95 of 105 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read it, but look between the lines., August 16, 2004
This review is from: The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles (Paperback)
This book will further your insight into why motorcyclists ride and why they think what they do about their bikes, motorcycling, and each other. But by the time Pierson is on to her second bike mechanic boyfriend, you will realize that you're going to have to see the truth for yourself, because the author has her hands so full with her own issues -- anxiety, delusion, hypocrisy -- that she can hardly help herself or her endlessly sick bike, let alone help you, the questing reader.
She does give you all the clues you will need, so don't despair. It's just that you're on your own in figuring out what the clues mean.
The Fallen Bike Incident is a good example of Pierson's lack of self-knowledge, and why this book is accused of male-bashing.
In the rain, Pierson's bike has fallen over due to the soft, wet surface she has planted her side stand in. This is a classic blunder. It's in the curriculum of the motorcycle safety course (of which Pierson is a graduate) and she even mentions elsewhere in the book how, for this very reason, wooden blocks were passed out in the dirt parking lot of a motorcycle rally. You can easily conclude that it is her own damn fault her bike fell over, but you won't read her admitting it in so many words, and this lack of personal accountability is everywhere in The Perfect Vehicle.
In her motorcycle class she has been taught how even a grandmother can lift up even a fallen Honda GoldWing (800+ pounds of bike), but for reasons unexplained, she is unable to lift her sub-400 pound Moto Guzzi. Again, no admission that she failed to learn the very thing she was specifically taught to do; you just read that it didn't work out and draw your own conclusion. So she asks a driver in an idling van for help, and he stares at her blankly, as she frantically begs "Quickly!" Finally the nice man gets out of his dry van, into the rain, and helps her right her fallen bike, to her eternal non-gratitude.
Reflecting later, Pierson intuits, and apparently comes to believe, that the reason her benefactor didn't instantly leap into the downpour to assist her was because he was thinking that since she is a woman, she wanted help lifting a bicycle, not a motorcycle, and so she was once again the victim of rampant sexism. She will shortly use this incident as a springboard to launch into one of many catalogs of undeniably valid examples of cruel and unfair treatment women have suffered in the history of motorcycling. This stuff is good to know and you'll be glad you read about it, but keep in mind, these terrible things happened to other women, not Pierson.
In several place we read explanations of her attraction to the woefully unreliable Moto Guzzi bikes, namely that they're stylish, sexy, and that fixing your bike all the time gives you a deep sense of self-sufficiency and personal identification with your machine.
It's a fair characterization of the series of Moto Guzzi enthusiasts Pierson repeatedly enlists to fix her broken-down bike for her, gratis, but this admirable, self-reliant, hands-on individualist ain't Melissa Pierson. She apparently never begins to master bike mechanics in her 35,000 miles of riding. She's more the damsel in distress with delusions of rugged independence. You would feel some pity if she had left out all the haughty, off-hand dismissals of Japanese motorcycles for the crime of providing exactly what Pierson and millions just like her really need: an affordable and reliable bike, albeit one that lacks "character."
She at least respects BMW and Harley-Davidson enough to give us fully-cardboard-cutout stereotypes of those riders, but those bland, bloodless Japanese aren't even worth the time. Oh, and in case you didn't know, "rice burner" is not really an epithet of derision. I bet "broad" is, though.
It's an all-purpose snobbery. When in France she finds herself at a hotel that dares offer exactly what Pierson and millions like her really need (it's affordable and they've got a room), she sniffs "Holiday Inn, of all places!"
So while the author only grows a little in the course of this book, you the reader will have the opportunity to learn much more in the ugly truth behind Pierson's inadvertent revelations, as well as benefit from the several places where she is actually on to something real and manages to convey it without getting hung up on her own issues. The florid descriptions of what it feels like to ride are quite fine if you accept them outside the context of the neurotic author's world of prejudice and denial.
