Before

After

My latest book was Michael Palin's book version of his around the world trip back in the eighties.  I remember distinctly the BBC television series.  Palin is a delightful host on world travels.  In fact, he is still making travel television shows.  His latest is broadcasting now on the New Europe, as I recall.

I am impressed with Palin's writing style, and there appears to be no ghost writer listed on the copyright page.  He is a very literate fellow.

Sounds like a great adventure, and I would love to trace his steps.  One day....

Book number six for this year was Long Way Round by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman.  I had to check the book out from the library after watching the DVD of their trip around the world on motorcyles.  I forget where I learned of their journey, but had to see it.

The DVD was interesting, but I was disappointed that they spent two hours out of ten on preparations for the trip.  And there were gaps in the DVD that kept me wondering what happened.  However, on the whole, the DVD was very entertaining, and of course, the book was better.  The book is always better.

In the book, Ewan and Charley take turns narrating the story.  (Of course, they had a ghost writer who is given credit in the front of the book.  In fact, I think that's the perfect way to write a book - have someone else do the grunt work for you.)

They left London on two BMW's to travel by land across Europe and Russia, then a short plane trip to Alaska, and on to New York.  The heart of the story was the hard part in Mongolia and Siberia.  The best part of all travel stories concerns the difficulties and set-backs.  But they met some very interesting people and saw beautiful places.  Makes me jealous of course.

Today I got to take my first bike ride of the year.  It's hard to believe that the temperature was 67 on February 5!  It was a cloudy and rainy day, but I managed to avoid the downpours and only got a light sprinkle.  However, the road was wet enough to get the bike really dirty.

It was great to get out and tool around for a couple hours on the backroads between Lexington and Nicholasville.  I do love riding.  But I always want to keep going.  There is that wanderlust in me that makes me want to take that bike on a long trip.

I get the same wanderlust sailing.  Most of the time, sailing is putting the boat in at a launch, sailing cirlcles and winding up at the same place.  Boring, except for the good sailing.  But far better is dropping the horizons behind and seeing what is coming up ahead.  I love traveling on a sailboat and a bike.  One day....

Well, I read my fifth book today.  Yes, I was not feeling well with my CFS so I spent most of the day in bed reading this book and completed it in one day.  I wish I could read all books in one day.  That's the best way.  And I want to complete all projects in one day as well.  Of course, that is not particularly practical, but it's my preference.

Yes, I've been on a travel book binge, especially motorcycle travels.  It seems I have about read all the sailing travel books, so it was time to pick up a new category.

Most of these traveling people are pretty crazy.  This girl is.  Riding, mostly alone, for 20,000 miles from Alaska to the tip of South America by herself is a dangerous thing, it seems to me.  But she escaped without any real dangers, it seemed.  And she and other travelers are quick to point out that all the horror-stories told about foreign travel are merely anecdotal.  I still don't want to try it.

I think there is plenty of adventure to be hand in the US of A for me.  Maybe when I have seen it all here, I might be tempted again to go overseas.  Meanwhile, these travel books feed my wanderlust.  I yearn to go do some of this.  Need it.  Maybe one day.

I was interested that this woman picked a 225cc Yamaha dirt bike for her trip.  In many ways that was better. It seems the big dirt bikes are very hard to keep upright in the rough terrain, and very, very difficult to pick up once they go down.  Light is good.  But then she had quite a bit of bike trouble.  I was disappointed that the Yamaha brand didn't hold up better.

Well, I must say that I prefer non-fiction to fiction.  When I read about a real-life adventure, I find my satisfied.  When I read about a made-up one, I am somehow not satisfied.  It was just a story.  It didn't really happen.  Maybe it was a well-told tale, and no doubt had some insights to human character, but it didn't really happen.  Yeah, I just don't care for fiction.

But I do love travel books.  Of course, my favorite is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is more philosophy than travel. 

All of the travel books make me say, "One day..."  One day, I will cut loose.  One day, I will have time and be free of responsibilities that tie me down.  One day, I will go.  Maybe it's just a pipe dream and will never really happen, but I think of it all the time.  One day.  One day.  One day.

Last night I finished my fourth book this year - Ken Follett's World Without End.  His two books are monster books; this one with over 1,000 pages.  These books caught my eye on Audible in December, and I decided to read them this year.  Feels good to have accomplished the year's goal by February 2!

Both books are magnificent tales.  The storyline captured me, and I couldn't wait to see what happened next.  Too many times I read until 1 am. Not good for me.  But these books were hard to put down.

And I am struck by the starkly evil characters in the books.  The bad guys are really bad and stay bad.  There is no reforming the brutal and self-serving people in these books.  Sometimes I grew weary of the brutality and tragedy, but I do not doubt that it was characteristic of the day, a time before much justice in the government.  It was a time of struggling toward a civilized life, and the main characters are very much involved in that struggle.

Ken Follett has one powerful imagination, and he can spin a yarn.  Both books are highly recommended, if you can handle 2,000 pages!

My latest book was The Essential Guide to Motorcycle Travel.  It was a pretty good how-to book about all the gear and considerations for going on motorcycle trips.  Most of it was pretty self-evident, but I did get some good ideas from the book.

I was surprised that many motorcycle riders like wooden beads as pads on their seats.  One of the keys is that the beads keep an air flow under your seat so that you don't get so sweaty.  I have a gel pad for my seat which is pretty comfortable. 

