9/11. 20 Years On. What the President did.

An English class. He hears the news, makes a broadcast and boards Air Force 1. It flies west from South Carolina. On board the phones and TV don’t work well so he’s less well informed than I was at home in the UK. He recalls it with all the alacrity of Homer Simpson, brave, angry, thoughtful, heavy responsibility, we’ll get them. Somewhere over Arizona AF1 turns north. GWB wants to go to Washington, ‘back home I used to be great with a ground to air missile launcher.’ He’s not allowed. After another two hours they land at an air force base in Idaho with a comms bunker. Meanwhile in the Capital there’s so many people in the Whitehouse bunker they run short of oxygen and send out the none essentials. Around 6pm they fly east back to Washington and GWB makes another broadcast. The conspiracy rumour mill begins. The owner of the WTC buildings was facing a humongous loss, half empty, too old and too costly to repair, and too costly to demolish. Israel and the US wanted a reason to go after various Arab states. New York share trading prior to 9/11 showed strong anomalies suggesting prior knowledge. A good few people were phoned and told to stay home that day. Firemen told of hearing a series of thuds (explosions) prior to collapse, and many more. Whatever the truth the Israeli owner of the WTC buildings got a humongous insurance payout, and the US spent 20 years, over 2,000 lives and $2 trillion fighting in Afghanistan. (pop; 39m = $50,000 per person) And now Joe Biden is getting a hard time for drawing a line under this unholy mess. So the actual lessons might well be, 1/ US high rise buildings are susceptible to catastrophic fire collapse, 2/ US government is too top heavy, 3/ and can be outwitted by a small band of dedicated individuals, 4/ wanting a war turns out to be not the same as having one, 5/ a lot of money makes for stupidity, 6/ and spending it on benefits is better than armaments in the long run. But as Homer shows recollection is dangerously prone to misappropriation. There is one good thing. The population of Afghanistan now has a taste for a more civilised society. That just might be stronger than gun toting jihadists.

 

Romanian Trip 1998.

In 1998 I took a trip to Romania on my SZR660 to visit Andrada, a young woman I met on a theray training course the year before. The total journey was around 3,500 miles of which 2,300 were riding miles. The bike didn’t miss a beat but 400 miles in torrential rain left the chain completely oil free and the bike sounding like a bag of nails. Sunday afternoon ride from Sheffield to Hull to catch the night ferry to Rotterdam. 200 miles in driving rain to Cologne and camp Monday night.

6am Moto-rail to Munich then 200 miles in torrential rain. The motorway is covered in a sheet of water and waves are coming over the centre reservation from lorries going the other way. Camp on banks of Danube west of Vienna Tuesday night, and find my bank has given me Australian money not Austrian so I arrive in Hungary the following day-- hungry. Missing out lots of stuff, meetings, conversations you have as a single traveller. Wednesday off to Budapest again in torrential rain but the weather turns fine there and the rest is in sunshine. Out of Budapest see beautiful tanned young girls in white bikinis hitching at the side of road. Hallucinating? Heaven? No just the Hungarian variant on a very old profession. If they exported that to Sheffield they’d be on a winner :) The road is now one track in each direction but the surface is OK. Camped Wednesday night just inside Hungary near the border. Evening walk in village and every house came with one cow, one or two pigs, chickens and ducks and veg plots. A whole different meaning for convenience foods. Thursday morning ahead of schedule I cross the Romanian border. God knows what they’re checking for but they take a half hour to do it. A guard is a motorcyclist and waves me to the head of the queue. (Warning; Ignore anyone trying to change money at the roadside. It's a scam. They'll snatch your wallet and run off fast into a silver Mercedes.) Then I hit Romanian roads!! Tarmac moto-cross. This is the main road?! like connecting London and Birmingham with the B1975 and it’s diabolical. Little things that need to be taken into account- wavy lumps and bumps, bits missing, unmarked deep holes, lines of 45* bricks across the road, Romanian for speed bumps, plus you’re sharing the road with big articulated lorries, cars whose wheels fall off frequently (I saw 3), horse and carts with massive loads of hay, herds of cows, goats etc. Romanian road marking for a very deep hole is they put a bush in it. I get to Cluj-Napoca and hail a taxi (to follow it) to Andrada’s address. Andrada is so pleased to see me.

I am brain swiped. The place is all communist concrete bunker flats like a mini New York after Mad Max but I am transformed from a fearful tourist into completely at home as I walk in her door. It is so English. In fact the whole place has an odd English feel to it. The weather is changeable one day to the next and the landscape is very similar and the people (OK I’m biased) have a similar ambience of understatement and minimalism. We walk in a botanical garden. I meet Mihai, Andrada’s boyfriend of 3/4 years and we like each other. He has to study so the two of us spend the next 3 days together. We spend around an hour changing a travellers cheque and can only get US dollars because 'the bank has no Romanian money!!' The economy is very shaky which makes things cheap but difficult for ordinary people. There are about 27,000 Lae to the £. so you instantly feel wealthy. There are many gypsy beggars. They are amazingly different to ordinary Romanians. They have no conception of achieving anything for themselves. They are either given something or go without it. Their 'commerce' is dependant purely on their ability to induce pity, which is why Romania has so many orphanages. ( baby pitiable, toddler not so much) We go for ride to a lake, then to a restaurant in a village. It rains while we’re inside and when we leave it is dry but the road outside is a river. The rest is eating, talking and Coca-colas in cafes. I take her on my motorcycle 70 miles to Tigr-Mures where her parents live.