UPDATE: January 12, 2011
In the 6 years since I first read this book and wrote this review, I've read a great many other motorcycling books that cover much of the same ground, and I've found none better than The Perfect Vehicle. The book's flaws are still its flaws: I think the author's attitudes are often unfair and tone deaf, but in spite of that, Melissa Pierson's scholarship is first rate and highly readable. So while I once again suggest you read between the lines, I still recommend nonetheless that you do read it.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
10 stars from me, August 13, 2002
This review is from: The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles (Paperback)
My dear friend John gave me this book as a gift because like me he is a motorcycle lover, rider, free spirit. Shy 250 pages the book can best be described as a sensual, intellectual wonder.
For me it is the following quotes that bring me back re-reading and re-reading.
"At precisely this moment someone, somewhere, is getting ready to ride. The motorcycle stands in a cool. dark garage, its air expectant with gas and grease. The rider approaches from outside; the door opens with a whir and a bang. The light goes on. A flame. everlasting, seem to rise on a piece of chrome. As the rider advances, leather sleeves are zipped down tight on the forearms, and the helmet briefly obliterates everything as it is pulled on, the chin strap buckled..........Soft leather gloves with studded palms, insurance against the reflex of a falling body to put its hands out in midair, go on last"
"The key is slipped into the ignition at the top of the steering head. Then the rider swings a leg over the seat and sits but keeps the weight on the balls of the feet" "In the neat dance that accomplishes many operation on a motorcycle --one movement to countered by another fro, an equilibrium of give and take--the squeezed clutch lever is slowly let out while the other hand turns the trottle grip down...."
This woman, this Melessia Holbrook Pierson knows what she speaks of and as I read I feel as if she is with the group I ride with on back roads through out the Sierras. The Hoggettes as we jokingly call ourselves, because we ride Harleys. So many books on riding real motorcycles are written by men. This one by this woman is the best I own.
She has a wonderful section on the value of rally rides as well as loads of photographs of the history and evolution of motorcycles. And as a rider as well as a woman, wife, mother, daughter of motorcycle riders I believe the best and brightest ride motorcycles and that sons and male lovers, partners, husbands should be encouraged to own a motorcycle and ride it often.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Starts & ends w/5 Stars, but it's 2-3 stars everywhere else, October 10, 2007
The first writing in this book (the Forward) is worth the price of admission. If it stayed at that level, it'd be "off the charts great" ... up there with "Eat, Pray, Love".
Unfortunately, this is not the case.
In the Forward (and the Postscript, for that matter), her writing is concise, poetic, wonderous ... it is art. And it's about the motorcycle - exactly what the title promises it will be. It is simply awesome.
But from there on, she takes more twists and turns than her favorite ride. And they don't really live up to the title or its subtitle. Instead of addressing "the Perfect Vehicle" or "What it is about Motorcycles", it addresses Melissa's own journey.
And in this, I feel like she cheated us. She might have more aptly entitled it "Motorcycles, Men, and Me". And - even with that - it could be a good story. But that tight, crisp, clean writing in the Forward is not present throughout much of the rest of the book. It is more flowery, rambling, unfocused, and off-point from the title. This is where it dips to 2 Stars.
She also tends to spend a lot of time grinding an axe about her experience of being a FEMALE rider in what she perceives to be a Man's realm. But then again, maybe that points out to a dated book (she's relating experiences from the mid 90s). This is maybe 3-star writing.
I've been motorcycling for only 4 years. I got started in Thailand when a woman from German talked me into motorcycling with her through the Golden Triangle area along the Burma-Thai border. Now, when I bike in Idaho, often as not at least 1/3 of the riders I'm with are women. They are on Beemers, Harleys, Yamahas, Suzukis ... and this is IDAHO. Not exactly what you'd call a liberal state.
The history section is relatively interesting. But and that's where it stays at a relatively modest "3 Stars".
Ultimately, I found this book to be a major disappointment - mostly because it started off GREAT. If you want to get the best this book has to offer, simply read the Forward and the Postscript.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
