Articles published in June, 2023
I spent the last week in the province of Quebec, seeing the sights and drowning in music. Bikers can be other things too, writers, musicians, plumbers, blood donors and blood couriers, cops and robbers. Because I was there to listen to the first ever production of an opera written almost 200 years ago, I met several musicians and conductors. Of course none of them had ever heard of me and none of them rode bikes. I would have liked to be introduced as a writer, but what fascinated them, what they really wanted to know about, was my journey round the world. I had to work hard to get my books into the conversation. One of them, Louis Lavigueur, dashed from the dining table to bring back a newly minted copy of “Zen and the art…” which he was planning to give to a relation who did ride bikes. At last I had an opportunity to explain that I, also, had written a book. I told him that it was probably Pirsig’s book that gave me an extra boost because it was published just a year before “Jupiter’s Travels” and so far as I know it was the first book involving motorcycles that achieved critical acclaim among reviewers of literature. Up until that moment, it seems to me, anything to do with bikes left an oily smudge on the desks of book critics.
I had to admit to Louis that I had never properly finished reading Pirsig, though I had started several times. My problem was not with the writing, but with the idea of Quality being substantive rather than descriptive. Jim Martin, who does the Adventure Rider Radio Podcast, wanted to do an episode about it, but it involved my having to read it again, properly, and up to now I haven’t had time. Or maybe I did have time but was somehow reluctant. Actually though, later in the year I might feel more like it (Jim, are you listening?)
This year is a big turning point for me. At 92 I think it’s time to say goodbye to my bike, and I’m finally selling my place in California, which is going to occupy me for most of July. There are only 3 acres left of the 40 I once had but it has three houses on it, two of which I built myself, and a huge amount of stuff which will have to go because I have no room for any of it.
I will have to fly there at the beginning of the month. I’ve only just flown back from Canada. On Thursday I have to fly to England, for the Adventure Bike Rider Festival at Ragley Hall. Too much flying ain’t good for ya. I’m beginning to feel it. But I went to the rally last year, they made it very comfortable for me. And I get to sell books and meet the people who read them.
My good old XRW964M will be there, and in one of the panniers I expect to find a frying pan. Not long ago I got a message from a man whose father had just died. Apparently among the things he left was this frying pan which, he said, he had stolen from the pannier of my bike when visiting the museum in Coventry where she normally sits. The son has, he says, recently returned this frying pan. We shall see when I open the pannier.
Maybe, when enough people have crowded around next weekend, we can have a Grand Unveiling. But I don’t think they’ll let me fry an egg. Will they?
PS: The man who’s dad lifted the frying pan has just sent me a message. He’s not a biker, but he says he hopes to be there at Ragley Hall to meet me. If he does come we really must fry an egg.
Still in Managua
I spent two more days with the Fowlers. On the second day the husband, Peter, returned and they organised a party including assorted foreigners, mostly conventional businessmen and wives. One very impressive Nicaraguan woman, a broker, made fun of the others for being dependent on their bosses, provoking some uneasy laughter. I wondered how they all felt knowing that they depended for their livelihoods on a murderous dictator, Somoza, who was supported, in part, by US interests. It was President Jimmy Carter who eventually helped to bring him down four years later. And President Ronald Reagan who would have been happy to reinstate him.
May 18, Sunday
Left Managua for Tegucigalpa [Honduras]. On the way tried to find the centre of Managua. Failed. [The city was all but destroyed by an earthquake in 1972]
Saw crater lake – not too impressed. On to Léon by south road but missed most of Léon. Too much hurry. Very hot. Border at 12.00. Easy but expensive. $3.50 in all. Had too little petrol to reach Choluteco. Bought gallon from café. Met two plain clothes police. Pleasant and helpful to me.
Much trouble in Tegucigalpa, first to find telephone, then to find that Roy Smith [friend of friend] was away. Then to find that cheap hotels either didn’t exist (Hotel Eden) – had been pulled down (Hotel Americano) ¬– or had no water (Hotel Astoria). Finally in despair called Smith’s parents again and was invited to stay. Impressive house in Avenida La Paz, 4 cars in garage. BMW, Mercedes, Lincoln Continental and Oldsmobile. Smith sr. a sluggish fellow of about 50, wife nervously Latin, anxious to please.
