News from Ted
People with long memories may recall that four years ago, in 2013, I rode my 20-year-old 650 to Greece and had a few minor mishaps along the way (see Greece: A slippery adventure). When I brought it back to the shop in Duisburg where Dirk Erker kept it and maintained it for me, it was a bit battered and the forks were noticeably skewed: Nothing to stop me riding the 3000 kilometres back quite comfortably, but Dirk told me, very firmly, that it was too old.
He didn’t want to work on it any more, it wasn’t worth it, he said, and I should get a new bike. Since he was the technical owner, and there was no way I could register a bike in Germany under my own name I had to give it up.
I can’t blame him. After all I was 82 years old, I’d had a harmless but silly accident along the way, and in Zagreb the bike threw a pint of oil on to the tarmac. I was riding on his insurance. Maybe he was just too nice to tell me he couldn’t risk sheltering a doddery octogenarian any longer.
How it was – eight years ago
Anyway I told a friend of mine, Doris Wiedemann, that there was this bike at the back of Dirk’s shop and that it only had 45,000 km on it, and that he was throwing it away, so one of her friends, Horst Anderten, who likes challenges, said he would see what he could do with it. And a few years later he wrote to me:
I removed the Cylinder, cylinder head with all the parts inside, camshaft, valves, shims, springs, decompression parts for the r/h exhaust valve, the piston with rings and so on. I found the piston rings a little bit stuck, after cleaning now free movement. Cylinder bottom and Cylinder head packings are new, Valves are adjusted, all parts cleaned and reinstalled, cooling fluid replaced. Now normal compression at about 8,0 bar. Whole bike cleaned and all parts ( which was removed by Dirk) reinstalled. Also new oil incl. filter, new air filter, new brake fluid and a lot of screws replaced, flashlight temp. fixed….. and so on.
My first thought was just to give the bike away. Then I wondered whether I might ride it again. I dithered. It’s very difficult, at my age, to know what’s realistic and what’s foolhardy. How do you know when you should stop riding? I have had many conversations about this. What are the signals? Reaction time? Physical discomfort? Eyesight? Temperament? All I knew was that when I rode that bike in Europe I had never felt so safe since I handed the Triumph back to Meriden in 1977. Finally I decided I had to ride it again. So I sent Horst money for the parts. The labour he said was for love and beer.
The bike ended up with Doris in Bavaria, and we hatched a plan. Doris would put the bike on her insurance, and then she would ride down to France with me and keep me out of trouble.
Her friends thought she was nuts.
“Just imagine the trouble you could have with an 86-year-old man on a bike,” they cried.
But Doris is a brave woman, with a very solid biking reputation, and she stuck with me, although to be honest we were both a bit nervous.
There was still plenty to do. It needed a tyre, a speedo cable, several rear spokes, a battery, and further efforts to untwist the forks before it could pass the German technical control. Doris and her friends put so much into this project I can’t thank them enough.
Then she took it out on test and it ran well. There was a minor hiccup which stranded her out in the country. Fuel wasn’t getting through. Her friends rescued her, and one of them reckoned he’d fixed the problem.
So I took a train – or rather six trains – to meet her, and three days later, on Friday August 11, we set off under cloudy skies for the south of France.
Quite soon, after maybe 20 km something marvellous happened. I discovered that I felt just as happy and as much in command of the bike as I ever had, as though we had never been separated. I felt forty years old.
Because I had the GPS Doris was following me and she said she was surprised how well I was riding, and there was a stupid grin all over my face.
We took three days, stopping in Belfort and at a camp ground in Roybon. I couldn’t get over how good it felt, after getting used to the MP3 scooter, to be using the gears and to be leaning so much more naturally. It was a revelation.
Unfortunately the hiccup returned and stopped the bike arbitrarily. There seemed no rhyme or reason to it. The fuel would suddenly choke off and the bike would die. I found that if I took the tube off the petrol tap, letting fuel run out, and stuck it quickly back on again, the filter would fill up once more, but it was aggravating and messy. There was no sense to it and we couldn’t come up with a decent explanation.
I’m afraid we didn’t do well with the interruptions, and for once the journey would have been better without them. While i was enjoying my born-again biker experience Doris was feeling very exposed stuck on the side of busy roads and, as always with these things, the roads got hotter and the stops more frequent towards the end.
Still we made it and I at least had a wonderful sense of rejuvenation.
