SECRET AGENTS IN TUXEDOS

I find particular pleasure in this commemoration of a mission planned by my stepfather, Colonel Euan Rabagliati (see web), given a scurrilous attack on his character in a recent "biography" of a Danish agent/adventurer.
Libeling the dead is risk-free and despicable.



Dear Mr Gandolfi,
I am organizing an event to commemorate the daring operation Contact Holland, which took place in 1941. This operation was a MI6-operation and was meant to establish a radio-contact between the UK and occupied Holland. In order to do this, a Dutch secret agent, Peter Tazelaar, was brought to the Dutch coast by a Motor Gun Boat. He went ashore wearing a tuxedo (in the sixties this element was used in the 007-movie Goldfinger). This operation was lead by your stepfather Euan Rabagliati. He was highly respected by Tazelaar and his comrades.

On May 3 the son & daughter of Tazelaar and myself will leave from the harbour of Lowestoft on board of an original Motor Torpedo Boat from WWII, quite similar to the MGB used in 1941. We will cross the North Sea with destination Scheveningen. On May 5 a re-enactment of the secret landing of Tazelaar will take place on the beach of Scheveningen.
Victor Laurentius

LORD PROFESSOR WINSTON - MOST IRRITATING MAN IN BRITISH POLITICS

Prime Minister Cameron recently named Ed Balls the most irritating man in British politics. Rude, yes. Boorish, yes. Conceited, certainly. But surely unpleasant rather than irritating.
My vote goes to Professor Doctor Lord Winston. Professor of Science and Society at Imperial College, Chairman of the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Trust, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Glasgow, and the Institute of Biology, Chairman of the Council at the Royal College of Music.
Add honorary doctorates from sixteen universities, member of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, patron of The Liggins Institute, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Forgive me, Your Lordship, for any titles, positions and honours that I have failed to include.
Wow!
Lesser mortals attempt to hold the moral high ground. Lord Winston is the moral high ground. He speaks with a certainty that the Pope must envy. Mere mortals fear to contradict - even when His Lordship is in error.
In error?
Never.
Forgive me, Your Lordship. The very suggestion is a sin.
I will do penance by suffering that utterly confident monotone in my dreams...

BRIDGE OF THE AMERICAS, COSTA RICA/PANAMA

A Spanish biker, Alejandro Menendez-Chacon, has posted on Facebook a pic of the Bridge Of The Americas. It is a railway bridge built by United Fruit to connect their banana plantations on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica with the banana port of Almirante in Panama. Loose planks either side of the rails enable the bridge to be used by road traffic. Alejandro's pic shows the safety netting is new. This is my pic. I crossed in the rain on my ride south from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego - see pic in OLD MAN ON A BIKE. The wet planks were slippery and lengths of safety net were missing or had big holes. I lost my nerve and tipped the bike inward over the rails. A transport driver picked me up and loaded the bike into the back of his truck. See this Blog, July 8/9, 2006...

GERMAINE GREER

Germaine Greer is Professor Emeritus of English Literature and Comparative Studies at Warwick University. She gives me the impression of being both unpleasantly arrogant and conceited. I may be wrong.
She is often on the BBC TV Friday night art show. She seldom has anything pleasant to say concerning the reviewed works of writer, actor, composer or painter.
Last week she panned a film of war time children sent to Australia as researched "wrong" as opposed to wrongly researched. Though even the latter would have been poor English usage. Inadequate or incompetentt might be better.
Misuse of English is no big deal - unless when criticising the work of others in an intolerably superior manner.
Am I a pot calling the kettle black?

SYMPATHY FOR MR CRAWFORD

This is a Thank You to N Green of Austin, Texas for posting the following on Amazon last week:
Love bikes? Love travel? then you will love this book.
Simon Gandolfi has a humble, gentle writing style that captures your interest and your heart on the first page. This is the best motorcycle journey I have read since ' Jupiter's Travels'. He paints such beautiful images of the people and places he encountered. The only improvement I could ask for would be lots more photographs, but they are really not necessary, his words provide all the pictures you need...

I have only posted one other review from Amazon - from a Mrs. S. M. Crawford "Suzanne Crawford" of Hampshire, England.
I bought this for my husband at his request. He was fired with enthusiasm from an article he read in The Telegraph. He is totally disappointed in this book and literally had to struggle through it. He sums it up as a description of breakfast in many places. It is therefore not recommended.

My apologies to Mr Crawford and my condolences. How tragic to suffer an antipathy to breakfast.

SQUID AND CHORIZO - YUM!

For lunch on Wednesday cooked squid and cHorizo with chickpeas in a tomato and basil sauce - lots of chili, lots of garlic. Washed down with a bottle of Rioja Alto. YUM!
Today glorious Spring, trees in blossom, daffodils and primroses in our woodland garden. Ate outside in the sunshine, cold trout, cheese, baby tomatoes. On such a day England is heaven.

JOSH

Our eldest son, Josh, is down from Leeds for a week. He has ripped up the vile carpet in the back sitting room, disassembled and removed an equally vile sofa bed. Today he is out in the garden cutting the lawn, pruning. I wish he and Jen were here for the summer. What joy it would be to watch Josh play cricket again and have his friends dropping by of a summer evening, cold beer, good Herefordshire beef sizzling on the coals.

OBESITY INVESTMENT ADVICE

Visit a bike show, witness evidence of a future diabetes epidemic, invest in manufacturers of Insulin...

SCOTTISH MOTORCYCLE SHOW

Thank you to all those fearless Scottish bikers who donned their snow shoes and, braving blizzard and avalanche, ploughed their way to the bike show. A special thanks to readers who sought me out and to those who bought books and contributed the extra £1 to my Round The World Petrol Fund!

BIKE SHOW

I am off again next week - to Edinburgh and the Scottish Bike Show (12/13 March). Find me on the Travel-dri stand, standard dress of denim overalls and battered straw hat Big pile of books ready to be signed...!

GRAVLAX AND GNOCCHI

February was a good month in the kitchen First the gnocchi were a success. I feared that the Gravlax was too salty - however I washed off the salt and the result was perfect. Tuesday I cooked a coli and prawn pie, definitely yum!

GRAVLAX + PASTA

Number Two son + julia and divine granddaughter, Anna, are arriving this afternoon to stay the night. They don't eat meat. They do eat fish. Hopefully they will enjoy my first attempt at Gravlax. The salmon has been marinading in a press in the icebox for the past five days: rock salt, Demerara sugar, orange and lemon juice, English mustard and lots of dill. I unwrapped and skinned the salmon this morning. Too salty...bummer. However should be edible when accompanied by good brown bread and lots of butter.
No disaster should the salmon fail, I have a pasta sauce prepared for the main course: vine tomatoes, shallots, one stick of celery, one carrot, three cloves of garlic, plump raisins, small black Spanish olives, black pepper, one chili with seeds, basil, thyme, two glasses of red Rioja.

THEY ARE ONLY ARABS

In these days of turmoil, let us be proud when our European and American leaders warn Arab Governments that they earn reprobation for their treatment of the innocent. For Arabs, sanctity of human life is an outlandish concept. Torture is commonplace. Police shoot unarmed protesters in Bahrain, in Lybia, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt.
Arabs may counter by protesting the innocent hundreds and thousands killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They might mention water-boarding. But what do they know? They are only Arabs...

CAPABLE OF PULLING YOUR SOCKS ON WHILST STANDING?

Definition of youth = that you can pull your socks on while standing unsupported.
Adolesence = capable of hauling your trousers on while standing.
Maturity = having to raise your foot on a step to tie your shoe laces.
Old age? I'll inform readers when I get there.

