Peter Egan > Quotes

“A year from now, you won’t remember why you stayed home, but you never forget a motorcycle trip.”
― Peter Egan, Leanings 3: On the Road and in the Garage with Cycle World's Peter Egan

“It had been 110 degrees in Bermuda Dunes, but the Cub was surprisingly comfortable in this hot weather. The right-side window swung upward and clipped to the underside of the wing, and the long clamshell door folded downward on its hinges, so it was open and breezy as a Jeep with the doors removed. The landscape went by like a slow-moving mural, and you could see more of the ground below than was possible in almost any other airplane. The wind wafted through the cockpit but didn’t tear at your hair, deafen you, or try to blow your hat off. We sat in the shade, flying in twin armchairs beneath a large yellow parasol.”
― Peter Egan, Landings in America: Two People, One Summer, and a Piper Cub

“Friends of mine who flew usually wanted to go ever higher and faster, aspiring to own Mooneys or Bonanzas or twin-engine Beach Barons so they could travel long distances and save time. But I was drawn toward the slightly funky, romantic end of the spectrum: glorified kites you flew just to be up there, looking around. I had nothing against speed and altitude as long as the airplane itself was also an interesting place to be, so that you never forgot for even a minute that you were in a machine with personality and presence. Given unlimited funds, I aspired much more to own a Stearman or a Gipsy Moth than a Learjet. Then again, I had the same problem with cars, motorcycles, and sailboats, always trying to balance utility with charm and historical resonance. Sometimes utility lost out.”
― Peter Egan, Landings in America: Two People, One Summer, and a Piper Cub

“I was born in 1948, only forty-five years after that first flight, and even as a young schoolboy it occurred to me that we were only about the third generation in all of human history who had the means to take off and fly freely over the earth in any direction, and it seemed incredible to me that more people didn’t want to do it.”
― Peter Egan, Landings in America: Two People, One Summer, and a Piper Cub

“A fellow journalist I knew once said that a great city should ideally be a place where every neighborhood might serve as a stage set for an opera. No matter which way you turn you’re presented with some kind of charm or grandeur, regardless of whether the area is poor or wealthy. Paris has that quality for me, and so does New Orleans. Both places are also endlessly walkable, another prime attraction. No cab required.”
― Peter Egan, Landings in America: Two People, One Summer, and a Piper Cub

“I’d never been comfortable with the concept of student deferments for the draft. I couldn’t understand why writing a term paper on Chaucer kept you out of the army, but working at the lumberyard didn’t. It seemed an undemocratic system designed by congressmen and senators to keep their own children—and those of their donors—out of harm’s way. If the war was worth fighting, why didn’t everyone have to share the risk?”
― Peter Egan, Landings in America: Two People, One Summer, and a Piper Cub

“I learned a long time ago to take this kind of advice with a large grain of salt. I’d been warned by Frenchmen to avoid Italy like the plague, by northerners not to ride through the Deep South, by mature adults to stay off motorcycles, by country folk not to walk around New York City, by all kinds of people not to fly airplanes, and by clergymen to stay away from girls in high school. I eventually learned that these advisors had two things in common: first, they had almost no experience with the thing they mistrusted; and second, they were always dead wrong.”
― Peter Egan, The Best of Peter Egan: Four Decades of Motorcycle Tales and Musings from the Pages of Cycle World

“I have a pet theory that much of the best music and poetry comes from people who grow up with some sense of isolation, be it social or geographical.”
― Peter Egan, Landings in America: Two People, One Summer, and a Piper Cub

“Then I had one of those odd shifts of focus and looked down at my bike, and my dusty, worn gloves on the handlebars. We were in the greatest place in the world, but what had it taken to get here? Quite a bit. Learning to ride, getting a driver’s license in high school. Acquiring tools, learning to change flat tires and clutch cables. Gaining dirt experience and going to dealerships to shop for the right bike. Installing knobbies and handguards and a skidplate. After years of youthful indigence, moving through a series of jobs that finally allowed you to afford a truck or a bike trailer. Learning to read maps and cross rivers in deep water. Finding helmets and enduro jackets and motocross boots that fit. Getting a passport, paying your bike registration, learning a smattering of useful Spanish.… And living long enough to have friends who were crazy enough to do all these things, as well. People you could count on who’d gone through the same lifetime of motorcycle connections that had brought us to this perfect spot in time. As I put my helmet back on, it occurred to me that you are never more completely the sum of everything you’ve ever been than when you take a slightly difficult motorcycle trip into a strange land. And make it back out again.”
― Peter Egan, Leanings 3: On the Road and in the Garage with Cycle World's Peter Egan

“When you were out traveling the good things raised your expectations a little, so when you got home you remembered them and wanted to concentrate some of the good ideas in the place you chose to settle down and live.”
― Peter Egan, The Best of Peter Egan: Four Decades of Motorcycle Tales and Musings from the Pages of Cycle World

“Some might consider a large open-cockpit biplane to be an impractical extravagance, but I like to think of it as an exercise in selective minimalism. I believe it was either Confucius or John D. Rockefeller who said we need only a very few possessions in life, if they’re exactly the right ones. I felt we were destined to own a Stearman.”
― Peter Egan, Landings in America: Two People, One Summer, and a Piper Cub

“And, of course, motorcycles are somewhat dangerous, as are most things worth doing—flying, mountain climbing, horseback riding, defending your country, skydiving, arresting felons, football, auto racing, boxing, firefighting, scuba diving, etc. You don’t do these things to be safe; you do them after deciding what kind of life you want to lead, careful or exciting.”
― Peter Egan, Leanings 3: On the Road and in the Garage with Cycle World's Peter Egan

“Today’s lesson: weight, horsepower, elevation, pressure altitude, wing area, and temperature conspire and come up with absolute limits, and no amount of wishing or having lived a clean life will affect the numbers. The laws of physics don’t respect those romantic motion-picture forces that propel airplanes over telephone lines and the rooftops of barns with inches to spare. Nature is indifferent, so if you happen to notice it’s real hot outside and your tanks are full, you should probably get out your flight computer.”
― Peter Egan, Landings in America: Two People, One Summer, and a Piper Cub

“It was the kind of trip, sooner or later, you have to make. Especially if you are a motorcyclist and always looking for a good reason to travel. Or in my case even a fairly mediocre reason of practically no discernable consequence or socially redeeming value.”
― Peter Egan, The Best of Peter Egan: Four Decades of Motorcycle Tales and Musings from the Pages of Cycle World

“And on the wall next to my desk is a huge Rand McNally wall map of the United States and southern Canada. All I have to do is turn and look at it (as I did just now) and I get this strange rush, an odd mixture of hope and foreboding that harkens back to something a Viking might have felt when stepping into a longboat. Or, in my case, an Irishman stepping into a curragh. It’s a vision that blows the walls off your house, zooms you backwards into deep space, and makes anything seem possible. Looking at a map is the seed of adventure. GPS screens don’t do this to me.”
― Peter Egan, Leanings 3: On the Road and in the Garage with Cycle World's Peter Egan

“On one of those evenings, I sat back in my chair, looked at the stars, and thought about the photos of distant galaxies we’d seen at the observatory that day. I was trying to get my mind around the always-troubling concept of infinity when I came up with the only two metaphysical questions I’ve ever found worth pondering: 1. Why isn’t there nothing? 2. And if there were nothing, where would it be? This is what happens when you mix cheap red wine with amateur astronomy while bats flit around your campsite.”
― Peter Egan, Landings in America: Two People, One Summer, and a Piper Cub