GRANDDAUGHTERS

I haven't written in a while. My head has been too full of anxieties personal to my family: tears shed for a new-born granddaughter in intensive care, pain for the parents, helplessness in the face of their fears, sense of utter failure in not possessing a magic wand - such is fatherhood.
Tiny Anna is home now. She is utterly beautiful, gurgles softly, joyously, and is gaining weight.
And I ask myself why am I so emotionally pathetic when my son and his wife are so strong...

ENGLISH CATHOLICISM

I find myself at ease with William Dalrymple's writings. I telephoned my brother yesterday to ask what he knew of Dalrymple – was he a Catholic?
Yes, educated at Ampleforth, the Benedictine boarding school which both my brother and I attended.
The persecution of Catholics in Scotland and England began under Henry V111 in 1535 with the Act of Supremacy and continued through to the Emancipation Act of 1829. Laws that forbade Catholics from Government service and from the Armed Forces and from the practice of Law made us onlookers to the conduct of our nation. Excluded from responsibility, our understanding of history is less partisan.

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

India is next on the itinerary. I hope to fly to Mumbai in October. Meanwhile, I have returned William Dalrymple's THE AGE OF KALI to the bookshelves and am reading his brilliant depiction of 19th Century Delhi and its destruction, THE LAST MUGHAL. Dalrymple's WHITE MUGHALS and THE CITY OF DJINNS await my attention in company with Mark Tully's INDIA IN SLOW MOTION.

THE HORNET'S NEST

A factual account of Anglo-Danish espionage during World War 11 contained inaccuracies regarding my stepfather, Colonel C E C Rabagliati. The writer, Mark Ryan, has corrected those inaccuracies in the second edition. The book is a good and exciting read. Find it on Amazon: THE HORNET'S NEST (HarperCollins UK) - or in your local library.

SWINDON FESTIVAL OF LITERATURE

Matt Holland organizes the Swindon Festival. He is a neat man of trim figure and clipped beard. Amongst his attributes is a wonderfully childlike enthusiasm. This enthusiasm is shared by Matt's brother, Robin.
Robin accompanied me to my presentation. Many in the audience were members of the Vintage Motorcycle Club. I am a great fan of the VMCC. Members make a mature audience (mature being how I might perceive myself were I to wear rose-tinted spectacles) and are sufficiently good-mannered to hide their boredom/show appreciation.
I will be the guest of another branch of the VMCC in Northampton on Monday, May 18.

PORN STAR/PORN DOG

I have been accused of Blimpish misuse of language. You know - all those traps for the unwary (though I remain puzzled as to why it is impolite to refer to a lady as Chairman rather than Chair)?
My present transgression of political correctness involves Hamish. True, Hamish is a dog. However calling him a Porn Dog rather than a Porn Star is belittling of the canine species. In recompense for my error, Bernadette has presented him with a new collar and lead.

GAURDIAN TRAVEL

A cold wind and rain baptises the Bank Holiday. Saturday's Guardian Travel section carried Katrina Larkin's and my tour of Herefordshire together with a short video. Sun bathed the cricket fields yesterday. Devon lost to Herefordshire on the upper field. Colwall was eliminated from the Village Knockout Competition on the lower. And Colwall Cricket Club suffered a great loss. Peter Pedlingham died while watching the Village Knockout. Colwall Cricket Club was a precious part of Peter's life. He was one of those rare and admirable men on whose great generosity of time and effort and dedication the continuing existence of village clubs depend. His parting will be of particular and daily loss to those of us who live on the boundaries of the Club's fields. He was so essential a part of nature's yearly cycle. He appeared at the ground with the first Spring buds, tirelessly mowing, raking, pruning – only to cease with the last of the Autumn leaves.
My own sense of loss is very selfish: I shall miss never again carrying his mug of tea out to the field of an evening (strong, two sugars). I shall miss persuading him to cease work for a moment, to sit with Derek Brimmel, Graham Careless and I on a bench by the ceder tree to admire the sunset. With his parting, there will be an emptiness there as we sip our tea and look across the cricket field – as if one of the oak trees had been felled.

GLORIOUS HEREFORDSHIRE

I have spent two glorious Spring days showing Katrina Larkin, founder of The Big Chill, my beloved Herefordshire. No company could be better...
Places we visited:
Hampton Court, Leominster
Coddington Vineyard
Padling down the Wye from Mordiford to Hoarwithy
How Caple Court
James Marsden's cider and perry orchard at Gregg's Pit farm
Check this coming Saturday's Guardian travel section (May 2nd) for a full account.

THE BIG CHILL

Katrina Larkin, founder of THE BIG CHILL festival, was with us for two days. I was showing Katrina my beautiful Herefordshire for a Guardian Travel article. Being with Katrina was a great blessing at a time of emotional pain. We enjoyed perfect weather and Herefordshire glowed in glorious Spring colours.

TERROR

I have been in terror the past days. My daughter-in-law, Julia, gave birth to my first granddaughter (the first Gandolfi girl in three generations). Rather than celebration, it has been a time of terror with Anna in intensive care. Poor tiny mite...
Thank God, she is now out of immediate danger.

DSA

I have never owned a bike in the UK. Bikes are for warm weather - preferably dry. England's summer makes a good winter. As a summer, it fails.
Not having a bike, I have never bothered with a UK bike license. Times have changed. Our youngest son, Jed, returns soon from his winter job in the French Alps. He will want to use my car. Time to buy a bike so I need to get legal. The Driving Standards Authority (DSA) is introducing a new, more difficult module to the test on April 27. Most training companies are against the module as too costly and dangerous. The biggest UK driver training company, BSM, is pulling out of the biker market. The DSA have arranged for me to ride the module today. If an old man of 76 can pass, where's the problem?
Steve from ACER Motorcycle Training brings a Honda 125 CG to the test area in Gloucester for me to ride. The Press Officer from the DSA is there. Motorcycle News (MCN) has sent a photographer. The tester is the DSA's instructor of testers.
I practice the module a few times. I'm ready. The tester is ready.
Steve asks if I'm confident of the two speed sections. Yes...
Steve's assistant, Paul, asks if I'm OK for the two speed sections. Yes...
I wish they would stop asking. Asking makes me nervous.
And I wish the track wasn't wet.
I ride the module twice for the tester: first a slalom, double figure of 8, 20 meters at walking speed and U turn. Last come the two speed sections, swerve and emergency stop. I hit the two speed gates at 54 kph for the emergency stop and 52 for the swerve. 50 is the pass speed.
The photographer asks me to ride the test a few more times.
I thank Steve and Paul from ACER and the tester from the DSA and the press officer from the DSA and the photographer from MCN - and I give cards to a few bikers watching the test. Then I drive home. Bernadette has taken Josh and Jen to the Malvern Spa. I make myself a mug of tea and collapse on the sofa. Reading demands too much energy and there is nothing of interest on TV. Hamish settles across my lap...

BRAVE YOUNG LADY

Our eldest son, Josh, and his girlfriend, Jen, have been visiting. Jen is brave to visit. It must be scary. All those How-do-you-dos with strangers. How awful will they be? You know? The boyfriend's folks? Are they really weird? And what do they expect? Commitment to a relationship? Planning for a fifty year future? Or, worse - conversation?
We are weird. Maybe not weird weird - but definitely unusual.
As for our cottage, romantic from the outside, great as a picture postcard. Bernadette and I love to live here. Through other eyes? Primitive, crumbling, a 300-year-old wreck...
And Hamish doesn't help. He is over enthusiastic as a greeter, jumps up at people, scrabbles at them with wet muddy paws.

PORN DOG

I am mystified by the intimate workings of the internet and what gets listed on Google and why. The Blog entry, USELESS BORDER TERRIER, rang a Google bell. I trolled searches to the Blog and discovered Hamish as third-from-top entry in a sex search! Our eldest son, Josh, has been staying a couple of days. He has bathed and brushed Hamish as befits a porn star. Next step? Hollywood...

JOY

Hi to my readers and a very joyous Easter/Passover to you all.

EASTER/PASSOVER

Yesterday we drove our Dutch friends to Hampton Court. On the banks of the Lugg river near Leominster, Hampton Court is a lovely Tudor castellated manor house parts of which date back to the early 15th century. We continued to Ross on Wye where the Dutch canoed on the river for a couple of hours while Bernadette and I read the Sunday papers in the gardens of the White Lion pub. We drove home on country lanes that wind through the Herefordshire hills - glorious sunny weather and the Dutch playing with buying a holiday home.

BOOKS ARE NOW AVAILABLE AT http://www.simongandolfi.com

HEREFORDSHIRE

Katrina Larkin is a co-founder of the Big Chill music festival. I will be covering the festival for the Guardian. Katrina will write a piece prior to the festival on my Herefordshire, the Herefordshire that I dream of when away traveling. I spent today visiting favorite sites for Katrina's article. Great day...plus having our Dutch friends here and celebrating both Easter and Passover week. I refer to the Dutch as our friends - not true. They are our family. Waking this morning, I lay in bed and listened joyfully to their voices rising from the kitchen.

A GREAT LIFE

I have a great life: a wife, four sons and a daughter, all of whom I adore and all of whom talk to me. My two elder sons and my daughter have wonderful lovable partners. I have four glorious grandsons. A first granddaughter is due imminently and a second next month. We live in a three-hundred year old cottage (slum or cute, depending on your expectations) with beautiful views across the Herefordshire countryside. We have kind and enjoyable friends on every continent. I am in good health, get to travel and write.
Depressed?
Don't give me that crap, old man.
Get it together or Bernadette will kick you up the backside...

USELESS BORDER TERRIER

Our Border terrier, Hamish, is young and feisty. He escaped yesterday (the postman had left the gate open). Frenzied barking led me to a house down the lane. Hamish had discovered a large flop-eared black and white rabbit in a cage on the front lawn. A tough Chav-type rabbit, safe in its cage, would have stuck its tongue out at Hamish. This rabbit was in shock. I dragged Hamish home and stuck his nose in one of the many moles hills desecrating our lawns. Hamish's answer: he doesn't do moles. He does sex with almost anything (including furniture), he does sleep, he does food and he does friendship with all and sundry (including burglars if any came our way). All in all, a totaly useless animal...
Though very handsome.