Sadly, it will be a while before I can ride that bike again. First I have to go through the French registration process, but I’ve done it once so maybe it will be easier this time. Wish me luck, please.
Can I remind you that I have books to sell? I think I can honestly claim that they are all worth reading, even the one that isn’t about bikes. The picture book is especially beautiful, having been art-edited by Yucel Erdem, and there aren’t a whole lot of them left. If you find my shop at all confusing, please email me: tsimon@mcn.org
I’m off to the first HorizonsUnlimited meeting in Switzerland next weekend, and the following weekend I will be at Gieboldehausen, a favourite German meeting of mine. I hope I see you somewhere. Enjoy the rest of the summer.
There’s a hotel at the Paris airport called Citizen M that proclaims itself, in a way I find rather clumsy and irritating, as though it were an exclusive, almost secret, organization. The walls and furniture are peppered with little homilies like “Citizen M says a good night’s sleep is worth two at the office” or some such nonsense. However, the typography is brilliant and the hotel is a triumph of design. I suspect that the whole thing is the brainchild of a dyslexic art director from Amsterdam, but aside from the peculiar branding it’s actually a great hotel, and very convenient – you can walk from it to the Terminal. Unfortunately it is also rather expensive for a cheapskate like me but I find that if I try booking.com a couple of days before I can sometimes get in at around 70 euros. Then it’s a bargain, so I book at a cheap and much less convenient place which I can cancel later and try my luck. This time I was lucky.
So on May 7th I drove my car from my house to Montpellier, parked it in the front garden of a friend – a huge one-time favour (thank you Toby) – took the tram to Saint Roche station, took a remarkably cheap TGV to Paris, got on the RER train to Charles de Gaulle, spent the night as Citizen M, caught a plane to Washington DC and then another to Phoenix, Arizona.
I’ve gone into all this because it interests me that, even today, the logistics of going anywhere much can be as challenging as riding a bike across Central America, though less rewarding – if you don’t have your own helicopter and private jet, of course.
In Phoenix I hung out with Al Jesse who has made himself a sort of unofficial patron of the Ted Simon Foundation. He’s famous for designing motorcycle luggage. He used to make it as well, but now he doesn’t have to do that anymore, so he does other, stranger things instead, like imprisoning rocks in cages of rebar.
On Thursday Al drove us both up to Flagstaff by the scenic route and I saw for the first time those astounding red rocks near Sedona. There’s still so much I haven’t seen, it hurts.
We were on our way to the Overland Expo, where I hold the Chair as Visiting Eccentric Emeritus. The job is very demanding. It consists of surrounding myself by a vast crowd of people and telling them what’s on my mind – for an hour, like a live talking Facebook. The wonder is that there’s enough in my mind to last more than five minutes, let alone that anybody stays to listen. And I don’t even promise them cookies. But it went really well. I was talking about what it means to have an adventure. What does the word even mean, when it’s not being hi-jacked by someone selling Adventure Socks, or Condoms maybe.
I’ve been reading lately about the epic struggle between Imperial Russia and the British Empire in India. Their battle to dominate that vast and then totally unknown mountainous area north of the Himalayas was called the Great Game, and the urge to discover it and map it was a huge challenge to adventurous young men, almost all of them junior officers in one army or another. Henry Pottinger, for example, was a 20-year-old subaltern 200 years ago who travelled 1600 miles by camel and on foot across completely uncharted mountains and deserts disguised as a Muslim Tartar horse trader. He moved from one fortified fiefdom to another, in appalling conditions, knowing that if he was discovered to be European he would be inviting almost certain death. That is what used to be considered an adventure. By comparison my journeys look like a ride around the block.
So what defines an adventure today? Does it have to involve risk? Discovery? The unknown? Huge distances? Must it be solo, or can it happen in company? Does it have to be physical? We had a great discussion, and came up with some interesting ideas. If fate spares me I plan to do the same sort of thing in Asheville at the end of September, when the Expo West takes place at the Baltimore Estate.
As if that wasn’t enough for this sad old sack, I then undertook to fly immediately to Indonesia.
I really didn’t appreciate just how far away that is, having only got there slowly by bike from Australia. To be wafted directly from the dry heat of Arizona to the humid heat of Bali in 24 hours of flying and airport time is my least favorite form of travel, but Hey, it was free, and I ended up in Bali. That was thanks to Jeffrey Polnaja. After riding his own bike around the world, he has bent heaven and earth, and his bank balance, to bring biker brotherhood to Indonesia. He found a fabulous beach two islands along from Bali, in Sumbaya, and a couple of hundred lucky people sported around palms and Crystal™ clear water, being watched over by a life-sized concrete elephant, a giraffe and a giant turtle.
