Motorcycle Explorer February 2015 Issue 4 | Page 116

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or three nights prior to the planned departure date my stomach heaved and my nerves kept
me awake into the small hours in my small hotel beside the Pagoda in Battersea Park in central
London. As a result I was desperately tired on the day of departure. The plan was to ride down a
specially built stage in front of an array of assembled press. From there Henrietta rode pillion
with me down to the train shuttle that would take me to Calais and we hugged goodbye
harbouring mixed feelings, each wondering if I would get back safely for us to be together again.
If you don’t get love from those who are meant to give it you, you never stop searching for it, and
my years of longing for someone to love were akin to gazing at the light from a distant star. The
light had been travelling for such a long time that I had begin to wonder if the star still existed,
but now here we both were, saying goodbye in Folkestone and setting off in opposite directions,
in my case to God knows where.
An hour later I ran out of fuel just a short way from Calais. The reserve setting on the fuel tap was
inoperative. It was an inexcusable error yet typical of the cavalier spirit I had often adopted in
my journeys. If I was furious at this flaw in my attitude, it wasn’t for the first time. Resigned to
losing precious time, I padlocked the bike to a section of Armco on the A26 leading to Paris and
hitch-hiked 75 kilometres back to Calais. Many times in my life I eschewed the chance of making
a sensible choice when the opportunity arose. From the moment my father asked if a journey
through life should be hard or not, I have been incapable of being gentle with myself. Self-
proving is a type of punishment and relies on a barometer of self worth which, for people who
do things like this, oscillates between incomprehension and surprise. In the Lutheran tradition of
working hard to succeed so God will be merciful, there are few moments when I truly feel that
what I do is worth doing. Science fiction author Kurt Vonnegut wrote in The Sirens of Titan:
“Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty three thousand miles closer to Globular
Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing
as progress.” I am one of those misfits.
I rode for days across Europe, feeling fit and strong, sweet-smelling rapeseed pollen filling my
senses. The roar of the wind mixed with the noise of the engine on an autoroute somewhere in
France as I watched farmers hosing down terraces of ripening vines. I felt happy, sitting with
them in my imagination beneath terracotta eaves sipping a soft wine. The incessant wind soon
plundered such thoughts as it sucked out the air from inside my helmet, my snot wrapped
around my nose with a bit of dribble down my chin, and by the time the afternoon light had
curdled, I was bloated by the days efforts, aching all over as I reached Aix-en-Provence. That first
night, in order to build up to what was going to be a tough journey, I booked into a hotel near the
Italian Alps. It took only minutes to eat, mail my story to my sponsors and sink into a shoulder-
hugging bed from which I soon wished never to leave. The bike was locked to a farm trailer and
my leathers hung in the corner like an alter ego. They reminded me of another self. The open
shutters overlooked a narrow street with the kind of old sodium lights in which bugs like to live.
They crawled around the inside of the lamp looking cozy after a hard day catching smaller bugs,
while empty seats made shiny by flurries of rain faced the steeple of the small church opposite.
During the next few days the roof tiles of baked clay were wet and dark and looked the colour of
ruby as the weather worsened and the light diminished. Visibility though my visor was poor. It
was like peering through a steam bath with only the rivulets of rain water running down to give
me a clear view. It was a Sunday and in the villages down the Adriatic coast of Italy families were
dressed for church. Already I was acutely aware of the quickness of time passing and the slow
pace with which distance was accumulating.