Book Review: Random Lines, Jeff Fereday. A collection of his Two Wheels columns

Anyone who has been around bikes for a long while will most likely remember the name Jeff Fereday and many of you will have fond memories reading articles by Jeff.

Jeff Fereday was a brilliant motorcycle journalist who worked for AMCN and Two Wheels. His life was cut short by cancer when he was 36, however, we can still enjoy his stories and columns in this book, Random Lines.

There is a good chance early 1980s AMCN readers remember Jeff and his hardcore full-on bike testing with the iconic fortnightly, where he started his full time motorcycle journalism career in 1983. He rode hard and tested hard, and also occasionally crashed hard. He was a bloody legend.

Jeff Fereday left AMCN to pursue playwriting at the Victorian College of the Arts, however, he also kicked off his famous column, Random Lines, in Two Wheels around the same time, with editor Bill McKinnon at the helm of the mag back then.

His column continued through from 1985 to 1991 and have now been published together, which means we have an almost endless supply of random Fereday or ‘Jeff Faraway’ stories that really are entertaining.

There is something in here for any mood of just about any two wheeled enthusiast…

There are 56 columns all up and I have had this book in my toolbox in the shed since August, so far I’m up to Two Wheels Ruined My Life, so I have 10 left to go. I have been reading one at a time with a beer a few times a week after work and really enjoying it. Jeff’s writing talent is incredible and for a motorcycle journalist like me, who is actually a motorcycle mechanic by trade, he’s the equivalent of a factory superbike ridr in the words world.

His columns, as the name suggests, are random and you never really know what you are going to get when you start reading a new one. One thing you can be sure of is that the story will be about bikes and Jeff will have used his genius to draw real life non bike human issues into the riding world, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, always entertaining and thought provoking even when they are a bit confusing. Some need more than one beer and a few reads!

I highly recommend Random Lines. Every Aussie motorcyclist should have this book. It’s like a good bunch of bike mates you can catch up with in the shed after work, or the perfect way to start a pre Sunday ride with your first coffee…

Random Lines, Foreward by Grant Roff, is available for $35 RRP PLUS POSTAGE from Susan Fereday in Hard Copy only by Online mail order:
http://jefffereday.blogspot.com