News from Jupiter
Fresh Words
May 12, 2013
Apologies again for a long absence. I’ve been working on a book and these days I don’t seem capable of doing more than one thing at a time (in the writing business, that is). It’s a book of pictures, otherwise I wouldn’t be done for another six months, but it needed a surprisingly large number of fresh words. The pictures are all from my first [...]
An Adventurous New Year To You All
December 30, 2012
My long-held belief that adventure travel is good for the world in general got a welcome boost last night. Like most people my age I am an occasional insomniac and some nights I turn to the radio to wile away the early hours. Most of the long wave stuff is a mixture of rantings, fantasies, conspiracies, and miracle cures, but my local public radio station [...]
Duisburg Blues
September 22, 2012
The summer has flown by. I launched the book, visited HorizonsUnlimited in Derbyshire, rode through Germany and France visiting old friends, took Lida on a tour of the UK, and spent ten days with Angel and Teresa in Madrid where they were launching an unbelievably luxurious 40th anniversary edition of Jupiter’s Travels. Now I’m back in California trying to make up for lost [...]
Let’s roll through the Isles
May 15, 2012
Six more months have passed, with not a word from me, but at last there’s news. I am the proud father of another book and though the labour was long and, at times, agonising, my latest offspring has finally gone to press and looks lovely. Because it is all about my journey through the British Isles there are no plans yet to publish it in [...]
How I became a foundation
August 20, 2011
Until a few months ago I was just an ordinary bloke, getting on in years, who sometimes rode a bike and tried to find time to tend his garden. Then, quite suddenly, I became a Foundation, the CEO of a world-wide initiative to tell it as it is. I’m still reeling from the shock. What distinguished Jupiter’s Travels from most motorcycle adventure sagas was the [...]
Eighty Implausible Years
May 28, 2011
Quite how my mother contrived to introduce me to the world on May the First was never explained to me. If it was by accident (and I very much doubt it) it was a happy one. People tend to remember it. When I was young, that meant more presents. These days it gives me a better excuse to have a party. This year we had [...]
Down among the warthogs
December 6, 2010
It was the warthogs I liked the most – impressive ladies with curly tusks dressed in a particularly tasty shade of brown, and always pursued by a fleet of little replicas. All in all it was a fairy tale experience to be in the relaxed company of so many different animals all strolling around in the Sondzela game park. Only now that I have been [...]
Revisiting myself
July 18, 2010
People keep asking me how I can be riding around on an iTune, and I have to explain that Piaggio, for their own mysterious reason, called their weird new scooter with two wheels in front an MP3. It didn’t take long to get used to it. At first I was worried about leaning over with two wheels in front of me, but they lean like [...]
Getting knotted
April 22, 2010
This news is long overdue, but there is so much to tell that I haven’t known where or when to begin. The most unlikely, delightful and, in a sense, preposterous item is that I am going to marry. A Ukrainian beauty, no less, so I hasten to add that I did not acquire her through the internet. We have known each other for seventeen years, [...]
My other life
March 28, 2010
Why was I able, in my forties, to take four years off to ride around the world? Because I had found a way to lead a life that cost very little to maintain. At the time I lived in an ancient ruin that I’d bought for $1000, in a beautiful but primitive part of France. Food and wine were cheap, and life was so satisfying [...]