GNOCCHI LOGIC

B isn't a picky eater. However she does have her dislikes (as does Jed). Though misguided, disliking offal is understandable - however why would B dislike gnocchi? Roger Gill's partner is both picky and a vegetarian. He and I cook each other lunch week and week about, dishes unwelcome on the family menu
Thus yesterday was my first attempt at preparing gnocchi - mixing Stilton cheese into the potato, flour and egg mix; sauce of vine tomatoes, spring onion, garlic and basil.
Delicious.
Roger and I ate the lot.
B came home and complained that I hadn't saved her some.
Odd...

READERS EXPECT MORE

Writing is OK when it goes well. I have been rewriting the opening to the second book in the biker travel trilogy, OLD MEN CAN'T WAIT. The first chapters didn't work. The tone was too flippant. Flippancy is suitable when giving a talk to bikers who've been on the beer. They are on holiday. They want humour. Readers expect more. They deserve the truth. Digging out the truth from one's experiences is often painful. Uncamouflaged, what really happened?
How scared was I on the ride north from Ushuaia?
Very...

CHARITIES? HAH!

British Charities are in uproar over Government cuts. In my youth charities were funded by charitable gifts. Financed by Government is financed by taxpayers without option or choice. Therefor no longer charities. Better call them NGOs. NGOs are a plague. Too many of them with overlapping and competing remits and hierarchies. Career structures are the norm. Waste is standard as is moral arrogance. Add hypocritical pretense of working for a Charity when they are simply Government employees by another name, then good riddance.

THE MET AND THE NEWS OF THE WORLD

The police investigate pedophilia. First act to confiscate the suspect's computer.
Four years of the Metropolitan police investigating telephone hacking by News of the World journalists and the Met hasn't yet confiscated News of the World hard discs.
Odd?
Or does Murdoch frighten them?
Or do they fear that the hard discs will provide evidence of police collusion?
Why does this concern me today of all days - when I should be enjoying my birthday?
On our last meeting in Mexico, Cliff Irving asked why I got so angry over matters outside of my control.
My answer: cease getting angry, why bother writing?

ANCIENT OVERWEIGHT TOAD HITS SEVENTY-EIGHT

Thoughts when in bed this morning whilst Bernadette wrapped my birthday gifts - each gift a romantic treasure: firstly how blessed I am in Bernadette and in my four sons, my daughter, my daughters-in-law and out-of-law, my son-in-law. And how truly blessed I am in my divine grandchildren (of whom Shane is baking a chocolate birthday cake which he will eat as I am home in Herefordshire UK, and he is home in Duchess County NY).
SHANE AND GRANDPA OOPS

Second thought: 78 seems so much much older than 77.
Third thought: 79 will feel old old old. However 80 will feel young again (if I make it), a new beginning. Hopefully I will be completing the final lap of a planned celebratory circumnavigation of the planet - probably on a Honda 125. So here is a Happy Birthday to me, Brmmmm Brmmmm!

COMIC MEXICANS

Normally I would ignore the prurient Top Gear team and their attention seeking. However I have described in the past visiting high schools here and asking students for their image of a Mexican. The reply: Fat, sweaty, big hat, droopy mustache, comic accent.
Top Gear presenters pander to this conception born of Hollywood.
The result?
A Brit failure to recognise or develop markets in Mexico for British goods.

BIG BIKES AND TEARS

Joy and sadness to meet a Bolivian woman and her daughter at the Excel. The mother is married to a Brit on the Yamaha stand. The daughter is newly arrived in England. The daughter speaks no English. My speaking Spanish somehow emphasises to her her linguistic isolation and loss of friends. She lays her cheek against my chest. I fear that she will cry. I fear that I will cry. Unfitting behaviour at a bike show, even for an Old Toad...

LA LINDA DE COLOMBIA AND AN OLD TOAD

A charming young Colombian woman served at a coffee shop at the entrance to the Excel.
I greeted her each morning with, "Buenas dias, La Linda."
She replied, "Buenas dias, Avuelito."
She treated me to breakfast on the last day. I remarked, "Oh that I was younger."
She laid a delicate hand on my arm, smiled sweetly and said, "Much, much, much younger."
Ah, well...

ROAD TESTING FOR A FINAL JOURNEY

Small bikes suited me for long distance travel. The Honda I rode round India averaged 160 miles to the gallon. However something bigger might be more suitable for a final journey. Consider this Triumph...

BIG BAD BIKERS

Home from the London Bike Show. Fun to meet new people, good to meet old friends. Best is to be made welcome in a community and to discover that my travels encourage others.
However why must a section of the biker community revel in ugliness? Tattoos on shaven scalps and across rolls of fat that pass for a neck - and those massive wobbly beer bellies, especially amongst the Sunday crowd - gross. Where but at a bike show could an ancient overweight toad feel slim?

LOVE = CLEANING HOUSE

I leave for London Wednesday morning. Bernadette flies in to Heathrow from NYC Wednesday morning. She has been away a month. Her absence has left our cottage sad and empty and I have been miserable - particularly with Hamish off to fresh pastures. Happiness is being in love with your wife. I will be seventy eight this February and I am besotted by Bernadette...What am I doing? Cleaning house! And looking forward to taking Bernadette to dinner in London Wednesday evening. Where? Indian - or, possibly Chinese...Or Thai? All of which serve what has become typically English food. In my youth, typically English was fish and chips wrapped in newspaper. God is good!

NO PURPOSE IN TRYING TO REMEMBER WHAT I HAVE FORGOTTEN

MCN London Motorcycle Exhibition - 3rd-6th February. I am on Stand N94. I have prepared: books,posters,pens, LARGE cash pouch, clean clothes, polished shoes, medication. What I have forgotten? Memory will kick in midway to London...

SNEAKING IN A RANT OR TWO!

Bernadette has been in New York three weeks. The reins are off. Hence the rants! Enough - better vacuum the house, new sheets on the beds, polish shoes and silver, tidy clean laundry into drawers.

NON EUROPEAN VICTIMS OF TERRORISM DON'T COUNT

MORE PAROCHIALISM? OR MERELY IGNORANCE? SURELY NOT RACISM?
Our Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition opened Prime Minister's Question Time today by expressing great sympathy for the victims of the Moscow airport terrorist attack. Neither man has ever opened Question Time by expressing sympathy for those killed and injured in the frequent terrorist attacks in Pakistan and Iraq. We freed Iraq from a vile dictatorship. Pakistan is central to our fighting in Afghanistan. Curious...

BBC WORLD SERVICE

PAROCHIALISM:
In my youth, most members of Parliament (and particularly members of the Government)gained wide experience before entering active politics. Many had served Britain abroad. They had gained an understanding of foreign opinions and beliefs. Today's politicians are essentially parochial. Politics is their career. Their advance is seamless: student politics, think tank, special adviser, MP, Minister. The vital service offered by the BBC World Service is foreign to them. They have never watched eager-faced tribesmen crouch round a radio or known those for whom imprisonment was the reward for listening to the BBC. They have no understanding of the respect the World Service earned for Britain even while our politicians earned contempt. And, of course, those foreigners for whom the World Service has been an information lifeline have no vote within these shores. They are unimportant.
Thus cutting 650 jobs from the World Service is a sensible retrenchment...

BRITS ONLY

My anger grows. Liberal politicians are pathetic. Incapable of defending themselves. More importantly, incapable of defending the decision of voters to vote for them. The electorate voted for a hung Parliament. The Market demanded a strong Government. Liberals had one week to help form a stable Government or Stirling would have crashed. The Conservatives were the only party with sufficient seats with which the Liberals could form a Government sufficiently stable to satisfy the Market. End of story. Or would critics prefer to have the pound crash?
Ed Milliband, a dreadful little man who, as with so many of our politicians, went directly from student politics to special adviser, then MP, and has no experience whatsoever outside the political bubble, denounces the Liberals for betraying the electorate by entering in coalition with the Conservatives.
What does the youthful nincompoop suggest that Liberals should have done?
Attempt to form a weak Coalition with labour plus the small parties. Traders would have dumped Stirling. The Labour/Liberal Coalition would have fallen.
Added to which the electorate had declared their antagonism to Labour. Attempting to form a Coalition with Labour would have been a betrayal of the electorate.

