From the Library

[Biggles]

The great freeways sweep me on past Stellenbosch and Belleville towards the ocean, into the suburbs of Cape Town, winding me down effortlessly and without error as though on an automatic flight path to the heart of the old city and setting me down in the plaza beside the ocean.  My joy is almost hysterical as I park the bike, walk slowly over the paving towards a cafe table and sit down.  I have just ridden that motorcycle 12,245 miles from London, and absolutely nobody here, watching me, knows it.  As I think about it I have a sudden and quite extraordinary flash, something I never had before and am never able to recapture again.  I see the whole of Africa in one single vision, as though illuminated by lightning. And that's it.  I've done it.  I'm at peace.
Ted Simon  Jupiter's Travels pp 180-181

[Biggles]

Mourning becomes electrics*.  Among the dunes and bushes of a camp site at La Plata, south of Buenos Aires, I searched for an electrical fault.  I never found it, but when I put everything together again, furious and frustrated, the fault disappeared.  Not an uncommon experience.
Ted Simon  Jupiter's Travels p 267

*Allusion to Eugene O'Neill 1931 play and subsequent movie "Mourning Becomes Electra".

[Biggles]

So far, on my journey I had learned scrupulously to resist travelling as though to a destination.  My entire philosophy depended on making the journey for its own sake, and rooting out expectations about the future.  Travelling in this way, day by day, hour by hour, trying always to be aware of what was present and to hand, was what made the experience so richly rewarding.  To travel with one's mind on some future event is is futile and debilitating.
Ted Simon  Jupiter's Travels p 307

[Biggles]

I was particularly interested in Pete because he had just ridden a three-cylinder Kawasaki on almost the same route from Rio to Panama as I had taken.
"Remember that bridge coming into Ecuador?" he asked.
There was only one bridge he could have meant.  It was built like a railroad track, but with planks instead of rails to take the wheels of cars.  The sleepers were set about eighteen inches apart, and there was nothing between them but air, and only river beneath.  It might not have been so bad if the planks had not kept changing direction, so that it was impossible to build up any momentum.  I had fallen halfway across and was lucky not to have gone through into the river.  Bob and Annie had also fallen on their Norton.
"Sure I do," I said. "I fell on it." He howled, and grabbed my hand.
 "Me too, pal. Which way did you fall?"
"Into the middle."
"Jesus.  I only fell against the side.  Boy, that was some ride.  I'm really glad I met you pal."
Ted Simon  Jupiter's Travels p 309

[Biggles]

The bike is tired also, but that is only a figure of speech.  I do not credit the bike with feelings.  If it has a heart and soul of its own I have never found them. People I meet are often disappointed that the bike does not even have a name.  They often suggest names ("The Bug" is top favorite) but none of them seem to do anything for the bike or for me.  For me it remains a machine, and every attempt to turn it into something else strikes me as forced and silly.
Ted Simon  Jupiter's Travels p 314

[Biggles]

Suddenly I realize that I have wandered into the middle of the road, and look up to find a huge truck bearing down on me out of the rainstorm.  It is far too late for me to react, and it is entirely by chance that the truck misses me, by a hair's breadth.  As I realize what I did, how close I came to being literally wiped out, obliterated, I feel that fearful rush of heat and cold sweat that makes the heart nearly burst, and feel immensely grateful for the warning while wishing I knew to whom to be grateful.  A God would come in useful at times like that.
I can count only two other times when I came so close to an end.  I must be really tired at the back of my skull. I must be careful.  I must never let that happen again.
Ted Simon  Jupiter's Travels p 315

[Biggles]

By the time l got to Mexico City one cylinder was smoking just as it had in Alexandria, but this time I was better prepared.  I had two spare pistons with me, both oversize so that I could rebore if necessary.  Was it necessary with only three thousand miles to go?  This time though, a friendly Triumph agent was there with all the equipment and the will to help.  It seemed silly not to take advantage.  Friends of Bruno put me up; Mr. Cojuc, the agent, did the rebore; I put it together again in his workshop, if for no other reason than the close contact this gave me with Mexican workers made the experience worthwhile.
Ted Simon  Jupiter's Travels p 316

[Biggles]