She says her sister Maria is so keen to meet me. I have serious trouble accepting this. Why would an 18yr old younger sister want to meet a middle aged acquaintance of her sisters?? Nothing could prepare me for the ambience of her family. So much love and acceptance flowing back and forth without the slightest restriction. It was wonderful to see and be a part of. No wonder Andrada is like she is. She and her sister, Maria, play like kittens. Laugh, disagree, scowl, pout, look, kiss and laugh again, all in an instant with nothing remaining. Her mum and dad speak no English but there’s instant warmth and understanding of each other. No judgement, distancing or reservation. It was blissful. I think, or at least I hope, that I am like that. We go for walk and Coca-Cola. Despite all our differences of circumstance somehow an old soul knows an old soul and the knowledge of our long existences seems to pass between us. We meet up with Mihai for a drink, drop him off, go home and talk. I feel ageless and everyone accepts me as how I feel, only the mirror reminds me. I seem to be in the land of who you are is how you feel. None of the condemning imagery that we are so used to, that we think is not damaging us. Later she sees me looking pensive. ‘Is it the mirror?’ I nod. We start off on a 3 day trip to the mountains.

Me, Andrada, Maria, Mihai and Anka, Mihai’s 13 yr old sister. Parents fuss to see everything is safe. Oh I change money with Andrada’s father. He gets out calculator but I already have implicit trust in this man whose eyes seem to wrap around you in a smile. Andrada drives confidently but a little fast and bottoms the car on some bumps. Sunny. Lunch. Mihai drives. We visit 2 churches and find a hotel for the night. There is one price for Romanians and one for tourists so they book the room and I have to act dumb. I’m beginning to feel like Mihai and Andrada are the parents and the other three of us as the children. It feels so nice to not be responsible. I have one room and the other four all sleep in one big bed. This is the only sense of age difference I have. At dusk Andrada and I find ourselves outside waiting for the others. Some boys are playing football with a hedgehog. I take it off them and put it under a car for safety. One fishes it out and it dies. I was upset I didn’t do more. Some young men appear and tell them off with a few cuffs round the head to make the point. The hotel is also like a Marriot after Mad Max. Next morning we arrive at Draculas castle

(all this is happening in Transilvania) and aquire a 13yr old guide who sets them all off giggling with his factual presentation of very dubious facts. As we walk round he casually tests the relics for their rigidity. The castle is a delight. Architecture that seems to conform to the human spirit in form and proportion. I buy 4 big pullovers that smell of sheep oil for about £5 each and a white fur hat for Anne. I so want to buy them presents for looking after me but they totally refuse. Back in the car I notice Alex the guide is still with us. He’s taking us to a house he knows for the nights stay. A typical Romanian farm house full of pretty things where, if Alex arrives with some guests the family moves out and we have the beds. The evening is set back by getting a puncture then finding the spare wheel does not fit the car?! 2 or 3 men gather as we decide what to do. They take over, remove both tyres, fit the good one on the wheel that fits the car and then rush off in their car after a bus that had gone by 5 minutes ago because it would have a compressor to fill the tyre. Maria and I, on the basis ‘anything you can do’, wrestle the punctured tyre on the errant wheel. We go for a pizza. Next day is raining so after visiting the castle of the ex king and queen we decide to go home. Palesh castle left me speechless. Full of the most excellently tasteful craftsmanship. I could spend an hour in each room drinking the wonder of it. Then there was another castle 100 yards away built because they thought the first was to grand. The interior designed by the queen, Russian but born and brought up in England, is grand simple elegance. Andrada tells me they had 'many wars with the Turkeys'. Next day Mihai had to go to college and Andrada and I go for walk and the day after we hire a boat on the broad river Mures and swim off it then picnic in Mihais fathers orchard. We look at the house he is building. (oh on the way back from the mountains we get lost. Andrada leans out the window to the next car. ‘I have a question’ ‘bla, bla’- she gets an answer- ‘how far is that?’- reply ‘that’s another question’) Lovely picnic. Anka who I haven’t mentioned is also lovely. Again that lack of external consciousness allows her to be both mature and innocent at the same time, utterly charming. Interesting to note they are building churches in Romania because of overcrowding. That’s different! On the last day I watch cable with Andadas dad. The German motorcycle grand prix. This is serious heaven. Andrada watches for a while. In the thick of the action Max Biaggi slides off unhurt. The testosterone levels rise with the speeds and the commentator talks on and on in Romanian, technical information, lap times, positions, strategies etc. . Andrada turns to me to translate something she’s found important. ‘Biaggi is upset’. Perfect Andrada! It’s time to leave. I first say goodbye to Mihai and I think I see his eyes a little full. We had grown to like each other. Andrada’s mum and dad the same. She and Maria drove out to a petrol station to see me off. She says ‘I think I want a cuddle’. She was crying a little. I held her and her poor little heart was pumping like a sledgehammer, I can still feel it. Maria smiles and says ‘I’ve come to look after her.’ I ride back through Cluj where I first arrived, and had to stop to write her a note just to re-connect with the happy memories of only a few days before. Peter, who I met very briefly and was using Andrada’s apartment while she was away insisted I come in for soup and ice-cream. They’re all so bloody nice. I drive into a wonderful red sunset until my visor is so covered in insects I have to camp behind a petrol station.

