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Around the world with The Bear | Part 35 | Arizona to Hollywood

Motorcycle Touring in the USA

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

Sitting Bull ate a handful of gunpowder every day. Maybe I should have been drinking petrol..


The bike was still running well and lapping up the excellent roads of Arizona and Nevada. But it was getting a little hard to start again, so whenever I pulled up to take a look at the Canyon, I tried to find a slope to make clutch starting easier. Despite these concerns, I still found the Canyon stunning.

The sheer size is overpowering, and it takes quite a while before the mind can take in its scale. It’s very pretty, too, but it reminded me irresistibly of an enormous layer cake that’s been attacked by monster mice.

From here, I turned north-east towards Durango and the Rockies. The old Indians at the roadside stalls where I stopped to buy turquoise souvenirs had the most awe-inspiring faces I think I’ve ever seen – except perhaps for some of the Tibetans in Nepal. Lined and sombre, their faces reminded me of photos of Sitting Bull. Did you know that he reportedly ate a handful of gunpowder every day to protect himself from gunshots?

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part PICTxUp through the mountains the altitude put me in a good mood with the XL also performing well

The road past the bald head of Engineer Mountain and up to the 11,000 ft pass leading to Silverton was great. Quite aside from the fact that I was enjoying having corners again – despite its weight and nearly worn-out shock absorbers, the XL was fun on winding roads – I also got an altitude high.

This happens to me occasionally when I get too high up, and I start making faces, singing, cracking jokes and laughing like crazy – all to myself. It also helped that I was back in the lovely Rockies, with forests of aspens and conifers on the steep slopes and that bracing, cold, clean air. Some of the aspens were already beginning to turn from green to gold. Winter was on its way.

I hurried to get to Denver, where I expected mail to be waiting for me, but of course the best-laid plans of mice and bears… Just outside Conifer, some 40 miles from Denver, my throttle actuating cable broke. I was on the very edge of the huge rampart of mountains that leads down to Denver, so I tried coasting.

I got 18 miles before I ran out of hill! Then – at Bear Lake, to add insult to injury – I finally had to give in and switch the return cable with the broken one. This gave me a throttle control, but of course it now turned the opposite way—to accelerate, I had to turn the throttle away from me. Lots of fun in peak-hour Denver traffic!

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part RIMGA broken throttle cable saw me coast 18 miles, before stopping to switch the return cable around

By now it was too late to go to the post office, and when I got there in the morning there was no mail for me anyway. It’s always a bit depressing when you’re on the road for a while and don’t get mail. You really feel lonely.

But I still had the address of John-with-the-BMW, whom I’d met in Michigan, so I went up to Boulder to stay with him. In traditional American style, I was made most welcome by all the inhabitants of his house and spent a cheerful few days there. Boulder is full of musicians and has an excellent library. I loafed and read and listened to music. My mail was waiting for me when I got to Denver again a week later, and my bliss was nearly complete. But I was still missing Annie, very much.

Down I rode to Colorado Springs along the row of frozen combers that make up the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, and then up and around Pike’s Peak to Cripple Creek. An early mining settlement, this little town has now suffered the fate of all picturesque places in the US – it’s become a tourist trap and derives its substance from the buses. It was still pretty, though, and the scenery on the way even more so. Some of the trees were now changing from gold to bright scarlet and the slopes were marbled with the different shades.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartTaos proved the ultimate in tourist towns…

Sand Dunes National Memorial, an enormous dune formed by wind forced to drop its load of dust and sand by a mountain range, was not as impressive as the booklet had suggested, so I took my leave again and headed for New Mexico. Leaving Kit Carson’s old fort to one side (he was the local hero here), I made Taos in the early afternoon. This has to be just about the ultimate in tourist towns – it gives the impression of having been built exclusively for the trade. Not that it isn’t pretty, it just seems so phony. Perhaps I shouldn’t talk. I only spent an hour there.

