Jupiter's Travels

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Every separation gives a foretaste of death - and every reunion a foretaste of resurrection.' I'm pretty sure that Schopenhauer never rode a motorcycle, but those sentiments could easily be applied to Ted Simon and his epic revisiting of a round-the-world journey he did in 1973. What year did you read it, when would that have been?”, Ted asks when I tell him about my introduction to Jupiter’s Travels. I read this pretty slowly, and found it enjoyable. I may not have enjoyed it so much if I had read it constantly and at my normal pace.

Oh tell me please, how does it go, the triple jump?" She pro nounced it tripee-el She had a way of pleading for things in her Brazilian English to make you understand that they were matters simultaneously of no consequence and of life and death. You could refuse, and nothing would be changed; or you could give, and earn undying gratitude. It was a great gift, which she had won by long effort and sorrow and laughter. It was the humorous residue of cravings which had once been corrosive enough to etch her face. Greece lived up to its expectations in many ways and the islands were a really good introduction into Greek culture. I’d always wanted to visit the Acropolis in Athens; it felt that it was important to do it. This was also an intense time politically for Greece. There was a frenzy going on around the fascist Golden Dawn party murder and MPs being arrested. Support for the party plummeted from 17% to 4%.” Interesting times ahead.As I was heading into Serbia I did what was my first, and I hope last ever wheelie. Of course it was in a petrol station with an audience, and actually I did a lot of damage to the bike but the local people helped me sort things out. Thankfully I didn’t damage myself very much. Gone were the interesting anecdotes and interesting people, in its place we get introspection and self analysis and almost self pity. Interesting it was not. In 1973, Ted Simon embarked upon an epic journey that would take him 64,000 miles around the world on a Triumph Tiger motorcycle. Four years later, he would return to London a changed man with many a colourful tale, recounted here. Simon himself provides the introduction for his epic motorcycle journey, and hearing his voice sets a good tone for the rest of the audiobook; in fact, he quips, ‘Rupert Degas […] sounds much more like me than I do’. Narrator Rupert Degas then takes over for the remainder, with delightful results. His British-accented diction is clear, and his speech follows natural patterns, appropriate for a memoir. Degas’s accents for the various people Simon encounters add an extra dimension to the work, creating a vivid listening experience.

When I eventually came to visit Disneyland, I realized that the ultimate aim, the logical conclusion for Los Angeles, was that it should all become another Disney creation, a completely simulated and totally controlled 'fun environment' in which life was just one long, uninterrupted ride. In the end, while I appreciate the fact that traveling in the physical world means also undergoing an inner journey, I would have appreciated a little less navel-gazing, and a little more effort towards showing both positive and negative sides of each place. Well, we're all just acting out other people's fantasies, aren't we? Maybe we're not much good for anything else." p.99 I’m pretty risk averse, but there was still plenty of adventure the second time around, some of it much more extreme than my youthful trip. In the Bolivian highlands, my gearbox gave out. Again, there was nothing to do but wait for rescue. In due time, help arrived in the form of an oil tanker. The driver offered me a tow. It was incredibly dangerous, but there seemed no other way. I spent over an hour balancing on the motorcycle as I was pulled along on a 10-foot rope. Without a doubt, it was the scariest ride of my life.But it was nothing, a paper seal slipped in assembly, easily put right. You could stop the oil if you took the trouble. That was what British bikes liked, a bit of trouble. They thrived on attention, like certain people, and repaid you for it. Not a bad relationship to have.”

We follow him through Europe and into north Africa, retracing his original route. Along the way, he looks for the characters who'd been cast in his first trip; the need for reunions seems great. Unsurprisingly, he finds them either gone or, more often, dead. Sometimes, he finds a link to them, only to learn of lives blighted by misfortune and dreams unfulfilled. I can understand though, how this book would inspire others to take off around the world on a motorbike, and see the world from the seat of a bike, and would be intrested to see what he had to say in some of the books that followed this one. On to the book. What a boring, self-indulgent novel. Ol' Ted decides to go slummin' through the third world in some misguided attempt to test himself. Once underway, his special brand of bitter negativity slowly swallows every paragraph. His suspicions and mistrust permeate all of his interactions. The countries flow by as little more than overblown customs headaches. The rare happy moments end with a caveat. As much as you'd think the trip should be the focus, it's only ever about the author.If Thoreau were alive today he would have full confirmation of his fears. Instant information is instantly obsolete. Only the most banal ideas can successfully cross great distances at the speed of light. And anything that travels very far very fast is scarcely worth transporting, especially the tourist.” Some books that have meant the most to me, though not necessarily the best, are Catch 22, All the King’s Men, The Gutenberg Galaxy, The Sun Also Rises, and Ford Madox Ford’s WWI trilogy, Parade’s End. If the book's conclusions are depressing, the writing is anything but. It is, at times, sparse, at others gloriously luminescent, but always self-deprecating. Simon's physical powers are diminishing, but his writing just gets better. The wonderful portraits of the people he encounters, often redolent of Bruce Chatwin, are sometimes so enticing that, were this a movie, you'd swear they were a plant for later on. But we never see or hear from most of them again and this, I suppose, is the essence of the journey. This biography of a living person relies too much on references to primary sources. Please help by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful.