News from Ted
We’re ten days away from the fiftieth anniversary of that day.
There was no one on earth I would have changed places with. Or so I thought – until that black night on the pavement of Grays Inn Road, when I stood dripping rainwater, sweat and despair, crushed by the unwieldiness of the monster I had created, and the enormity of the prospect I had invented for myself.
Only three yards away, behind the thick glass doors of the Sunday Times lobby, was the bright and comfortable world that suited most people well enough. I could see the commissionaire, smoothly uniformed behind his desk, looking forward to a pint of beer and an evening with the telly. People in sensible light-weight suits, with interesting jobs and homes to go to, flaunted their security at me and I felt my gut scream at me to strip off this ridiculous outfit and rush back into that light and the familiar interdependence. It struck me very forcefully that if I went on with this folly I would forever after be the man outside in the gutter looking in. For a moment I was lost beyond hope, utterly defeated.
Then I turned away from all that, somehow fumbled my packages away, got on the bike and set off in the general direction of the English Channel. Within minutes the great void inside me was filled by a rush of exaltation, and in my solitary madness I started to sing.
What should we do about it, if anything? I know I’m going to drink something very special. How about you?
UPDATE
Joe Kearns in Dublin suggested people get together to mark the day at various locations around the world.
You can see the list of venues on this page.
It has been so hard to let go. I’ve been promising to do it for a year at least, but even at the last minute, with the money already in the bank, I couldn’t quite reconcile myself to losing the bike.
Drew and Ruth were there with the van, all ready to load but I had to take it off for one last spin around the block and I felt so good on it, no different to the way I’d felt riding to Greece or to Ukraine a decade or more ago.
It had been my European ride ever since Dirk Erker bought it on my behalf, in 1997. Dirk was a master mechanic and a great traveller himself, who rode a lot in Africa. He kept it in his workshop in Duisburg for me and he was the nominal owner for 12 years until he moved to Dusseldorf. By then the bike had a few problems, and it languished at the back of the shop for a while, until some German fans thought it would be fun to resurrect it if I would pay for the parts. Of course I said yes, and in 2017 I rode it, triumphantly, from Bavaria to France. But then my troubles with the French bureaucracy began. They changed the rules, and it was three years before the bike became legal.
Anyway, now the deed is done, and I know it was right thing for me to do.
So, with the help of two handy villagers, we shoved it up the ramp and, after a tearful farewell, it started its journey to a new life in Ireland.
Drew Millar, the happy new owner, is the bearded one. Jean-Marc (left) and his friend are on the outside, and the old guy in the middle – that’s me.
I still have the MP3 of course, and it’s big enough to take me anywhere I want to go. I’ll probably ride down the coast towards Spain someday soon and get a last look at the beach in the tail end of summer. Then I’ll get back to my notebooks, and bring you more memories from 47 years ago, probably from Singapore. I hope you’ll tune in.
And a new life begins, in Belfast
Next Thursday I will fly to London (Easyjet permitting) to attend Paddy Tyson’s Overland Event, where I’ve been a fixture for many years. Of all the bikers’ meetings it has always seemed to me the friendliest and most relaxed, for many reasons – the wonderful site, the limited scale, Paddy’s obvious passion. There’s only one other I’m as fond of, and that’s the German one at Gieboldehousen – try saying that after a couple of pints – which is held, unfortunately, on the same dates.
But time, my time at any rate, marches on and I suspect that this year will probably be my last visit to Hill End, so if you were thinking of going, please come so that I can get a last look at you.
Like several million others I’ve been struggling through a heat wave for the last couple of weeks, and it sucked the life out of me. I find it difficult to keep up an optimistic view of life unless I’m able to do something even moderately physical, like fixing shelves or digging in a garden, and the heat just turned me into a flaccid and aimless heap.
As it happens I was also trying, at the same time, to make something of the notes I kept when I was riding through India. Of the four books of notes I kept, the notes on India were by far the most comprehensive, and I wrote in tiny script that is quite hard to read now.
It was very hot in India a lot of the time but I had no problem with the heat. The biggest difference, of course, was me then, weighing 130 pounds and me now at 180. But it’s not just the extra weight I’m lugging around – my entire system was adjusted to the conditions. How far humans can adjust to heat is obviously now the subject of countless studies, because the heat is coming. Probably, as with an epidemic, the heat will first pick off people with other problems, and overweight would be one of them, but I’ll probably get to my natural end before that becomes my achilles’ heel.
Those notes from India are a treasure house. I look forward to many hours this Autumn and winter disentangling them, and if you’re interested, you will benefit from my efforts right here. Let’s stay in touch.