I was very interested in the new fabrics for riding.  The Outlast brand of temperature regulating fabrics sounds pretty amazing. But I was most impressed with his opinion (apparently shared by many riders) that their best garment was an electrically-heated vest.  That impressed me!  I have been cold on a bike and a heated vest sounds like just the item.  I have looked online and found kits for putting electric heating into a vest. Does that sound safe?  I would be a little nervous about making my own electric gear.  I think a mistake might be shocking!

Well, I learned a bit from this book, but it's wasn't great. Most of the items were rather obvious.

My second book of the year was The Longest Ride by Emilio Scotto, a ten-year motorcycle venture around the world.  This is quite an amazing story and worth the read because of the sheer grandeur of the adventure.  Ten-years and 500,000 miles on an old Honda Goldwing.

Emilio was born poor in Argentina, but in his early twenties he was working for Pfizer and making a modest income in dollars.  When he saw an ad for a Honda Goldwing, he had an instant radical commitment to buy the $26,000 bike.  With incredible persistence, which he exhibits throughout his journey, he persuaded the dealer to finance the bike in spite of the fact that there was almost no way he could pay for it on his modest salary.  But just about the time he was to default on his loan, the peso was devalued and he wound up buying the $26,000 bike for $3,000!

Next thing you know, he is off to see every single country in the world with $306 in his pocket.  I am amazed when anyone starts such adventures with little or no money.  But he made it!

The book is poorly written.  There's no doubt about that.  It sounds like the writing of a person more committed to riding than to writing, which is obvious. 

The one thing I wish he had talked more about was exactly how he managed to keep cobbling together enough money to keep going.  Many times he runs completely out of money, and then the next page he is spending money on a boat passage or extortion rates for entering a new country.  Occasionally, he explains that he worked in a restaurant or hotel, or later in the journey, managed to get sponsorships or sell his story to a magazine.  But most of the time, I was left hanging wondering how he managed financially.

His persistence is inspiring!  In most of the troubled countries of the world, he had great difficulty getting through the border checks.  He strategy mostly was to wait them out.  He would go to the necessary office or border crossing every day for three weeks and sit all day waiting.  Finally, the clerks would call a higher up and when they discovered his story, he was given permission to enter and to bring his bike.  I think he spent a year of his journey waiting at border crossings!

And the trip was unnecessarily dangerous!  He went through six or eight war-torn countries, in spite of good advice not to enter because of the danger.  He simply would not listen to advice. If someone said the road ahead was impassable, he had to try it.  If someone said he would be killed by warring tribes or cannibals, he had to go. Crazy!  I am mostly surprised that he lived to tell the tale.  There were numerous occasions when he came way too close to being killed!  I like adventure but not that kind of unnecessary risk.

I am also very impressed with the Honda Goldwing.  His bike must have been about an 1983 model, and it kept him going against incredible odds around the world.  He drove it in all kinds of terrible conditions from water, to desert to jungle.  He finally did have to have some major repairs and a new engine, but he got amazing service out of this bike.  And it made me want to get one.

It's not the best narrative in the world, but with all it's weaknesses, I still very much enjoyed the book.  It truly is a one-of-a-kind adventure. 

Well, 2008 has started off as a reading year for me.  One of my gift cards was to Joseph Beth's Bookstore here in Lexington, so I bought two books I have been interested in reading - Pillars of the Earth and World Without End by Ken Follet.  I have never read anything by him before, but was very intrigued by reviews. 

I have already completed Pillars of the Earth - a 989 page book!  I guess I liked it to have read it in a week.  I was afraid it was going to be one of those books where you have trouble keeping up with a whole host of characters, but it turned out to be very readable and interesting.  It is not heavy reading, not a historical fiction quite like the Michner books I like so much.  I re-read Chesapeake by James Michener last year.

So I have completed the first and am now into the sequel - World Without End.

Did I ever tell you that I would rather read than eat?

Well, the big news in my life is my new Hunter 22 sailboat.  I purchased it on Ebay in August and drove to Atlanta to pick it up over Labor Day.  Here is my first photo of the boat out of the water.

It was an ugly mess really.  The boat had been in the water a long time and the hull was covered with algae and ugly growth. 

I had no idea what I had really purchased, but I got a good deal on it at $1,000.  My brother-in-law Ralph and I had quite an adventure getting the boat home on the trailer which was too small for the boat, but we made it.

The first project was to get a trailer large enough for this 3,000 pound boat.  After searching on the Internet, I found this one.

Obviously, this is a bass boat trailer.  So Ralph has been helping me rebuild the trailer so that it will fit the boat.  That is a project that is still underway.

But I have been working on the boat itself.  It has boat pox.  Ever heard of that?  That is when the gelcoat has been compromised and water seeps under the gelcoat and causes blisters.  They are usually about 1/2 inch big, but some are smaller and some larger.  They have to be busted with a chisel and ground out.  Then they have to be filled. 

When I say my boat has boat pox, you probably don't appreciate how badly it has this disease.  Look at this picture to see the extent of the damage.  This is after I had bust the blisters and ground them out.

So the next project is to fill all the holes, then sand it all smooth again.  Only then will it be ready for a paint job.  I will put on 3 or 4 coats of boat enamel, and it will look like new.  It has been a ton of work cleaning up this boat and getting ALL of the blisters popped and ground out, but it is almost ready for the paint.  It will be beautiful.

I am planning to paint the bottom red with a 2 inch white stripe at the waterline and the top sides navy blue.  I have seen boats with those colors and really like them.

Well, this is a boat project, not a boat yet.  I think it will be next spring before I really finish and put the boat in the water.  But I am excited!!