MANIC DEPRESSION

The image I project is of a fat, moderately jolly old buffer. In fact I suffer from manic depression. Traveling produces the manic mode. The past few weeks I have been in depression. One of the side affects is an inability to write letters. This must strike readers as the most inadequate excuse for bad manners. However, from those with whom I should have communicated, I beg forgiveness...

DSA BIKER TEST

I have been practicing for the new DSA bike test over the past two weeks. The test includes riding through a speed gate at 50 kph and immediately swerving before pulling up in a box. I ride a Honda 125 loaned by BRANSONS MOTORCYCLES, the Gloucester Honda Agent. The test area is short and a Honda 125 isn't the speediest accelerator. It takes a while to get the line and acceleration right. Steve of Acer Motorcycle Training spent ten years track racing. He has practiced on the new course over the past two months and reached 58 kph through the gate on the Honda CG. He is a good teacher and I finally made 51 kph after ten practice runs.

TOM YAM

I wrote that I must get off politics and back to cooking. Our eldest son, Josh, visits next Tuesday for two nights with his girlfriend, Jen. Josh called to say Hi and ask what I was preparing for Tuesday evening. We haven't met Jen. Josh says she isn't a vegetarian but wouldn't order a steak at a restaurant. Sea food?
Yes.
Great - I will prepare my favorite dish, Tom Yam. I use mussels as well as prawns and prepare a hot sauce to serve on the side.
SAUCE:
chilies, garlic & shallots
fish sauce and shrimp paste
tamarind
soft brown sugar

GET BACK TO COOKING

I have been enraged for the past few days by morally corrupt British politicians. I need to get back into the kitchen. We have a Dutch family, dear friends, arriving Wednesday for Easter/Passover - a fine time to plan a fine meal. I will drop by the butcher in Malvern Wells tomorrow. He gets his beef from the Scottish Highlands. Skirt is the perfect cut for the barbecue. Essential that I remember not to overdo the chili.

GEOF HOON HAS NO SHAME

Geoff Hoon was Minister of Defense when Britain joined the United States' invasion of Afghanistan. Geoff Hoon was Minister of Defense for three and a half years. He occupied a luxury apartment free of rent in Admiralty House. He rented out his own London house and charged the British tax payer for the upkeep of his home in his Nottinghamshire Constituency. Meanwhile the families of British soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan were condemned to substandard accommodation. Their accommodation was Geoff Hoon's responsibility. An honorable man would resign in shame. Honor is foreign to Mister Hoon.
Hoon's father was a railwayman. By profession, Hoon is a barrister. I recall a saying from my youth: Go screw the working class, I've got the foreman's job at last.
Bravo, Mister Hoon...

HEROES OR TERRORISTS?

I spent much of my childhood in the Scottish Borders. I remember reading Buchan and Kipling and imagining myself a British officer disguised as a Pathan tribesman, the Cheviot Hills as the Hindu Kush. My elder brother and I rode most day - my brother, a turbaned Chieftain. Tsarist Russia was the enemy. So much for fantasy...
Forty years later I followed moujahidin into Afghanistan. I wore a khaki turban and khaki pyjamas and carried a World War One rifle (all Afghans carry weapons). Soviet Russia was the enemy.
A narrow footpath climbed barren mountains parallel to the Khyber Pass. The path petered out and we scrambled up slides of granite scree and clawed our way across rock. We reached the head of the pass at nearly 3,000 meters, descended into a valley and walked until evening when we dined on chapatis that were 80% sand. Full moon and we stumbled all night up a dry river bed. Dawn and we slept an hour in a ruined farm house - no chapatis. Then we walked all day and were finally through the Russians' exclusion zone. For those two days the leader of our troop encouraged me with threats of Russian helicopter gunships. I prayed for a Russian gunship. One bomb. Peace...
A different peace came three days later.
We had shivered through the night on an open mountain side. The sun rose. The clarity of vision in the mountain air verged on the hallucinatory. We followed a stream up a narrow valley. Grass grew emerald on the banks and I recall wild flowers and a pair of blue kingfishers and an abundance of pale yellow butterflies. An old man had presented me with a horse the previous day and I rode to the rear of our troop. One by one, the moujahidin passed me their weapons until I resembled a mobile game of pick-up-sticks. I had no idea of our destination nor of our troop's intention. For the first time in years I was freed from any possibility of taking a decision and rode in an almost trance-like state of peace. Yet this was war. Two thirds of the population had fled their country, every village lay in ruins, livestock had been stolen or killed by bullet or landmine, food was famine short. So, though happy, I was also shamed by my happiness.
Two mulberry trees in fruit shaded the stream at the head of the valley. We rolled rocks to form a dam and one of the younger moujahidin climbed the trees and shook berries down into the chill water. We sat with our feet in the water below the pool, cooling them from the march and eating the mulberries and I recall the faces of the moujahidin - fierceness melted by the moment's content. I recall jokes and laughter and an intense companionship and trust one in the other and of trust in these harsh mountains that rose purple from the valley and barred Russians in their tanks and APCs. Now the tanks and APCs and gunships are American and British – and the heroes I traveled with are terrorists.

SCREW OUR SOLDIERS

I have been watching the Defense Debate in the House of Commons. Present are a mere half-dozen Labour MPs. This is the Party of Government that has sent our soldiers into battle after battle, too often with insufficient, ineffectual or unserviceable equipment. What must a soldier think as he sees those empty benches? A soldier back from Afghanistan? A soldier crippled by bomb attack on a snatch Landrover? A soldier with recent memories of lost companions? Companions who might have been saved were there sufficient helicopters?
There writes the Old Blimp again, the ex-cavalry officer off his bike...Who cares?

MISERY

Bernadette has been in agony for the past four days with an infected tooth. My brother and sister-in-law came to dinner last night - anniversary of my mother's death. Bernadette was brave in sitting through the meal before heading for bed on a cloud of painkillers.

BIKE TEST

A new journey begins with a drive to the Drivings Standards Association Test Pad at Gloucester. The Test Pad is a large tarred rectangle some 150 meters by 80. The Pad is patterned with different coloured cones and two speed gates. Steve of Acer Motorcycle Training will (maybe) coach me through the new SDA biker test that comes into effect on April 27. The SDA will test me in advance on April 2 so that I can describe what is entailed in an article for Motorcycle News.
The test is about control. It begins with the rider keeping pace with a pedestrian. Next comes a slalom and double 8. Then for the difficult bit - difficult for me. Ride the length of the pad and back, pass through a speed gate at 50 KPH and immediately swerve and come to a halt. I finally managed 40 KPH after six attempts. Speed never was my strong suit...

SOUP

I love D J Kirkby. She wrote a more than generous review of OLD MAN ON A BIKE. Now she offers to exchange soup recipes: her Lotus Land for my Jerusalem artichoke.
Proper stock is the first essential - none of those vile powders or stock cubes made from God knows what. Mostly I use chicken stock - though I keep vegetable stock in the freezer for vegetarian guests. Chop and melt two shallots and two cloves of garlic in unsalted butter. Meanwhile peel and slice the Jerusalem artichokes and simmer the Jerusalem artichoke peelings in the stock for twenty minutes to concentrate the flavour, strain. Add the artichokes to the onion and garlic and cook gently for a few minutes before adding the stock. Simmer until the artichokes are soft. Blitz with a blender till smooth. Check the seasoning. Reheat before serving and stir in the creme fraiche.
Guests tend to eat a second serving so prepare plenty or whip their bowls away quickly.

GRAVITAS

The USA has a Secretary of State. We Brits have a Foreign Secretary - same job, different title. The Foreign Secretary projects the public image of the nation. Like her or hate her, Hilary Clinton is impressive. I have been watching our Foreign Secretary on TV - David Milleband. He possesses the gravitas of a student at a Provincial University. No wonder the Russian Foreign Minister treated him with contempt.
Perhaps age has caught up with me....

JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE SOUP

Jerusalem artichoke soup is delicious. I used creme fraiche rather than cream, lighter and adds a gentle tang. Also proper chicken stock. Stock cubes are a negative.

HARPER COLLINS = MURDOCH

Harper Collins bought OLD MAN ON A BIKE after the bankruptcy of The Friday Project. Harper Collins have lost their copy of our contract. They have asked me to sign a new contract. My agent, Paul Marsh, has asked for a return of the foreign rights with which Harper Collins have done nothing. Harper Collins won't cooperate. The original contract with Harper Collins included an advance against royalties. They have never paid this advance. They admitted that I was leagally due the advance - however if I insisted on being paid, they would publish OLD MAN ON A BIKE as a cheap paper back. Harper Collins is part of the Murdoch Empire....
Meanwhile I have been cooking Jerusalem artichoke soup and a smoked haddock risotto for Father Dominic of Blackmore and Upton Parishes.

CONFESSION

I have never taken a UK biker driving test. I have never ridden a bike in the UK. The weather has put me off. Our youngest son, Jed(19), claims that my car is his car. He has been working this winter at the Hotel Belles Piste in Araches la Frasse (Haute Savoye). Most days he snowboards from 10 am to 4 pm. He returns home at the end of April and will want my car to drive to mountain-board meets. Rather than argue ownership, I shall get a bike. A Honda 125, naturally. I am booked with the DSA to take the new test the first week in April. Monday I begin practicing. I am extremely nervous. Jed will mock the hell out of me if I fail.
So will Bernadette....
The photograph is of Jed out of his head. He calls it having fun. Mad...!