It was all under the auspices of HorizonsUnlimited and I think it’s there to stay. I saw an amazing World War Two Harley that looked as if it had been rescued from a primaevel swamp.
I also had a massage that was worse than interrogation under torture because she didn’t actually want to hear my stupid secrets. It was so terrible that I had to have another one just to be sure I wasn’t fantasising. That was a mistake. But after that everything was doubly delightful. Great food. Good conversation. Go there.
I’m back in France now, where the elections have given this phenomenal new President a big working majority. After so many decades of stagnation it’s hard to believe in big changes, but equally difficult not to hope for them. Meanwhile Britain is looking more and more like a rudderless vessel drifting off course under a delusional captain. But that’s just politics. There are great meetings there this summer. The HU meeting is just over, and I’m sorry I had to miss that, but Paddy Tyson’s wonderful Overland Event is coming up at Hill End in Oxfordshire at the beginning of September.
As for me, I’ve just been to the beach at Meze. The water was wonderful – but not crystal. The Indonesian massage is only a memory. I wish you all a lovely summer. Don’t let the idiots spoil it.
Aspiran is voting today. As you can see from my picture, posters of all 11 candidates are up in the village square, but only Marine Le Pen’s is defaced. Those of you who would like to take consolation from this should beware. The people round here are much inclined to like her regardless of the neo-fascist origins of her party and her friendship with Putin and Trump.
In the second world war this part of the world was called Vichy, and was governed by a French authority that collaborated with the Nazis. You might think that after 70 years this would be forgotten, but it cast a slur on the region. Recently Le Pen was asked to comment on the fact that French collaborators in Paris rounded up 30,000 Jews and handed them over to the Nazis to be sent to the gas chambers. Le Pen insisted that this was not a reflection on France. France, she said, was not to blame. This is an alternative fact that will please some of my older neighbours.
And young people, who are 20% or more unemployed, like to think that she will kick out foreigners and give them jobs, which is nonsense. The French believe (according to a reliable poll) that there are vast numbers of Muslims in France, whereas the actual figure is a single digit percentage.
The media are caught in the same trap here as everywhere. Even though, for the most part, they would rather the devil than Le Pen, they can’t help helping her. Even though the Dutch and the Austrians have held fast, the media’s relentless pursuit of controversy makes it seem as though an irresistible wave of nationalism is drowning Europe, which makes it harder to fight back. Well, we’ll see. At least the French are cushioned against disaster, because they will vote again in two weeks’ time when the blood may cool. Here they vote in a lovely, ancient building – the Chapelle des Penitentes. And there will be time to repent.
Whatever they do I doubt that it will affect me much in the short or medium term, and after all that’s probably what I’ve got. My love affair with the bureaucracy has born fruit. The plates for my bike should arrive any day, and health care is free. I’ll see this one out.
Next Sunday I turn 86 (there’s a party, of course) and a week later I’ll fly to Arizona for an Expo of overland vehicles in Flagstaff. And from there – my envious friends – I’m going to Bali, to help spread the word that two wheels are better than four, with my friend Jeffrey Polnaja who is determined to make Indonesia the next best thing for bikers.
Hope to see you soon.
Cheers
PS: Well the results are in now, and thank heavens the French have found a way to avoid the populist trap. Macron, a newcomer with no political ties to either of the old parties, will be President. He still has to defeat Le Pen in a run-off, but he is certain (if anything is certain) to win. So Europe will survive, because he is pro-Europe while Le Pen would scupper it.
Just when I thought it was all over for me, just as I enter my leaden years with all thought of romance a nostalgic dream, I find myself launched on a new affair. It crept up on me so quietly and unobtrusively that I didn’t even realise it was happening .
I was on my way back from meeting her in Béziers, a nearby city, furious at having been given the brush-off yet again when it dawned on me. Of course, I thought, she had only sent me away so that I would have to go back, again and again, to play out this tantalising courtship which might never be consummated.
