News from Jupiter
From My Notebooks in 1975: Leaving Brisbane, Australia
February 11, 2024
G’day, everyone. How are you this Sunday morning? Perhaps like me you start the day looking for good news and not finding any. Us humans having pretty much obliterated one small country and decimated its population, and done a similar job on 20% of another, much larger country, it looks like the only survivors in the long run will be the cockroaches and the arms […]
From My Notebooks in 1975: Leaving Sydney, Australia
February 4, 2024
From the outset of my journey, I was very clear about several promises I made to myself. First: I would do it in one single, unhurried journey and then write a book about it. Second: It would be a complete journey, overland, uninterrupted, visiting as many countries as I could on the way round. Third: I would travel as frugally as possible in order […]
More Old News From Jupiter
January 28, 2024
Still following the story as it happened, my next stop had to be Australia. As idylls go, my idyllic time on the commune in Northern California lasted longer than most, but after almost four months I had to move on. The Sunday Times had engineered a free crossing of the Pacific for me and my bike on the P&O cruise liner SS Oriana. In return […]
The (Old) News from Jupiter
January 21, 2024
In July of 1975 I left Los Angeles with a fully functioning motorcycle (and the same silly paper air filter) and made my way to some new friends who lived south of San Francisco, and then, after a week or two, travelled North on Highway 101 to get to the commune that Bob and Annie had told me about. I lived on the commune for […]
Things On My Mind
January 14, 2024
Dear friends and virtual acquaintances, It would be nice to hear that you’ve had a wonderful few days or weeks of festive joy. I’ve certainly stretched my holiday out as long as I could, but I daren’t cut out any longer in case it becomes permanent. When you last heard from me I was writing about my arrival in Los Angeles, and if I were […]
The End Days of Triumph LA
December 17, 2023
This may well be the last bulletin from Jupiter in 2023, so here’s hoping you aren’t hiding in the ruins of Gaza or freezing in the trenches of Ukraine, and I can wish you a warm and happy Christmas holiday – whatever your religion, even if, like me, you don’t have one. At the end of last week’s piece I offered a ten-dollar […]
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 […]