VISIT MEXICO AND DIE

I've been reading posts on Fodors Travel Forum warning of the dangers in traveling to Mexico - mostly US citizens scared by reports of kidnappings and narco wars.
Here is my post:

Aged 75, I rode my Honda 125 north through Mexico last year on my way back from Tierra del Fuego to New York. The route took me up the Pacific coast, east via Merida and Queretaro to the Sierra Gorda and north into Texas at Brownsville. I never felt in any danger.
Recently we have been watching the WIRE here in England on TV. Based on the evidence of this much acclaimed series,tourists should be warned against visiting the US, especially Philadelphia. Oh, and certain areas of Washington DC, Miami, Los Angeles etc etc etc. Random killings are common in all these cities, cops are corrupt, narco gangs rule the streets...
Or be sensible, travel, meet new people, encounter different cultures and enjoy yourselves. I am planning a ride round the Indian subcontinent for next winter and intend celebrating my 77th birthday in Nepal.

Cheers!

ELEGANT BRIT BLIMP

A biker on Horizonsunlimited suggests that bikers have the advantage of always looking scruffy - thus less of a temptation to bandits. I think of myself as moderately elegant, good, well-polished Church shoes, gloves, clean shirt. You know - an English Gentleman of a certain age
Though I lose confidence in this image when sprawled in the dirt beside the bike...

LEOMINSTER CLASSIC MC CLUB

WITH GRAHAM


B and I drove down to Warmley (near Bristol) yesterday evening for a VOYAGER CLUB biker evening at the Midland Spinner pub. Great group, very patient as I droned on for more than an hour. B says that I am improving as a speaker but need to cut the presentation by thirty minutes. Next outing is 8 pm on April 1 for the LEOMINSTER CLASSIC MC CLUB at the Bush Inn, Bush Bank, Canon Pyon. Hopefully B will agree to drive home so that I can indulge in a couple of pints!

MUSSELS IN COCONUT

I celebrated my 76th birthday last week by cooking dinner for Bernadette and for my brother and sister-in-law and an old and dear friend, Sarah Duke/Richardet. Mussels in a coconut soup:
fresh chicken stock
lemon grass
kaffir lime leaves
garlic
red chilies
fresh coriander
Thai fish sauce
shitake mushrooms
coconut milk

Add a shrimp paste that I prepare in bulk and keep bottled in the fridge.
garlic
shallots
red chilies
shrimp paste
tamarind paste
Madeira sugar

Wonderful were my Argentine cousins visiting. Thinking of them, I chose a red Malbec from Mendoza, 2003.

No fat in the meal makes for easy washing up - no, we don't have a dish washer.

LIVE OFF THE LAND (OR POND)

DUCK TAGINE


Our bankers have misbehaved. Our political leaders have been indolent, ignorant or complicit. We ordinary citizens must economize. I have plucked a brace of duck shot by a neighbor and roasted the carcases for soup. I will cook for Bernadette this evening a tagine: wild duck breast seasoned with coriander, cinnamon, cummin and black pepper and served with honeyed apricots on a bed of seasoned couscous and grilled aubergines.
Next week I will lie hidden in the shrubbery at my brother's and shoot rabbit off his lawns. Wild rabbit pie is good. A blanquette of wild rabbit and forest mushrooms seasoned with rosemary is delicious. Come Spring I must get the rod out and sort through the fly box. Building a smoke house would be a sound economy, smoked trout...and we need to buy a truck of old mushroom compost for the vegetable garden.
Meanwhile I am studying maps for a ride next winter.

ACE CAFE

I drove down with Bernadette to London yesterday,to the Ace Cafe, to give a presentation at a biker meet organized by Horizon Unlimited and sign copies of OLD MAN ON A BIKE. Snow threatened and I spoke to a dwindling crowd. I also spoke directly after a brilliant and humorous speaker - not good for my confidence! However it was great to catch up with friends and meet people whom I had only met previously on the Web and great for Bernadette to meet people who have been only names to her. Especial thanks go to Glynn Roberts for the hours he put in organizing the meet and to Andrew at www.Londonbikers for dropping by.
We hit heavy snow on the way back to Herefordshire. We were on four wheels. Glynn was heading further north on his bike. Good to hear to day from him this morning that he got home safe.

motofoto.cc

My thanks to Joe Berk:
Readers seeking a US review of OLD MAN ON A BIKE can hit the motofoto.cc button

AMAZON CANADA

Brit publishing contracts do not include the USA in the English speaking world. OLD MAN ON A BIKE is available on every Amazon other than Amazon.com - Dutch, French, German, Spanish, various Scandinavian varieties and all those countries that were or are part of the British Commonwealth
Readers in the US can buy the book on Amazon.ca - Canadian Amazon. Amazon.ca sells the book for Ca$17.46. It also lists a bookstore in New Jersey that offers the book at US$11

KIND COMPLIMENTS FROM INDIA

Hitting this link takes readers to an Indian biker site. Members have been commenting with kindness on my Hispanic American journey. I drove a VW jeep in the early sixties from London to India and down to Rameswaram. I haven't been back for 45 years. Yet I remain fascinated by the country: the people, music, architecture...And the delicious food! Those kind messages from India's bikers prod me into considering a ride this winter, exchange the greyness of winter England for Indian sunshine - and a multitude of spiced prawns. Go for it, Old Man, go for it....

GUARDIAN TRAVEL

For those interested, here is the piece published by The Guardian newspaper. The Title and subtitle are theirs:

WHY YOU ARE NEVER TOO OLD FOR AN ADVENTURE

Flash wheels and support vehicles are for wimps, as 73-year-old Simon Gandolfi proves when he picks up a 'pizza delivery bike' in Mexico and heads down south