It had been my third visit to the Prefecture – the French police headquarters – so that I could put French plates on my scooter. When I look back now at my first visit I smile at my naiveté. I had read online that they wanted a piece of paper to prove that the bike actually conformed to European regulations. Since England was still in Europe, and the bike was originally brought their from Italy, it must obviously have already been certified kosher, but the French do love to have their own bit of paper. To get it from Piaggio, the manufacturer, costs 150 euros, but I found an English outfit called DVLAAdvice who said they could give me an equivalent piece of paper for £67. Always the sucker, I leapt at the offer, not having read the fine print which explained that it might not work.
I have to say that the piece of paper they sent me was a work of art. With all its seals and signatures it looked tremendously authoritative. It was the kind of instrument I always wanted on my way round the world – something to get me past obstructionist officials at borders and game reserves and splendid receptions. But it didn’t get me past the lady at the window in the prefecture. “Everything else is fine,” she said, “but you have to come back with the right paper.”
So I had to spend that 150 euros anyway to get the real thing,
I have to explain that you don’t just go to the Prefecture. You have to go online and make an appointment for a ten-minute slot on a weekday morning, but that’s better probably than being stuck in an endless queue with uncouth lorry drivers and terrorists-in-waiting.
However, the second time I went the same lady pointed out regretfully that what I had brought her was all very well, but – and she brushed the signature with her finger – it was not the real thing. It was only a copy of the real thing, and she really, sadly, couldn’t accept a copy although, – and she repeated it – everything else in my dossier was fine.
So I went back to Piaggio to get the real thing and that’s what I took to Béziers the other morning.
But this time there was a different lady, a little sterner. She looked at the papers in a puzzled way and said, “Where’s the fiscal?”
“What’s that?” I asked? She looked at me with pity for my childish innocence.
“You have to go to Customs and Excise to pay the import duty. I can’t do anything without that.”
“But, but, but she told me . . . ” I spluttered . . . and I looked imploringly at my first lady who was sitting in the next booth, but she was being very quiet . . . and in the end there was nothing for it but to retire.
So I went to the Tresorier, the money people, who live in another town altogether, for permission to revisit my ladies, and there an even nicer lady told me there was nothing to pay and she would give me a piece of paper to prove it, but first I must get another piece of paper from the man who gave me the scooter in the first place
However, I must tell you that these skirmishes over the scooter are merely a sideshow.
Just around the corner from the Prefecture is another office, CPAM, (The Caisse Primaire de l’Assurance Maladie, if you must know) and there I have been no less than seven times, to see seven different ladies, because there the game is not about my little road toy, there my very life is at stake. Without the right piece of paper from them, I can’t afford to go to the doctor or dentist or hospital. Not that I need to but, you know, life is scary. So that explains the number of visits, which obviously have to be in proportion to the importance of the quest.
Let me say now that nobody doubts I will get this vital piece of paper eventually. I am entitled to it, and I have a printed pamphlet to prove it. All that is required first is a dossier, which must be gradually built, like a house, from many different papers. At one point, on the third visit just as everything seemed to be coming together my dossier was lost. Disappeared in the system, they said. Never mind. This happens quite often, I’m told. We started anew. Last Monday, on the seventh visit after four months , it all came together again and my dossier has been sent somewhere. Perhaps it will be lost again.
It was just this morning, as I shook off another fit of exasperation, that I realised what was really going on. I am being drawn gradually but ineluctably into a love affair with the French bureaucracy. Between us we are engaged in a process of creation: we are pregnant and anxiously awaiting the birth of the great dossier which will define my relationship to the Fifth French Republic. It will be made of paper, but in France paper has a deeper meaning. Banks, Insurance companies, Utilities can go paperless, but France? Never. Only when all my paper is securely gathered together and held deep in the bosom of the bureaucracy will I know that I am really, finally in France.
There should have been trumpets and a drum roll, but the trumpeter sloped off months ago and somebody turned the drums into lampshades. Nevertheless, it was a momentous event. That beautiful piece of brass I have been rabbiting on about for ages did finally arrive. So today it is OFFICIAL. I have finally got the brass plaque. The names are on the plaque. The plaque is on the door, and the door is open.
It’s just over a year now since I moved into this house, thanks in part to a long list of people, the ones on the plaque, who liked my idea of a retreat for travelling writers, and in fact it has been operating unofficially for a while now.
It’s a nice spacious room, with a lot of light, a useful table, a rustic beam, and a very comfortable bed. There’s room in the garage for a bike and there’s a bar/restaurant just round the corner. Jupiter’s Travellers have priority but I’ll be happy to consider anyone with a serious purpose, even if all you’re doing is trying to figure out what you’re doing.