I was really finding it difficult to leave. The ground was grass over rocks and my tent was outside the radius of the guard dog’s chain. The journey went fine but by the time I got to Germany I was beginning to miss those Romanian roads after miles of bland, lifeless motorways. Drank and talked of life with a 6foot6 Arnold Schwarzenegger on the Rotterdam ferry and home. On the Sunday Andrada’s mum came back from church and gave me a little piece of bread from the service and said she had prayed for my safe trip. My main relief when I got home was that I hadn’t let her prayers down, funny that. So my trip to that magic land is over. It was literally out of this world. It made me see the price we’ve had to pay for our complicated prosperity.

Trip round the Alps.

 

A leisurely tour for a change, not a there and back AFAP. 2/3 weeks with Antony, an old friend on a newish Kawasaki Versys and me on my trusty SZR round the Alps and back camping and rooming. I did prep the bike honest but in retrospect I didn’t do a very good job so it’s no thanks to me that she didn’t miss a beat again.
So Friday evening, July 17th we set off for Hull in shite weather and stationary traffic getting into the M18.
The ‘all you can eat’ buffet on the boat was welcome, especially for a very large guy who had 3 mains, 2 slabs of chocolate cakes and god knows what else besides.
Rotterdam and south. Same shite weather which made the 300 miles to the first stop a slog. Antony got a wet crutch and my boots were, if anything, leaking- outwards. A lonely hotel deep in the woods run by a rather choice grandmother. It’s my age. Good food, which will later become a theme for this trip. We dry. We set out again in the rain then dry. In the middle of a plain, having taken our wet gear off, we get caught in a downpour, the only protection being a field of 6’ corn. I suggest it’s better the second row in and we pretend the corn is sheltering us for half an hour then head out in the 60mph hair drier to get dry again. We’re well short of our second night stop so cast around for rooms in Ellingen, apparently a famous baroque town. A far too posh for us place has rooms so we give in to paying the extra. The young chef gets two 8” heavy iron keys circa 1800 and leads us up a grand carved wooden staircase to equally grand pairs of double doors. It was like being on a stately home tour and being ushered to stay in the king’s bedroom. Far better than the Ritz. Assuming an interest in motorcycles and ceilings don’t go together I won’t dwell on the magnificent plasterwork, an amazing piece of restoration. The more my mouth drops open the more the chef shows us. The attic with an amazing bathroom in a cupboard, the banqueting hall with ornate painted ceiling, even down to a hole in the floor through to the cellar where Jewish women would ceremoniously cleanse themselves. (and I suspect have a good time without the men)

Then off to a camp site in Austria for a couple of days. The weather is now hot and my SZR even hotter, it didn’t feel happy. It had steamed a bit in miles of traffic just outside Sheffield so maybe the coolant’s low, especially as the fan wasn’t cutting in. Plus the oil level was very confusing being a dry sump. So changed coolant and topped up oil. Plus the footrest hanger had cracked from the tie down on the ferry. Antony’s reference to her being a ‘nail’ didn’t go down well. Got a heavy duty jubilee clip and fashioned a support which, as time went on, seems to have caused the back brake master cylinder to pull in air which then required periodic bleeding for the rest of the trip.

Antony is convinced we are now in the region of very nice people who are also secret Nazi sympathisers. Lederhosen and Mercedes seemed to be the give away. 

Yet another enjoyable meal. 

Now into the Alps and a late evening search for a guest ‘hof’. Luck found us one half way up a mountain side overlooking the valley. 20 euros and lovely clean rooms.

And three delightful girls 2, 8 and 10 who would entertain us with German lessons for the next two days. Kids make great teachers. They found our lack of their language huge fun and just carried on regardless until we understood.

Sandra showed me round the barn. 8 cows, 2 pigs, 1 goat, one rabbit with pups and a cat with kittens. Which did I like best? I said the pigs. She was aghast, “nine nine, de shwine da shtinken!” In some curious way I found I could understand what she was saying.

The hillside opposite was a bit like the Lake District except for the houses being ridiculously small.

Humanity was dwarfed and I found it strangely relaxing to look at it time and time again. I wasn’t too well so Antony did daily trips to the valley for rolls and cigs. After a thunderous evening storm we bled my brake and were off again for the high passes into Italy. First the Brenner, then the Jauafen and then the Stelvio. Antony insisted on the Stelvio as it’s the highest in the Alps, 1.7 miles high. I thought nah, that was just about bragging rights. Well I was wrong; riding over it is something to brag about. It had me scared with its hairpins and drops.
It took all the little skill I have to negotiate it.

You have to go right to the opposite edge of the road to come out anywhere near on your side of the road, so oncoming traffic is problematic. Do I hit it going in or coming out? Half way up we chat to a German couple. The man says “We come 6 times. Each time we see dead biker in road.” Thanks for that. And at the top, Buxton on a Sunday afternoon or Douglas prom during TT week. God knows how they get all the sausages up there, probably helicopter. For sure nothing bigger than a small campervan could make it. 