Why would a reasonably sane man in his mid seventies ride the length of Hispanic America on a small motorcycle - a man who is overweight, suffered two minor heart attacks, has a bad back and survives on a small pension? Age has much to do with it. My wife is younger by almost thirty years. I suspect that our late-teenage sons find me an embarrassment. I am mistaken for their granddad - or an old tramp. And my tales of past travel bore them.
So an attempt to prove to myself and to my family that I can hack it? And to others of my age that solo travel remains possible and an enlivening experience.
I chose a Honda 125 for the journey, the original pizza delivery bike. I could buy it new in Mexico for aproximately £1200. Built in Brazil, spares are available throughout Hispanic America; it cruises 120 miles to the gallon; my legs have sufficient strength to hold it upright and I can lift it after a fall. Nor did I desire a big bike. Big bikes create a wealth barrier and colour people's perception of who you are. I was traveling for the people...
Finance and time governed my preparations. I bought a thick jumper and a pair of strong Church's walking shoes in a Hereford charity shop, packed thermals and a six month supply of heart medication. Insurance? For a biker in his seventies? I don't think so!
A cheap ticket with AerLingus took me to Boston followed by Amtrak south. I have treated the United States on past visits as wide-spread islands: New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas. What land lay between? Mostly flat was the answer, innumerable small towns of identical clapboard houses, rust-spotted gas guzzlers and monster pickups in the yard. I remarked to a fellow passenger on the United States flag flying outside almost every house.
“The poor live close by the railway track. Their kids are in the Military.”
Arkansas was the surprise. I had imagined dirt farms from Grapes of Wrath.
Reality was green hills and magnificent trees.
Finally Dallas and the home of an old friend, a true Texan. He and three fellow Good Ol' Boys planned a weekend on monster bikes. I followed in a Hummer as baggage man.
Galileo claimed the World was round; he had never cruised the Texas Panhandle. The road runs flat and straight, not a house, no animals, not even a tree. The boys on the bikes rode in a bunch. Back home we would fill the road. In the Panhandle we were minute pieces in a board game. The sun sparkling on helmets was an electronic ray. Reach the end of the board and we fall off...
I intended traveling by express coach south from Dallas to Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico, 1200 kilometers, 36 hours, US$115. The Good Ol' Boys thought me mad. A bus driven by a Mexican – tantamount to suicide. And riding a tiny bike through countries plagued by banditry! Plus crooked cops and corrupt border officials...
A new bike awaited me at the Honda agency in Veracruz. I was confronted by the first official when registering the bike. Proof of residence was obligatory. A utilities bill was sufficient. The registrar produced his own electricity bill and called me Grandfather. Keep to the main roads. Elsewhere there are bandits...
I took the bike for a preliminary outing to Old Veracruz and the ruins of Hernando Cortes' first house. From here Cortes set out to conquer Mexico. Aztec armies were a doddle when compared with traffic on the urban freeway. This was my first ride in forty years. Five kilometers and my thumb and thigh muscles cramped. The project was ridiculous. Time to admit defeat. Return home, tail between my legs. Face the mockery of friends and neighbours...
I was saved by meditation. Om never did it for me – not even in the mystic 60s. At a riverside restaurant in Old Veracruz, I meditated on a dish of perfectly prepared prawns with chili - camerones el diablo. I breathed the familiar thick, over-ripe tropical scent of garlic and onion, fried fish, fruit, rotting leaves and rich damp earth. A boat chugged up-river, birds sung, children chased each other, a fun trio played Mexican weep music. Bliss...
I was fortunate in Veracruz to meet a kindly Federal police officer with extensive knowledge of the roads. He suggested a suitable route for an elderly novice: the first day south along the coast to San Andres Tuxlas, straight road, gentle gradients; a second day of low hills followed by a stretch of highway to Tuxtepec; third day over the Sierra on Route 175 and my first mountain pass, 60 meters above sea level to 3200. Call me, he said, call me when you reach Oaxaca.
I stopped three times on the climb to add clothing. Hairpin followed hairpin, rain forest gave way to pine. Could the bike cope? Could I cope? Was the knife pain in my chest cardialgic, muscular or imagination?
My legs trembled as I dismounted at a mud brick cafe at the head of the pass. The woman owner set a chair in the sun, poured me a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and shouted to her daughter to check the hen house for eggs. An old bus disgorged companionable faces. Where was I going? All the way south, I said - and, for the first time believed that I might succeed.
Oaxaca is 16th and 17th century Hispanic Colonial glory in green quarry stone, luminescent after rainfalls. The Jesuit temple is austere beauty. I discovered companionship in a side chapel: the familiar names of our English Jesuits engraved amongst the role of martyrs: Owen, Oldcorne, Ashley, Campion, Arrowsmith...
And I reported to the Veracruz Federale that I had arrived safely.
I thought you would. Call me from Ushuaia.
I recall a perfect dawn on Mexico's Pacific coast. From Tehuantepec an excellent highway unwound west through hills speckled with white blossom of frangipani and splashed with creepers of deep rose and brilliant blue. Rain left a sharp clean taste to the air. I glimpsed, between the hills, sea and white surf curling on golden sand; vultures and buzzards floated overhead. I rode at ease amongst memories of my Bultaco trail bike in the Ibiza of the 60s.
Indulging in memories is dangerous. My Guatemalan friend, Eugenio, owns a Maya hill tower overlooking the Rio Dulce. “The track's bad,” he warned. “I'll run you up later in the pickup.” As if I was an old man in need of help!
Proud in my Ibiza memories, I kicked the Honda alive. Minutes later I lay beneath the bike, my right leg frying on the exhaust pipe. The burns became a battle ground between modern pharma and ancient brujaria, antibiotics versus jungle poultices,
Falls are unavoidable. My second came on Costa Rica's Nicoya Peninsula, a steep gravel road. Diners gathered round as a doctor scrubbed and sewed my right hand at a table in a village restaurant. The doctor's wife sat beside me. En route to a party, the wife wore a minimal mini-skirt. Look down, I was confronted by her thighs - dangerous. Nor did I enjoy watching the doctor at his work. So I sat with my eyes shut and concentrated on the kitchen scents of garlic and grilled snapper.
Two days rest in a cabin behind the general store in San Francisco Coyote and I was off again, up over the mountain spine, Pacific Coast to the Caribbean - and a third tumble, this time on a United Fruit Company railway bridge a few miles into Panama. The bridge is a hundred meters long. Planks either side of the rails form the roadway. The planks were slippery and uneven. Some were missing. Much of the safety rail had been torn away. I panicked and deliberately tipped the bike inward between the rails. Truckers rescued me and delivered me and the Honda to the next town, Almirante. Only three mini-catastrophes in 26000 kilometers, not too incompetent...
The Chief of Customs at the Honduran border was the only official to hold me up. He insisted I watch a France/Mexico football International on TV in his office – and drink his beer. I demurred at the third bottle. Copan was my destination. Ten kilometers, Old Man. You can slide that far.
Nor can I complain of the law. Lost in Bogota, two biker cops led me 10 kilometers to the highway with blue lights and sirens. Traffic police nurse-maided me through the coastal desert of Peru in a sandstorm and treated me to lunch. A police band in Bolivia played me out of town. A female police officer in Salta, Argentina, kissed me on both cheeks.
Dangers? Colon, Panama, was dangerous. Police armed for a war zone patrol in pairs and wirelessed backup to escort me a single block to a bank. And I met a Chinese American biker who had been robbed at knife point. He and I were seeking passage round the Darien Gap. We shipped on a small banana boat only to discover that the crew were smugglers. We had paid to be delivered to Cartagena. They dumped us on a beach in the middle of the night. We were in Colombia illegaly. The nearest town, San Bernardo, was an hour's ride down a mud track. A further six hours brought us to Cartagena to be chided by the Head of Immigration: “Safer for them to have cut your throat. Have you learned nothing in your seventy years?”
Colombia has an image problem created by Hollywood. Scenery is jungle. Men sweat and wear grease in their hair. Intrepid US heroes (Harrison Ford) fight cocaine cartels. Heading inland I rode through a vast parkland of great trees, lush paddocks, clean streams, fat cattle, glossy horses – followed by days of mountains and upland pastures reminiscent of our English Lake District.
And such urban architecture – from the simplicity of small, cobble-and-whitewash towns to the 17th century glories of Cartagena and Popayan. Founded in the 16th century, I find Popayan the most perfect of Hispanic Colonial towns. Streets of baroque houses and mansions remain unblemished by developers. Cathedral and churches possess a serene beauty.
Ecuador boasts the glories of Quito and, at the Museo Nacional, Hispanic America's greatest collection of pre-Colombian ceramics - and I went white-water rafting at the foot of an exploding volcano. Peru and Bolivia are the tarns and fells of the Alto Plano, snowy peaks and the fifth day of a miners' picket that had closed the highway. The miners welcomed the grandfather. We sat on a grass bank, sipped mate and photographed each other.
Argentina is Salta and the culture shock of finding myself in a seemingly European city, the desert to Mendoza, delicious wine, huge steaks, the massive barrier of the Andes, the extraordinary clarity of light in Patagonia and, in driving sleet, surprise at startling a flock of green parrots from trees along a river bank.
Now returned to the safety of my beloved Herefordshire, I recall fragments of conversation:
The speaker at a millionaires' Dallas breakfast club warning of a billion and a half Muslims in the world - everyone of them taught from birth to hate and kill Americans.
A Mexican businessman in Veracruz commenting on race: The only pure bloods are horses.
A mid-fifties Californian surfer with chemically recalibrated brain insisting that seven-foot green aliens had been discovered in sarcophagi beneath Maya pyramids.
A bench in the Cathedral Square, Panama, and an elderly schoolteacher weeps as she recounts the US invasion: None of the captains were killed. Only poor people. My neigbours were all killed. The youngest girl was six. The grandmother was seventy three. And my sister...
My Chinese-American companion on the smugglers' boat from Colon to Colombia remarks at every setback or danger Simon, we wanted an adventure...And, with splendid Chinese elitism, discounts pre-Colombian art as Two thousand years of bad ceramics.
A small town restaurant on the Bolivian Alto Plano, two Bolivian men at the next table. One asks my nationality: Your Blair is a great liar.
Porto San Julian, Patagonia, an elderly matron at the monument to the heroes of the Argentine airforce in the Falklands/Malvinas War: It was a politicians' war. There were no heroes, only victims.
Also in Patagonia, sheltering with two cops from a freezing gale in the lee of their truck: The whore of a Government forgot to pay the gas bill.
Finally the manager of the Honda Agency in Ushuaia: We've been expecting you, Senor Gandolfi.
My journey was complete, six months on the road, 26000 kilometers, a maximum ascent (in Bolivia) of 4700 meters. Sleet, ice, gales and tropical storms were momentary hardships amongst perfect day after perfect day. I was treated universally, even in Colon, and by officialdom and commonality, always with true kindness and consideration. I slept in small family hotels recommended by locals, invariably a room with bath. Room rates varied country to country: US$18 in Veracruz, half that in Bolivia.
I come of a recusant family and was educated at Catholic schools. In the sublime churches of Hispanic America I discovered how deeply imbued I am with the culture of Catholicism...And, riding alone across those vast spaces, uncovered within myself an unfashionable admiration for those scant bands of Spaniards, the Conquistadors. They were small men of minimal education and many superstitions. Judge them how you wish but never doubt their extraordinary courage and imagination. And they differed in one essential from the British Founding Fathers of the United States. The Conquistadors intermarried with the indigenous population...Yes, including Hernando Cortes.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

OLD MAN ON A BIKE reached No 1 in Movers & Shakers on Amazon UK at the weekend and No. 2 in travel writing sales. The Guardian did the trick. I have also been invited to be a guest speaker at a Literary Festival in May. A dozen of my books have been published over the years. The Literary Festival is a first. Yelling Yipeee would be unseemly in a man of my advanced years...!

FESTIVITIES

Christmas and New Year are gone. The travel editor at the The Guardian telephoned the week prior to the festivities: would I write a piece covering the southern leg of my American excursion? For when? January 2nd. How many words? 2000. So much for the holidays! I E-mailed the piece on New Year's Day. Sorting photographs took a further few days. The Guardian did me proud. They published the piece last Saturday, January 10, as a three page spread in the travel section.

LEDBURY, HEREFORDSHIRE

Ledbury's Mayor and the Town Crier watch as I sign copies of OLD MAN ON A BIKE in the Three Counties Bookshop. I am dyslectic. How embarrassing to make a spelling mistake in front of such august witnesses!

POSTERS

AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN IN PERU (alias The Mobile Blimp)


Kind people have been posting messages on this Blog. Amongst their number, Gemma, Hubert Kriegel, Rob, Greg Funnell, D J Kirkby, John McClane and an Englishman in Japan. Thank you, a very happy Christmas and a safe New Year. For bikers (Hubert and his sidecar), ride safe and may all your falls be gentle,
simon

HEREFORD TIMES

A journalist on the Hereford Times asked for my New Year wishes. Difficult not to be pompous...as with featuring on the radio program, Desert Island Discs. Do those famous people really listen to both Gregorian chant and the most obscure of Dylan albums?
These are the wishes I sent to the Hereford Times:

Wishes for the New Year? Health for my family and myself: though 76, I plan a further six month solo journey by motorcycle, preferably not to Eternity.
On the home front, I wish for leaders who boast less in good times, accept responsibility in bad and are keener students of history.
On the world stage, I wish for the safe and speedy withdrawal of our soldiers from Afghanistan. I am familiar with the country and its people having lived in Kabul in the days of the King and ridden on horseback with moujahidin during the Russian occupation. Afghans were our heroes then. We are their enemy now.
Lastly (or firstly), writers are obsessive egotists: our greatest wish is that our books sell well.

EMPTY NEST

Our youngest son, Jedediah, has flown the nest. I drove him to Gatwick airport from whence he flew to Geneva and continued by road to a small resort in the French Haute Savoye where he will work in a small ski hotel and perfect his snowboarding. He will be away five months. Our home feels very empty without him. I worry that he will hurt himself on the mountains.
He is worried by my health. I have promised to lose weight.

LEDBURY, HEREFORDSHIRE

Ledbury is a small charming town once famous for its cattle market (Herefords, of course). Bernadette and I were married in the Tudor market house. New Year approaches. People are out there buying Christmas presents. OLD MAN ON A BIKE is a fine stocking-filler and readers enjoy having a copy signed by a local author. One of the two books shops in Ledbury, BOOKS & MAPS, has sold 30 copies; I signed a further 14 for them yesterday. I did a public signing last Saturday in the other shop. We ran out of books (an order for fresh stock hadn't arrived). However I had my photograph taken with the mayor and the town crier which I will post in due course.