Is it heaven . . or is it hell?
What kind of a time you’ll have in that room just depends, of course, on what kind of writer you are. For me writing is purgatory (well, I exaggerate, as usual) but getting it finished is a high like no other. Some people, I’m amazed to hear, actually enjoy the process of writing. But whether you love it or hate it I’d like you to take advantage of me. The cost will be minimal – just enough for laundry, light and heat– maybe a few euros a day.
There are two other bedrooms as well. If you’re not a writer but just a nice person I wouldn’t at all mind if you want to come for a holiday. I’d ask you for some money and we’d have to talk about it, but it would help to keep the place up. You could think of it as an AirB&B. Thirty minutes from a really good beach, and about the same distance from mountains. There’s a baker and a grocer in the village. Big shops and supermarkets are ten minutes away, in Clermont l’Herault.
I would also like to hear from someone, preferably a woman to keep the balance right, who would be interested in living here for an extended period through the summer in exchange for keeping the place clean and tidy.
So we’re here and in business. If you’re interested, let me know. Send an email to tsimon@mcn.org
Here are some notes about how to get here. No doubt some might be on their own wheels, but that’s not always possible so let me explain how to get here by public transport.
MONTPELLIER has an airport and a train station. Getting here from there is a bit long-winded but quite easy at reasonable times of the day. From the airport you get a shuttle into the city. Its the 120 bus and they call it a Navette. It goes to the Place de l’Europe. From there you take a blue Number One tram (the trams are great – and cheap) to the end of the line at Mosson. From Mosson there is only one bus to bring you to Aspiran. It’s the 305 and it leaves at 17.45. To get to Mosson from the airport this way you should allow an hour and a half, so you should have a flight that arrives at 4pm latest. The bus ride is a pleasant way to to be introduced to the area.
If you come by train (which is how I like to come) it’s just a couple of hundred yards (or metres) up a gentle hill to find the same blue tram Number One. The ride will be a little shorter from there – about 30 minutes. If you arrive early without too much luggage you can walk on up the slope to the Place de la Comedie, a huge open square surrounded by cafés where you can watch life go by, and take the tram from there.
The tram stops have ticket machines which take coins and cards. A single ticket is €1.60; buy at least two. Ten tickets cost €10, and the same tickets work on the buses.
BEZIERS has the cheaper flights with Ryanair, but getting here from there is a little harder.
There are two flights from England on Thursday and Saturday that will let you get here by bus, and two from Germany on Tuesday and Saturday that will also work.
Again you have to take the shuttle into Beziers, then a bus from Beziers to Pezenas, and then another bus from Pezenas to Aspiran. If that’s how you’re coming let me know ahead of time so I can help.
My little essay on records has stirred up a bit of controversy and predictably turned over a few stones. So first, let me reassure everyone that I don’t actually give a hang about setting records. If you didn’t notice the tongue in my cheek it must be that my cheeks have grown too fat on all this lovely cheese I’m eating in la Belle France.
There were also some strong women who resented my using the epithet “Pah!” in relation to their gender. I thought that was an obvious joke, directed at myself. I must learn to use emoticons, I suppose.
As for the record itself, I’ve had a few entries.
José Porros Novalbo, from Madrid told me about a couple who rode Norton Dominators in the fifties, and one of them, Lennox Cook, wrote a book about it. They went from London through India to Australia, then to Canada, across the States and back to London.
Bernd Tesch, my old friend (though he is still not as old as me) has more about the Cooks on his website, which is a great resource :
http://www.berndtesch.de/English/Continents/WorldAround/WorldAroundMotorcycle1951-1970.html
The Cook book was called “The World Before Us”. But there were two of them so they don’t count –emoticon.
Bernd still insists that Clancy Stearns has the record, but as I explain, he doesn’t count because he didn’t take his bike back to where he started. Bernd also has a bunch of couples who went round in the fifties, Germans, Austrians and Kiwis, and a very interesting British bus driver called Ernest Bell who did it on a Dominator, but he did the first half with a group of Australians, so he doesn’t count – more emoticons.
The Omidvar brothers from Iran probably had the most extraordinary story and were on the road for eight years. Lois Pryce wrote about meeting one of them in Iran in her latest book, Revolutionary Ride, but obviously they don’t count either – invent your own emoticon here.