INTIMATE DISCLOSURES

The two big front bedrooms in our cottage are our two sons' territory - big so that they can entertain (although both have left home). B and I have a small bedroom at the rear with a sloping ceiling. We sleep on two extra-wide single mattresses on the floor. Old men have to get up in the night. I crawl to the wall and heave myself upright whilst pray that my legs don't cramp. If they cramp, my yell or whimper wakes B - not popular. Bernadette is in New York for a month. Thursday my elder brother, Antony, folded the seats down in his big 4X4 and we collected a king-size bed. I assembled the bed in our bedroom yesterday. The twin mattresses were too wide. I dragged them to the left-hand front room, dragged a double mattress back and heaved it onto the bed. M oving mattresses single-handed is a struggle.This mattress is a standard double so a foot short and a foot too narrow. I shall await B's return before seeking out a king size. Meanwhile I slept in the bed last night - true, with some fear that I would suffer from vertigo. All I suffered was a bump on the head this morning when I sat up without thought for the sloping ceiling. The bed legs need shortening. Again, I shall wait B's return to decide (for her to decide) how much shorter. The bed is varnished pine. B will probably want it painted. Waiting is wise...meanwhile I have a cockerel to pluck.

TRAGIC SHOOTING

Gabrielle Giffords, a fine member of the United States Congress, has been shot in the head. She was marked as in the sights of the Tea Party. Others were shot dead, amongst them a nine year old girl. Sadly the USA's reputation is formed by such tragic incidents - shootings in schools, what ever, rather than by the good works of US NGOs or US AID Projects. Americans sometimes find it difficult (even unimportant) to see themselves through foreign eyes and are angered by criticism. Yet think of the Afghan or Iraqi reading of the shooting in today's Press or watching reports on TV. This is their image of the United States, the nation with troops on their soil to spread Democracy. Imagine their thoughts...

SAD EMPTY HOUSE

Sad empty house. Have been double glazing windows. As for food, Roger Gill came for lunch Wednesday and brought a rabbit and two pheasant. Skinned and plucked Thursday. Roasted the pheasant breasts on a bed of vine tomatoes. Made a game soup with pheasant legs and rabbit and a great stock from the carcases. Meanwhile reading with joy The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa - tender and brilliant.

HAMISH HORNYOLD

Hamish at his new home with his favourite toy. He is reported to be delighted at having made a sound career change. I remain weepy...

HAMISH WISHES TO BECOME A SOPHISTICATE - AND CHASE CATS!

Our cottage feels very empty. Bernadette left today for New York. She will be away a month. I am happy for her. She deserves a break and loves the City. I am jealous of her because she will be seeing my daughter, Anya - and my wondrous grandson, Shane. And I am sad, of course, at her being away for a month and was even a little weepy at the station. B reminded me that I go away for six months or more at a time. True....
However there is a greater sadness because it is final. Josh left first and lives now in Leeds city center. Jed is off cheffing/snow-boarding at a hotel in the French Alps. Now Hamish has left home. He decided time had come for his own career change - that he had enjoyed enough of the country and wished to become more sophisticated. So he has moved to a home in the suburbs closer to London. English suburbanites keep cats. Hamish will have fun!
HAMISH WITH JED

MESSAGES FROM WEB SPACE

Great to get messages from readers, angry, disappointed, complimentary or kind.
Paulcf is disappointed that I wrote little concerning Argentina and Chile. OLD MAN ON A BIKE is the first of a travel trilogy and covers my journey south. Chile was not part of this journey. Chile does feature in the second MS which takes me north from Ushuaia to the USA. The second MS also includes three chapters on Argentina. As to Ming, he has joined a Buddhist monastery where I hope to visit him in the coming winter.
Rants?
I sense that the vastness of the United States distances many citizens from their Government and its actions. Mine is a small country with no space for distance. The nations of Central America are equally small. United States immigration and foreign policy is intrinsic, not only to their history, but in their daily lives. It is a common subject of conversation. The same is true of Mexico.
Bush and Blair may be "old history" to us yet their decisions continue to effect opinions of both the United States and Britain. I encountered this as much on my recent journey round India as in the Americas.
Added to which, I am an obsessive. Riding long hours alone, the same chain of thought becomes my daily companion and is a natural part of my writing. For pure travel I suggest a travel guide. My own preference is FOOTPRINT.
For an overview of the trip, please be patient. You will find it in the second volume.

NATIONALITY UNKNOWN

MESSAGE FROM paulcf@telus.net

Review of your book

Very interesting...I have 20 years to prepare for my SA trip! I too am afraid of all the negativity the press says about SA. I suspect having your white beard and your age benefited you on your trip. I was dismayed with the latter part of your book...little to tell about Chile (and why you didn't travel in Chile except for the very end?) and nothing about what you did afterwards...did you just fly home and sell the bike in Ushuai or what? What about your rider buddy Ming? So much of your book was loaded with Mexico and Central America and so little about Argentina and Chile. Also, the ranting about Bush and Blair served no purpose...it's all ancient history now, out of date and I didn't get your book to hear your rants about them, I wished you had spent more of that time/pages about the TRIP. I wanted to see/read an overview of your trip, etc but nothing at all, very strange indeed.

WHAT BRA SIZE?

TED SIEROCINSKI HAS SMOKED ME OUT. Though not a rabid "Red", I must confess to being something of a Pinko.....
Pics are SUNDAY TIMES COLOUR SUPLEMENT from the Spencer Tunik Instalation at THE BIG CHILL FESTIVAL, 2010

KIND TEXAN

Subject:
blog 1/2/2011 Ted SierocinskiNM 87505 letter

Message:
Hello, Simon

I was born and currently live in TEXAS, USA. My fellow countryman's myopic letter is too often the norm. Of course it's everyone's right to his/her own opinion, but the letter is so typical of folks here in the USA. Yes, we each try to do good (or perhaps the best we can) but we don't do as much "good" here in the USA as we need to. Unfortunately, for the USA, "Peak Oil" will focus our policy even further away from our own borders, since we do not now have sufficient oil to power our consumer oriented post industrial revolution society. Lets hope (pray) that the struggle over oil does not cause further problems for the world and the USA.

All of your books are on my book shelf and I am looking forward to buying your next book.

The point of this letter is "Please" don't judge everyone in the USA by the tone of Ted's letter. Thanks.

Best Wishes
Bill Rose

NEW YORK PRINCESS

Susan Switzer writes:
WOW.....

LONG HAIRED BRIT

Ged Asbery writes:
Good ol' Ted must be more clever than me. I obviously missed the hidden message that "Old Man on a bike" portrayed US citizens as"selfish and disgusting people".

UNOBSERVANT CALIFONIAN

Joe Berk writes:
Odd, I read the book, and I did not take any of Simon's comments as US bashing. Mostly he was reporting what other people said or felt.

IGNORANT GUATEMALAN

Re criticism of OLD MAN ON A BIKE
EUGENIO writes:
As much as I would rather be under the boot of the USA instead of say Hitler's Germany, Russia or Torrquemada's Spain, I like your comments (USA bashing) because I hate the hypocrisy. Spain never pretended to be exporting "democracy" well until now that is, neither did Hitler nor Stalin. It is precisely because USA citizens are supposed to be smarter than that that they should see beyond the USAID signs and go look at the mess they have left here...