GRATITUDE

Having readers (or listeners) leave comments here is a reward only equaled by encounters on the journey. Thank you all. I am an extremely fortunate old man...

EXCESS BAGGAGE

Sandi Toksvig, a great traveler, presents the BBC Radio 4 travel program, Excess Baggage. The program is recorded at Broadcasting House, London, on Fridays and broadcast on Saturdays at 10 am. London is our capital and traveling to London is always up - or so I was taught. I was also taught to judge men by their shoes and to wear proper leather, properly polished. I mentioned on Excess Baggage that I wore a good pair of Church's sensible English walking shoes for the ride south from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego. I wore the same shoes when traveling up to London. I mention the shoes and traveling up to London because such habits mark me as old-fashioned or out of date - as does my accent. I listened to the program on Saturday morning. I sound (to me) like an Old Blimp. My son, Joshuah (22), attempts to reassure me. He claims that people will find me a charming rarity, relic from bygone times.

WEDDINGS AND DAMP EYES

Weddings are private - the emotion they arouse. I wept at my daughter's wedding last month - wept with love and with joy at her happiness. Enough...

OLD MAN ON A BIKE, HarperCollins UK

AMAZON.CO.UK carries a couple of kind reviews. Read at OLD MAN ON A BIKE:

OLD MAN ON A BIKE, HarperCollins.uk

WEEKEND READING, Caroline Smailes

OLD MAN ON A BIKE, HarperCollins uk

My gratitude for this review at Biker Site MotoFoto:

OLD MAN ON A BIKE, HarperCollins uk

My gratitude for this kind review:

METROPOLITAN STUD

Late Fall in Dutchess County, NY: cloud-skimmed sky, hills cloaked in gray woodland, splashes of golden willow, patches of dry corn, mares in paddocks of faded green, wood pigeons on the barn roof,...
No days of rest on a horse farm. Michael, Shane on his back, marches passed on morning inspection. Overheard, the lilting Spanish from Mexican farm-hands freshening straw in the stallion pens...

STREAMERS OF GEESE AGAINST A GREY SKY

Dutchess County, New York, mares stand close and munch hay together in the paddock below the barn; drizzle softens hillsides of naked woodland; sky is layers of soft greys; long streamers of geese fly south; my grandson does his lion imitation; my daughter beams with pride. Mothers are like that - thinking their kids remarkable. Frankly, crawling is no big deal. Nor is giving the occasional roar.
I see Shane, ten months, through unprejudiced and unemotional male eyes. He is loving and totally lovable, extraordinarily beautiful, a natural comic and possessor of an intense intelligence - in fact much like his Mom.
I am not certain yet as to whether Shane is an oracle.
Charlie Boo (my grandson back in England) is an oracle - though his forecasts of the future are not absolutely reliable. However, this may be my misinterpretation of Charlie's reading of the runes. He is equally wonderful in all other ways and has an equally wonderful mother. The Dads are OK too...

GRAND CENTRAL OYSTER BAR

My daughter lives in Dutchess County, New York. I can ride Amtrak from Pen Station or Metro-North from Grand Central. Amtrak is faster and more comfortable. It is also more expensive. I take Metro-North and save fifteen dollars. Grand Central is one of the world's great rail stations. The oyster bar at Grand Central is one of the World's great restaurants. Fifteen dollars buys half a dozen Bluepoint oysters plus tip.
There is no senior discount on the bus from Kennedy to Grand Central. Heading back to Kennedy I travel half price. The senior discount plus the saving on Metro-North pays for a full dozen Bluepoints.
My daughter says that I haven't saved a dime. However, she doesn't eat oysters.
I claim to have eaten a dozen and a half Bluepoints free.
Possibly a similar logic and discipline to mine has smashed the World's economy.

BEWARE AIRPORT SECURITY

I flew AerLingus back from New York to Birmingham (England) earlier in the year, transiting at Dublin. My biker boots are too big to pack. I was wearing them. At Dublin, I had to pass through Security a second time – no chairs at the security gate. I had to sit on the floor to drag the boots off - undignified! And worse...
BEWARE(a warning that Tax Free shops at airports don't give): I bought a large bottle of rum for Bernadette at Kennedy. Dublin Security confiscated it.
Who got to drink the booze? I hope they got sick, threw up and were kicked out of the house by their spouses....

Meanwhile here I am back in the US at my daughter's home, playing with my grandson.
People here ask where they can buy OLD MAN ON A BIKE. The book isn't available yet in the US. http://www.amazon.uk.co or http://www.amazon.ca and most good British bookshops have it in stock. HarperCollins Australia have it listed for December 1.

HEATHROW HADES - US PRIDE

Flying was slow in the fifties and DC3s had few creature comforts. However there was no demand that you be at the airport three hours before take-off. Three hours in the car to Heathrow, three hours in the terminal: I am exhausted already. I collapse by the boarding gate and watch the US election results on TV.
When I first flew as a young man, Southern States enforced legal apartheid no less vicious than that in South Africa.
Today the US has elected Senator Obama to the Presidency. Were I a citizen of the United States, Democrat or Republican, I would be immensely proud.

DC3s WERE ROMANTIC

I took my first commercial flight in 1952 - Dusseldorf to London, mid-winter - in response to a telegram: my mother was in hospital and unable to write. Unable to write had to be serious. The plane was a DC3. We got bounced around in a storm. I sat next to a Gay male German movie actor. The actor believed that we would crash and determined to have his last grope before death. Being groped was a new experience and not really my thing. However I was a polite young man, a lieutenant in a Lancer Regiment. Fending the actor's hands off without giving offense demanded concentration. I had no space for fear. My politeness was rewarded. I traveled up to London with the actor in a chauffeured studio car and telephoned the London Clinic from his mews house. I wasn't able to talk with my mother. She was out to dinner. She had cracked her wrists in a fall and had moved into the clinic as a convenience - nurses to help her bathe and dress.
I had a weekend pass. My mother wasn't expecting me. She was busy much of the weekend and we didn't see much of each other. The weather was fine on the flight back to Germany. I had a seat by the wing. Later I flew over much of Africa in DC3s. They were trusty planes: you could watch the propellers spin. And flying was a romantic adventure. Turn your coat collar up, tweak the brim of your hat and you were Humphrey Bogart watching the plane lift off in Casablanca...

US ELECTION

I flew Air France to New York on November 6 for my adopted daughter's wedding. My youngest son, Jedediah, drove me to London's Heathrow Airport. We left home at 2 am. Nighttime on the motorway can be scary. Jedediah passed his driving test only a couple of months back and I am a nervous passenger. Jedediah drove beautifully. We listened to the election results broadcast from the USA.
Jedediah said, “You want Obama to win?”
“Yes, I want Obama to win...”

ME AND MY BIG MOUTH

HOME IN HEREFORDSHIRE
Scott Pack (ex-head buyer at Waterstone's) has a review of OLD MAN ON A BIKE on his web site (hit the title button) and is gifting four copies.

BUY BOOKS AT BEACON BOOKS

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For any of my local readers, Beacon Books at 23 Worcester Road, Malvern, have OLD MAN ON A BIKE in stock. I will be doing a signing later this month.

BRASILIAN POP MUSIC IS HELL

HOME IN HEREFORDSHIRE
I received an email yesterday evening from a Spanish couple, Diego and Viki. We traveled together by river boat down the Madeira River (see BLOG 2007-11-11) and became friends. From Manaus, Diego and Viki were heading up a tributary of the Amazon to holiday at an eco-jungle lodge. Eco-jungle lodges are expensive and (mostly) uncomfortable. Preeminent amongst the fauna are ravenous mosquitoes, flies that lay eggs in the most intimate parts of the human anatomy, man-eating serpents, man-eating fish and poisonous everything. Flora is equally deadly. Survivors pass through a green muggy hell only to boast afterwards of a wonderful experience. Tell the truth, eco-jungle lodges would close to the benefit of the jungle. I am overjoyed by Viki's survival. I am even more overjoyed by her and Diego's email. They live in Cadiz. Their email suggests I come visit and eat camarones. Camarones aren't poisonous...

BRITS BEWARE

HOME IN HEREFORDSHIRE
This is more than a Blog - probably too long. However it is the distillation of my musings as I lie in bed here at home in Herefordshire and listen to news on the radio of the United States Presidential election.


I have been traveling by small motorcycle through the Americas for the past three years – perhaps an odd pastime for a man in his mid-seventies.
The journey took me from Veracruz, Mexico, south to Tierra del Fuego and back north to Duchess County, New York – 45,000 kilometers.
Before departing, I visited three High Schools in my native Herefordshire. I asked fifteen-year-olds for their image of a Mexican. All gave the same answer: dark skin, fat, sweating, drooping mustache, big hat, comic accent.
And those from further south? Central and South America?
Drug dealers or crooked cops, corrupt officials.
Such is cultural colonialism - so much is absorbed from Hollywood.
I wondered what those south of the Rio Grande thought of us Brits? Do they imagine that we wear bowler hats, carry umbrellas and drink endless cups of tea? Or that England is a land of football hooligans?
Do they differentiate between Britain and the US?

US citizens possess a certitude in their superiority; Canadians are poor cousins; those south of the border are inferior beings: good ones make good house pets.
At a breakfast club for white Dallas millionaires, I listened to the guest speaker promote a verse history of the US flag for distribution to Primary schools. Each verse faced a full page illustration of the flag in transition and an American family in period dress, Mom, Dad, two kids - white, of course.
The speaker began by warning of 1.2 billion Muslims in the World, all taught from birth to hate and kill Americans. The speaker progressed to Hindu and Buddhist, Chinese and Korean and added an off-hand sneer at the cowardice of the French. He finished by warning that only the army and the church stood between America (the United States) and chaos. Chaos was Latino immigration.

