Jupiter's Travels

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Having fallen out of love with journalism, Ted moved to France and began restoring a ruined 13th-century gatehouse in the South of France while writing freelance celebrity stories for newspapers when actors filmed on the continent. However, it was while watching television on a visit to England that the idea of travelling around the world first came to him. But at some point descriptions of dresses that held "breasts up for [his] inspection" and calling a woman a "silly cow" really spoiled my enjoyment of the book. I’m pretty risk averse, but there was still plenty of adventure the second time around, some of it much more extreme than my youthful trip. In the Bolivian highlands, my gearbox gave out. Again, there was nothing to do but wait for rescue. In due time, help arrived in the form of an oil tanker. The driver offered me a tow. It was incredibly dangerous, but there seemed no other way. I spent over an hour balancing on the motorcycle as I was pulled along on a 10-foot rope. Without a doubt, it was the scariest ride of my life.

The most bizarre fact about Ted Simon’s four-year mid-1970s motorbike journey round the world is that he was 42 when he undertook it; even more remarkable is that he repeated his journey, aged 70, eight years ago. Listening to his upfront and personal account of his first trip, I’d assumed he was in his early twenties. He is engagingly honest about his own shortcomings as he is unseated time and again on Africa’s all but non-existent roads, panics during two weeks of being held by Brazilian police, falls in love in California (to which he returned as an organic farmer in later years), and learns just a little wisdom among Indian gurus. All praise to Rupert Degas for making this over-egoistic but fascinating tale compulsive listening. The writing was better than I anticipated - some beautiful metaphors along the meaningful philosophical thoughts transformed parts of it into quality literature. Find sources: "Ted Simon"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( February 2009) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) The journey had little to do with motorcycles, which was really just a conduit for the narrative – a unique way of getting around that hadn’t, to my knowledge, been done before. As a method of travelling, motorcycles are very physically demanding; you’re completely exposed to the elements. Over the years, motorcycle travel has become something of a trademark of mine, and I’ve written several books about my two-wheeled journeys. His first book, The Chequered Year, or "Grand Prix Year" (U.S. 1972), was an account of the 1970 Formula One season.The relationships Ted formed and the time he spent working the land on the ranch in California had a huge impact on his life, so much so he later decided to make the Golden State his home. In Kenya, the isolation and constant battering his ageing body is taking start to bite and it's clear that the cherished memories of a quarter of a century ago are being slowly, irrevocably, violated. Exhausted and in the middle of a vast plain, he hits a patch of mud and his bike topples over. 'For the first time in my life, I hear the loud snap of a bone breaking,' he writes. 'I put my right foot down, only to see it flop over uselessly.' If the book's conclusions are depressing, the writing is anything but. It is, at times, sparse, at others gloriously luminescent, but always self-deprecating. Simon's physical powers are diminishing, but his writing just gets better. The wonderful portraits of the people he encounters, often redolent of Bruce Chatwin, are sometimes so enticing that, were this a movie, you'd swear they were a plant for later on. But we never see or hear from most of them again and this, I suppose, is the essence of the journey. Although I do not share many of the author's views, I liked most of the book, learned historical facts, and gained food for thought. The book also made me reflect upon some of my own shortcomings, and there's always value in that. In those days I played jazz clarinet, and a famous jazz musician gave me a note to a friend of his in Paris who ran a newspaper office. The friend gave me a job as a messenger boy, and that was how I became a journalist.

Ted is concerned about the fact that it’s too easy to travel the world doing little more than skimming across the surface of the countries along the way. “There’s nothing wrong with a person heading out to explore the world on a motorcycle, or any form of transport, with no greater aim than to see some of the world and to be out of the places they know well. But it’s a missed opportunity if the traveller doesn’t look deeper. Deeper within the countries and cultures they are travelling through, and within themselves.” They are different from other men, these road builders. Some kind of esprit de corps animates them, as though the roads and bridges they are making are only the physical symbols of a desire to help the world along." p. 108 Ted’s new book, Jupiter’s Travels In Camera, is a sleek, coffee table sized book and as soon as you see it you know why he’s so proud of it. “Technological advances have allowed something quite special to be produced from my old Kodachrome slides.” However, having heard his comments about his ability with his Pentax cameras, I was keen to see inside it. The quality is spot on and the 300 plus photographs aren’t so over engineered that the sensation of time has been lost. In 1973, Ted Simon embarked upon an epic journey that would take him 64,000 miles around the world on a Triumph Tiger motorcycle. Four years later, he would return to London a changed man with many a colourful tale, recounted here. Simon himself provides the introduction for his epic motorcycle journey, and hearing his voice sets a good tone for the rest of the audiobook; in fact, he quips, ‘Rupert Degas […] sounds much more like me than I do’. Narrator Rupert Degas then takes over for the remainder, with delightful results. His British-accented diction is clear, and his speech follows natural patterns, appropriate for a memoir. Degas’s accents for the various people Simon encounters add an extra dimension to the work, creating a vivid listening experience.Well, we're all just acting out other people's fantasies, aren't we? Maybe we're not much good for anything else." p.99

Jupiter’s Travels – America (excerpt 2) https://naxosaudiobooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Jupiter_America_extract2.mp3 But I also felt changed in the ways he describes. Sure, my own 'trip' was a much shorter version, and factor in everywhere I've been it's still just a fraction of the ground he covered. But as he's concluding the book, and talking about finding the meaning, and finding even if there is a meaning... Have you ever stopped what you're doing, thrown it all down, and gone to look for that meaning? I wandered through supermarkets and along 'Shopping Malls' disgusted and obsessed by the naked drive to sell and consume frivolities. It seems to me I got most comfortable in places that were actually terrible places. I mean, like Chile, where there was Pinochet and all sorts of terrible things were happening to people, but I enjoyed it, partly because I fell in love with a really beautiful woman and secondly because it was all so exciting and I wasn’t personally under threat. I was alright. I remember that as being a very good time. And then there was the ranch in California. That was just something out of time altogether. I had four months at that ranch. That really was very special. Not something someone could really hope to do today. Innocent times, sort of, anyway…”I watched her still, exploring the shape of her body. I would have expected a dancer's body to be harder, to show more muscle.” He went on to tell us, “One of the aims of The Ted Simon Foundation is to encourage overlanders to travel with the ambition to learn about the places they are travelling through. There is no better way to get to know people and their culture than to live and perhaps even work with them for a while. Most overlanders stumble across opportunities, but I want to encourage them to travel with intent.” He rounded that comment off with this, “The dumbest question I get asked is ‘why did you do your four year journey’? Why would you not want to know what’s going on in the world?”

As an author, Ted Simon is an honest as they get. Jupiter’s Travels isn’t a tale of macho bravado but is instead an insight into what happens when a man opens himself up to the world – the loneliness, the friendships, the breakdowns, the loves and the losses. Putting your vulnerabilities down on paper for the world to scrutinise isn’t an easy task. I ask Ted how he dealt with this challenge during such a tumultuous time in his life.Jupiter’s Travels – America (excerpt 1) https://naxosaudiobooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Jupiter_America_extract1.mp3