IRATE US CITIZEN

Letters from readers mostly fall into two catagories: thanks for enjoyment or anger.
The angry usually come from readers in the US.The following is an example:

Subject:
How I enjoyed your book

Message:
Ted Sierocinski
NM 87505
Simon,
I was looking forward to reading your book as I was traveling from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Guatemala on my Kawasaki KLR 650. I have been in Spanish language school here for almost 4 months. It provided many useful references and your insight into the Latin American indigenous people was informative. I am a US citizen and am about to celebrate my 60th birthday at the end of the year.
Having commuted to work over the years I have accumulated over 300,000 miles on various bikes. I share your enthusiasm for adventure and the experience of the two wheel challenge. The adventure really begins when things go wrong.
What went wrong for me with your book was about by page 266 I finally became nauseated by the bashing of the United States and its role in Latin America. Traveling thru Mexico and Guatemala I encountered many USAID projects with many USA citizens involved volunteering. Many bomberos, doctors and nurses are here! helping the Guatemalan people progress. I know that as a country we are taking our licks as a less than perfect country but never once heard a reference to Spain as they took a
lions share of the wealth form Latin America to Spain and how that Latin American within a feudal system under Spain's domination missed the Industrial Revolution. That was probably the United States fault also. Transferring the wealth out of the country in Korea is subject to the death penalty.
Having said that I am throwing your book in the trash. I can take solace in the fact that although we are a selfish and disgusting people that your wrote this book in English not in German.
Ted Sierocinski

A few family pics, top to bottom:
Bernadette's brother, Michael
My granddaughter, Emily
Emily with mother, Sarah
Emily's brother,Charlie

NEW YEAR

A New Year's resolution: to Blog at least once a week.
What have I been doing?
Loving my wife and enjoying home life in Herefordshire, England;
drooling over my Brit grandchildren and loving their parents;
missing my US grandson and my US daughter and son-in-law;
signing books at the NEC motorcycle show;
preparing new book for publication.

MOUNTAIN COW

I have been Time Travelling while sitting on the bench outside the Mountain Cow cafe. The owner comes out to check my health. I photograph him. What are his feelings toward Pine Plains? He prefers the mountains and given a free choice would live in his home State of Colorado. However his wife has deep roots in Pine Plains...

PINE PLAINS AND COLWALL

Pine Plains in Dutchess County, New York, is much the same size as Colwall in Herefordhsire, though houses are more widely spread and on big lots. Trees shade the streets. Architecture is white clapboard with porches to rock on in summer twilight. A few small buildings rub shoulders on Main Street each side of the sole intersection regulated by traffic lights. The Stissing Bank occupies one corner, the pharmacy another and The Stissing House Tavern and Restaurant a third. The Stissing House is the biggest building in town; it has an upper floor though no rooms to let; the owner/chef is French. The Colwall Park has a French waiter and does have rooms. Both Colwall and Pine Plains are set in a gentle country of small valleys, wooded hills and grass paddocks. In my youth this was dairy country. No longer. Farms are too small to survive in today’s market place.

CHEFS AND PARAGLIDERS - OWLS AND BUZZARDS

My home is a three hundred year old cottage facing across two cricket fields to the orchards and hills of my beloved Herefordshire. The fields are home to Colwall Cricket Club. In summer I walk to the far boundary to sit on an oak-shaded bench and watch paragliders ride the up-draughts above the Malvern Hills. A pair of buzzards often circle amongst the paragliders and a white owl lives in one of the oaks. Colwall is much the same size as Pine Plains in Dutchess County, New York, where the midday Autumn sun warms the bench outside the Mountain Cow Café on Main Street This is a good place to sit. Drivers pull into Peck’s Market car park round on my left. Clients visit the law office and the realtors across the street or drop by the book store - used books, or is that pre-read? A yellow school bus passes followed by a John Deere farm tractor pulling a trailer. A new restaurant opened this weekend, Agriturismo. The chef/owner, Mark Strausman, is a name in New York. The owner’s son (14) hurries by, red-haired and a slight limp.

MEN!

ROAD SIGN IN LYON, FRANCE
I had to put this up!

ONE MORE MAGNIFICENT MORNING

A loosebox door grinds open and steel shod hooves tap concrete. My room is above the stables. I am in bed at my son-in-law’s horse farm in Dutchess County, New York. I have bronchitis. The medic in Pine Plains has prescribed antibiotics for ten days, two pills a day to be taken with meals. I took a pill yesterday with dinner at 7.15. Now I get up and make breakfast so I can take the next. I dress and pad silently down the corridor passed my grandson’s bedroom. He will be three in January and is of uncertain temper when woken unnecessarily. I step over the black cat that sleeps on the stairs. In the kitchen I turn on the coffee machine before going to the bathroom, pee, wash hands, face and the important bits, brush teeth, glue in the dentures. The coffee machine commands me to rinse it, empty the coffee grinds and fill the water tank. The toaster requires six minutes to heat. I slice five mushrooms into an omelette pan and whizz a couple of eggs with chilli flakes, black pepper, garlic powder and a pinch of low salt salt. The toast is almost ready, coffee machine set to STRONG. Pour the eggs into the pan, stir once, fold over and slip onto a plate: low fat fake butter on the toast, low fat milk in the coffee. I tuck yesterday’s New York Times under my arm, follow the dog outdoors and set my breakfast on the table by the barbecue. Four cats weave between my legs. Pigeons bask in early morning sunshine on the barn roof. Mares race each other up the hill paddock towards the woods. Maples are in full Fall splendour of lipstick pink through to scarlet. Oaks and hickory prefer gold. Tea Party Candidates for Senate prefer gibberish. Old Brits run on cardiac medication...

POLO AT MASHOMACK, NY

9 OCTOBER
PINE PLAINS, NY
I intended writing a travel article on New York's horse country. I meet two Argentinians in the Mountain Cafe, Pine Plains. Polo players, they compete in tournaments at Mashomack Polo Club through the Summer season. The season is over. They have shipped the ponies south. The older of the two, Juan Olivera, will fly to Palm Beach on Sunday. He is a small, compact man with a firm handshake, sun and wind tanned and beginning to grey. His younger companion is tall and younger and strikes me as somewhat languid and less the professional horseman - perhaps because he is returning to Buenos Aires. Though that could be to visit his fiance or a sick parent. What do polo players do as they grow older? Is there a downward spiral, less important tournaments? Do they date older, wealthier women? How many professional polo players are there? Surely not that many. Though what do I know...?
And my son-in-law advises that the August sales and race meeting in Saratatoga are the heart of New York's horse year. I am a little late!

FIVE SMALL PIGS

My grandson, Shane, will have his third birthday in January. He says Good morning to me this morning and only then yells to his mother (my daughter) that there is a monster in the house. I comb my hair at the bathroom mirror above the hand basin. Shane decides that I look less of a monster and demands that I play piggy with his toes:
This big piggy went to market.
This little piggy stayed at home.
This little piggy ate pastrami.
This poor little piggy had none.
And this little piggy cries wee wee wee wee as it runs all the way home.
Shane prefers to play piggy on the carpet. Grandpa finds getting down onto the carpet comparatively easy. Getting up is tough. Shane pulls, I groan...

SPOILED

This is my last day on antibiotics. I take one pill in the morning and one in the evening. Having to take the pills with meals is an excuse for a cooked breakfast - this morning a mushroom omelet with two slices of toast. I feel comfortably full and totally spoiled...

LATE WITH PICS

I uploaded a few pics today onto the Baja Run Blogs

CATS, CATS, CATS

8 OCTOBER
DUTCHESS COUNTY, NY
A stallion snorts close by in a paddock to the rear of the house. Horses are messy eaters. Rats and mice would thrive but for the cats. A striped grey cat sits on a small grey plastic children's slide. A black cat preens itself beneath a bigger yellow slide. A marmalade cat washes its self on a chair. A fourth cat eats at the feeder on the table. I sip excellent coffee made in a wondrous machine that grinds fresh beans for each cup.

PIGEONS ON THE ROOF

8 OCTOBER
DUTCHESS COUNTY, NY
Friday and a crisp clear Autumn morning on the horse farm in Dutchess County, New York. I count seventeen pigeons sunning themselves on the barn roof. Why count? Why not?

