Sometimes I wonder whether motorcycles are actually a grown up, adult form of transport. In a couple of days I'm heading off down to the Alps on my 125 - mainly to do a few days of property maintenance, but with a bit of extra leisure time tacked on as well (hence my request for Stella Alpina info). This is a trip I do reasonably frequently, and usually by car. I haven't yet considered writing the story of my car based alpine adventures in any form at all - no "drive" reports, no blogs, no folk tales, no romantic ballads and certainly no book. It's not because I can't write or because I can't see the romance of the open road but because it's routine. When I did the trip in a 60's sportscar I did do a quick write up (on request) for the local classic car club newsletter but I think the editor spiked it.

On a motorcycle though the same trip somehow goes from being a commute to an expedition worthy of television coverage (or GoPro coverage at least). It goes beyond being just a transport choice made out of personal preference (shall I fly this time, or maybe the TGV? No, I think I'll take the bike) into the realm of square jawed, leather clad heroes setting forth to do battle. You need as much "right stuff" for bend swinging through the Jura as dogfighting in Sopwith Camels. And such derring do should rightfully be recorded for generations as yet unborn to marvel at. Or not.

OK, that's slightly hyperbolic but wondering why people would want to read my slightly deranged but definitely adenoidal travel jottings is what stops me from producing them in the first place. I don't have an overwhelming urge to communicate and I suspect it's only the ease by which books can be published these days that convinces others to commit to paper. There would be far fewer books (of any genre never mind bike travel) around if the manuscript still had to hawked around 200 publishers by hand.

ZAMM could just as easily have been ZAWM - Zen and the Art of Washing Machine Maintenance. The principles would apply just the same but probably wouldn't have had the same touching tale of generational bonding amidst the obsessive philosophising. I'm not sure anyone gets past the first hundred pages where it starts to drift off into introspective navel gazing. Or maybe that's the great truth - all long bike trips end up like that, where you end up pondering the nature of existence as you cruise along in crash helmet enforced solitude. There's probably a book in it somewhere.

In the absence of any bike travel blockbusters I'm currently reading my way through a raft of faux 007 novels - the ones written in recent times by celeb guest writers. I've finished the Sebastian Faulks one and I'm about half way through the Jeffrey Deaver one, with William Boyd's offering lined up next. Plenty of "man action" in those.