By the end of coming back down my back brake is only effective by the pedal dragging on the ground. Into Italy and a campsite somewhere with a disco playing till 3 in the morning.
In the midst of some Italian traffic jam my fan kicks in! Jubilation.

And I thought it wasn’t working.

Around this time Antony and I encounter small differences of opinion. Well nobody’s perfect. I am cheap, Antony likes comfort. I ride slow, Antony is faster. I am a  rudimentary camper, Antony has a hundred little containers of everything you could possibly need. I am mature and all knowing and Antony is a twat. How he can think I am one too is beyond me. In Switzerland we end up with a room for Antony next to a campsite for me and get pissed together, mates again.  The Simplon pass is easy and sweeping, Lusern and a campsite in the Jura south of Dijon for two nights. I’m reminded how the smallest slope can slide one into a heap in a corner of the tent. A fine Nuevo cuisine meal of chicken which for all the world looks like sections of tastefully arranged bull’s todger in the middle of a large square plate. The next night it’s chicken and chips for £35 less. Two nights and 450 miles to Zeebrugge as we set off north again. The next night in Joinville and we’re in what was probably Edith Piaf’s favourite hotel, the one before she got famous.

Around eight men sit outside in the warm evening visited by a series of bikers on a Ducatti and a Harley, each newcomer shaking hands with everyone, including us. A nice custom.

Inside is a delicate arrangement of rooms, plumbing and stairs. I watch euro porn in bed and am reminded of the tastefully arranged chicken on the square plate. We breakfast, set out and stop. We ‘discuss’ filling both Scott oilers and how to ride apart whilst staying together. In our middle class gentile way it becomes a heated conversation. Without the benefit of our considerable education we would have been free to say, “Well fuck you, asshole!” but we didn’t. I did say OK then I’ll see you in Zeebrugge tomorrow, and Antony by way of disagreement said, “Yeh OK right, fine” and we go our separate ways.

Now I haven’t told Antony this but about one in the afternoon I run out of petrol, stranded at the side of a fast French country road in the middle of nowhere. Shit! This is some hole, and the ferry’s booked for tomorrow evening. I wave haphazardly at the passing traffic. Almost immediately a small French guy with no English stops and I point to the tank. After nearly two weeks of struggling with German and Italian I couldn't give a toss about trying French. For a start the boarders are all in the wrong place. They speak German in Austria and Italy, Italian and French in Switzerland and French in Belgium. It all needs a jolly good sort out. Anyway I have a water bottle and we set off for petrol around 3 miles away. Petrol station, pump, bottle, no petrol. They wouldn’t serve it into an old drinks bottle. By now Julian is on my case. We drive around to a garage and ask for a proper container. Fat guy behind the desk says no on account his fat arse is stuck to his fat chair, but a thin guy is off like a whippet. Container, petrol, 3 miles back and I’m left thanking and clapping St Julian as he drives away. I think we both feel very good.

That evening after a lorry driver gives me a map of Ronse the local town with a campsite marked in biro I camp in the grounds of a school come summer school.

There is a serve yourself bar and with two 8.5% Belgian beers and only one sandwich all day I’m as happy as a newt. Next morning I go into town for breakfast. Belgium by the way looks permanently closed. Shops, rather than attracting attention seem to hide hoping no one will notice them. A role and coffee in an amazing bar all big and period blousy; a sort of 1910 Wetherspoons. 

Back to the campsite and another thing I haven’t told Antony. I left the ignition on and flattened the battery. Well he told me earlier that lying was a necessary art. Shit again! A 660cc single is not the easiest thing to bump start. I pack up and ask a young guy to give me a push. We plan our attack on the small slope, I select third and we role. Immediately a group steps out with a pushchair. Shit, but seeing our predicament I now have three big guys pushing. Brum! Yes! And I’m off. What I haven’t said is that maybe something left in the makeshift petrol container was making the engine die at low revs so I couldn’t let them fall below 2-3,000rpm which made the next hours very nervous, Belgium being mostly flat. But after an hour and a half I made it to the small queue waiting for the ferry in Zeebrugge docks.

The engine stopped. I pressed the button and it started. Few! Relieved and hungry there was time to get lunch back in the town. I parked on the sea front and Antony appeared. So all was well and we’d both got there safe and in time. On the boat I had a plate of Lamb Balti and rice followed by another of Vegetable Tanduri and a big slab of Bakewell tart and cream to finish off. Antony tells three different waiters to alert the captain that another boat is overtaking us. They appear to find this hugely funny but I doubt that indicates what they’re actually thinking. On deck for a smoke. One biker tells of his solo trip to Cape Town and another of doing 280kph on his R1 down the motorway. I am daunted. In the bar it is apparent someone has shit themselves and being very low key about it. Two guys have the dance floor to themselves making strange surreal movements to a singer with backing tracks. I’m guessing the singer has seen it all as he manages to adjust his sound system, play guitar, turn his music over, sing and usher drunks off the stage with complete composure.