Actually Bernd’s list goes on and on, with other couples, and people on scooters, and the bare outlines of incredible adventures, and maybe one of them did fit my exacting criteria, but I can’t tell and it doesn’t matter anyway.
Personally I would award the prize to Peter Lee-Warner who went round the world in 1953 on a bicycle with a Power Pak attached. Here’s his story, thanks to Dan Alsop who told me about it:
On 20th March 1953 he set off to ride to Australia and back on a Tradesman’s cycle powered by a Synchromatic Power Pak. The intended route was outwards via France, Italy and the Balkans, Syria, Transjordan, Iraq, India, Burma, Siam, and Malaya. The return journey was to pass through Egypt, North Africa and Spain. The cycle was fitted with a 2 gallon auxiliary fuel tank in the frame triangle and a tank of drinking water below the front carrier. By the middle of May he had reached Baghdad where he recorded an account of his experiences so far for the BBC Midland Regional programme “What Goes On” which was broadcast on 28th May. It was while in Iraq that Peter changed his plans and decided to make his journey a trip around the world. September saw Peter on his return journey, flying to San Francisco on a “Clipper” airliner. Then there was just the 3,000 mile journey to New York to complete before boarding the “Queen Elizabeth” for the voyage back to Britain. At midday on 20th October 1953 Peter rode up to Australia House, the starting point of his journey, where he was greeted by Vivian Blaine, star of the musical “Guys & Dolls”.
All they gave me when I finished my journey was Miss Great Britain.
So sue me, sue me – what can you do me.? I love you.
The other day in London I met Gianluca Renato, the marketing director of Pirelli, a very likeable, youngish man with an obviously acute intelligence. We met thanks to an introduction from a friend in Russia, who thought we might be able to help each other. Unfortunately, like too many people, he had never heard of me, and I had the uncomfortable job of having to explain myself.
“Well”, I said, “I rode a motorcycle round the world and wrote a book.”
But obviously that wasn’t enough.
“That was in 1973. I was on a Triumph. It took four years. The book was called ‘Jupiter’s Travels’. A lot of people have read it.”
So you were the first to go round the world?
“Well, no, not really. There were others, long before me, who made very long journeys . . .”
And that was when I started thinking, what does it actually mean to ride around the world?
When I first told Harry Evans, the editor of the Sunday Times, that I wanted to ride around the world I was thinking only of how to describe the journey, to make it understandable – saleable, if you like. The act of making a complete circle was not at all important to me personally. I just wanted to see as much of it as I could. But I needed to raise some money and if I was going to write a book – which was always my aim – then that label, that headline “Round the World” would be important. And so far as we knew, I’d be the first to do it.
Since those days in the early seventies the business of making and breaking records has grown with record-breaking speed. The Guinness thing has become a huge business. Everybody wants to swallow more eggs, jump over more buses, swat more flies, fly, float, drive, swim, climb, drop, skate, crawl further, faster, longer, than anyone else and get a certificate.
I wasn’t thinking about records when I travelled. It would have been easy, for example, to nip across a few borders here and there to rack up a few more countries but it didn’t occur to me because that wasn’t the point. But now, forty years later, I think if a record would sell more books, why not?
So did I create a record? If so, what would the record be? I rode a bike around the world, solo – one uninterrupted journey, on the same bike, and I rode it back to the point of departure. What’s the competition?
According to Wikipedia, in 1912 an American, Clancy Stearns, rode a Henderson, starting from Dublin in Ireland, and apparently ended his journey on the East coast of America. He’s credited with being the first man to go around the world with a motorcycle. But at the beginning he was accompanied by his partner Walter Storey, and of course he didn’t ride the bike back to where he started.
In 1928 two Hungarians, Zoltan Sulkowski and Gyula Bartha, started an eight-year journey through 39 countries – a fabulous journey, no doubt – but there were two of them.
Then there was the marvellous Bob Fulton, who began his journey in 1932 from London on a dare (well, actually, he was on a Douglas) and wrote a terrific book called One Man Caravan, but he finished up in New York which was not where he started from.
Then we come to the most serious competition I can find, which was Anne-France Dautheville who apparently went round the world in 1973, but the evidence is very sketchy and she seems to have started with a Motoguzzi to Afghanistan. She then went on with a Kawasaki 175 and there’s nothing about where she finished up. She’s said to be the first woman to ride solo around the world, and I’d love to meet her, but I’m doubtful that she’s Guinness Record material. Anyway, she’s a woman. Pah!
