News from Jupiter
From My Notebook in 1975: Coming to the Promised Land
December 10, 2023
If you remember, I came through the US border at Nogales with remarkable ease. It was late afternoon on a Saturday in May of 1975. I was tired after a day of riding through hot Mexican desert. My bike was limping along and would only run on full choke. I had no real sense of the distances I would have to cover in America and […]
Riding The Gringo Trail (The Sunday Times – September 1975)
December 3, 2023
Two weeks ago I buried myself in the past to avoid the present, and today I can’t see any point in coming back. Almost anything I might have to say about current events would almost certainly provoke fury and outrage. So please join me again in 1975. I had just crossed into the USA, limping along with a sick engine to Los Angeles where […]
From My Notebook in 1975: All Roads Lead To Los Angeles
November 19, 2023
Good day everybody. The news in general is so awful that I’m ignoring it, and finding some peace and pleasure in going back into my journey notes again. It’s May in 1975, and I left you last in the beautiful town of Guanajuato, but the USA looms large on the horizon of my thoughts. From Guanajuato I reckoned that I was three days away […]
From My Notebook in 1975: On the Road to the Land of Gringos
November 5, 2023
Still in Oaxaca 1975, I was going to continue with extracts from my notebooks as I moved on through Mexico to the USA, but I find them harder to transcribe. Compared with the bare-bones existence of the Andean lands of “No Hay” Mexico seemed quite prosperous, but the prosperity was an illusion. It was created by the availability of goods from the USA which only […]
From My Notebook in 1975: To Mexico
October 29, 2023
I left you last week in Guatemala on my way north. Already in Gringo country – more and more influenced by American tourists and commerce, and I became unreasonably upset that the word “American” now only means the USA. After all I’ve been in America for almost a year. And yet I’m beginning to long for the comforts that I imagine waiting for me when […]
Onwards and Upwards
October 22, 2023
The last time I regaled you with extracts from my notebooks I had crossed Honduras to Copán, on the border with Guatemala on my way up through Central America to the USA. Sadly, I was beginning to long for those first world comforts. And, so it goes on: Left Copán at 9-ish. Emigration is in the town. Transit is at the border. The two […]
A WorldWideWeb
October 8, 2023
Dear Friends, It was heart-warming to read of all the kind people – from Orkney to Australia – who toasted my Jupiter anniversary. I myself celebrated by riding my MP3 down the coast towards Spain and, in true Jupiter fashion, got lost and found myself negotiating a goat track in that very rugged country we call garigue. I made up for that though with a […]
50th Anniversary
September 26, 2023
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 […]
Farewell My Lovely
September 24, 2023
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 Overland Event and Notes from India
August 27, 2023
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 […]