END OF JOURNEY

17/18 SEPTEMBER
LA VERNE
A stiff head wind along the coast slows us. Turn inland and we ride through a splendid hill country of vast commercial vineyards and acre upon acre of plastic tunnel. Big John is expert in navigating the border with the US. Joe and I follow as he weaves and squeezes between long lines of waiting cars and trucks. The US immigration officer examines my passport. Mexico doesn't register as having left the US. “You entered in New York?” he says and waves me through. We load the bikes onto a California Scooter Company truck and the journey is done.
A night in a La Verne motel, a late brunch with Joe and his wife, then off to Ontario airport in joe's Corvette – Wow!

FIT FOR PURPOSE

j indiana jonesing


17 SEPTEMBER
TO TIJUANA
Here are a few musings from the road. J's modern Power Wagon is a powerful and effective off-road vehicle and delightfully comfortable. My opinion, it is not a vehicle for what I think of as an expedition. It is too complicated.
The rule for an expedition vehicle: Something breaks, can you fix it?
In my early twenties, I spent three months at a time in the Ogaden desert of Ethiopia, Northern Frontier District of Kenya and what is now northern Somalia. There were no roads, not even dirt roads. Transport was an early model Landrover and the original bright yellow Dodge Powerwagon – by today's standards, primitive vehicles. Crew were a Somali driver for the Dodge, a Somali interpreter and an elderly Ethiopian cook. A ten-ton Thornycroft truck brought supplies every fortnight (if it could get through). I carried spare leaf-springs, plugs, petrol pump, points, rotary arm and a distributor cap, a dozen or so inner tubes and boxes of hot patches (ten punctures a day in thorn country was common until a genius invented the gaiter). Communication was by radio early mornings. The radio was a heavy 19 Set used in Centurion tanks. Rig up a long aerial between two trees and I could usually get through to base. The radio was too heavy to carry in the Landrover when I was away from my camp – often for two or three days when exploring the territory - and I would leave the Powerwagon; it used too much gas.
My Landrover beat the hell out of me. I cursed it often, cursed the designer. However it was fit for purpose. It got me in, enabled me to do my work and got me back – and when it broke I could fix it. Same went for the Powerwagon.

JUMP START

17 SEPTEMBER
TO TIJUANA
6 a.m. and we breakfast at a restaurant next door to the hotel. A half day will bring us to the border. We pile our gear into the PowerWagon. Luxury creates its own problems: the PowerWagon's battery is dead. Someone must have forgotten to switch off the microwave or the espresso machine or the ice maker or the water heater in the 2nd bathroom. The kindly restaurateur jump-starts the PowerWagon from his beat-up pickup...

MAMA ESPERANSA

SEPTEMBER 16
ONWARD NORTH
Visiting Mama Esperansa's restaurant in El Rosario is a right of passage for California's bikers. Biker memorabilia cover the walls and ceiling - cards, group photographs, insignia caps, sweatshirts. Joe calculates that the present owner is third generation. She is an ample woman in her fifties. We have had a great ride. In adolescent mood, I tease the waitresses and have them giggling. What's good in sea food? Crab soup, fresher than fresh...
A large crab chopped in quarters swims in a big bowl of broth. Delicious.
I finish and the owner comes by. How was it, grandfather?
Perfection.
There is more broth in the pot, she says and has the waitress serve me a refill.
Such is the reward for speaking Spanish!
Onward a further sixty miles to San Quentin and a modern hotel on Main Street. We have been on the road twelve hours and traveled 325 miles – good going for a mini motorcycle. This old man heads for a hot shower and bed. Big John, as ever kind, brings me ice cream and a choice of sticky cakes!

APOLOGIES

Apologies to readers: I have been struggling with bronchitis for the past ten days, dosed with antibiotics, depressed and writing slowly. I am on the mend and will write more and faster....

LANCHERO

beautiful

16 SEPTEMBER
NORTH
Lanchero is border Mexican-Spanish for a diner. We pass one every forty or fifty miles. Normally the lanchero is a lone building beside the highway. There is no apparent reason why the builder chose this site. Why not a hundred yards south or north – or 500 yards in either direction?
We pull in at a lanchero on the left. Intricately worked saddles and splendid chaps hang from the ceiling. Smaller pieces of harness fill a glass-fronted display cabinet. Probably thirty miles or more to the next house in either direction, a hundred miles to the nearest town – quite a drive for horsemen in want of spare stirrup leather.

VULTURES

16 SEPTEMBER
NORTH
I am a follower on this journey and must concentrate on the riders ahead. Riding alone, my mind is free. I chase the same thought day after day, worrying at it as a terrier does a hard rubber bone - and small details of the countryside, of fauna and flora awaken memories. Today has been better - perhaps because I have become more accustomed to the group. Temperature exceeds 100 – a 60 degree rise since we left the hotel this morning. We have ridden north beyond the boulders and cross a seemingly endless plane circled by mountains. Small, pale yellow butterflies zigzag on the breeze. Flowers on two small roadside shrines to the dead are the gifts of love. The flowers are already desiccated. A dead cow rots in front of the shrines. Gorged vultures perch on the candelabra cacti. I recall, from my early twenties, vultures as signals of suffering in a desert where nomads, trekking from dry well to dry well, abandoned their children and the aged so that the breeding stock of the tribe could survive...And where I could do nothing other than extend the suffering of a chosen few with a few cups of water.
There was a further guilt: that, for me, the desert was an immense playground, a marvelous land alive with great herds of gazelle, where majestic oryx and kudu grazed, where lions sprawled in the sun, giraffe nibbled the treetops, elephants were king. To be shot at on occasion was part of the adventure in those glory days of tribesmen armed with single shot rifles, relics of the First and Second World Wars and often loaded with the wrong gauge ammunition.
Now every teenager in that desert wields a Kalashnikov or an M16 – such was the strategy of the Cold War: arm your enemies' friends' enemies with no thought for the future.
The future is now. Animals are gone, vicious chaos rules, refugee camps line the frontier.

ROADSIDE SHRINES

16 SEPTEMBER
ONWARD NORTH
Finally the sun melts the cover and paints small curls of pale red gold on the underside of small puffs of white cloud high above. Never in my travels have I seen mountains so blue. We pass three small shrines to the dead on a straight stretch of highway. A hundred yards or so separates the shrines. Surely not casualties of three separate accidents? Yet, if the same accident, why the separation? Anger between the families of the dead? The blame game? Three kids racing down the straight on Saturday night? A drunk driver? Or high on dope? Or was he driving one-handed while hugging his girl and lost control? Was there a quarrel between the three? Did one of the passengers strike the driver?
Were I alone i would stop a moment, read the names, presuming the dead were Catholic, murmur a Catholic prayer. A local driver, curious, might stop. We would talk a while. Such is traveling...

BREAKFAST

16 SEPTEMBER
NORTH FROM CONSTITUTION
Dawn approaches as we ride out of the Hotel Oasis courtyard. Sea fog rises from the ocean and spreads across the desert. We ride for two hours in chill air beneath the low grey canopy to breakfast at the Desert Inn, San Ingnacio.