Breakfast of everything going and 60 miles to Sheffield. We stop for a parting coffee and agree it was a good trip; a good mix of luck, skill, anxiety and angst. A big manly hug and home, where Barbara had opened the back gate for my arrival. A small but heartwarming gesture. The next hug wasn’t manly.

 

SZR trip to Volos, Greece

 

My trip to the Pilion Centre, near Volos, Greece. May 2007. Starting out on ferry to Calais. Dale, V and me, first day on our way to Reims. Me and bike are passengers in Dale's camper. Hotel in Reims for night and on to South of France. Sunny till we get close, then it starts raining.   We stay at V's friends for 2 nights but it keeps on raining. We start out for Italy, raining, past Nice, Marsalles and Monaco. Monaco looks like a Lilliput land from motorway.  Van begins to judder, we stop to replace missing bolt and re-pack CV joint but no improvement. We camp on beach campsite near Genoa, still raining. I jump ship and next morning bike off in direction of Ancona, Italy. In Genoa a thunder storm and roads flood. Armco lined rings of motorway ramps running like rivers are frightening on a bike. Then the nightmare motorway bit begins. Two lanes each way with Armco both sides, first through a tunnel where all I can see are the lights on the other vehicles. Can't see the road, the walls, nothing, only the red lights to guide me and the little hole at the end. I'm just riding on the assumption everything is where it aught to be, scary! The hole grows and I'm out onto a viaduct across a deep ravine 300 feet below. Armco is only waist height so it might stop the bike but I'd go sailing over. Plus cross winds and lorries; I imagine numerous ways to die. This is repeated for around 50 miles. I'm a nervous wreck by the time the motorway returns to 'on the ground'. I head for Farenzi which I later find out is Florance. A massive traffic jam round Florance and by the end my clutch hand is just about giving up, even though I'm using the motorcycle lane between the cars. On to Arezzo where I find camp site and have pizza and beer, wonderful! In the morning I get a text from Dale who'd driven slowly, under the judder speed, through the night saying leave three and a half hours for road over the mountains to Ancona. Lucky because it didn't look that far on the map. I set off and take best part of an hour just getting out of Arezzo. On a bike there's no one to look for signs and tell you the way so I got lost countless times. Then the wiggliest road in the world. It just wiggled and wiggled and wiggled for ~ 60 miles over hills. As it straightened out on the other side I got stopped by cops for speeding. "I'm English, do you speak English?" He looked at me frustrated and gave me the one word he knew, "Goodbye." Phew! Got lost again in Ancona and arrived 10 minutes before the ferry left. Buy ticket. Can't find passport. Last time I remember it I gave it to V for Calais ferry. Argh! they've got it. Visions of being stranded with them on way to Greece. I ring Dale. "Dale I'm at the ferry," "I know we're looking at you from the sun deck." "You've got my passport!" "No I haven't." I look again and find it 'my other safe place.' Buy ticket with minutes to spare, drive to join the que of one remaining car. I ride on and ferry leaves before I've sorted the bike out. Dale and V find snug place on deck on my camping mat and I have a seat booked. Totally uncomfortable and by midnight I, along with all others are trying to sleep on the floor. Except for a drunk German. He asks if I'm English and tells me all his friends think the English are shit but he likes them. I eagerly shake his hand. He spends the next 2 hours going in and out doors and turning the lights on and off. The sun comes up as we get onto Ignomitsa dock. D ale sets off for Ionenna and I go for petrol. The motorway lasts for 20 miles, rest unfinished. This is Greece. I'm dumped onto country roads for the rest of the way. I stop for a breakfast Coke at Ionenna and head for the pass across the central mountains. The road is 80 miles of beautiful sweeping bends, I learn a lot about cornering. No traffic and lorries easy to pass. Fabulous!  Back on the east lowland I turn a corner and in front of me is Meteora, a cluster of rocks several hundred feet high with monasteries on top. A blast along a motorway I get to Volos. All that's left is a trip over a mountain to Pilion. But Volos is a massive sprawl on a grid pattern with no road signs and it takes me well over an hour to find the way out. Up and up winding and slippery Greek roads, for miles! At the top there's a ski resort. On and on along winding roads not really knowing if I'm going the right way I find Anilion, the village where the Pilion Centre is, but no signs. I text James to come and find me. He replies and 15 minutes later he and Rick walk up the road. I follow them and park. We walk past a house, across a narrow path, then down a track AND I'M THERE!!! 2,000 miles!! It's in a very lush part of Greece south of Thessaloniki and the place is covered in thigh high grass. ale and V arrive a couple of hours later having worked out the problem is old tires deforming when they get hot. Next day we begin work. 5 hours a day for free board and food; afternoons off. V and I scythe as Dale services the strimmer. It's hot and ah Greek salad for tea. Grass gets cut and we start putting up the outdoor structures along with Rick and James. There's a round house, a yurt and a dance and workshop area. I dig over a veg patch ready for V's plants.  Hard work but enjoyable but 3 days of Greek salad and we're sick of it so V and I bake a thick ciche and potatoes. Dale gets to work on the trees. The grass may have grown 2' but the trees have grow far more. Dale has chain saw but trees are on lose earth bank covered in tree litter which makes it dangerous and a pain in the butt. Dale cuts while me and V are on ropes attempting to get it to fall missing the shed and toilets. In the process we inadvertently make signs for men and womens toilets. (left) We repair the steps and railings and prepare the rooms in the main house. 