This flurry of flights all over the place is nearly over. The last one, to California, starts on Monday, with a train to Paris, a hotel stay because I can hardly ever find a train to meet a plane, then an eleven hour flight to San Francisco.
When I say it’s all too much, people mock me. “Oh you poor thing, having to go to California.”
Well, of course California is fun, although it’s not the Hollywood and beaches bit that everybody seems to have in mind. It’s a remote valley further north where most people imagine Canada to begin, because very few realise just how far north California extends. Anyway all of that’s fine. It’s the airport stuff I’m fed up with.
The first trip to Quebec, at the beginning of June, was really enjoyable. I went to an opera and ate some lobster, But more to the point, it included two cruises on the St Lawrence river, and it opened my eyes to the huge and fascinating port activities at Montreal – 16 miles of cranes and silos and godowns all along the river banks. So much of the old nineteenth century ironwork is still intact and those silos are immense even though most of them, I’m told, are obsolete They stored the grain that probably put my grandfather out of business when he was trading wheat out of Romania a hundred years ago.
The second brief trip was to England for a bikers’ meeting, the Adventure Bike Rally at Ragley Hall. I talked and sold books, and found myself sitting opposite a Vintage Bike Stand, so I got myself a picture with a Brough.
My own vintage bike, the one in the museum in Coventry never made it to the rally. I was hoping to find that frying pan in the pannier and maybe fry an egg or two. But that story (check out last week’s blog) has a weird twist to its tail. The frying pan that Bob Newcomb’s dad said he lifted from my bike wasn’t my frying pan at all. I remember mine very well, it had a handle you could fold into the pan. I wonder if I’ll ever hear the rest of that story.
I’ll be gone for three more weeks, but don’t let that stop you from ordering books. if you can just wait a little I’ll get to them as soon as I’m back. So, if you possibly can given the horrible things that are happening in this world, enjoy your summer.
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.]
I spent a lot of my early life very close to Portobello Road, in North Kensington, so I felt a particular attachment to the Spanish port of that name.
This is where Spain counted and loaded its treasure fleets.
An obvious target for pirates and privateers, it was well defended. You can see the canon still lined up below, facing the Caribbean.
April 29th, Monday
I leave for Costa Rica. Very soon one cylinder starts missing. If it gets worse, it seems I may have to turn back. It’s hard to reject the idea. But the missing continues, uncertainly – worst when engine is asked to work harder. Fiddling with the HT lead seems to affect it. Plugs are white. I raise carb needle. That night I get close to border. David (a town) then Concepcion. Decide to go to Volcan. It’s wet but not raining. Volcan is nearly at 3000 metres. All lush but nowhere obvious for tent. At entrance to town are cabañas, $8 a night. Ask a young man where I can go. Eventually he suggests I can sleep in the garage, and tells me where to eat. Have fish, and converse with several Panamanians who are very friendly and interested in my journey. The garage is a porch with pillars. Good for a hammock. The man comes over to talk with me. He’s an evangelist and wants to do me good.
“What a remarkable coincidence,” he says, “that we should meet. If you had arrived a few minutes earlier or later, we would have missed each other.”
He is straining my sense of the miraculous, but he means well. His tracts are in Spanish, distributed free from some US mission.
“Sospendido por un hilo,” is one of them. “Pessada y hallado falta,” is another. [Hanging by a thread. Weighed and found wanting]. Like US advertising slogans, they are translated literally, word for word. Coca-cola – “Chispa de la vida.” [Spark of life] McDonalds – “Su classe de lugar. » [Your kind of place]. They say the translations really don’t work at all. I think this is a very good example of what is really offensive about North American intrusion into South America. Before sleeping I changed a coil on the bike to try and track down the fault. Put foam plastic in hammock against cold.
April 30th
Morning was lovely. Small dog was dashing about the garden, occasionally dashing towards me and then, overcome by nervousness, dashing off again. Standpipe in garden produced milky water. Rode off to highway, then to Routier at Paso Canoas (The frontier).
Not too difficult. About fifteen minutes each side. Then to first town for breakfast – quite a nice place – eggs, rice and meat – two coffees. Rode on and passed a petrol pump. [My principal vice, for I knew I should stop but wanted to change money first, which I should have done at the breakfast town but I was too impatient] and shortly afterwards ran dry.
The bike was burning too much gas and the cylinder was still missing. I got a litre of petrol off a laughing woman and gave her fifty cents for it. It didn’t last me. I stopped some telephone people, and they siphoned half a gallon for me.