HORSES FOR COURSES

main highway
sikkim,india

15 SEPTEMBER
COSTITUTION

J is keen to organise joint off-road and bike trips on the Baja peninsular using California Scooter Company bikes. Joe and Big John are enthusiastic. I am an outsider and keep my thoughts to myself. However, the main highway is about the only tar road in Baja. Surely dirt bikes would be more suitable?
Coco Chanel is very different from the pre-production bike I rode south – not in looks but in feel. Coco purrs and the vibration from the unitary chassis seems less. The seats on both bikes are mounted on coil springs. They are wide seats for wide butts. I love them. They are the type of seat I dream of on my travels. And the riding position is ideal for my build. Sit upright and my hands rest as comfortably on the controls as they did on the Brazilian Honda Cargo I rode round the Americas – as they should on a work bike or a touring bike, bikes on which the rider will spend hours each day. The Indian manufactured Honda Stunner was more a cafe racer for teenage posers. The rider's weight was on his hands and on his crotch. Longer than half an hour in the seat was cruel punishment.
Mechanically, both Hondas were perfect: 40,000 miles on the Cargo without a mechanical fault; 10,000 miles round India, not even a puncture. The Cargo averaged over 120 miles to the gallon while the Stunner maintained a remarkable 160. The Stunner was stable on mud and gravel and on river beds marked as roads on India's road atlas.
Coco isn't a dirt bike. For transport I would chose Honda. Coco wins on charm. It is a bike to love. It is the bike I would chose to ride to the Malvern spa of a Sunday morning where it will attract a crowd of admirers. Even my youngest son, Jed (20), would be proud to show it off to his friends and he doesn't like bikes. As to reliability, the few faults we have found on this journey will be cured. Future complaints will a rarity.
So there you have my judgement – as always, Horses For Courses...

GRILLED CACTUS

15 SEPTEMBER
CONSTITUTION
We are back at the Hotel Oasis, a modern building devoid of charm but with air-conditioning, comfortable beds and a small square of water advertised in the hotel brochures as a swimming pool. Swim two strokes and you would break your wrists or concuss yourself at the far end. We stand in the pool and talk of our journey and the beauty of the ride down to the sea and of the heat and of where to have dinner. A taco stand on main street wins the food stakes. We sit in white plastic chairs on the sidewalk, eat tacos with parboiled, grilled cactus and roast shallots. Party night in Constitution and quad-bikers parade on Main Street.

BIKER HEAVEN

15 SEPTEMBER
CABO SAN LUCAS NORTH
The road swoops down from the plateau to the Sea of Cortez through narrow gorges of rose red stone. The descent is biker heaven. A shared joy draws us together as we lean into perfect curve after perfect curve, shed years, shed worries, become children in a playground. Then comes the sea, a shimmering sheet of lapis. Not to bathe in such beauty insults its creator. Yet on we ride, on and on and on...
And, rather than cool ourselves in the sea, stop for lunch at an air-conditioned Chinese restaurant.

GOODBYE TO HOLLYWOOD MANSIONS

below the pool

15 SEPTEMBER
CABO SAN LUCAS NORTH
7 a.m and we are on the road again. Goodbye Hollywood Mansion, goodbye glorious beach that we didn't visit. Goodbye Cabo San Lucas, town that remains unknown. Arlene flies home this morning - business. Wonder woman, she has leant me her bike. The bike is a production model with a custom paint job. The bike's name? Coco Chanel, naturally.
We race north two hours to Todos Santos for breakfast and find the bypass round La Paz. The road cuts inland beyond La Paz and climbs 1500 feet to a wide plateau encircled by mountains. The sun bleaches and paralyses the desert. The dark grey road is an interloper. It runs straight as a steel yardstick between fluffy borders of dew fed emerald. Two glow-yellow bugs speed down the road - Joe and Big John in their biker jackets. The temperature at noon tops 103 degrees.

TERRIFYING LAUGH

big john

14 SEPTEMBER
CABO SAN LUCAS
I have followed Big John for four days. John on a California Scooter Company bike is kin to a father riding his five year-old's tricycle. That the bike holds up is a fine advertisement for the bike. Big John and I in the Hollywood mansion's infinity pool is a sight for nature lovers sufficiently short sighted to mistake us for a pair of captive white whales. John wisely keeps to the shade. I am in the sun and thus the more gruesome.
However not the more terrifying.
Terrifying is John's laugh. The laugh is deeper than the deepest coal mine. Even his gentlest chuckle would make old ladies limp for shelter. Sell it to a Movie Company and John's fortune is made.
However John possesses something deeper than his laugh – his heart. Four days of his company and here is my one-word summation of his character, kindness. Extraordinary kindness...

NAKED, SHAVEN-HEADED GIANT

joe not seeing big john in the pool

14 SEPTEMBER
CABO SAN LUCAS
The pool is small and tiled in the obligatory blue Italian mosaic. Look down across (gated) roof tops to a wide golden beach on which Pacific rollers break in obedience to the tourist brochures. J and I are in desultory conversation. Four seagulls sit on the roof. Two pink bougainvillea blossoms drift across the surface. Such tranquility...
Big John's swim suit is locked in J's truck. Imagine a naked, shaven-headed giant. Elegant is not a description that comes immediately to mind. The four seagulls screech and take flight.

MILE-WIDE TV

14 SEPTEMBER
CABO SAN LUCAS
The Hollywood mansion is a rental property. It could sleep a dozen with ease which would make for a moderately priced holiday if you knew twelve people with whom holidaying would be a pleasure. The twelve need to be adults. This is not a house for kids. The floors are polished marble. Fall off the outer edge of the infinity pool and the servants would scrape the scraps off the rocks. The scraping wouldn't be an extra as the house is staffed with two housemen and a major domo. A mile-wide TV dominates the open-plan living room. A wall to wall mirror above the TV doubles the size of the room from big to mega and roller-blades would be convenient for exploring the kitchen/dinning area.

HOLLYWOOD MANSION

j

14 SEPTEMBER
TODOS SANTOS TO CABO SAN LUCAS
A year or two and the four-lane highway south from Todos Santos to the tip of the Peninsular will be complete. Stretches remain under construction. Dirt deviations are tough riding on a small bike with a unitary frame. The bikes buck and vibrate and shake the hell out of you and the afternoon temperature exceeds 100 degrees.
Cabo San Lucas exists for tourism. J has arranged for us to stay in a Hollywood mansion in a gated community on a steep hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The mansion is near the top of the hill. The roads up through the gated community are granite pave. Cobbles would be marginally tougher on our already tender rear ends.

ISLAMIC-HISPANIC ARCHITECTURE

14th SEPTEMBER
TO TODOS SANTOS
La Paz is on the Sea of Cortez. An excellent four lane highway crosses the Peninsular to Todos Santos. Todos Santos is a neat clean town on a rise above the Pacific. Truck traffic is banned - as are high rises blocking the sea breeze. The town has charm. It is attractive to tourists without being touristy or over-run. Townsfolk are courteous. We take lunch under a palm frond roof. A triple deck fountain cools the breeze - natural air-conditioning typical of Islamic-Hispanic architecture.

LA PAZ

14th SEPTEMBER
LA PAZ
La Paz is a hot sweaty city on the Sea of Cortez. We are hot and sweaty (other than J who travels in air-conditioned splendour). We miss the bypass and are lost. I ask a lady for directions. She begins describing the route. I understand individual words, even entire sentences. The whole becomes a jumble. My eyes betray a fatalistic acceptance of inadequacy. The woman halts her instructions. Her smile is familiar. It is the generous female's smile of understanding when faced by male incompetence. Men are men. They have their uses. However rational thought is not the male's strong point (expect even vaguely mature thought and you will be disappointed). Humour them. Lead them by the hand. Such is the Latin way...
In brief, she stops giving directions and says, “It will be best if you follow me...”

FULL OF COLOUR

14th SEPTEMBER
SOUTH VIA LA PAZ
The desert is full of colour at dawn and dusk. Midday and it is sun-bleached. The sky to the East over the Sea of Cortez is a dark lapis fading to pale turquoise over the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific sleeps under a thick blanket of sea fog or low cloud. At altitude, the fog condenses on the tar and trickles to the verge. The road is a black strip between narrow ribbons of emerald green.