I slept up in the hills above Santa Fe that night, deep in another world. Everyone here speaks Spanish, the shop signs are in Spanish and the fluorescent Coors advertisements all say ‘cerveza’ instead of ‘beer’. I felt as though I’d made it to Mexico. In another sad case of prejudice, a white Anglo-Saxon-etc American I asked wouldn’t tell me where any of the local bars were. He didn’t think I really ought to drink with ‘those people’.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part‘Mexican Hat Service’ – Stopping for fuel

From Santa Fe I took the back roads to Albuquerque and found myself back up in the mountains. It was drizzly and cold, too, but the road was well surfaced, narrow and twisty; I had a good time here. I also stopped in a weird little town called Madrid. It had obviously not long since been a ghost town, but now a great crew of hippies was busy restoring, shoring up and beautifying the wonky-looking timber houses.

On the way to Ruidoso and the Aspencade Motorcyclists Convention, I began to worry about the chain again. I’d had to tighten it rather frequently – neither of the chains I’d bought in the US lasted very well – and now the bike was jerking quite noticeably. I had all sorts of fantasies about bent countershafts (silly) and twisted sprockets (sillier).

Riding was becoming unpleasant. I made it to Ruidoso anyway, and spent a relaxed couple of days watching the bikes roll in. I’d been in touch with Honda, and they had expressed an interest in having my XL250 on their stand at the trade show, so, once the show started, I spent my evenings down there talking to the visitors – who found it very difficult to believe that anyone could be crazy enough to ride a 250 around the world.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartAspencade Motorcyclists Convention

Days were spent drinking with my newly acquired friends Norman – who left his little dog Honda guarding their Gold Wing – and Bob, who’d ridden to the show on one of the very few two-strokes around.

Nothing much was going on, rather a disappointment after the bustle of European rallies, but it was great to talk to so many people, from so many walks of life, who were all devoted to motorcycling. I was a little surprised to see relatively few Harleys compared with the waves of Gold Wings that inundated the place.

I rode the new Harley Sturgis, and was very impressed with the belt drives, and spent a lot of time admiring the custom bikes. Unfortunately, they mostly looked as though they’d been put together out of three only slightly different mail-order catalogues. There was not really much variety. The trikes were spectacular, but once again there was little variety among them. On the third day, I won the ‘Longest Distance-Solo Male Rider’ trophy, which still hangs proudly on the wall of my office.

Then it was off again – a straight run for the coast. Every trip has a limited lifespan, and after 11 weeks this one was gasping its last. So it was out onto the Interstate, a road I generally avoided, and off.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartI could tell I was reaching the natural end of my journey with the trusty XL

Seventeen miles from Yuma the steering went heavy. Inspection showed that the patch we had put on the front tube in the Khyber Pass had lifted. It was well over 35 degrees C, there was no shade, and in fact it was very similar to the conditions in which the tube had first given out. It went flat again just outside Yuma, so I had a new tube fitted.

I rather begrudged that now, seeing we were so close to the end of the trip, but I couldn’t be bothered with any more flats. In El Centro I also found an excellent bike shop, where they located a good second-hand Tsubaki chain to replace my old, worn-out one. So I was ready to face the last stretch with confidence!

The road to the coast was most enjoyable, through rugged hills on an excellent surface. In San Diego a solid wall of smog was waiting for me. I made my way down to the Pacific – nice to see an old friend again – and watched the huge oily rollers coming in all the way from Australia.

Up the coast into the rat’s nest of freeways that is Los Angeles, and a stop at the Road Rider magazine office, where I was received very kindly and offered the use of a typewriter to belt out a few stories for them and refresh my traveling kitty.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartWas always a pleasure meeting fellow riders, many surprised by my trip on the XL compared to the more common machinery seen in North America

I spent the last few days before my flight was due wandering around, by bike mostly, and sightseeing. I found Hollywood especially interesting – not so much the homes of the stars as Hollywood Boulevard. Then I had lunch with the friendly folk from Honda USA, entrusted my little bike to them for forwarding to Australia and climbed aboard the plane with the big red kangaroo on the tail.

I spent the flight planning the next trip…


And that, as they say, is all he wrote. But of course I wrote a lot of other stuff after this… and I’m grateful to all of you who read it.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear | Part 34 | Oregon to the Grand Canyon

Motorcycle Touring in the USA

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming


I received some sage advice at this point in my journey, “Just because you reach the Pacific coast doesn’t mean you’ve seen America, boy!”


