News from Ted
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.
… and obviously I’m not the only one
Overland is one of those words used for promoting everything from socks to Santa, so you could be forgiven if you’ve missed Paddy Tyson’s Overland Magazine, for and about motorcycle travellers. But you won’t be forgiven if you don’t at least look for it now. Paddy, who also has a quite difficult day job, gives birth to this glossy marvel every three months, and it usually sells out.
So, when HorizonsUnlimited were unable to hold their usual annual meeting in the UK last year Paddy thought he’d have a go, and it was a delight. Everybody asked him to do it again, and this year it was even better despite having my picture plastered all over it. Obviously I had to go.
I flew to the UK from Montpellier because my plan was to come back with that scooter I used to roll around the British Isles in 2010 – you know, the one with two wheels in the front. I thought it would be great for nipping around the villages here in the south of France with a baguette across the handlebars, and a box of wine under the saddle.
I just assumed it would be good for a thousand miles to the south of France. I’m always saying you can go round the world on anything, but I confess I was a little nervous. Not about the bike, about myself. Some time, not too soon I hope, I will have to stop riding bikes. I have no idea how I will know when that is. I suppose one day I’ll sit on a bike and it will just feel wrong. Last year I didn’t ride at all. The V-strom needed work, and I didn’t have time to deal with it, so now I couldn’t help wondering . . .
Anyway, I got on the scooter in Godalming where Stephen had sent it to be serviced, and it felt all right. After six years I couldn’t at first remember how it worked, but mercifully it came back to me and I got it to Paddy’s do where he put it on show with my other bigger bikes from 1973 and 2001.
I was never particularly sentimental about my bikes, not even the Triumph. Here and there in the world, women – it was always women -– would want to give it a name: The Bug, or The Trumpet, or even The Green Chainsaw, but I refused to indulge them. To me it was always XRW964M.
But I must admit, that weekend, seeing the Triumph standing there spotlit, I felt a tremendous affection for it. With light glancing off the leather tank bags and the green panniers it looked not just smaller but somehow quite remote from all those other larger beasts. It looked so much simpler and cleaner, before the age of decals. And so accessible. Yet it had done everything those latter day behemoths had done. And it is still the most comfortable bike I have ever ridden.
The meeting was wonderful. Everybody said so, and one big reason was the site. It was at Hill End, just outside Oxford, a piece of ground that has seen children enjoy the pleasures of the outdoor world for many decades. It used to belong to a generous benefactor who bought it in the Twenties and it gradually evolved from an occasional camp to a fully fledged centre for kids to experience nature.
It has often crossed my mind that many children of my generation would never have known the countryside at all had it not been for evacuation in the second world war, and those who found their way here were very fortunate. The manager I met, Selby Dickinson, was extremely glad to have us there, recognising that our enthusiasm for the world at large resonated happily with the fascination for nature that he and his helpers try it impart to children. Some of the older kids were there too, in green uniform jerseys, helping out, making very good coffee, and very obviously engaged in making it all work.
All in all it felt like the beginning of an institution, and I hope Paddy finds it possible to keep it going for many more years.
I had a wonderful break in the middle of m journey down through France. some American friends met me in Beaune, and through their connections with the wine trade, they got me in to meet one of the more elevated wine makers of Burgundy, and taste his ethereal product, but I’m back in Aspiran now continuing my efforts to integrate myself with the French bureaucracy. Well, it’s not so bad, and I shall be very happy to part of such a fine social welfare system.
Angel. Teresa and I are just back from a much smaller but very enjoyable meeting in the west of France, where John Whyman organised a HorizonsUnlimted meeting. It was to introduce a new French translation of Jupiter’s Travels. I’ll write more about it soon.
On the night before Quatorze Juillet hundreds of us, in the village of Aspiran, sat down to dinner together under the plane trees with bottles of wine, to eat melon, ham, grilled sausage and lamb chops, cheese and ice cream. It’s a tradition in many French villages and a wonderful way for people to enjoy their sense of belonging to the community.
People who ride motorcycles have (or certainly should have) a much more conscious concern about the risks they are taking than the average motorist, who scarcely thinks about it at all. So the question of risk has fascinated me for decades, and particularly the way in which risk is manipulated for commercial and political profit. Of course the mundane business of insurance benefits from it enormously, but this year especially, on both sides of the Atlantic, fear-mongering has had some spectacular political successes, and the “jihadist menace” throws even more fuel on the fire.
Like many people of my generation, I imagine, I can’t stop comparing the situation in Europe today with my memories of wartime London. For a year, in 1944 and ’45, England was under attack by flying bombs and rockets. There were more than 22,000 casualties from the flying bomb alone, and a high proportion of those was in London where I was living at the time. So through most of my 14th year I was accustomed to the sound of these things flying in overhead, usually at night, and landing somewhere with a big “crump” – usually far away but sometimes frighteningly close.
I never thought that one of them would hit me – although I was once chased down the road, as it seemed to me, by one that came gliding in very low. I was also quite sure that we would win the war and that before long they would stop coming. I suppose I would guess now my chances of being hit were around one in a thousand – I had no way of knowing then what they were. I considered them negligible. I don’t think they affected my behavour much and, for a boy, they added a certain spice to everyday life.
The probability of my being targeted by a jihadist in Europe today must be around one in a million. I am four times more likely to be killed by a crashing airplane, and ten thousand times more likely to be killed on the road. So, much as I felt 70 years ago, I have no fear of being one of the victims of the current “wave of terror” and I also expect that it will be over some time soon unless, by over-reacting, we make it a lot worse.