I’ve been getting quite well-defined impressions of society in Nicaragua and Honduras, apparently based on the scantiest of evidence. Am I inventing it to satisfy myself? Obviously, a lot of information enters my mind subliminally – expressions caught on faces as I pass by, mannerisms, driving habits, the style of advertising, the style of officials at borders. Then I might meet one or two people or observe a more prolonged incident such as the one at the border. My experiences are checked against those of others I meet. But all is subjective, relative to my own likes and needs. Aesthetically the Nica male is displeasing to me; short, stocky, gross features, quick to put on fat, I think of him as arrogant, boorish, corrupt, brutal. But what does he think of me? Arrogant, feeble, effete, inhibited, pretentious?
Honduras! Ad for cigarette shows male smoking on beach with two ladies courting him. They don’t smoke but assist in the ritual. Makes me wonder whether firms, like Kodak, who have been advertising a long time, use their Thirties American ads for Central America today? Looks like it.
Here’s a combined ad for a beach resort and Kodak.
“A perfect occasion to employ a Kodak camera and film.”
Nica Honduras border: Everybody wants a dollar. On Nica side Customs and Immigration each take 5 Cordobas (7 to the dollar). Hondurans have three departments – Immigration, Transit, Customs. They take 1 Limpeira, 1 Limp, and 2 Limps respectively (2 to the dollar). The transit man does nothing at all but write out a receipt. The others don’t give receipts.
May 19th
Straight to Copán [A famous archeological site of Mayan culture.] Easy ride until La Entrada, then 60 km of dirt (not bad) and a puncture. Big bent nail, sharp at both ends. One and a half hours for whole job of changing tube. Audience inhibits my swearing which may be just as well. Arrive Copán after dark, but bike goes well over loose stuff. Hotel Marino annex. $1.50. Met four US girls in pairs, Tammy and Mary are Peace Corps social workers going home from Colombia. Tina and Judy are older, more interesting. Tina gave up art to wait at tables and travel. Judy (ex-married to Honduran in San Pedro) is buying [ethnic stuff] seriously, to sell in US.
The ruins are undeniably beautiful in their setting. Bird song is wonderfully varied, and I wish I could record it. Took many pictures – but now I’m very convinced the light meter is inaccurate – doesn’t correspond to the readings I took earlier on trip. Bar and drinks seem very expensive. Town is without water. But they’ve tried to make it pretty.
There’s a small museum with some stone figures (the frog and the turkey). Skulls with teeth inset with bits of jade, and obsidian tools. A very expansive old gent rambles on about it all.
Of the girls Tammy is the most eager, but Tina the most interesting. Her very determined way of life seems laudable, if painful, and I gave her my home address in case she comes to Europe. She in turn gave me an address in California of two boys who run an “Earth Shoe” branch and have made a fortune.
Every meeting now emphasises my loneliness. I sat in the plaza alone that night and as I do more often now feel hungry for companionship and/or love. How much of it is unrequited lust I don’t know – but I suspect a one-night stand would do little to help.
A man walks towards me across the square. His silhouette is a perfect Gary Cooper cowboy – slim, bow-legged, cowboy hat. As he emerges into the light he is young, vacant-faced and unworthy of the image. Ridiculous image.
The fellow who came to the ruins with the girls and showed them around was pleasant, intelligent. Wore rather fancy clothes – trousers with a sort of lamé net sewn over the blue material. Had many teeth missing. I traipsed around with them. He showed us bits of obsidian, slivers used for cutting. Also that strange plant, sensitive mimosa, which curls up when you touch it. I thought he was going to want money – but he just went off to lunch and left us.
Tomorrow Guatemala.
I liked this old man of Copán. When I went back 25 years later he was still there, an old friend, but with a roof over his head.
In May 1975 I was making my way up through Central America. After 18 months on the road, in Africa and South America, I was almost half way round the track I’d set myself. Feeling a bit weary I was bedazzled by the prospect of California and, moving faster than I should have, I crossed into Nicaragua from Costa Rica.
May 11
Drove up to see volcano Poas. Was lucky that mist cleared just enough to get a good view and take pictures.