My new-found friend Larry thought that story was very funny when I told him in the bar that night. Larry was an extremely laid-back ex Marine, whose wife owned one of the three bars in town. He explained to me why he was happy with his life. “You know the story about the perfect wife being a deaf and dumb nymphomaniac who owns a bar? Well, look, my wife may not be deaf and dumb, but she owns this place, and as far as the rest is concerned…”

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part RIMG‘The Western’ motel offered an old school saloon experience

On down the coast, and past the gloomy but impressive hulk of Humburg Mountain, a block of stone between the road and the sea. I was in the redwood forests by now, which presented a problem in photography. Even with the widest lens I carried, I had to put the camera up quite a distance from the tree if I wanted to get both the top and bottom in, as well as myself standing at the base. So I’d put the camera on the tripod, set the self-timer and run like hell to get to the tree before the shutter went off. I succeeded most of the time.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part RIMGTraditional American food, not so different than what you get in Australia…

Maybe it was the majesty of the trees, but I started to do some rather serious thinking about what this trip had taught me, and how I had changed in the last two and a half years. I could come up with very little, except that I missed Annie badly. It’s probably not so much that there’s little to learn on this kind of trip… it’s more that I’m incorrigible. After all, I’d coped pretty well with all the different cultures… hadn’t I?

I had looked forward to discussing all this with Ted Simon, who had written a marvellous book called Jupiter’s Travels about his own circumnavigation of the globe. Ted now lived in San Francisco, and mutual acquaintances had given me his address and telephone number. But when I rang, it was to discover that he had just become a father – and swapping ideas about bike travel was the farthest thing from his mind. I could hardly blame him!

When I got out of the phone box, the bike refused to start again. The poor little 250 XL had been mistreated for so long that it was finally rebelling. Even pushing wouldn’t do it. As it happened, the phone box was outside the Municipal Offices for the small town I was in, so I went in there looking for pushers. The Sheriff, Deputy Sheriff and the Fire Chief all lent a hand, and the bike – out of respect, I guess – fired straight away.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartI had to request some aid to get the Honda started on occasion

Through the coastal fog, I rode the last few miles into San Francisco. The fog was eerie, somehow – I had the constant feeling that there was an enormous eye, just above the fog, looking for me. California was beginning to affect me, I guess. They do say that the place has more religious nuts than any other place on Earth. Maybe it’s catching. Once in the city, having crossed a Golden Gate Bridge whose upper beams were invisible in the same fog, I started looking for a bike shop to service the XL.

The Honda dealer’s service manager was dubious. She indicated her crew of mechanics and said: ‘These prima donnas only like to put new bits on new bikes,’ something that the XL definitely wasn’t. But she sent me down to Cycle Source, a small service shop run by the inimitable Jack Delmas.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part RIMGThe Golden Gate Bridge is an inspiring site

Jack is an ex-cop, and one of the friendliest, most helpful blokes I’ve ever met. His staff aren’t far behind, either – Chris, on the spares counter, and Eddie, in the workshop, both helped me out. The shop was like a little home away from home. Eddie also got the bike running – and starting – beautifully. All at very reasonable rates. I celebrated by doing (more or less involuntary) wheelies up the steep streets of San Francisco, racing the cable cars.

SF is one of those rare cities that just feels good. Fishermen’s Wharf is a tourist trap, but North Beach is full of great bars, with good music and imported beer. Although why they bother importing Bass is beyond me… Then it was time to turn east again, over the Bay Bridge and through Oakland and all the little valley towns to Yosemite National Park.

If Yellowstone is beautiful, Yosemite is exquisite. The soaring cliffs, yellow meadows and dark pine forests set each other off so well that the place hardly looks real. All development has been done carefully, and presents a low profile. The park is like a natural garden, from the delicacy of Bridal Veil Falls to the brute mass of Half Dome.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part PA slightly different message to the one we’d see back home…

Despite the lateness of the season, the campgrounds in the valley were full, so I camped in one of the free sites up in the hills. Smoky Jack campground was very pleasant in the half-dark, with campfires and stars both twinkling away. Despite the cold night, I slept well – no doubt partly due to the good offices of Mr James Beam.

Mono Lake was a little disappointing; its strange rock formations didn’t really live up to the publicity. But I was thoroughly enchanted with an extremely attractive ‘flagperson’ with one of the road repair gangs I met on the way south. Women are now a common sight in road gangs in America, but they seem mostly to do the less strenuous work. That’s changing too, though. I saw a number of female tractor drivers.