Traditional immigration to the United States were escapees from Europe. They brought little other than their native language and religion. From these grow the tribal allegiances exploited by US politicians: Polish, Irish, Jewish, Black, Italian, Latino. Dissent within the tribe is dangerous – dangerous to the dissenter's business interests. Of those fifty or so wealthy Dallas citizens at breakfast, one possessed sufficient temerity to whisper in Spanish to me that not all in the audience were in agreement with the speaker.

Hispanic America is more homogeneous. The Spanish transported their history and culture to the Americas. Conquistadors married native Americans, as did later settlers. To quote a Mexican businessman in Veracruz: the only true bloods are horses. Poverty of soil or remoteness governs the extent of the genetic mixture: few incomers settled the Altiplano or penetrated the Amazon forest.
Hispanic America is equally homogeneous in religion. Catholicism predominates. The Founding Fathers never mixed. Nor have their descendants. Division rather than diversity infects the country with a pox of competing and exclusive sects and sub-sects: ten different grades of Methodist, a dozen Baptists, the Church of God, the Church of Jesus Christ, Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventists, Later Day Saints and so on ad infinitum. Politicians crave support from racist TV preachers. Freshly painted churches stand triumphant on every knoll; trees hide the reality of decaying trailer homes.
This is the South through which I rode this early spring. I carried with me adult memories of legally enforced segregation and of Jews denied entrance to up-market resorts and hotels: Restricted Clientèle was the euphemism. World War 11 was won. The horrors of the holocaust were public knowledge.
Now Senators Clinton and Obama were locked in combat.
Senator Clinton boasted of her approval rating amongst white working-class males (white working-class racist males) and attacked Senator Obama for suggesting that her constituency in the mill towns and mining communities of Pennsylvania were bitter.
I rode north through those valleys towards my Jewish daughter's New York home and found reminders of the Scottish Borders in the 80s, employment decimated by the closure of mill and mine, of boarded shops and For Sale notices. The Scots believed themselves betrayed by an English Conservative Government. The Conservative Party in Scotland has never recovered. What fate will befall Republicans?
Senator Obama has the victory over Senator Clinton. He is hailed as the first Black Presidential nominee. To quote my Texan host: One drop of black blood and you're Black. Black? One word to dismiss the Senator's mother.
This is the language and terminology of division, of the ghetto. We Brits echo it at our peril.
It is a language that rules United States attitudes in foreign relations.
Both academics and Government divide the peoples south of the Rio Grande into Hispanic and indigenous. They mount aid schemes for indigenous communities. Ride through Guatemala and pass massive concrete signs boasting of the generosity of the peoples of the United States. Each article of that aid, however small, bares the clasped hands emblem of US Aid and the United States flag. 120,000 Guatemalans were murdered by the military during 36 years of clandestine war. The Central Intelligence Agency organized the war at the behest of the United Fruit Company. The United States funded the war. Military and para-military were trained by the United States, masters of brutality at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Did the guns and ammunition proudly bare the twin emblems of US Aid and the US Aid's slogan: GIFT OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA? Are Guatemalans expected to forget now that the clandestine war is ended? An aftermath of violence rules. Buses in Guatemala City suffered 2,200 armed attacks in the first five months of 2006, the year I rode south from Mexico. Much the same is true through out Central America.
The guns and gangs that dominate the townships are US exports. Governments and economies are destabilized by vast profits in drug trafficking financed by the US market.
Tourists skim the facade. They sun themselves at beach resorts, marvel at the pyramids of Copan and Tikal, admire the architectural treasures of Granada, Leon and Antigua, boast of bargains achieved in negotiating the price of a skirt or shirt handwoven by a village artisan desperate to feed her children, seek a greater morality in taking the eco route.
History is a picture postcard. Understanding is wasted effort.
We echo this attitude at our peril.
On earlier journeys through Central America people differentiated between the United States and Britain. On this journey, I was reminded, time and again, that the Founding Fathers were Brits. We are judged by the company we keep. Minor partners in an alliance, we are held equally responsible for the Iraq war, for the deaths of the uncounted tens of thousand of Iraqi civilians.
At first I remonstrated.
I admit to being something of a Blimp (though infected with Leftist tendencies). I have chosen to believe that we Brits acted better, that those who represent us are men of honor. Yet not a single Brit resigned at the disclosure of those vile happenings in Abhu Ghraib: not a Minister nor our Ambassador in Baghdad, not the senior officer in Baghdad nor the resident Chief of Military Intelligence (surely they knew – certainly they should have known).
“You knew what they were like,” a young investment banker in Costa Rica accused. “You knew what Bush's father did in Panama.”
A week later, I met an elderly schoolmistress in Panama City, a plump, motherly woman who, before retirement had been head mistress of the school in the Historic Quarter. We shared a bench facing the Cathedral. The teacher was reluctant to talk of people. She talked of the apartment buildings in the district that were destroyed in the invasion, that the buildings weren't luxurious but were an improvement, that there was a community feeling to the district.
She insisted that Noriega was easy to arrest. There were so many opportunities. He traveled out in the country, walked the streets...
"So many people died. None of the houses of the rich were damaged, none of the rich were killed, none of the captains. It was against the poor," the teacher insisted... Poor people weren't important. Artisans died and poor people who sold fried fish on the street corner and on the beach at weekends. "Very flavorsome," the teacher assured me, "Fried with chilli and with garlic. Yes, very flavorsome."
Memory of the fish was a trigger. She wept, yet her tone of voice remained calm, almost wondrous, as she spoke of a family, her neighbours. All were killed. The grandmother was seventy-three. The youngest child was only six, a girl. And the teacher talked of her own elder sister who had lived on the top floor of a building. "The soldiers shouted that everyone must come out into the street or be killed. There was so much blood in the elevator and bits of bodies.”
The sister died two days after the invasion. "It was the shock..."
The teacher wiped her eyes and was silent for a while. Then, "They killed more than five thousand people,” she said. “They buried them with tractors. They are hidden there deep down in the area that is called Arenal.”
That evening I talked with a successful Panamanian businessman in his fifties. "Yes," he said, "There were thousands killed..." And, Yes, it would have been easy to capture Noriega. The invasion was unnecessary.
The businessman gave the booming Panamanian economy as the reason for the invasion. President Carter had agreed to the canal being handed over to Panama in ten years. The invasion was a warning to the Panamanians of their true status. George H W Bush was US President. The invasion was named Operation Just Cause. Those in the Pentagon referred to it as Operation Just Because. Official Pentagon estimates put Panamanian deaths at 516 while an internal memo put the figure at over a thousand. An independent Commission of Inquiry put the figure at between 1000 and 4000. Some 15,000 civilians were displaced - most were working class. The US army arrested all the police officers. Wide spread looting resulted. Looters sacked a great museum. Businesses were bankrupted.
I visited a respected Panamanian journalist at his office. “Have no doubts,” the journalist said, “Noriega is a vile man. However he would have been easy to arrest. The invasion was simply a demonstration of power...”
The journalist described the US soldiers as country boys, young, ill educated and inexperienced, that they often fired from panic. The blame for the killing of civilians and for the ransacking of the airport by US soldiers lay with incompetent officers.
The invasion is ever present in the memories of Panamanians as it is through out Central and South America. It is proof of US attitudes.
Let the journalist have the last word: The gringos have never thought of us as equals or important.
So it is in Iraq – no need to count civilian casualties.
Race again...
Introducing me to her students, an Afro-American Professor at Texas A & M remarked that I believed that people in the United States were obsessed by race. The Professor asked how many in the group agreed. A blond female student in the front row finally and timidly raised a hand shoulder-high. One by one all the students followed. Once committed, students unburdened themselves of personal experiences.
Race and the United States are inseparable. So is Religion.
Catholicism is the enemy. Senator Obama's relationship to Reverend Wright commanded media attention for weeks. Little was made of Senator McCain soliciting support from the equally reverend Pastor Hagee. Pastor Hagee frequently refers to the Catholic Church as the Great Whore and the anti-Christ.
Senator McCain referred too Pastor Hagee as “the staunchest leader of our Christian evangelical movement,” while claiming to be “very honored by Pastor John Hagee’s endorsement.”
These are our allies. It is an alliance that has cost us respect in every country through which I rode. We Brits need beware.

SENATOR BARAK OBAMA

HOME IN HEREFORDSHIRE
Senator Barak Obama is admired througout Hispanic America. Senator John McCain represents the same old US domination and racial arrogance. Few Hispanic Americans believe that Senator Obama will win the Presidential election. Hispanic Americans believe that, even were the Senator to win the vote, the election would be stolen from him.

ENDEMIC CORRUPTION

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The journey is done. I met so much generosity and encountered such sadness, such cynicism: in Hispanic America, cynicism in regard to the United States - in the United Sates, cynicism in regard to Hispanic America.
Citizens of the United Sates judge Hispanic America endemically corrupt.
Hispanic Americans view the United States as the bedrock of financial and political corruption.

NATURAL ENEMIES

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Writing is a moderately happy occupation. Having a book published is tough. Imagine sending your beloved only child to boarding school - a sensitive child with whom you are obsessed. You surrender control to people who hate you. The hatred is understandable. Publishers have families and mortgages. They depend on writers writing.
"How's the book coming?"
"Nearly finished..." (writer speak for being determined to begin the prologue next Monday).

IGNORANCE IS PARANOIA

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I have been checking bookstores on the internet. Most Amazons have OLD MAN listed but not Amazon.com. This has something to do with publishing and distribution rights. Amazon.ca (Canada) is the closest for US readers. And HarperCollins Australia is advertising the book for publication December 1. Is that a separate print run?
Why am I ignorant of the nuts and bolts of my profession?

BOOKS IN THE BOOK STORE

HEREFORDSHIRE, OCTOBER 14
Publishers feed books into the stores ahead of the official publication date. OLD MAN ON A BIKE is due for publication November 1. A friend from over the hills (Worcestershire) called yesterday; she bought a copy at W H SMITH in Malvern.How do I feel? Good. Alive. And back to Blogging.
Publication has been fraught. The Friday Project bought rites to the book. I did the editing with them. They went bankrupt. The UK branch of HarperCollins cherry-picked the ruins. OLD MAN was one of the cherries. Later today I shall drive into Malvern and see how the book looks in the stores.