The coast road north of Sydney is called the Pacific for 650 miles until it gets to Brisbane.  Then it becomes the Bruce Highway.  Another five hundred miles north is Rockhampton, right on the Tropic of Capricorn.  I crossed the tropic (for the sixth time on my journey) four days before Christmas and headed on for Mackay.   
Since Brisbane the arid summer of the south had been giving way slowly to the tropical rainy season of Queensland.  In the southern droughts the cattle died of thirst.  In the north they drowned and floated away on the floods.  Australia runs to extremes.
Ted Simon  Jupiter's Travels p 341

[Biggles]

If the Nullarbor was not an ordeal, it was perhaps a last straw.  Bouncing over it was too much for the spokes of the rear wheel.  After all they had been through in two and a half years. I had been warned.  In Melbourne and again in Adelaide I had replaced broken spokes, and I checked them every time I stopped for the day.  At Eucla, where the dirt ended and the highway began they were still in order. The smooth tar enticed me to greater speed. After five hundred miles, just before Norseman, I noticed a growing vibration through the steering head. I stopped in the absolute nick of time.
Only four of the twenty spokes on one side of the wheel were left, and the rim was a terrible twisted shape.  A few seconds more and it would certainly have collapsed. I shuddered to think of the mangled mess that that would have left.  As it was, I spent one of the nastiest hours of the journey rebuilding the wheel in a twilight plagued by squadrons of vicious mosquitoes.
Ted Simon  Jupiter's Travels p 363-4

[Biggles]

The journey continued, as it always had, with this close inter-weaving of action and reflection.  I ate, slept, cursed, smiled, rode, stopped for gas, argued, bargained, wrote and took pictures.  I made friends with some Germans, and some English, and some Indians. I learned about mushrooms, potatoes, cabbages, golden nematodes, Indian farmers and elephants.
The thread connecting these random events was The Journey.  For me it had a separate meaning and existence; it was the warp on which the experiences of each successive day were laid.  For three years I had been weaving this single tapestry.  I could still recall where I had been and slept and what I had done on every single day of travelling since The Journey began.  There was an intensity and a luminosity about my life during those years which sometimes shocked me.
Ted Simon  Jupiter's Travels p 406

[Biggles]

And why else should I find myself now having my future told to me at a Rajput wedding?
"You are Jupiter," he said.  Of all the gods in the pantheon, Jupiter is the one I fancy most.  A lovely name, Jupiter, like cream and honey in the mouth.  And a sense of great distance and closeness at the same time.  He was a rainmaker, and I have definitely made my share of rain.  I rained all over the Southern Hemisphere in unprecedented quantities.  Then he was famous for his thunder, which is appropriate too for a god on a motorcycle, and (if it's fair to mix him up a bit with Zeus) then I like the idea of appearing in all those disguises. I have been changing my shape quite often as well.  All in all I would quite like to be Jupiter, if it is not too late...
"You are Jupiter," he said, and for a flash I was, "but for seven years you have been having conflict with Mars."  Of course.  It was a misunderstanding.  He was talking about the planet.
"This troubling influence will go on for two more years."  His grip on my hand remained firm and convincing, and I did not resist.  I wanted it to be important.
"During these two years, you will have two accidents.  They will not be major accidents, but they will not be minor either."  Really, I thought, that's stretching my credulity a bit.  I hardly need a fortuneteller to predict accidents, with ten thousand miles still to ride.  But he did say two.  Not major? Not minor?
"After this period, when you are no longer influenced by Mars, it will be well.  You will have great success and happiness."
Ted Simon  Jupiter's Travels p 421-2

[Biggles]

I was carrying rice from Iran, raisins and dried mulberries from Afghanistan, tea from Assam, curry spices from Calcutta, stock cubes from Greece, halva from Turkey and some soya sauce from Penang.
In a polythene screw-top bottle bought from a shop in Kathmandu was the rest of the sesame-seed oil I had bought in Boddhgaya. The rice and raisins were in plastic boxes from Guatemala.  My teapot was bought at Victoria Falls, and my enamel plates were made in China and inherited from Bruno at La Plata.  A small box of henna leave leaves from Sudan, a vial of rose water from Peshawar and some silver ornaments from Ootacamund were all tucked into a Burmese lacquered bowl. This in turn sat inside a Russian samovar from Kabul. The tent and sleeping bag were original from London, but the bag had been refilled with down in San Francisco. I had a blanket from Peru and a hammock from Brazil. I was still wearing Lulu's silver necklace and an elephant-hair bracelet from Kenya. The Australian fishing rod was where the sword from Cairo had once sat, and an umbrella from Thailand replaced the one I had lost in Argentina.
By far the most valuable of all my things was a Kashmiri carpet, a lovely thing smothered in birds and animals to a Shiraz design, but it would have been hard to say which of my possessions was the most precious.
Ted Simon  Jupiter's Travels p 443