12 days in Barbara is arriving in Skiathos so I bike over on the ferry to meet her. We have a lovely day together, I won't go into detail, and come back on the ferry the following day. Barbara is 'apparently' there for a week. Apparently because by the time she really arrived it was time for her to go. She cooks a broad bean creation, a merciful change from tomatoes, onions and potatoes, and feta. We see giant 4" toads, 3' snakes and wild tortoise from babies to 8" adults.  And each day sit around and chat about daring dos.      Dale and I had to put up a gutter on the roof but it was above another angled tile roof. Problem; how to support us to do it with no decent timber around? After much thought we settled on using the dining benches but we couldn't destroy them. OK make a long bar of 2 upturned benches screwed together and supported by branches resting against the frame of the other building. Then a third bench with extra legs screwed on so we could move it to any position along the other two. Worked great! Barbara gets picked up by taxi to catch her plane. We watch Liverpool lose at the local taverna, me with only one eye for the second half; too pissed to coordinate both, and the next morning I set off alone for home. The weather is rainy over the local mountain but clears up and I head for Meteora and the high pass. The road is flat, straight, one lane each way; the sort of road that doesn't take prisoners. I stop for a coffee in the middle of nowhere, one of those junctions on the plains with nothing but a sleepy cafe to mark it. I strike up a conversation with three Greek guys, our only common language being football player names. One looks surprisingly like Hose Marenio after several very hard nights out. We agree Liverpool the better team, Gerard hero and Kaka devastating. I begin the bendy road I loved on the way out. I overtake a lorry and in a moments panic think I'm not going to make the next bend. I could have easily but it just shows what panic can do. I looked at where I 'didn't' want to go and went there. I entered the ditch at approximately 1mph and stopped. No problem. But each time I tried to get out I slipped further in; well stuck. A few minutes wait and 3 jolly German bikers came round the corner and pulled me out. After convincing them I hadn't had a 'real' accident, just a moments stupidity they wished me luck and continued on their way with an amusing, if confusing, story to tell. The high pass looks more like Alpine pastures with snow poles each side of the road to guide the snow ploughs. Down into Ioninna for a bite to eat at 'Mister Food' and on to Ignomitsa to catch the ferry. On the dock, mercifully a warm, dry evening, I oil the chain and check the bike over. A voice asks "Want some water?" My hands are greasy and a German truck drive, size to match his truck, is offering a wash. He's come from Istanbul on his way to Sweden. He says Greek roads are so slippy empty trucks wheels spin going up hills, and tells of Turkish bribery reducing an E1.5 million customs tax bill to E100 in the pocket. I pack away and he continues listening to German heavy metal. He has a Yamaha R6, a very sporty bike, and says he's a Yamaha man. He rolls his sleeve up to reveal a 4" tattoo of three tuning forks. No CBR's and GSX's for this guy. The ferry looms into view out of the black bay 10 minutes before it's due to sail. It performs what can only be describe as a perfect handbrake turn to arrive at the pier back end first, just meters from the concrete dock. We load and it departs on time. I find a perfect spot to sleep; on the soft carpeted floor under a stack of luggage shelves. Only 2' head room but that's fine for what I intend doing. Then a beer and I begin to put 2 and 2 together. Shouting, scarves, the day after the Athens Euro final. How would you get from Athens to Milan and Liverpool overland? The ferry was full of Milan and Liverpool supporters on their way home. I retire to my perfect spot. One problem. The luggage above me belonged to a dozen young Milan supporters who had no intention of waisting a night on the high seas in sleep. All night they were back and forth finding huge enjoyment keeping the old itinerant biker awake, until comatisation finally overtook them thankfully. At Ancona it was 'they' who were bringing the cup back to Italy. It was they who had taken the free kick and beaten Liverpool, and they who were being jubilantly received by the three people on the dock. It was 12.30pm and my aim was Milan, around 300 miles. I decided to stop every 100 miles, approx one and a half hours. The first was fine, the second slower because of a massive traffic jam round Bologna. By the end of the third I was rounding Milan. The main problem with riding a bike is there's no one looking at the map and telling you where to go. So numerous instant decisions are wrong and I'm either on the wrong motorway or lost in some back street sprawl. I finally hack back onto the motorway I want and turn off to Busto Arsezio to find a camp site. It's the same with camp sites; by the time you find one you're hopelessly lost again. I eye up some waste ground alongside a golf practice range. It may not be 'proper' but at least I know how to get back to the auto route. I am totally fucked from lack of sleep and food. Ham and cheese from supermarket and pitch the tent. The soil is thinner than Astroturf on concrete, so when the wind blows up the pegs ping out and the tent shows every intention of flying away in a mess of poles and, well whatever they make tents out of these days. I drag it under the shelter of some trees where the soil is thicker and park the bike on the windward guy. It now begins thunder and lightning which makes my choice of position a bit dicey. Did I mention it was also raining heavily. In the tent I eat and get my sleeping bag out. Then I put it away. My disheveled tent is leaking like a sieve. I decide to sleep in my waterproofs instead. After a couple of hours it quietens down and I spend the rest of the night in my sleeping bag. Between showers in the morning I pack up and head for the Simplon Pass over the Alps. Through several long, thankfully well lit tunnels I end up in the longest, wettest valley I've ever encountered. 