LETTER OF LOVE

DUCHESS VIEW FARM: APRIL 8
There is a difference between a love letter and a letter of love. A love letter is written to a lover. This diary is a letter of love - and of gratitude to those who made my journey possible, those who picked me up and nursed and mended me when I was broken, sent me on my way with courage restored. It is dedicated firstly to Graciela Abat Agostinelli - and to her ex-future novio, to Pepe Gonzalez the one legged orthopedic surgeon, to all the residents at the Hotel Argentino, the oil workers of Rio Grande, my cousins in Buenos Aires - yes, the people of Argentina, a people who proudly portray themselves as tough and macho yet are such softies. They are immensely kind, immensely generous and immensely thoughtful. Oh that they were subject to less vile politicians.
My treasured friends, I have waited to write to you until the journey was done. It is your journey. Had I failed, I would have betrayed you.

JOHNNYCAKE HOLLOW

HOME: APRIL 8
Take a right after Pine Plains, then a left, swoop into the next valley. The farm road is on the right. The road runs up hill between dark-stained post and rail fences to the homestead. The journey is done. I park outside the office between the stallion pens. Anya pushes open the door from her and Michael's duplex. Anya is small and immensely beautiful. She carries her baby in her arms. I am a real man. I pretend that riding in the cold wind has made me weep.

PINE PLAINS

PINE PLAINS: APRIL 8
Pine Plains is a few blocks each side of a crossroads. Houses are white weather-board in lawned yards, upstairs and downstairs, a few pillars, shaked roofs, sash windows and dormer windows - cute to an American - and to me. The brick restaurant on one corner of the crossroads is French owned. The food is reasonable.
Nothing much happens in Pine Plains (nothing much happens back home in Colwall). They are good sane places in which to sink roots.
I ride in sunshine. My hands are warm. The Honda purrs contentedly as we coast the country road. In my early youth this was a land of small dairy farms. A hundred or so years of toil won fields from hillsides. Dry stone walls protected the fields. Agro-Industry has put the farms out of business. Hill fields have surrendered to second generation birch woods spotted with weekend homes. Valleys are given over to hobby farms and horse farms. White painted post and rail fences enclose horse paddocks, white houses, white painted stable blocks. Even the dirt has been deodorised.
Why so bitter?
Not bitter, sad.
Sad at the waste of labour dedicated to future generations, a cold funeral pyre of dreams for a better life.
Such was New England...sacrifice to avarice.

ROBERT SHECKLEY

UPSTATE NEW YORK: APRIL 8
I feel the Hudson river as a frontier between old and new, between the United States that is foreign to me and the United States with historic and cultural ties to Europe. I take the correct road round town to the Hudson River bridge. I am home East of the river. Anya and I have toured every lane, visited each small town - Rhinebeck, Red Hook, Millerton - stopped for coffee here, shopped there, visited Anya's doctor, browsed the bookshops, collected a cat from the vet, ordered a Chinese takeaway.
Anya's genetic father, science fiction writer Robert Sheckley, passed his final years in Rhinebeck. He is buried in the artists' corner of Woodstock cemetery. Anya and I visited his grave at Christmas. Snow covered the cemetery. We parked and watched as two deer broke out of the trees and bounded uphill across the gravestones.
I am indebted to Bob for his teaching. He was a fine writer and a great teacher of writing. Largely forgotten in his own country, Sheckley remains a hero to those who live in what was the USSR. Soviet censers failed to recognize dangers in Sheckley's anarchist take on society; collections of his short stories sold in millions. To quote a leading literary critic in the Ukraine: "We were safe in a sort of intellectual stupor. Bob kicked our minds out of neutral".

HUMANITY IS IN RETREAT

ROUTE 209: APRIL 8
The terrain of the past two days was familiar in scale and history: a land of valley and hill, mill and mining towns, scattered villages, small fields and woods. Cross the State line into New York and everything is different. Development seems haphazard. The peripheral rash of abandoned stores and warehouses, multi-pump gas stations and fast food outlets is the United States portrayed by Hollywood. Pimped-up trucks, automobiles and pickups are protagonists. People are redundant: a bag lady, hoodies cloaking a black or brown or white face, baseball caps, faded jeans, slouched walk, scuffed trainers. Pennsylvania was an aberration.

MENTAL MATH FOR A NUMB BUTT

ROUTE 209: APRIL 8
I stop in Milford for coffee and a Subway chicken sandwich. Sun shines. Woods fall back The country opens. Route 209 crosses Interstate 84. I ride the frontier of New Jersey. How many States have I crossed? This has been a journey of calculations - kilometers to miles, liters to gallons, distance into minutes - anything to pass the time while crossing the deserts of Argentina or Central Brazil, any distraction that took my mind off the pain in my butt. Next trip I will buy a custom saddle. Next trip? I'll be 76. What am I planning? I'm crazy...

SUNSHINE HERALDS A GLORIOS DAY

STATE PARK: APRIL 8
A barrier closes the road midway through the State Park. The detour winds through woods and a narrow valley. Trees part to a scattering of clapboard houses, a couple of churches, a jail - or perhaps a down-market holiday camp? The lane climbs again out of the valley before dipping to the river. Clouds break. Sunlight glistens on wet tar and on the clear waters of the Delaware. Joy is instant.

ROUTE 209

DELAWARE RIVER: APRIL 8
Cold, cold, cold. Yet the route is beautiful. The two-lane highway follows the wooded banks of the Delaware. Mountains rise to my left. Dressed in Spring-green this would be wondrous. Now the naked trees seem frozen in their stillness. Skinny branches drip at the border of a patch of bald plow. I stop a while, beat my hands on my thighs and watch two men cast for trout in clear waters. The fishermen wear waders; the river drags white water eddies round their thighs.

DELAWARE RIVER

ROUTE 209: APRIL 8
I will finish this journey today - gratefully finish. I have been scared often - here, in the US, of falling ill. Not scared of illness. Scared by medical costs. We Europeans carry a plastic card that gives us free health treatment anywhere within the European Union. How good is the health treatment? Very good. Senator McCaine asks voters which they would prefer: European waiting lists or US freedom of choice. Freedom for whom? Senator McCaine. The Senator has Senatorial health insurance, a billionaire wife and doesn't know how many homes they own. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah....

POCONOS MOUNTAINS

ROUTE 209: APRIL 8
Nature is what the US does best. They possess a vast quantity: desert, plains, mountains, take your pick. I have ridden the Natchez Trail and the Blue Ridge Parkway. Now for the Poconos Mountains. Route 209 follows the Delaware, one more name conjuring a romantic view of history.
I leave Stroudsburg under an overcast sky. Cold? Bitterly cold. I stop at Wal-Mart and buy an outsize pair of ski gloves to wear over my other gloves. The gloves keep my hands warm for a few kilometers.

ADMIRABLE MEN

STROUDSBURG PA: APRIL 7
A third giant arrives at 1O am. The boss giant has sent him to fix my bike.
Has he much experience of bikes?
Never had one. Too dangerous. However machines are machines. Patience and logic are the only requirements.
He squats on the sidewalk and studies the bike a while, planning his moves. He dismounts a cover, removes the broken link and a further link from the chain, refastens the chain with a removable link.
Fifteen minutes and the bike is ready.
I am in his debt – and in debt to the boss giant for his kindness.
The boss is a type I recognize and admire from earlier travels through Africa, the Mid-east and the Indian sub-continent: a type of US expatriate. You find them in the oil fields and in engineering, agriculture and construction. They possess great energy and are immensely competent in diverse fields. Decision doesn't scare them. They act where we Brits would set up a committee to come to an indecision. And they treat all men as equals – race and religion not withstanding. Perhaps this lack of prejudice drives them abroad. They are uncomfortable back home. Home is too small.
Both the boss giant and Don Weempe are typical of the breed: Joe (my host in Granada) is another - good men in every sense...

AHEAD OF THE GAME

STROUDSBURG PA: APRIL 7
I sit in the lobby of the Stroudsburg motel, eat breakfast and read the paper. The paper is dated Monday, April 7. I check my watch: Monday, April 9. I have gained two days on the rest of the world. Better give them back...

CLARITY OF THOUGHT

STROUDSBURG PA: APRIL 8
The boss curses himself for not thinking clearly. I have less than 200 miles to ride. A new chain is unnecessary. Easy to repair the old. For sure, one of his men on the job will have a spare chain link in his toolbox. The boss will have a mechanic come by in the morning - around 10 am.

PREJUDICE

STROUDSBURG PA: APRIL 8
The boss and I wait in the truck while the sidekick buys fishhooks.
The boss says, “Never met a Mexican who wasn't polite and a worker...”
The boss is from New York.
The sidekick is from South Carolina.
This is the easy explanation of the difference in attitude.
However, my friend Don, a Dallas Good 'Ol Boy,would agree with the boss. All the workers in Don's construction business are Latinos.

MEXICANS ARE RUDE

STROUDSBURG PA: APRIL 8
Jack at the gas station is stringy of body and of beard. He has wrecked teeth and a wrecked Honda 750. I am welcome to the chain. The chain is way too big. Wal-Mart is the next stop. Work at the power station requires a multitude of keys. The boss wants the keys hung on fish hooks on a board in the works office. The sidekick drives. And he talks of Boilermakers and how he is one of a dying breed. Modern kids won't get their hands dirty.
Mexicans?
Mexicans are rude. They pretend that they don't speak English.

