"These are the days that must happen to you" - Dan Walsh. A bit of a "marmite" book; but the guy is a very gifted writer. Probably the best overland biking book I have read. Not for everyone, but I found the honesty inspiring.

Strange that you should mention that as I have a copy of it somewhere that I bought years ago and was looking for it as a reread last week. I've still not managed to find it though. When I first started writing this stuff about 10yrs ago Dan's book was something I used for inspiration / insight into how to put a travel tale together, but I very quickly learned that for him the trip and the journey were two separate things. While I might be able to follow his journey, his trip - in all it's senses - went to places it wasn't in my nature to follow. Dan's thought processes are as densely and obscurely layered as the Walt Whitman poem (Song of the Open Road) the title comes from. It's a star that shines brightly, but inevitably, in the way of these things, briefly.

The travel books I've been reading (and re reading ad infinitum to get through Amazon's seemingly endless submission process) have been my own but for fear of invoking Grant's ire over breaking 'Da Rules' I won't mention the titles. Hopefully coming to a HUBB meeting near you at some point in the future though. If anyone else has picked up their pen and committed their experiences to paper I'd be interested to hear how it went for you. Given the amount of effort that goes into it (2-3yrs per book for me) and the somewhat meagre income they generate the self enrichment you get from the process certainly seems to be more for your soul than your bank balance. That may just be a reflection of my talent as a writer but they're fun to do.

Don't forget that there is more from Ted than Jupiter's Travel

* Riding High: More from the same trip as Jupiter's Travel
* Dreaming of Jupiter: from when he repeated the trip at the age of 69

I've been getting inspiration from Ted's output ever since Jupiter's Travels first hit the market. There's a copy of Dreaming of Jupiter right in front of me at the moment as I'm in the middle of doing something similar - revisiting a previous trip with the insights / 'wisdom' that a misspent adulthood brings.

Sadly the project is Covid delayed but in an homage to Ted's title, the fact that I knew nothing about 'foreign' travel before I left the UK, my original trip was mainly in Europe and the astronomical observation that Europa is a satellite of Jupiter, ever circling the giant of the planetary firmament (a bit like my literary efforts vs his) I've called it Dreaming of Europa. All I need to do now is reride the route and see what 50yrs of cynicism brings to it. In the meantime this is what my Photoshop meanderings have come up with so far:

If I remember correct,
much of Ted's second book is about the disappointment he felt that things had changed. So it might be hard to return to old places.

I would not do that. I have memories. And I do not want them to be destroyed. Leave then as they are. Some examples.
I was once in the Ecuadorian Amazonas. Travelling the last part of the roof of a bus. Together with the suit cases. And I slept in a hut of bamboo.
Today I can see on internet that there is a tarmac road, airport and hotels.

We did a trip up on Chimborazo. By local buses and paying a local to give us a ride. You could get to 4 800 m on the "road". At that time, there was nothing at the end of the road. You had to climb to 5 000m, to get to a refuge. Today there is a refuge where the road ends.

I was with touring Europe on my MC. With my girlfriend. Happy times, that never will return. I have no wish to drive the same routes again. And stay at the same places. I would just make me sad. That our dreams never come true.

This is me. I just write about myself. We are all different. And I have full respect for everyone that wants to do the opposite. I wish you a happy journey.
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I compare to much, how it is today with how it cold have been. And that makes me sad. Better for me to focus on today and tomorrow.

And there are so few places that I have visited, compared to what there are to discover. Where does the road go ? what is in the end of the road ?
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Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.
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A plus for you who recognize those words.
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Sorry, this post is not recommending reading material, but... my reflections on Ted's "Dreaming of Jupiter"

I'm not that bothered that things change. In fact I'd be more concerned if they didn't. That's the whole point of me wanting to redo my 1970 trip; I want to see how things have changed, moved on, adapted. It won't alter what I remember from that long ago journey but it will give me perspective. And of course it's not just how the countryside or the infrastructure or any of those material things that I'm interested in, it's what the intervening time has done to me that's equally important.

I've never had a long enough discussion with Ted to find out whether Dreaming of Jupiter was more catharsis than adventure for him but usually books of this sort are one or the other. If my effort ever gets written it's going to need some careful structuring to make sure it's not just an exercise in introspective navel gazing. These things have to be interesting for someone else to read. And if nobody else reads it it has to be interesting to me to write.

There's an old saying "I don't know what I think until I read what I wrote" and there is some truth in that. It's the literary version of quantum uncertainty where ideas and impressions that only exist in your head as formless impressions and feelings are forced to take concrete form by the act of writing them down. Whether what comes out is worth the effort is another matter but at least they then take on a separate existence. That act of writing it down crystallises what was important but it's always amazed me that two people doing the same trip will write down different things. We see things differently, we interpret things differently and we remember them differently. One of the ideas I've wanted to follow through on is to write a parallel lives travel book where those different perspectives are brought together in one volume but of course it needs at least one other person to commit to it. In the absence of that the best I can do is to use the same person separated by time.

There are trips I've done where the interplay between the 'characters' became the essence of the trip but the emotional fallout that results makes them difficult source material. I tried to tackle one one of them about 10 or 12 yrs ago after something brought it all to the fore again but the resulting manuscript has never seen the light of day. It's not interesting and I keep it in a drawer along with a copy of Zen and the Art etc as an example of how not to do it. I'm sure there's a story in there somewhere but if there is it won't end up on the motorcycle travel section of a (secondhand) bookshop.

I’ve just been reading a book called Zen and Now by Mark Richardson. Those of you who have read Zen and the Art etc will know that it starts with a bike trip across the US mid west heading for San Francisco before vanishing into the philosophical aether. Zen and Now is the author - a journalist - redoing the trip some decades later and relating his experience of what he found. What he did find were a number of people mentioned in the original book who were willing to talk and a number of instances where the story had been ‘embellished’ for literary effect.

It seems that there is (or was anyway - the book was written in 2008) a Zen trail across the northern states akin to Route 66, with guide books etc available to help you track down the most obscure original trip landmarks. It is well written - as you’d expect from a journalist I suppose - and he does have the confidence to push his nose in where many of us might fear to tread; the journalist again I suppose.

With getting on for 15yrs having passed since he rode the route, his trip itself is fast becoming a route to re-ride and see if many of the characters remember him. Certainly quite a few of the places he stayed at are no longer around so anyone doing it would face the same problems he did. Re-riding a trip that in itself was a re-ride of an even older trip starts to raise some philosophical issues that it might need another trip to resolve. Quite what to call it might be the first one