Che Guevara, born as Ernesto on (probably) June 14th 1928 in Rosario, Argentina, grew up in Alta Gracia in a reasonably rich family. About one year before he made his famous ride on a motorcycle (known from the movie "The Motorcycle Diaries") to the lepers camp in Guatemala, where he, after finishing his medical study, wanted to help these people, Ernesto made a journey through the Northern part of Argentina on the age of 22. He did this on a racing bicycle, provided with a 38 cc Mosquito engine that gave him pedalling assistance.
It is this bicycle that we see on the 65 centavos stamp of Cuba:

On the picture Ernesto is standing in front of his parents house, ready to start his journey:

Nowadays this bicycle is standing next to the 500 cc Norton with the nickname 'La Poderosa II' ('The Mighty One II') in the house of the family Guevara, that is transferred into a museum.

During his years as freedom fighter he got his nickname 'Che', meaning 'friend'. After the freedom fight in Cuba (together with Fidel Castro) and a.o. in (Belgian) Congo, Che was murdered on October 9th 1969 in Bolivia.

Many collectors of motorcycle stamps also collect scale models of motorized 2-wheelers. For them the Finnish Post has produced a small model of the moped that is used by their delivery men:

Nostalgic feelings bubbled up when I saw the new Australian stamps "Classic Toys".

As a boy I was already crazy about mopeds and motorcycles, and therefore the depicted bike stood on top of my wish list for Sinterklaas, but…. I never got one from this miser. Fortunately I had a friend who had such a bike and sometimes I was allowed to ride it. On that bike I already felt a bit part of the Hells Gang. The only problem was that I got aching lips from making the brrroooooeeeeeem sound.

Hans de Kloet

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