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.