At the same time as being horrified by the violence and deeply sympathetic to the victims, it is terribly important not to think of this as the end of life as we know it. In 1944 there were concerts in the Royal Albert Hall and all over England. Nobody thought, OMG what if a bomb were to fall on it.
Instead of fearing, uselessly, for our skins we could put a lot more energy into wondering why so many men and women are willing to throw away their lives in a violent gesture, or risk their families in desperate ventures at sea, and what part we in the pampered West have played in all this.
From the tragedy at Nice I rescued one bit of morbid humour.
It was the day the algorithms went horribly wrong. As I read a long account on my Mac of this ghastly rented truck mowing down crowds of holiday-makers the text was interspersed with a series of ads ––– from a car rental company.
Read about the Fire Sale, and then if you want that $10 CD and you’re in the USA, send me $12 (includes $2 for shipping) by Paypal to tsimon@mcn.org. If you’re not in the US send me an email, please.
Not quite, perhaps. More of a moving sale, but fire sure sounds more urgent. I did have a fire here once, in 1991, when my redwood barn burned down, and wasn’t that dramatic. All gone in six minutes. Now that I’m leaving those memories come flooding back.
So, as I search around for things to leave, things to take, I find something I haven’t looked at for a long time – it’s the living record of my second journey around the world, and looking at it again I am amazed at how rich it is, in stories and pictures, almost all of them unique to this medium. For three years I ran a live web site of my journey and it’s an example of what I have been imploring other travellers to do – look at what’s going on around you, think about it, write about it, photograph it, tell the truth.
There are 253 pages of text with 706 pictures from Europe, Africa, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, Asia and India. It’s easy to navigate – there are calendars to take you anywhere you want to go instantly, and quite a lot about the choices I had to make before I started.
A lot happened on that journey – nine-eleven for one. Even now it reads like history, and it’s quite different fro the book I wrote afterwards, Dreaming of Jupiter.
I have been asking $25 for this CD, but I want more people to see it, so right now if you’re in the USA you can have it for $10, plus $2 postage. If you are anywhere else, just email me and we’ll work something out. I really believe it’s a bargain. If you don’t agree I’ll give you your money back. Can’t say fairer than that.
It has taken me 85 years to discover Verona, but I’m one of those people who like to save the best for last.
What got me there – apart from my new/old Citroen C2 – was an email from Luigi Licci who owns a travel book shop.
Anyone with a book shop will get my attention. Book shop owners are among the bravest, and most endangered people alive, and one should go any distance to find them. YOU will find him on the Via Stella in the heart of the city and the shop is named after Gulliver, who was my inspiration too.
Luigi invited me to enjoy stardom at one of those amorphous public events that I never really got the hang of, but which I liked tremendously. A PR girl in harlequin tights and a denim burqa tried to explain it to me in vain, but I had my shoes shined by an elegant gentleman in top hat and tails, so who needs explanations.
I think it was all about books and travel and motorcycles and Verona, but there were also people selling retro clothes and jewelry. The food was very nicely presented from cleverly converted trailers along the side of a sort of mews that was once attached to the city arsenal. As well as pasta and seafood there was beef from Argentina, which is a very big deal in Italy. I had some (too much actually) and it was pretty scrumptious. Everybody seemed to be doing well except for Giorgo, a short man with a huge tummy, who sat back on the saddle of his ice-cream tricycle. It wasn’t very hot and nobody wanted ice-cream. I felt sorry for him but he seemed happy enough not to have to bother.
As you can see a lot of people came to listen to me stumbling through a long interview and they seemed to be genuinely interested although it obviously helped that it was the only place where they could comfortably sit. I was interviewed by a notable Italian rider/writer called Roberto Parodi, who also translated for them since I don’t speak Italian (not to mention several hundred other languages).
What people generally want to ask me is how they too can have a journey like mine, and of course that’s impossible for all kinds of reasons. But I understand what lies behind the question and try to do my best. Anyway they all applauded enthusiastically, and I felt very much among friends.
Luigi – he’s the one in the green shirt – looked after me like a son (well, actually more like a grandfather) and invited me into his home to meet his family and friends. Of course I already knew that he must have another source of income because nobody makes money selling books off the shelf, and he was a successful broker in “real life”. So now he lives in the country in a villa with a view that Visconti would have envied. It’s heart-warming to see money put to such a good purpose.
Guiglio Fanton, who writes for Mototurismo, took me on a marvelous sight-seeing tour of the city. Of course all the stuff about Romeo and Juliet is a bit hoky, but there’s masses to see. He showed me piazza after piazza, each one more beautiful than the last, and Verona also has a Roman Arena, only a bit smaller than the colosseum in Rome. That’s Guiglio standing in front of it. (Happy Birthday Guiglio).
The city sits around a lovely green river that snakes through it. You can see someone fishing in the picture and I watched him make a catch, so the water’s clean, which is not too common in big cities. That huge castle is made, incredibly, from brick. Someone told me that brick absorbs the impact of canon balls better than stone – remember, you heard it here first.
The history, of course, goes back beyond the Romans and is pretty bloody. One member of the ruling family is credited with having slaughtered 11,000 men from Padua at one sitting, but the good old days are over and it’s pretty safe now. Can’t wait to get back.