At Lone Pine I turned onto the roller-coaster that passes for a road down to Death Valley. From 5000 ft it goes nearly to sea level, then back to 5000, down to two, back to nearly five, and then down to Furnace Creek, 178 ft below sea level. True to form, it was hot – over 37 degrees C – and it didn’t cool down much at night.

There were some German travelers camped next to me, and although I got some sleep on top of a picnic table in my underpants, they tossed and turned all night. Australian conditioning finally comes in handy!

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part PElevation changes and heat took their tole, but being used to Australian conditions helped

I had a strong headwind the next day, and was nearly blown off Zabriskie Point lookout. But when I turned left at the ghost town of Death Valley Junction the wind was at my back and helped me along. The whole area is very impressive for its total desolation – over square mile after square mile not a blade of grass grows. It must have been a tough life working in the mines here.

Las Vegas spreads its rather unattractive tentacles far out into the desert. Housing developments go up on the flat, windy plain and some attempt is made to civilize it all by pouring great quantities of water into the ground to grow a bit of anemic lawn. I much prefer the desert itself. The town, however, is fun with its amazing architecture, combination loan offices/motels/wedding chapels/divorce offices, acres of neon and extremely single-minded people.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part RIMGSome interesting signage…

Something seemed odd to me about all the casinos, and it took a while before I’d worked out what it was. Unlike the equivalents in Europe, Las Vegas casinos were not styled like palaces or upper-class residences. Here, they were styled in Ultimate Suburban – their exteriors like a hamburger joint gone mad, their interiors like a suburban tract house owned by a suburban millionaire. Lots of flash, but no taste. Tremendous fun, all of it.

In the bizarre, broken-down little town of Chloride, I asked the elderly, toothless petrol-pump attendant where the campsite was. He pointed to the top of a distinctly bare hill off in the distance, and I decided to push on to Kingman instead.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartThe famour Route 66

I followed one of the few remaining stretches of Route 66 in the morning, and rode through Coconino County, the home of Krazy Kat in the famous thirties comic strip of the same name. Meanwhile, dozens of grasshoppers hit my legs as I rode along – it was almost like riding through gravel as they rattled against my shins. There seemed to be quite a plague of them.

Still in beautiful sunshine, I rode up to the Grand Canyon.


Well, all good (and other) things have to come to an end. That’s what this story does next week. About time, eh?

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear | Part 33 | Mount Rushmore to Oregon

Around the world with The Bear – Part 33

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

And finally, The West, the part of America I have returned to again and again in subsequent years.


The West

The Black Hills were pretty, especially after the long run over the Great Plains, but they’re rather spoilt by dozens of tacky tourist traps. These fill the side of the road leading to Mount Rushmore and consist of such things as The Life of Jesus Wax Museum. The famous faces on the mountain itself look rather funny for some reason.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part QuoteMost of the Black Hills is totally unspoilt, and I found myself a little free Forestry Service campsite, where I was joined by two other riders. One had a CX500, the other an immaculate Harley Sportster. We lit a fire, drank what booze we had between us and watched the satellites passing over in the crystal night air. An elderly couple travelling in a camper joined us, and brought an enormous shopping bag full of fresh popcorn. What a night!

There’s a system of balance in nature. After you’ve had a good time for a while, you get a bad time. Mine started the next morning with a flat tyre, and continued when the bike wouldn’t start. Too high up, perhaps. We were a mile high. Much pushing finally got us under way, after I’d filled the tube with latex foam from an aerosol can.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartFlat countryside and altitude were of note, with the Honda taking a turn

The bike laboured all that day against a strong headwind across Wyoming, the original cowboy country. Rolling grassy hills as far as I could see, broken by mostly dry water courses with names like Dead Horse Creek and Mad Woman Creek.

It was overcast and chilly. But the sun came out the next day, and as I rode up to the Powder River Pass and Tensleep Canyon I thought of John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, who had said, ‘There is something in the sight of the mountains that restores a man’s spirit.’

I could have done with a little extra restoration in Basin, just on the other side of the mountains. The rear tyre was flat again, and I began the mammoth task of repairing the old tube. Mammoth because I kept pinching it while putting it back in. I wasn’t yet used to the new set of tyre levers I’d bought, and the tube was very old.

