish philosopher. Going back to sofa and reading the book was a perfect way to end the beautiful Sunday.

 

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Age and desirability

Note: If you don't like to read about men, especially older men like me, talking about women-girls as sex symbols, this post is not for you - please do not read it.

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I was with a friend and we were talking about the most beautiful Italians. I told him about a blog post I had written some time ago about my favourite Italian sex symbols in which, I had put Alba Parietti and Sabrina Ferrilli in my top list.

 

"What?" he said horrified, "but they are old!!!"

"OK, I also had Monica Bellucci in that list", I added.

 

"She is also too old for this kind of thing now. You have to look for some one younger!" He insisted.

 

 "There are really hot east European babes", the bar man added helpfully, providing details about the contortions they can do in some porn videos.

 

"Those are not women, they are just meat. And anyway they are not Italian and we exclude porn stars from this classification", my friend clarified.

 

I should also add that the women, whom my friend called "too old", are at least 10-15 years younger to us.  

Anyway, this discussion created the idea of finding out who are the young women today who dominate the fantasies of men in Italy? And compared to my favourites Alba Parietti and Sabrina Ferrilli, how do they fare in my perception?

 

So there I was trying all kinds of combinations on Google to find out the top young models that Italians love today. Unsurprisingly, I found that there is no unanimity.

Actually quite a lot of them seem to root for Martina Colombari, born in 1975, she was Miss Italy in 1991 and is still considered as one of the best models here. In 2006, in a pool on the best Miss Italy of all times, she was number one.

She does look great but I don't think that she is that young, like my friend was insisting.

Many others think that Carla Bruni is the best Italian top model of all times. Born in 1967 and now married to the French president Sarkozy, however even Ms. Bruni is also not very young.

Two other names were mentioned on some websites - Marta Cecchetto and Federica Ridolfi. Ms. Ridolfi was in some recent list of top 100 most desirable women of the world compiled by Askmendotcom. 

Finally a group of Italian journalists asked to identify the woman they would like to see nude on a calendar, gave the maximum votes to Ilaria d'Amico, a TV presenter but their choice had not so much to do with age, as with the fact that Ms. Ilaria refuses to have top less or nude pictures (and we desire most what we can't have).

So in the end does it matter what year persons are born?

 

Anyway, I feel that desiring a person has much more to do with the perceived personality of the person than just measurements of breasts or hips, etc.

 

My wife keeps on saying that she finds Sean Connery, who must be seventy now, sexy. So there is hope for all of us, over the hill, but still somehow sexy and desirable, to the people who matter most to us!

 

And I will stick with my Ferrilli and Parietti, thank you.

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