So, the big question is: Am I the first man to ride a motorcycle solo around the world, according to MY definition? And if so, will you buy my book? Somehow I don’t think so, because you’ve probably already read it.
But if you want to challenge my record, I’d really like to hear from you. Who else circled the globe?
Write to me: Ted@Jupitalia.com
My bike sits in the garage, gloomy and forlorn. I can’t ride it because it still has British plates on it, and I can’t get it insured. To get French plates I have to have a piece of paper to prove to the French authorities that the bike conforms to the European norms. Of course it does. It was made in Italy, sold and used in England. It’s as European as you can get, but the French have to have a piece of paper to prove it. The French love pieces of paper. That’s probably the worst thing I can say about them.
The paper they want costs 150 euros but there’s a business in England that said they could give it to me for half the price, and being greedy I fell for it. What they gave me was a lovely piece of paper, with all kinds of seals and signatures on it, but when I took it to the Prefecture (that’s French for police) they said it was no good. So I’ve had to fork out another 150 euros anyway, and that should teach me a lesson, but somehow I don’t think I learned it.
Anyway, on Tuesday I’m going to take this new, shiny piece of paper in its cellophane cover to the police in Beziers and hope that I don’t have to learn any more lessons. I’m an old dog. Can I learn new tricks?
Meanwhile, what is there to do except enjoy life, drink wine, and listen to music. Which is what I’ve been doing tonight. And tonight was astonishing.
A guitarist came to the café – a Spanish guitarist with violent Gypsy songs and tumultuous technique. And then Pascal, the accordion player who haunts the café, found a way to play with him, although they had never played together before, and between them they cooked up the most exciting, heart-throbbing jazzy music I have heard in ages. And it was the one night I didn’t bring my iPhone, and I curse the fact that I can’t give you a video snip of this most amazing musical triumph. Really, I know what I’m talking about. I have heard great music and great jazz in my life and this was phenomenal.
I won’t claim that this kind of thing happens every night at the Café de La Poste, and I swear that I have no interest in promoting the café other than that I badly need it to be there and succeed, but really, for a small place in a small village the record is pretty impressive. Only last night there were five people playing ukulele accompanying a wonderful chirpy singer, like a reincarnation of Edith Piaf, singing naughty, suggestive songs, with the crowd clapping and singing along.
Please come. The café needs customers. The food’s good. And I’ll sign your book.
Cheers,
Ted
Google me at
Aspiran-34800
France
I had a nightmare last night. The world was in ruins, in a rather colourful and impressionistic way, and I was in a famous photographer’s studio where he was trying to turn the ruins into an art object. I had been up and down the west coast of America, on a bike I think, getting lost in hotels and viewing the destruction, and I was trying to get the celebrity’s people to take my accounts seriously but they didn’t want to know, which was hardly surprising because I actually had nothing to offer, and that was the nightmarish part. It was the sense of my own futility that woke me up.
Of course the world around me now is not in ruins. Village life goes on as usual. People are coming to dinner. The battery of my bike has died. The church bell, which rings every half hour, is ringing as I write. The nightmare is still some way away, but I feel it coming.
One summer in the late nineties I was riding a big Triumph Tiger around the States. I was already well enough known that people invited me to drop by and stay for a night or two. One such invitation came from a man in Louisiana. He said if I turned up before he was back from work I should help myself to the whisky. It was the kind of sultry, sweaty night you associate with the south and the room I found myself in was a cavernous space full of steamy shadows. A whisky on the rocks sounded very appealing, the bottle was where he said it would be and I helped myself to ice from the freezer, not noticing that it was also full of seafood. It was the first, and I hope the last time in my life that I drank shrimp-flavoured whisky.
When my host arrived I found him very congenial. We had good conversation, great food. I slept well and in the morning again, before I left, he struck me as an intelligent, thoughtful, well-balanced man. Ten years later I wrote something in favour of Obama’s bid for the presidency and that same man sent me the most vindictive email I have ever received. He called me a disgusting, myopic fool, and tore into me for supporting “that animal.” I was truly shocked and, believe me, that hardly ever happens.
I have always thought it very important to criticise politicians. I used to think that Americans were much too kind to them, worshipful almost, especially to senior politicians like senators and White House dignitaries. I thought it would be impossible for an intelligent American to insult his revered institutions so much as to call a presidential candidate an animal. So I assumed my friend had suffered some terrible trauma in his life – Alzheimer’s perhaps. I should have known better.