30 miles of undiluted moisture! It takes around three times the concentration to ride a bike in the rain and five times if you add cross winds and lorries.  The pass finally begins and I'm climbing out of Italy into Switzerland.  The road winds ever upward for about 15 miles. The thing about r eally really big mountains is that they don't look any bigger than big mountains, it's just that the houses and villages get smaller and smaller. Across the valley a 10 story block of flats looks like it's made for ants. The top of the pass must be around 6,500 ft, twice as high as Snowden, and even at the end of May it's cold and the peaks are covered in snow.    Another 15 miles down and I'm in Switzerland in Brig for a cake and coffee. A window is slightly open in the cafe and a small bird comes in, scavenges the tables and flies out to feed its open mouthed young outside, time after time after time. Another long valley but thankfully dry this time, then the motorway to Laussane. I manage to glimpse the beautiful views over Lake Geneva before turning off towards Bern. Then off the motorway to a small village, Cossonay 'I think' is in France. I stop for a coffee and a look at the map. I leave money in Euros but later realize I'm still in Switzerland which still uses Swiss Francs. No wonder it seemed expensive. In the way out of the village a Harley joins me at a T junction. I ask him the way to Besancon He is big, has black helmet, black lensed glasses and black scarf; not an inch of person showing. He says a name, I don't understand. He repeats it, I don't understand. He stabs it out with his finger on my tank. I understand. Well I don't really, I pretend, on the assumption this black invisible man may start writing it on me with something sharper than his finger. He signs to follow him till he turns off and I'm to go straight on. He leaves me with a friendly wave and I go 80 miles to Besancon along wet twisty A roads in the rain again. I get lost coming out of Besancon, find the motorway and in a few miles stop for petrol at beautifully laid out services near Dijon. All of a sudden I realize I've reached my limit, I'm totally exhausted and my brain is fried; any further and I'd be dangerous. I've done over 300 miles over the Alps in mostly horrible conditions and I've just turned 64. Eat that you Milan punks who probably went home tucked up in the back of a coach. I find a spot shielded by some trees near the exit and hope nobody sees me. I practice what I'll say if they do. "Exhausted, dangerous, old, demented." And if that doesn't work, "English." Tent up right this time and I get a good nights sleep. It's still around 400 miles to the north coast so I'll just go as far as I can. It starts wet but a 100 miles on it turns dry and I do a steady 85mph in the quiet Sunday traffic. After 300 miles I begin to think I could make Zebrugga for the night boat at 7pm. It begins raining again and that plan goes out the window. I settle for Calais. Knackered again I drive onto Calais dock elated that I've survived! Off the boat and I'm dangerous again. I head for Ashdown and a B& B in the pouring rain. I get directed to a Premier Travel Lodge and they apologize they only have a smoking room left. I'm delighted. The room is bliss; better than a Beverly Hills mansion. I'm in love with it, I want to spend the rest of my life with it. A McDonalds, a shower, a TV and a double bed. And I can smoke in it. Heaven. Just 250 miles to Sheffield and I'll be home. How wrong was I. Black skies, cold rain and side winds and I 'had' to stop in Dartford just to get warm and weld my nerve back together. The spray meant I could hardly see and the winds threatened to push me under lorries. This was going to be a hard long slog. I manage Luton for my next hot coffee stop, then Northampton, then Nottingham. The rain stops but the winds are dangerous and after a particularly close slue towards a lorry I vow to not overtake another the rest of the way. Off the M1, through Chesterfield, round the roundabout, past Abby Lane and into Holmhirst Road. And home. 3,280 road miles and a total journey of 4,400 miles. Apart from a worn out back tyre my Yamaha didn't miss a beat. And my beautiful Barbara gave me a heroes welcome, which I have to say I was. The journey, particularly the weather, had pushed me to the limit and tested my nerve, my endurance and my skill, and I DID IT! When I get back there’s a strangeness. Not in people but the overarching media consciousness. The news is an assembly of people’s mind stories, their intellectual constructions. It’s as if there is a reality yet people are making up their own for reasons of their own. The gulf seems clearer and the reasons, but the futility of doing it is more obvious. I enjoy animals who respond only to the reality they are in. They do not dream of their five minutes of fame or mounting the foothills of opulence with a sofa from DFS. The adverts sell these unrealities, our distractions, and Big Brother shows unformed children excited by the confirmation that unreality exists. Politicians and presenters expound their unrealities with some assumed confidence that what they think exists, exists simply because they think it. “I think therefore I am” has become “I think therefore I am what I think.” Each turn and twist builds further their mountain of misunderstanding, confirming and substantiating it. And those that are successful in this scheme are the failures; those that are more convinced and convincing than the rest of some unreality and able to spread their conviction and profit from it. The richest are those in greatest need of the consolation of riches, who need to build their nest into a palace of suffocating comfort to shield and protect its unreality. The days where life and death coexisted as close as motorway lanes has expunged these tales of unreality. Life became avoiding death, keeping dry, warm and fed and all that that entailed. A taste of trench warfare where the men came back, shocked yet simplified.