By the time the rear tyre held air again, the tube had six new patches on it and I retreated to the local bar to try to drown my sorrows. At least I found convivial company and a couple of good games of pool, and had my first taste of decent Coors beer – a significant improvement on the usual American slops.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartPinching the tube while trying to fix a leak led to six patches to get the job done

I also got a lot of sympathy for not being American, and specifically for not being from Wyoming. The entire clientele of the bar assured me that Wyoming was the best place in the whole world, even if Basin, with its population of 700, might be a bit “slow”.

My road west from this little oasis kept heading for a window in the thick general overcast, a window filled with sunshine and pretty little clouds. But I couldn’t catch it, and it finally disappeared when I reached Cody, a town devoted to the memory of Buffalo Bill Cody, or at least devoted to the amount of tourist money that memory could bring in.

Up in the mountains once again, I found a bloke lying on the ground next to the most decrepit bike I have ever seen – and I’ve seen some decrepit bikes in my day, some of them mine. This was a 250cc Honda of indeterminate vintage, with one muffler tied to the rack and most parts held on either by grease or wire.

The owner of this apparition proudly claimed the road as his and bummed a few coke cans of petrol from me – this being the most convenient receptacle to drain the petrol into – and went cheerily on his way.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartInto Yellowstone National Park

Shoshone Canyon provided some exciting riding the next day, and took me up to the gates of Yellowstone National Park, and the snow once more. It was disappointing to learn that all the bears had been moved up to the high country, but it appeared that they had been having trouble with the humans. There was no danger of my meeting any bears that night anyway; I checked into the Old Faithful Lodge. Snow had been forecast for the night, and my tent suddenly seemed awfully flimsy.

Yellowstone Park itself was beautiful, like a piece of the world just after the creation, but I wasn’t particularly impressed by the Old Faithful geyser. One Japanese bloke was, though. He spent most of the evening sitting at the bar’s picture window, a barely tasted glass of whisky in front of him, concentrating on the geyser.

My evening was brilliant – I celebrated New Year’s Eve with the staff. A trifle odd seeing that it was 31 August… It appears that a few years ago a party of visitors had been trapped by an early snowstorm towards the end of August. They reasoned that since they were stuck anyway, and it was white outside, they might as well celebrate Christmas. The staff have taken this up as a tradition, and there’s always a Christmas and a New Year’s Eve party towards the end of August.

I had a marvelous time meeting everybody, discussing politics, the MX system and the iniquity of the labour laws; all those things which are endlessly fascinating when you’re drunk, getting more drunk and the surroundings feel good. One of the fascinating things I discovered that night was that if you’re over 6ft 7in tall, you’re safe from the draft. The US Army isn’t set up to cope with people taller than that. So grow!

All the celebrating must have disturbed my sense of direction (which assumes that I have one), because I took the wrong road in the morning. Instead of heading for Craters of the Moon National Park, I found myself on the road to Missoula. I made the best of it anyway and enjoyed the sweeping wheat fields and later the enormous trees of Lolo Pass.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartZabriskie Point

Just over the pass, an elderly chap on a KZ400 with a sidecar waved me over to the side of the road and offered me a cup of coffee. We stood in the thin drizzle, drank coffee out of his thermos and compared travelling styles. He was travelling even more slowly than I!

Outside Lewiston I had another flat tyre. This time I replaced the tube, but the bike needed new wheel bearings as well. The old ones had been severely knocked around from having the wheel removed so often. The bike was running much better now that I was out of the high country. Perhaps it would have been worthwhile to change the jetting after all.

I didn’t need any directions to get to Portland – just follow the Columbia River, right along the tops of the sheer cliffs that border its northern side. But once in Portland, I did need directions – just to find the post office. It seemed I had come to the wrong town. The first person I asked was a biker who had broken down on the freeway.

He told me I wanted the exit two back. This on the freeway, where you can’t turn around. After I’d found my way into town by myself, I asked a lady at a street corner. She did her valiant best, but became totally incoherent within a few seconds. We both finally gave up.

I then found the post office by myself, checked for mail, and made the mistake of asking for the road to the west. First my informant tried to talk me into going south. Then he told me to go down a certain street and turn left just before I could see the viaduct. What is the matter with Portland?