SENIOR MOMENTS

SENIOR MOMENTS/PERIODS
Senior moments are becoming the commonplace of my life. And they extend in length. Whilst writing during the past two days I have been attempting to place our journey into the calendar. We departed Los Angeles on the 10th, sleeping in San Vicente. The night of the 11th was the Desert Inn, Catavina. The Desert Inn,San Ignacio would have been the night of the 12th. We stayed overnight at the Oasis Hotel in Constitution on the 13th and reached CaboSan Lucas on the 14th.
I have checked this itinerary on paper, drawn diagrams, calculated mileage and hours on the road. It is correct.
Much of my journey south was filled with worry. The preproduction bikes developed electrical faults. The welds failed on the muffler supports. Would the production bikes hold up? I have flown from London to make this ride. Failure would be a major disappointment, not only to me, but to two editors waiting for me to file. Joe has more pressing concerns. This ride was conceived by him as proof of the bikes' reliability. Potential customers follow his Blog. And his leg hurts (“No it doesn't,” I hear him say). Ouch...

SOUTH
My bike died yesterday. Died as in dead. Death occurred at the entrance to a dirt bike competition. An electric fault. Probably minor. We could find the fault in five minutes or waste two hours. Temperature is above 100 degrees. Messing with the bike when we can load it on J's truck would be stupid. I ride in the truck a while, then ride Joe's bike while Joe rides in the truck. I wish Joe would stay in the truck. Hours of the bike vibrating over bad bits of road engenders pain in his leg. Joe will deny this. Suggest he rests and he claims to be fine. He isn't fine. The pain shows in his face. So does the determination. He is a good man, both serious and a magnificent recounter of immensely long jokes - those we Brits call shaggy dog stories.

SOUTH
I am having a great time. My four comapanions are fascinatingly disparate. Arlene is warm, humorous, brave and instant energy with a lightening mind and a PHd. She is also Gay and a great hug. Add talent as a designer and you have a tiny fraction of the whole. She sits very upright on the bike and wears a red hacking jacket – you know, slit at the back for riding a horse, except that this jacket is for bikers and part of Arlene's range. I compliment her on the jacket and on having a great tail (true). She seems pleased.

LORETTA
Loretta is a tourist town on on the sea of Cortez. The cops in Loretta are running a fund-raiser. First Big John is pulled over for doing a wheelie on main street – or was it for running a red light? The lights hang high above the road and are easy to miss against the sun. J's turn next, his crime, failing to stop at a stop sign. We gather at the police station, statements signed, fines only $20. Legitimate fines. receipts given. The cops are good natured, much humour. However we will give Loretta a miss when riding north.

WRITING

SOUTH
Wrtiting is a solitary profession. I am accustomed to traveling alone and at my own speed. I stop where I will, chat endlessly with strangers, hope to discover a little of their lives, eat where local inhabitants eat (in Mexico, a plastic table at a sidewalk taco stand), discover a bed in my price range (under $20 and no bugs). This trip is different. We ride across Mexico without touching it. This apartness is born of the language barrier. Even Big John, married to a Peruvian and owning a house in Mexico, speaks no Spanish. And time is a factor. For people in the US, holidays are few and brief. A long weekend is Big John's standard ride. Mount that saddle and open the throttle wide...

SOUTH
Noon and Joe's thermometer registers 103 degrees.
A fractured weld on an exhaust pipe attachment adds to Joe's worries. For me a welder's shop is happiness. I act as Joe's translator while chatting happily with whomever drops by to admire the bikes. The bikes draw a crowd where ever we stop. So they should. Simply looking at them makes people happy. As to problems, we've had batteries go flat on both preproduction bikes. Joe calculates that the batteries are two to three years old. Age, heat and vibrations probably killed them.

SEA OF CORTEZ

13 SEPTEMBER
SEA OF CORTEZ
Midday and the sun is a killer. The road dives down from the plateau to the Sea of Cortez. We pose for silly pics above water the blue of dark turqoise. The sky is a pure blue marginally paler than the sea. Islands of stripped rock and quartz glint pale in the fierce light. The road climbs above the coast. A fish rises, rings spreading across still water. An enclave of foreigners' houses and a hotel stand at the head of a bay. The golf course is obligatory, grass green as our lawn back home. From where comes the fresh water and at what cost?

SOUTH ACROSS THE DESERT

13 SEPTEMBER
SOUTH FROM SAN IGNACIO
Dawn and we ride the Baja California plateau in desert chill. The road is a straight line across a flat desert of scrub and candelabra cacti. Mountains in the distance come in two colours. The sun brings a soft rose glow to those to the west while the shadowed faces to the east remain a hazy blue.

OASIS

12 SEPTEMBER
OASIS
San Ignacio is a miraculous lagoon in the middle of the desert. Date palms shade the streets. Imagine yourself a traveler in ancient time, exchausted and kneeling at the water's edge. Tears of relief and of gratitude for life mingle with the green water where now a man paddles a kayak. J an I eat quesadillos at a taco shack across the square from the church. The church is 18th century. The interior beauty is created by perfect proportions rather than decoration. I imagine a time of monastic discipline, of date palms pruned of their dead fronds. Today the oasis is unkempt. Tourism is the earner.

SUFFERING

12 SEPTEMBER
TO SAN IGNACIO
Though beautiful, the desert is a place of suffering. We are imune to the fear that acompanied past travelers. The heat, for us, is a momentary discomfort. One more hour and we will swim in the pool at the Desert Inn, San Ignacio.

BIKER HEAVEN

12 SEPTEMBER
DAY THREE SOUTH FROM CATAVINA.
The desert here is a vast up-and-down jumble of immense grey boulders, candelabra cactus, Judus trees and skinny scrub. To the south and west lie mountains scrubbed to their stone core by a few million years of wind and ocasional rain. To the east a long roll of cloud or fog lies low over the ocean. The dawn light washes the mountains a pale chalky blue. The cloud bank is touched with pink.
I have ridden on ahead. I haven't met another car or truck in twenty minutes. Cut the engine and the silence is total. Two buzzard glide overhead. Nothing else moves. I am absorbed into the stillness and the quiet and the beauty and find myself shivering, not with cold, but with that exultation that comes sometimes when, tired yet wonderfully content, you get into a bed spread with Egyption cotton sheets stiff from the laundery and wriggle in minor ecstacy as you clutch yourself in your own arms. Never done that? Never slept between Egyptian cotton sheets? How sad...
And if you have never visited Baja California, start planning. Right now this is about as close as you can get to heaven without a one-way ticket.

A MOVING MICRODOT

12 SEPTEMBER
Joe and Arlene ride production bikes. John and I ride pre-production bikes. These are small bikes, pretty babies to treasure. The average owner will ride down to the store of a Sunday or drop by a neighbour's – say twenty minutes max. Steve wants the bikes tested to destruction. John is massive and I'm no light-weight. Steve wants destruction, we're his men.
Day one south from Tijuana is horrific coastal-strip development on the cheap side of cheap. Pass Ensenada and I begin to understand Baja's magic: clarity of light, range upon range of mountains, immense spaces across which merely to travel is an adventure. Even Big John becomes little more than a moving microdot.

MEET THE POSSE

12 SEPTEMBER
We are five on this adventure – the length of the Baja California peninsular and back – 2000 miles.
Four riders and J in support. J is Nevada based, aids businesses in the Adventure Tourism field market their products and drives a double-cab (leather seats) three million horse-power Dodge PowerWagon laden with everything bar rockets and a cappuccino machine.
Joe and I are given. John is a 50s-something jet engine engineer, six-six and weighing in at a few tons. Arlene is slim, classy, Gay and designs, manufactures and markets biker clothes for style-concious biker ladies (and for Real Men). Check out her sight:

PRETTY BIKE

12 SEPTEMBER
CATAVINA, BAJA CALIFORNIA
Joe Berk is mostly metal. He was in a coma for a few days last November. He was riding a Triumph Speed Triple when a lady on four wheels back ended him. He limps now. Maybe he will always limp. The limp and the metal slow him down somewhat but haven't damped any of his enthusiasms – particularly bikes. He sold a second Triumph the day he picked me up from LA Lax – changing Brits. A KLR 650 shares the garage with a Corvette and his wife's 5 series BMW. Joe's souped-up Subarau has to sleep outdoors. His California Scooter Company 149 stays at the plant. The Company is Steve Seidner's baby. Steve both owns the company and designed the bikes. The bikes are small and pretty, surely an unusual description of a bike. Best of all they make people smile, not with scorn but with pleasure - as does watching your children play out in the yard.