HOEING

STROUDSBURG PA: APRIL 8
Giants require regular sustenance. We eat before hunting for gas-station Jack - eat as in mountains. One waitress is fun. The other is wary of giants - the sidekick is flirtatious. He has undergone multiple divorces. Born in South Carolina, he has a home on the beach.
Boss giant is a bachelor and owns homes in Queens and in up-state New York twenty miles from my daughter's home. We can't get my bike fixed, he suggests I take the bus and he will drop the bike off at Anya's at the end of the month.
They ask where I live. I tell them Herefordshire, that we have a small cottage but a large garden.
The sidekick adds a further mountain of fries to his plate and asks if I do much hoeing.
He and the boss are keen on hoeing.
I say that my wife prohibits hoeing, that hoeing is bad for my back.
I have surprised the hell out of him. He orders mammoth wedges of pie, flirts with the waitress.
The waitress giggles and flounces off. To the boss he says, “Remember those two hoes we met up with in Charlotte?”

BLITZKRAIG

STROUDSBURG, PA: APRIL 8
We are in a dinner. The dinner has a bar and a dozen check-cloth tables. The giants have been in Stroudsburg a week and have integrated with the bar crowd. The crowd is male designer stubble. Dress code is check shirts or sweat shirts, jeans and baseball caps We are hunting the bike shop owner's home number. I plead that tomorrow would be fine. The giants are unstoppable. They are on a mission (imagine a two-man blitzkraig).
None of the bar crowd has the number. One of them suggests Jack has a Honda in pieces back of the gas station – Jack, you know, guy with a stringy beard?
Jack doesn't work at the gas station. He got fired.
Yeah, but he hangs out there in the evening. The bike's in the back.
I doubt that the bike would be a 125. Bikers in the States ride BIG.
I am being negative.
Negativity never stopped a Blitzkraig...

HEAVY COMPANY

STROUDSBURG PA: APRIL 8
The boss directs his sidekick round the block to a small, brick-built bike shop. A notice on the door proclaims the shop closed.
I am a Brit and a Blimp. Elderly Brit Blimps don't hammer on shop doors on a Sunday evening.
Boilermakers do.
Trail bikes crouch behind the shop window. The door quakes in its frame. The frame leaks cement at the edges.
I dread a burglar alarm, cops, jail...

BOILERMAKERS

STROUDSBURG PA: APRIL 8
A second giant, equally muscled and vast of belly, waits outside at the wheel of a grey four-by-four pick-up truck. I am thrust onto the center seat. My two companions are members of the Boilermakers Union. They are boilermakers from infancy – maybe even in the womb. Years have faded the Union badges tattooed on their massive biceps. They are refurbishing a power station. The first giant is the boss. The second is responsible for health and safety. The sidekick tells me pay is good – that it needs to be: Boilermakers don't survive into old age. Asbestos kills them. The power station here is packed with asbestos that needs removing. The giants have a work gang of forty men.

IN THE PAWS OF A GIANT

STROUDSBURG PA: APRIL 8
I am inspected by the giant.
“You look depressed,” he says. “The type of depression that goes with needing crutches and owning a small bike with a broken chain...”
I plead guilty to the ownership and admit the depression.
The giant extends a massive hand, hefts me to my feet. “Let's get it fixed.”
I remark timidly that bike shops close on Sundays.
“We'll open them...”

GIANT

STROUDSBURG PA: APRIL 8
I sit in the motel lobby and drool at the lush scents of curry seeping from the owners' quarters. A giant enters, giant in height, giant in shoulders, giant in belly - late fifties and losing his hair - stained jeans, stained sweat shirt, scuffed work boots. He leans against the reception counter. The counter quivers. So does the receptionist.

MOTELS A GUJARAT MONOPOLY?

STROUDSBURG PA: APRIL 8
Gujaratis run the Stroudsburg motel. The portly Receptionist was born in Gujarat. He attended art school in England before emigrating to the United Sates. He paints in his free time. His work is traditional Hindu religious. He shows me a painting of a Goddess in profile on a black background, lots of gold leaf and gold dots.
Why did he move to the US?
In England, he worked for the couple who own the motel. They moved to the United States.
The wife is British Gujarati, a university graduate. Does she enjoy the US?
Opportunities are greater - the motel business. Work hard for a few years and you are financially established.

GRATITUDE

STROUDSBURG PA: APRIL 8
We hitch the trailer to the Honda, collect the bike. Stroudsburg is a fifteen minute drive. I attempt to give thanks, ask for an address.
“It's nothing,” my savior tells me. A nothing miracle of generosity! And so typical of my few weeks in the United States...
I set out on this journey through the Americas in 2006 from Providence, Rhode Island, the home of my ex and her son, Jed. I traveled south by train to Dallas and Don and Jane Weempe and adventured with the Boys with Bikes and was saved from disaster in Amarillo by the Angel of the Bourbon Street Cafe. Now, riding north in 2008 I was saved first by the wicked Muslim at the Texas gas station on my way to Galveston to enjoy the company and hospitality of Terry and Ed, Carol and Peter. I have been pampered in North Carolina by Jim and Liz and aided by Mike Townsend at the Long View Cycle shop. Now I ride towards my daughter and her partner in Duchess County, New York. Encountering such kindness, such generosity, why dare I be so critical of the United States? Why do I feel more at home, more secure, in Hispanic America?

CITY FOLK

ROUTE 209: APRIL 8
I park the bike behind the church. The young man in the Honda opens the passenger door. The rear is loaded with waders and rods and fishing tackle.
He asks where I come from.
“You rode that far on that small bike...” He shakes his head in semi-disbelief. Then, “There's no sense leaving the bike out here. I have a trailer at the house...”
We drive through semi-suburban pinewoods country. His home is on a rise, dark-stained cedar, white window frames, perfectly maintained. Azaleas and rhododendrons are in bud. His parents live near by. So do his in-laws. He works for the electricity company, maintenance on high-wire pylons. He and his wife have a first baby. They were at church this morning. His wife gave him the afternoon off to go fishing.
City folk are moving into the neighborhood, building weekend and holiday homes. City folk complain if he keeps a pig or his chickens crow. We have the same problem back home. An ancient yew tree has been massacred on our lane. Neighboring women complained that the tree cut their light. The tree was there before they bought their cottages. It was there before they were born.

MIRACLE

ROUTE 209: APRIL 8
The chain has snapped. I pry the chain free, drape it over the crutches and push the bike fifty meters to a side turn. Do I push the bike onward until I find a village? Or do I wait in hope of a miracle? The miracle appears in the guise of a red Honda 4x4 driven by a typically friendly young man with short hair and dressed in standard GAP. Sunday and bike shops are closed. He suggests I park the bike a hundred meters down the road behind a church. The bike will be safe. He will drive me to a motel in Stroudsburg.
I imagine, as I push the bike, attempting to push a Harley or Gold Wing.
No way...I would collapse.

SO CLOSE, YET SO FAR

ROUTE 209: APRIL 8
Route 209 joins the main highway south of Stroudsburg. Sunday hasn't kept truck drivers off the road. I open the throttle to max in hope of not being run down. Full throttle on the flat is around 100 KPH. A machine gun fires a burst under my backside. The chain has snapped. The chain will entangle the wheel spokes. The wheel will collapse. I'll be catapulted onto the road. I'll have two seconds watching a truck's tyres before I get squashed. Totally squashed. Smeared. Except the bike comes quietly to a halt at the road edge.
I sit a while before dismounting.
The sun shines. I breathe carefully and inhale the scent of pine woods bordering the highway. Trucks thunder by.
What am I going to do? I am seriously short of funds. So close, yet so far...

DEFINITELY WEIRD

ROUTE 209: APRIL 8
Midday, the sky clears. The country grows more open, bigger fields bordered by good woodland, wealthier. Polished automobiles pack the parking lot of a roadside diner. The diner is low and light and new and built to last half of a short life time. I finger-comb my hair before entering and struggle out of a wet bomber jacket. Sunday lunch and tables are full. Uniformity in dress is obligatory. GAP or Old Navy is the choice in male tailoring. A smiling waitress with good teeth seats me at the counter and asks, “How are we today?”
Cold and hungry.
In England waiting is obligatory.
This is the US and coffee comes by instant magic.
I cup the mug in cold fingers. I must look a little weird. Too fat for a scarecrow, but, yes, a little weird: three short sleeve jerseys over one long-sleeved jersey, all tucked inside two pairs of outsize rain-proof pants yanked half way up my chest, two sets of broad suspenders visible, red and grey.
What is he? A pessimist? Maybe. But weird, definitely weird.
Country Brits would show their suspicions. Here bland faces hide any curiosity. Or maybe I'm invisible.
Oh, to be back in Hispanic America. South of the border I'd be in conversation, answering questions.
Fish and chips is England's national dish. In my youth the chippy wrapped your dinner in newspaper. Now it comes wrapped in off-white recycled. The smell of sweat, malt vinegar and stale oil is the same. So is the thick, grease-soggy batter and greasy-soggy potatoes. US fish and fries may be equally designed to halt longevity. However the batter and fries are crisp, the servings are immense and I prefer the odour of chemical air freshener.
I doubt that I can reach my daughter's today. So one more night in a motel. One more night and the journey is done. From the start I expected to give up somewhere along the road - admit that I was an old fool, that the journey was too tough. All in all, I am well content.

BITTER? YES, INDEED...

PENNSYLVANIA VALLEYS: APRIL 8
I ride beneath a low gray sky. A thin drizzle falls. Broken-backed trailer-homes hide in dripping birch woods. The mining and mill towns are imprisoned in narrow valleys: Tremont, Minersville, Port Carbon, New Philadelphia. Battered pick-ups are a fashion statement - abandoned automobiles and soon-to-be abandoned automobiles. Shop windows are boarded up. For Sale notices thrive on small red-brick and clapboard houses. Sullen teenagers cultivate a tobacco habit. Health Warnings? What has life on offer?
So were the Scottish Borders of the Thatcher Government in the 1980s, mills shut, mines closed, a lost generation of kids on street corners. Bitter? Yes, indeed...Though Senator McCain claims that bitterness is un-American.
Tories in Scotland ceased to exist.
What future have the Republicans?
What future do I have?
For bikers, this is unfriendly weather. Oh for a little Global Warming...