Then visited Michael and Cherida Cannon on their 480 hectare farm of dairy cattle. Holsteins – with mechanical milking machine from N.Z. The bull and his mounting block (the bull’s broken penis). Two gallons of diesel an hour to generate their electricity. Then visited Andy, the medic. Building his log cabin. Land up to $1000 a hectare. Very wet. Horrible storms. 7000 feet up on the Caribbean side.
[Of all the central American countries Costa Rica is the one that attracts by far the most American expats, and it goes out of its way to make it easy for them. In the relatively short time I was there I also made it easy for myself by hopping from one to another. They told me I should visit the Santa Rosa national park on my way north.]
May 12
Left early for Santa Rosa, stopping only in Liberia. Dry all the way. Heard later that rain bucketed down at San Jose.
Santa Rosa at midday. Spent afternoon setting up hammock with fly sheet and mending mosquito net.
The Malaria Inspector came by, on a small motorbike, with a sterile mask. He makes a call every fifteen days to make sure that people fumigate their homes.
Enormous Cebu bulls strolling through to waterhole. They are very timid.
The Park’s director came over to see who I was. Young man, zoologist from San Jose. Said he was waiting for results from Michigan about a scholarship. Told me about Santa Rosa’s significance as hide-out for a volunteer army in 1855 when, led by an assorted group of 4 Europeans, they beat a much larger army from Nicaragua and changed the balance of power in Central America.
In the night I met a small animal close to my camp. About 18 inches long, black with white stripes from nape to tail tapered snout, tail with sparse hairs, erect, blinded by torch, it moved slowly away, but turned once when trapped by tree roots, and jumped up and down on all fours to frighten me.
Bad drawing of strange jumping animal
Curious storm passed overhead in the night, flashes of lightening but no thunder, and gusts of wind coming in from the sea.
May 13
Saw another animal this morning, Dark rusty brown with big bushy tail. But bigger than the one above. Also large lizard and several aristocratic birds. One with long black feathers curling off the crown of the head and black ornamental band round throat (as painted by Beardsley).
It peers down and shrieks insolently at one. Creamy white body. Blue grey wings and fantail. Almost a foot long.
Exciting appearance of a band of horses galloping past to the water trough. They were so excited that they couldn’t stop when they arrived and were dancing around for minutes before they calmed down sufficiently to drink.
Left Santa Rosa at 10.15.
Frontier (with Nicaragua) at 11.15. Easy passage. Then stopped for beer and Coke. Very hot. Saw Nicaraguan male with huge paunch and fleshy face picked up by hitch-hiking woman. She wore a blouse of a net material, and trousers, with just a bag slung over her shoulders. She was quite good-looking, with an expression that invited attention without soliciting it. He wore an open white shirt, dark trousers, whiskers. Terrible studied impassivity. Had small truck. He was going to leave when she walked to the truck and whispered something. He came back to the table and waited for her. Then they left together. This scene became a prototype.
Took road through Granada (on lake Nicaragua) then Masaya, and finally found Susan Fowler (Pat’s cousin) in suburban estate above Managua. Quiet, intelligent woman, occupational therapist, married to US banker. Languishing rather in Nicaragua.
May 14
We went out to see the volcano Santiago. Walked a kilometre up to crater, then walked round to the opposite side. Was unbelievably impressed looking down into the cup, within a crater, and seeing the rock plasma, red liquid lava, slopping about, sometimes darkened over with flecks of black, sometimes bright cherry red, and occasionally spurting up. Like a window into the middle of the globe, full of mysterious implications – a reverse moon shot, and just as awe inspiring. We sat and looked for a long time, entranced by this shimmering, irregular fragment of pulsating energy. Occasionally, it seems, it rushes up to overflow into the cup and form a visible lava lake. What a sight that must be. A unique experience and, as at Iguaçu, I felt it justified the whole journey.
As close as I could get to the lava at Santiago
I was told that the dictator of Nicaragua, Somoza, got rid of his political opponents by hurling them down there.
The Iguaçu Falls
And Iguaçu again
May 15
Thursday. Wrote piece about Jesus.
[I have no idea what that refers to. I’m sure it wasn’t about Jesus Christ. It may have been about Jesus Clavijo, the padron of the hotel in La Plata, who had half his hand sliced off by machete while playing billiards.]