GODBYE MATURITY

12 SEPTEMBER
CATAVINA, BAJA CALIFORNIA
Back in the 1990s Katrina Larkin gave a party for like minded friends in a deconsecrated London chapel. The party is now an annual event and is grown into The Big Chill Festival. Until this year the Festival was as it began: a party for like-minded people. Katrina remains a shareholder and the artistic director. This year she invited the North American installation artist, Spencer Tunick, to create one of his mass nude photographs. My number three son called Bernadette with words to sap the firmest of good intentions: “Mum, tell Dad, absolutely not...”
So of course I joined the parade, one of four hundred nude people on the grass at Eastnor Castle Deer Park and painted all over in lipstick pink.
A few days later came an Email from Joe Berk of The California Scooter Company: How about a ride down Baja California as a proving run for the Company's new bikes.
Which explains why the lawnmower is back in the shed and I am in the Desert Inn, Catavina and goodbye maturity.

GODBYE TO WISDOM

SEPTEMBER 12
BAJA CALIFORNIA
I've been lying in bed the past hour wondering what time it is. My watch died yesterday after taking a fall off a table to a stone floor and I haven't changed the time on my mobile nor on this notebook. Where am I? The Desert Inn, Catavina, Baja California.
I am aware that I haven't blogged since March. Bernadette has been pushing at me over the intervening months. “Write, Simon, that's what you do. Readers expect it.”
So here is an apology to those readers – and an explanation. The Sela Pass in Arunachal Pradesh did for me. The road was suitable for a young, sure-footed mule. It was unsuitable for a septaugenarian with a fear of heights. I reached the top of the pass and I was old. Really old. Five days of rain in Tawang without electricity was time in which to face facts, time to call a halt to exploring continents by bike. Get home, invest in a ride-on lawn mower; should I crave adventure, drive eight miles over the Malvern Hills of an evening; paddle in the warm waters of the outdoor pool at the Malvern Spa; for a change of climate sample the spa sauna or the steam room. In short, act my age.
So what happened to such sensible intentions?
First came The Big Chill music festival.

EXCITEMENT IN TAWANG

MAY 15: TAWANG
Two young drunks loll against the counter at the telephone central. One drunk drops the chip from his mobile. Both drunks bend to pick it up. Their heads collide and they shout at each other. The Angel solves what ever problem they have.
I remark to Angel that drunkenness is common in Tawang.
"They fight when they get drunk," says Angel. "They go home and hit their wives."
"Always?"
"Always."
Will she marry?
Not in Tawang. An elder brother emigrated to Canada. Angel is waiting for a visa.

NOT A YOUNG MAN

MAY 15: TAWANG
I call Baby Baruah from the telephone central, tell her that I will truck the bike back to Assam.
"I didn't want to tell you with all these experienced travelers giving you advice," says Baby Baruah. "In the back of my mind I was thinking that you should stay here. So many things to see. The farm and my cousin's house on the hill."
"Watch cricket in comfort on a big screen TV," I say.
"That's what I'm telling you," says Baby. "Look where all this adventuring has got you to. You are not a young man."
True...

CALLING BABY

MAY 15: TAWANG
What to do in Tawang on an electricity-deprived raining afternoon under low dark clouds? Not a lot. Daylight is insufficient in my room for reading. I take my book to the smoke-free Chinese restaurant. Two of the six tables are occupied by inebriated chain smokers. University students sit at a third. I ask why there is no electricity.
The transformer is damaged.
I repeat the question.
They repeat the answer.
I say, "Wrong answer. "There is no electricity because there is no spare transformer and there is no spare transformer because you don't shout. Do any of you vote?"
None of them. There's no point. Nothing changes.
To which I say, "Nothing will change if you don't vote. Or, at least, shout. Go shout outside the Electricity Company's office."
I have made them uncomfortable. I am uncomfortable. Tawang is too wet and too dark and too cold for an instant revolution. Better go sit in the corner at the telephone central, talk with the Angel and call Baby Baruah.

TWO CZECHS

MAY 15: TAWANG
A decision has been taken. We will load the bike early tomorrow and drive straight through to Assam. I accost a blond foreign couple mooching up Main Street in the rain.
Are they Czechs?
How did I guess?
Because two Czechs are on my Permit for Arunachal; other than me, these two are the only Europeans in town.
They paid 8000 Ruppes for the Permit.
I paid 5000 Ruppes.
A total of 13000.
A Mister Wanga arranged the Permit. He initially demanded 9000 from the Czechs. He claimed to be an influential politician and would obtain the permit within forty-eight hours once they had transferred the fee.
They waited six days.
The male Czech is tall with dreadlocks and loathes India. All Indians are on the make. Everyone has tried to rip him off.
I have enjoyed extraordinary hospitality - though telling him is wasted effort. His English is too limited. He speaks neither French nor Spanish - nor Russian. Surely Russian was obligatory at school? He dislikes Russians (understandable in a Czech) and never learned.
She is better educated and marginally less negative.
We shelter in a mini-restaurant on the High Street. The owner, a woman, is seated behind a cash box. She ignores us. Perhaps she is related to the mobile-phone addict at the bakery. Or suffers from poor eyesight. Or dislikes foreigners...
Half and hour of difficult conversation passes before a girl appears from the kitchen. I order soup. The Czechs drink water.

MAY 15: TAWANG
I have met with much kindness and generosity on this journey. Passang Tsering is my latest benefactor. I watch from inside the cafe as he talks with the truck owner and the driver. The driver is young, perhaps foolhardy. Angel told me yesterday that two couples in a saloon car went over the edge on the Sela Pass the day I crossed. They were killed.
And the Army commander asked me at breakfast in his camp whether I had ever seen an Indian truck driver wearing spectacles. Not that I noticed. The implication is obvious. So, yes, I am nervous.
Does Tawang have an oculist? Should I ask Passang Tsering to have the young driver's eyesight tested? Or should I close my own eyes as we cross the Sela Pass? If we cross the Sela Pass...A jeep that left Tawang early this morning has returned - a land-slide has closed the road. The road may reopen by mid-afternoon, meanwhile rain is falling steadily from black clouds and Passang Tsering warns that the chance of leaving today are slim.
The Army commander expects me for dinner tomorrow.
I am booked on the train from Guwati to Delhi on the 18th.
Or am I condemned to a life sentence in Tawang?
Is Tawang Purgatory?
Or Hell?
Or would sunshine transform the town?
Even electricity would help, light, hot water.
However yesterday's thunder storm destroyed the transformer and there is no spare.

MOMPA

MAY 15: TAWANG
Tawang is a study in genetic diversity. The angel of the telephone central is Tawang Mompa. Typical of her community, she is slight of build, fine featured. Mountain Mompa are squatter and speak a different language unintelligible to the city folk. Vally Mompa speak a third language, equally foreign to mountain and city folk. Cross the pass to the next valley and you find a fourth language and a fifth and a sixth. Division by language enfeebles Arunachal as a political unit. Buddhism is the sole unifier.
Passang Tsering's great grandparents were immigrants from Lasha and the family's home language remains Tibetan. At six foot, he is taller than the Mompa, powerfully built, his features what we Europeans think of as Oriental. His mountaineer's stride is scornful of the slope up from the High Street. He wears a puffa jacket over a tartan shirt, jeans and work boot. He shakes and folds a khaki green umbrella before entering the cafe.