The mountain range before San José took me by surprise. I hadn’t expected anything so ambitious – both high and long – very cold air and a lot of cloud/fog. Meanwhile I had changed back to the French plugs and the misfiring ceased. However, the provisional rocker-box plug was failing and I was losing oil over the engine, carb, and gearbox. Also overheating and possibly the two were connected.
Got into San Pedro at 4.30 and it began to rain. Stopped for coffee and watched two girls drinking tea and doing their nails by the window. One was very pretty and they both smiled at me a lot. Should have done something about it, but I didn’t imagine that I would be sleeping next door for two days.
When I came out, found Lee waiting by the bike. He was from Boston, had come down with two others – Richard and Gerry – on two Harley Sportsters and a truck.
[He saw that I’d come halfway round the world]
He invited me to stay. I thought I should try to get to Mark and Sally Beaudoin [friends of friends] but asked if I could come back if necessary.
“Sure,” he said. “See you tonight or tomorrow morning.”
I went on into town and saw the rain clouds ahead. Then o the turnpike it began to pour. The directions were confusing, and I rode around in buckets of rain before finding the address. They had moved out a week earlier. Now I was very thankful to know that Lee was there. He received me enthusiastically in the restaurant – called La Fanega – which they had bought only two weeks before from another American.
Half-pound hamburgers, quesoburgesas, pescoburgesas, machoburgesas, cerveça cruda (draught), dim light, good music, lots of writing on the wall.
[I stayed a few days, sleeping in a storeroom, and then moved on to another friend of a friend on the Gringo expat circuit, the Davidsons at their Santa Ana ranch. He was away but his wife, Pat Davidson, young and lonely, invited me with enthusiasm.]
The Country Club. Christina the impeccable gossip from Florida, with the perfect sweet American “ass” and the slightly buck-toothed cocktail sipper’s mouth, dispensing chat about the Foxes, the world’s most disagreeable couple – ugly as sin – he an alcoholic about to die – she a telephone addict. Forbidden the phone she uses the neighbour’s and runs up 6000 colones – $750 – in a month. A cosmetic surgery freak – her eyes lifted and two inches of stomach fat – eager to show her scars she drops her pants without provocation – “Isn’t she gross!” When he was ill last she hired a Lear jet in Miami to fly down and pick him up that instant. “It burns my stomach,” was one of Christina’s expressions.
From the rough and ready life on the road in 1975 I’m transported to the big rock candy mountain, a bubble of luxury kept inflated by the US Navy and its Marines.
April 15th, a Monday
Life in the Canal Zone begins on Rodman Marine Base. Thirties barracks buildings, big, spacious, landscaped – now a golf course runs through the middle. Captain John B. Mallard jr USN (that’s one down from Admiral in the US) lives in the last house of five with open porches and garage below, a fleet of rooms above.
John and Ann Mallard, daughter Lynn was nurse, is married to USAF helicopter pilot on rescue service in Iceland. Born of Russian émigré family. Wedding was Russian Orthodox in New York State. They also have a son who is about to do post-graduate work at the University of Salamanca in Spain. John is nearing fifty and expects to retire in two years or so. I don’t know Ann’s age. She’s small, grown dumpy, but very active. Hair grey, face still youthful. Saw picture of her at 18 in scooped crinoline dress, belle-of-the-ball, all firm flesh and sparkling eyes – a great catch. She has developed ideas about social work – “one to one.”
The Admiral, Blunt, is the butt of all jokes and criticism. He’s a weak man, but ambitious. They say he’s determined to get to Washington but he’ll never make it. But just before I leave he’s posted to Washington, to some office of research and development. They say it’s a meaningless post where he’ll fade forever from the sight of man, surrounded by hundreds of the same rank.
The Admiral has arranged for tulips to be brought by KLM. He wants all the officers’ wives to buy them, for charity, and Ann is put in charge of selling them. She thinks it’s an imposition but doesn’t quite see the essential absurdity of it. The tulips, when they arrive, fall to pieces. If they were plastic the petals would have been stuck on firmer, no doubt. These tulips are wear-dated.
She and all the other ladies are all disciples of the Mola cult – vying with each other for superior understanding and judgement of these folk-art pieces.
(Molas are brightly coloured pieces of appliqué, usually about a foot square, stitched together by the natives of the San Blas islands, not far off the coast of Panama. Originally they were stitched by hand but now, since the Peace Corps brought sewing machines to the islands, they are sewn by machine. Inevitably only the hand stitched ones are considered authentic.)
My Mola – stitched by hand, of course
Marge Asman, wife of Commander Bob next door, repairs my hammock expertly (It was ripped by Skip Kaltenhauser on the boat to San Andrés). She sews two little Molas on by hand.
The marines have movies every night, picaresquely described – “Rape, murder, pillage and violence” – and violence?