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartFinally getting back to the coast marked an achievement of sorts, seeing the Pacific

At Lincoln City, when I finally did reach the coast, I saw the Pacific for the first time since the beginning of the trip. In a way, my circumnavigation of the Earth was over.

But of course my ride was far from over, so I headed off down the coast the next morning. I stopped quite early at a lookout to take a photo of the fog swirling in to bathe the foot of the cliffs. When I got back on the bike, it was once again those ominous couple of inches lower. Another flat rear tyre – and this time there was an enormous sliver of glass in my nice new tube. Out with the tyre levers once again.

The coast was lovely, with forests and cliffs and dunes and hills and enormous trees – and a family of moose in a meadow by the river. The Youth Hostel in Bandon, a well-preserved old fishing town, provided shelter for three days while I relaxed, reading and checking over the bike. A new chain was overdue, so I made a shopping trip into the local metropolis, Coos Bay.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartThere was also some impressive views along the coast…

The Honda shop had a chain, and a small supermarket had some beer in white cans just marked ‘Beer’. It was explained to me that this was what was known as a ‘generic’ product – no brand name, no advertising, and therefore a low price. I bought a six pack.

On the way back to Bandon I also picked an enormous plastic shopping bag full of blackberries. I was just congratulating myself on how well everything was going when the rear chain broke. Well, well. When will I learn not to congratulate myself? It was rather convenient that I was carrying the brand-new replacement in my tank box.


Next week, the West continues to enchant me.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear | Part 32 | North Carolina to South Dakota

Around the world with The Bear – Part 32

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

I stay at the YMCA… da da da da dah YMCA…
And I get a lesson in race relations.


The Blue Ridge Parkway was next, a bit of road every bit as pretty as its name. Parkways have no advertising on them, don’t allow trucks, follow the contours of the land and are administered by the National Parks Service. This one follows the Blue Ridge Mountains for some 500 miles, all of it lovely, with the Appalachians rolling off to both sides like waves in an enormous, ancient slow ocean.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part nThe Appalachians provided some amazing scenery

The Morgans, from Danby, Pennsylvania, pulled up while I was trying to take a photo of the forests, and asked about my Australian number plate. They also volunteered a beer and insisted that I take down their address and come and stay next time I was around Danby. I accepted gladly. Americans are certainly a friendly lot, rather like the Irish, and much more friendly than the British or Australians.

Although I didn’t manage to see any of the bears that supposedly inhabit the park, I felt quite ridiculously happy all day, sang little songs and waved at all the Honda Gold Wings, Harleys and Kawasaki Z1300s that went past. They all waved back, although some of them were clearly puzzled by my bike.

I stayed with friends of friends in Boone that night, which had the distinction of being my first dry town in the USA. We had to drive eight miles to get across the county line and find a bar where we could spend the rest of the evening drinking jugs of Black & Tan.

The countryside in Georgia was dull and mostly flat. So much for the moonlight through the pines.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartGeorgia proved flat and for a motorcyclist that at times meant boring

Atlanta promised to be a bit more interesting when I discovered that the Youth Hostel had been demolished – and there certainly weren’t any campsites around. I stayed in the YMCA downtown. When I went for an after dinner walk, I was the only white person on the street although I was so naïve that I didn’t notice that.

I spotted a bar with swinging doors and cheerful music and talk spilling out, and pushed my way in. All conversation and even the piano stopped as a sea of faces – all black – turned to regard me, probably with more puzzlement than hostility but with plenty of hostility anyway.

I remember thinking, “If I run they’ll catch me”. Fortunately, the bar itself ran along the wall next to the door and a bartender was nearby. I plucked up all of my courage and squeaked, “Can I get a beer?” It was all I could think of. He looked at me curiously and said “Where you from?”- “Australia,” I said, and the talk and the piano resumed.

A couple of blokes, ex-Marines, had been on R&R in Sydney during the Vietnam War and took me under their wing. They bought me drinks, introduced me to their friends and walked me back to the Y when I told them I had to ride the next day. “You ain’t goin’ by yourself,” one of the laughed.