 

This method allows three quarters of the pyramid to be built as you go up and the fourth quarter to be built from the top down using the same ramps, replacing the ramps with blocks as you go. I could do it in a fortnight when I was younger.

Today I’m pissed off.

Into my third day of rebuilding the back wall of the garden. Painstakingly chipped old mortar off 150 bricks and started laying them. One mix in and no one insight I needed a pee so had one ‘on site’ as it were. Adjacent to this site is the back of the neighbour’s shed, plain manky ply except for three 2”diameter chicken wire covered holes. This neighbour is known to me from previous debates about his 12’ laylandii hedge less than a foot from said wall so that most of it grew in our garden, a surly bully type. Post pee a voice came from one of the 2” holes, “I can see what you’re doing you filthy bastard.” This phrase isn’t new to me but said seriously it is. I laughed and marvelled at his acuity through such a small orifice. Now cementing requires water and a little later mothermouse remonstrates me for putting a little plant in jeopardy. I’m building a wall here! I cannot hover especially with a brick in both hands! And the plant in question grows all over the place and if it isn’t a weed it should be. A little later another remonstration that she’d been looking for her gloves for hours and there they were on the wall. Why didn’t I tell her they were there?! One I hadn’t noticed them and two it’s highly likely she left them there during the first remonstration. So I’m pissed off, probably at myself for being a wimp. I could have called the neighbour an effing peeping Tom, not automatically assumed the gloves were my fault and pointed out that nothing short of incineration would stop that plant from growing even though it does looks a bit flat and muddy at the moment. Breaking up a wall, chipping off all the old mortar from 150 bricks, mixing new mortar and laying them in something resembling the geometry of a brick wall is hard work. I should not be chastised for my efforts. But then not having direct experience of doing something, anything, leaves one an inadequate judge of what it entails.

Bill Gates wrong?

Bill’s book, ‘How to Survive a Climate Change Event’ is as you might expect, from his unique perspective as CEO of a mega corporation and very wealthy, i.e. science, technology, innovation, investment capital, government funding: basically the creation of Microsoft all over again. It’s laudable but not revolutionary. Covid is currently doing a better job reducing population, personal spending and activity, damaging the drugs industry, decimating air and road travel and generally causing a world slow down. It all started long ago. Man invented farming which allowed time for dreaming and learning. Man then invented factories. Factories pay wages and profits and produce efficiently, so well in fact that the wages they paid could afford to buy the products the factories made. Obvious really, at least to us. But this ever so obvious situation caused a feedback loop. That’s where a little bit of the output is fed back into the input so, as the output increases the feedback increases the input which in turn further increases the output which, and so on. Before factories work produced only for the rich or friends and family. In the last 200 years this factory feedback loop has caused a boom in profits, wages and personal spending. We have all enjoyed the changes from horse and cart to Ford Mondeo, slate tablet to Apple iPad, Bill’s made his fortune and Elon Musk the largest ever factory. What on earth could be wrong with that? Well, as we’re finding, this almost exponential growth is not sustainable. That’s because there are hidden costs not accounted for that allow excess profits to pay higher wages that result in the afore mentioned feedback. Costs like raw materials that come free from the ground, pollution and environmental damage and human time and sweat not adequately paid for. Basically factories break the second law of thermodynamics, well at least in profitability terms. You can’t get more out than you put in. It’s just a case of humans being too clever by half. So Bill, an undoubtedly very intelligent and public spirited person, hasn’t come close to the revolution needed to solve our current riddle.

The riddle and its solution are far deeper than building a zero carbon cement factory. My life, having spanned nearly eighty years, has experienced horse and carts to very comfortable auto mobiles but its richness and happiness has not echoed those technical improvements. If it did I’d be ecstatic by now. It’s given me wonderful tools to play with, new ideas to understand, new opportunities, an excellent education and the NHS, but if I consider my happiness it’s depended on other things. Things like relationships, creativity, freedom to explore myself, achievements, and existing in a context of fun and acceptance. These bear little reliance on technological advancement.

The accepted view is we create a perception of our current surroundings as things happen; nothing strange in that. We easily compare and contrast other peoples surroundings like them having expensive jewellery or a cold. When our surroundings change quickly we compare the before and after for better or worse quite vividly, but if I try to compare my life now with how it was twenty or more years ago my attempt at comparison is far more foggy. It’s hard for me to recreate my sense of the feelings I had back then. I might look at a photograph for help but what I feel is dominated by my current emotional situation. While I cherished my first car at the time it seems like a piece of period junk now. If I’m content then expensive jewellery won’t be attractive but if I feel poor I might lust after it. All experience is coloured by my current condition, which is to be expected. My current car is far better but doesn’t carry the thrill and excitement of my first. But all this means is everything I consider as objective reality is actually based on drifting, ungrounded comparisons. I’m permanently floating on a sea without any inkling of how deep the water is or where I am in the scheme of things, if there is such a thing as the scheme of things. Luckily, being human, my conscious brain can reduce all this to, “When the fuck is this pandemic going to end?”