Marines are very tall in their seats, spring up as from dragon seeds to obscure the screen.
The Canal controversy is very low key here. (Panama is pressing the US to relinquish the Canal Zone to local control). Nobody seems to imagine that much will happen, although John is mostly resigned to a shift of power eventually. Vietnam finally collapses while I’m there. He has a ruminatively resigned appreciation of the faults of USA. Any criticism can be voiced in his presence and receive attention.
He wants to build a house in North Carolina to retire. He will get 75% or more of his full pay. Thinks it’s ridiculously extravagant and seems most worried about the general waste of public money.
The visit culminates in the big party with fairy lights on the green, two bars, an enormous display of warming dishes, but all the work was done by the ladies themselves. Servants in the Zone are paid $2 an hour by order, (two dollars then would be roughly eleven dollars today) and the USN goes out of its way to avoid any charge of exploitation or discrimination against Panamanians. Money buys the image.
John was in submarines – his commands were all under water. I grow very fond of them both, and they make me very welcome, always renewing their invitation to stay on.
April 29th, Monday
I leave for Costa Rica.
PS: Some of you were intrigued by a remark I made in my notes, a few weeks ago. I wrote:
“The explanation of these fits of urgency, interspersed by periods of timelessness, must be explored somewhere.”
I didn’t get around to doing it then but, thinking about it now, it seems to suggest that there are actually two journeys going on simultaneously, the conscious “real life” journey and another subliminal journey across the ocean of the subconscious, sometimes peaceful, sometimes threatened by anxieties, like Scylla and Charybdis, demanding hasty escape.
In 1975 the Panama Canal and roughly 5 miles either side of it was still US territory and called the Canal Zone. Politically I was trying to stay neutral, although the Vietnam War was at its height . . . I had no idea what to expect, but my sponsors, the Lucas company, had an important depot in Panama.
11th April, 1975
Leave San Andrés for Panama on SAHSA plane. $90 all in (tips and tax included)
For some reason I say nothing in my notes about this extraordinary event. The plane was a Lockheed Electra with a Honduras airline, SAHSA – often referred to as Stay At Home Stay Alive. They tried to squeeze my bike into the cargo hold but it wouldn’t fit, so they rolled it up the gangway into the cabin and tied it to the back of the pilot’s seat.
Fly over sea for an hour, then over Colon and parts of the canal (before landing at the airport).
Because some of my luggage seemed to have been lost I wasted time and missed the cargo deadline. So had to return next day for the bike. But all worked out (thanks to the sponsorship of the Lucas agency in Panama).
The Ambassador had me to dinner and found me a hotel. Lucas man, Martin Allen, took me to the airport the following day.
12th April
Taken to visit Colon by a rep. of the David Brown company.
In spite of all the attention I was getting, I was bitterly disappointed to get no mail in Panama. The absence of my pieces in the Sunday Times has had a two-fold effect on me – more subtle one being that it robs me of a form of communication with my friends. If they then fail to write to me I feel lost to them entirely. Why didn’t Jo write? I know that the most probably explanation is that it required too much effort, sorting out how much to say or how little. I am deeply resentful that she can’t even get a postcard off but prevented from expressing my resentment by sense of guilt – or rather my undeservedness. (I walked out. She drove me to it. I failed to satisfy her. She made Utopian demands. I was too weak to resist the temptation to step up on her pedestal. Once up there, there was nowhere to go but down.)
Riding through South America is nothing like riding through Africa. Nor is the second year of this journey like the first. It has taken a while for me to appreciate the cumulative effect of this second continent.
My confidence with the bike is much greater, and I have fewer morbid fears of sudden disaster – though the accidents I’ve had were, if anything, more dangerous than any in Africa.
The experience is more varied and intricate. The psychic pressure is greater – there is more aggression, hostility. The journey is slower, more tiring. I feel much more remote here which combined with absence of mail makes me feel abandoned. But against this there’s Bruno’s company, and Malu’s friendship.
I find myself much more rigidly held by habit than I would like. Although I know that people and situations will respond to my needs, I still find myself reluctant to let go of accustomed sources of comfort and security.¬ Restaurants, hotels, cash transactions, conveniences.
Riding up to Volcan yesterday in Panama, I had to force myself to go on rather than return to the certain comfort of known hotels in Concepcion.
When I arrived in Volcan (because everywhere the grass was too tall and wet for comfort) I looked longingly at the Cabañas and asked a man how much they cost.
Eight dollars – too much. Where else can I go? The pension at five or six dollars. Is there a camping place? He thought about it – then said I could sleep in the garage by the motel.