On my way around the world I’ve had friendly, enjoyable relationships with people whose fundamental beliefs were abhorrent to me: An Afrikaner in apartheid Africa, a militant Muslim evangelist in Sudan, a tribal anti-semite in Tunisia, and so on. But I made the lazy assumption that we, in Europe and America, were beyond that sort of thing except when it came to fringe extremists. I couldn’t have been more wrong. My man in Louisiana was only one of millions who kept their unseemly thoughts nicely tucked away behind courtly southern manners when in the presence of “foreigners” like me. The distressing ex-mayor in West Virginia, with her careless reference to Michelle Obama as an “ape on heels”, is like a bookend around that story.
Of course it’s not just about race. It’s about poverty, neglect, misinformation and the deadly precision with which politicians manipulate underprivileged constituencies. In India, a politician could secure the votes of several thousand destitute villagers with one standpipe of drinking water. The principle’s the same. It took Nigel Farage and Donald Trump to wake me up to the existence of these unreconstructed nations within a nation. I suppose I should be grateful to them, for exposing some of the realities that we in our supposedly advanced civilisations have been trying to ignore.
My second big journey in 2001 made it pretty clear to me that all the huge disruptions in the world today are symptoms of three enormous changes that occurred since I first wandered around forty years ago: huge population growth, an information revolution, and creeping climate change. Large parts of the world are unable to sustain their populations, climate change is drying them out, and the internet is telling them where to go to get the kind of life that we are enjoying. It may sound simplistic but I think it’s incontestable.
In a smaller, more local variation of the same pattern, it’s what’s happening in England and America. A self-satisfied urban and coastal elite lost touch with the country where large numbers of under-privileged people have been nurturing their grievances and hiding their prejudices under a mask of political correctness. It was surprisingly easy for two rabble-rousers to rip the mask away, exploit their emotions, tell them a story they wanted to hear and watch them rise up in anger.
The terrible, destructive truth is what we have seen demonstrated again and again in human history. These agents of change, these provocateurs, are interested only in boosting their own egos. They have no solutions, and the upheavals they generate lead to chaos and violence from which it takes ages to recover.
I was only eight years old at the outbreak of World War Two, which has given me a life-long interest in the times that led up to it. I imagine that the sick feeling I have today must be rather similar to the way many felt in 1938. These worrying and mind-numbing events – Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Ukraine – are just premonitory tremors. But its awful to think that our destinies are in the hands of people like bumptious Boris, egregious Farage and the slithy Gove on one side of the Atlantic, and on the other such ghastly creatures as Mitch O’Connell, Rudy Giuliani and the naked Emperor Trump.
Maybe from now on I really will just stick to motorcycles. The poet Alexander Pope once wrote: “When vice prevails and impious men hold sway, the post of honour is a private station.” Yes, but, is it honourable to stay silent?
I haven’t been in a locker room since I was 17 which probably accounts for the fact that all my joints seem to be working quite painlessly, but even back then in post-war London boys might be heard saying some pretty disgusting things. I don’t remember anything about pussies because we hadn’t graduated yet to reverse anthropomorphism. The C word was certainly uttered from time to time, but only as a pejorative. Anyone boasting about his ability to grab it, in the Trumpian manner, would have been considered a complete twat or worse.
If there had been such a twat, and if later he had put himself up for Prime Minister of Great Britain, and if I had been able to produce a tape of him proclaiming his vainglorious C-grabbing prowess, I doubt that it would have blighted his progress. Nor should it have. What has it got to do with running a country? My personal view is that most leaders have huge to monstrous egos, more or less well disguised, and with powerful lascivious urges to match. Neither presidents nor prime ministers should be chosen as role models. Obama seems to be a remarkable exception.
But Trump’s case (as always) is different. His so-called “banter” was really peacock-strutting boastfulness and, most importantly, it wasn’t in a locker room. He was licking his lips as he was being escorted by his well-born enabler to greet various desirable women. So it was much worse, much more revealing and I would say only barely under control. If the tape helps to defeat him I will be delighted, and yet this is hardly the best reason for keeping him out of office. A much better reason is that he clearly has no idea what he would do if he were elected other than to put Hillary in jail, cut taxes for the rich, build an impossible wall, and mess up the lives of a HUGE number of people. And then there’s the nuclear thing . . . Sweet Jesus, keep him out.