[Biggles]

(It was predicted Ted Simon would have an accident, "not major, not minor".  He rode 60,000 around the world and it didn't happen. Then...)
In the South of France near Avignon, I came to a crossing.  There were no traffic lights, and I was on the minor road.  I stopped the bike completely and looked up and down the major road.  I saw no traffic, and set out to cross it.  I could hardly have been doing five miles an hour when I saw myself within yards of a big van coming straight for me very fast.  It should have hit me side-on and I would undoubtedly have been killed if it had, but I braked and the driver didn't, and so his van was just past my front wheel when I hit it. The bike was torn away from underneath me, and the front end was smashed beyond repair.  I fell on the tarmac with all the bones in my body shaken in their sockets, but otherwise unharmed.
The worst was having to face that I could look directly at a speeding van and not see it.  My confidence was more shattered even than the bike.  After all that I had done, with all the care I was taking, I could not explain how I could ride blindly into such a disaster. If ever an accident qualified as "not major and not minor" that was it.
Ted Simon  Jupiter's Travels p 446

[Biggles]

Everything went wrong immediately.
I accidentally started in second gear, which meant that my bike began to chug forward without the much-needed stability of smoothly rotating tires. Not realizing this, I gave my bike more gas, and it lunged forward- but standing on the foot pegs as I was, this abrupt spurt of speed threw me off balance, and as I fell backwards, my grip on the handlebars pulled the throttle open even more. The net effect of standing up on my pegs, pulling back on my handlebars while riding up a steep hill at speed was that there was almost no weight on the front tire- and consequently I couldn't steer.
In these desperate moments of motorcycling, you have a split-second decision to make: jump from the bike and save yourself or try to ride it out, gambling that your abilities can save you and the bike. Unless you are about to ride off a cliff or into a cement wall, everyone chooses the second option.
The Great Pan American Motorcycle Expedition  Jesse & Jessica Eyer p3

[Biggles]

For anyone who didn't realise, yesterday's post is the first of a new series from a book you haven't seen before.

Within 20 minutes, the man was back and the pedal, looking brand new— was re-installed. The total cost? $12 US. We thanked them profusely, hopped on our bikes and rode back out onto the main road. Moments later Jessica said "Something's wrong! My bike has no power!" With a groan, we started to pull over, fully prepared for a new motorcycle disaster. Then Jessica exclaimed, "Ah-ha! They installed the pedal upside down. I was shifting into the wrong gear." From neutral, you normally shift down for first and then up for the rest of the gears. The idea is that, if you're screeching to a stop and your left foot is madly shifting down, you'll eventually end up in first, not neutral— and be able to roar away if you need to. With her pedal installed upside down, Jessica now had to shift up for first and down for the rest of her gears— just like a racing bike. Within 10 minutes she grew accustomed to the new shifting style and never looked back.
The Great Pan American Motorcycle Expedition  Jesse & Jessica Eyer pp46-7

(I personally can't imaging how the selector pedal could have been installed in this way except by having it at your heel rather than toe.)

[Biggles]

We met up with Kerman and Jann several hours later. To our surprise, they also met the two KLR-riding Aussies, Adrian and Tim, and invited them out as well. Adrian and Tim knew of several other adventure riders in town, who, it turned out, knew several others and so on. In the end, 14 of us ate dinner together that night, all of us on the same crazy motorcycle trip from various parts of North America to Argentina. It was an astounding coincidence that, after seeing no other bikers for so long, we all encountered each other that night in Antigua; none of us actually arranged to meet there. The group was filled with the best kind of riders: friendly, interesting, from all walks of life and filled with stories of adventure and good advice for riding.
Tim and Adrian, the Aussies, had begun in LA where Adrian had been working for several years. They were friends from high school who always wanted to do a crazy adventure together. Adrian was an engineer with amazing technical insight into almost any motorcycle-related problem. Tim was a pharmacist, and like Jessica and I, had only been riding for about a year, but was utterly fearless when it came to tackling dodgy Latin American roads. We'd team up with Tim and Adrian later on in our trip, but we didn't know that yet...
The Great Pan American Motorcycle Expedition  Jesse & Jessica Eyer pp83-4