Out of the conversation my confidence revived. In fact, with my hammock slung between the posts of the porch (which was what the ”garage” turned out to be) I was more comfortable and happy than I would have been in a hotel. The human contact was the essential prerequisite.
The pension Mexico on Av. Del Sur 4 (formerly Av. Mexico) is four streets up from the Av. Balboa, which runs along the coast – but not I think right on the sea; I can’t remember the water’s edge.
The name of the proprietor is Maduro – this is an old name for one of Panama’s richest families. He is brisk, balding, dapper, not afraid of unpleasant details (“I sell combs. They are not expensive. You see, this one is 20 cents. It is so plastic it conforms immediately to the shape of your hand as you drag it over and through a 4-month growth.”)
Or – guests are not allowed to cook, although here’s Pete Shoemaker doing it in front of your very eyes. He has a special dispensation awarded by himself on the grounds that if he’s not allowed to cook, he’s leaving. They would rather have him stay. He pays a daily rate ($6) but lives there by the month. Mrs Maduro is white and all knots and sinews under her kimonos. She hustles and hassles and loves it.
Shoemaker is a young alcoholic sex-maniac. I accused him of not being able to leave the drink alone [The accusation was remote and implicit, but he dug it out] He swore it wasn’t true. When working, he said, he never drank until after work. He has a good face and body, but the skin round his eyes is inky stained. He has just ridden round from Rio to Panama on a Kawa 750. He says there wasn’t anywhere he wouldn’t rather have been in a car.
When he got to Iguacù and found he had to go back to Säo Paulo for some papers, he went there and back non-stop. Curitiba, Säo Paulo, Curitiba, Iguacù, 1200 miles non-stop – mostly at night. Insane.
He didn’t enjoy the journey – just fucking and drinking between rides. Spent $10,000.
“Remember that bridge coming into Ecuador,” he said.
It was in Ecuador, and I remembered it well. Two planks for four-wheeled traffic and only joists in between.
“I fell on it,” I said.
We were both laughing and he howled and shook my hand.
“Me too Pal. Which way did you fall?”
“Into the middle!”
“Jesus! I only fell against the side.”
He says he has screwed every girl in the pension (a very job lot they are too). Says they’re all very discreet about it, but he doesn’t mind telling me. That’s why he stays here. It’s a license to screw, he says.
There’s a Sanyo Widemaster fan in every bedroom. It’s really silent. I have a big double room and fill it as usual with my stuff. There are those louvered windows which you can never open, and lots of recesses in the walls. It’s not a bad life at the Mexico. The style is “rooming house international.” Panama is just a blend.
The Ambassador was leaving on Friday for Boquete with his daughter, to return on Sunday evening. I was invited to use the new pool at the weekend.
Called his secretary (Sheila?) who received me there. There were three women stranded on the concrete round the pool. The first impression was hideous, but of course conversation and attention brought them to life. Sheila was a widow capable of having fun – a compulsive talker – she wore horrible slacks and bent the door of her brand new car on the pillar of the Ambassador’s porch.
With her was a floating 3rd secretary – Scots – who filled in for the holidaying 1st secretary and had massive jellying white thighs and a dour and homely face. The Australian girl had a reasonable figure, but her face had never got finished off properly.
At some point during the week I went to a bank in the city to change my traveller’s cheques into dollars, since that was the official currency of Panama. These were the same cheques that I had been carrying since Rio, nine months earlier, where the Sunday Times had misguidedly arranged for me to receive money in this form. The whole of Latin America was starved for dollars – no bank would give me dollars for my cheques, and the denominations were too high so that I was always left with piles of local currency which lost much of their value when changed at borders.
In Peru I thought I’d found a bank that would give me dollars. After I had countersigned them the bank official told me that I couldn’t have dollars after all. There was a heated exchange, and I took my cheques back but now, in Panama, the bank refused to cash them because they were countersigned, and I would have to have a reputable person to vouch for my identity. In the absence of the Ambassador
I was in despair when an American voice behind me said, “I’ll vouch for him.”
I turned to see an American Naval officer who introduced himself as John Mallard.
“Glad to be able to help,” he said. I thanked him profusely and he gave me his phone number, inviting me to call him any time. He explained that he lived on a naval base in the American Canal Zone. In fact he turned out to be Captain John Mallard, a submariner, and he ran the show.
Capt. Mallard and his wife Ann
April 15th
On Sunday I called the Mallards. Was immediately asked over. Within an hour of arriving I was asked to stay there. The change was instant, abrupt. I felt as though the ambulance had finally arrived – the rescuers had spotted me – I was going to be all right. It’s only afterwards that you see how good or bad things were before.
In the Mallards’ garden