Everyone in Georgia speaks with that seductive southern drawl. It makes an enquiry as to one’s preferred beverage in a diner sound like an invitation to view the bedroom… Yes, I liked Georgia even though my next breakfast was taken in a chain restaurant called a Huddle House and was awful. I promised myself I’d stick to the little private diners after that. They’re almost always excellent value.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartPeople proved friendly in the typical American way, with plenty of interest in my bike

The fine for littering the roads in Georgia is a rather desultory $25, after a high in Connecticut and Florida of $500. It’s still pretty clean, for all that, and the people are very friendly. A Mustang full of young ladies followed me for two or three miles while they figured out my number-plate and all the stickers on the back of the bike, then they went past tooting the horn, waving and throwing peace signs.

Another thunderstorm caught me down in Alabama and followed me almost to the campsite out on one of the sand islands, called Keys, off the coast. There were ‘Don’t Feed the Alligators’ signs up all over the site. Can you imagine an alligator coming up and stealing your picnic basket?

The men down here were all carefully haircut, and the women even more carefully made up. But I still found no hassles, in the bars or elsewhere – as long as I managed to keep the conversation off colour. Whites in the South are a long way from accepting blacks as equals, and are very careful to make a point of that in conversation with strangers. As a visitor, I found myself in a difficult position, and I’m afraid I compromised by keeping my mouth shut.

I pondered all this one morning over that great American institution, the bottomless cup of coffee, in Hazel’s Diner in Gulf Shores. No conclusion emerged, I’m sorry to say, beyond the obvious fact that I ought to stay out of something I knew far too little about. That, much as I regret it, was my contribution to civil rights in the South.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartSeeing ‘Don’t feed the alligator’ signs was interesting while camping

Mobile was resplendent with magnolia and old Southern mansions, and the long ride along the coast to New Orleans rather reminded me of Australia. The road could have been running along Port Philip Bay, or through Brighton-le-Sands in Sydney, going by the architecture and the flora.

New Orleans was rather different, of course. I teamed up with Matt, a Canadian who pulled in at the YMCA at almost the same time as I did. He was on a Honda CB900 Special, a bike rather better suited to US touring than poor old Hardly. Matt and I went out to do the town together. The Gumbo Shop came first – a restaurant specialising in the traditional Creole cooking – and was surprisingly cheap.

Then we hit the hustle and bustle. First a walk up Bourbon Street, with its tourist glitter, and then a visit to Preservation Hall, one of the few places where genuine New Orleans Jazz is still played – well, genuine for the tourists. There’s no booze available, so our next stop was Pat O’Brien’s Bar, next door, where we each put away a Hurricane, a monstrous $5 cocktail which seems to consist mostly of rum.

At Sloppy Jim’s, over a few glasses of draught Dixie Beer, we tried to collate our ideas of New Orleans. It’s a strange town. The place is full of tourists, yet it doesn’t feel like a tourist town. Everybody has a good time, except perhaps for the crowds in the assembly-line bars on Bourbon Street. Off the main drag, the people in the bars and restaurants are there to enjoy themselves – and they’re not about to be cheated of it; as a couple we met in O’Brien’s said: ‘We’re from Jackson, Mississippi, but when we want to have a good time, we come down hyar!’

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartFinding a place to grab a drink at times proved an exercise, but I received a warm welcome when people knew I was Australian

I did my laundry the next day in a laundromat supervised by one of the descendants of Marie Laveau, the famous witch. At least I presume that she was a descendant – she looked and acted like it, and she was certainly in the right business. It was hot again when I braved the spaghetti of roads leading out of town and eventually over Lake Pontchartrain on the 24-mile-long causeway.


The North

The way North was all corpses of armadillos slaughtered by cars, and poorly surfaced but pretty little roads. Then I reached the Natchez Trace, another route like the Blue Ridge Parkway, and followed that north to Nashville in serenity.Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part quoteI did stop off to pay my respects at Elvis Presley’s birthplace in Tupelo. The suburb is now called Elvis Presley Heights. I visited Opryland in Nashville, a kind of Country & Western Disneyland, and had a good time. The one thing that annoyed me was that I had to pay as much as a car driver to park. This is fairly common in the US – there are no parking or toll concessions for bikes.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartNo concessions for motorcycles was an annoyance but there was some impressive sights

A few days later I reached Ann Arbor, Michigan, and another friend of a friend. Victoria and her parents welcomed me with open arms and supplied a sort of replacement home for a few days. I really needed it by this time, too. It does get lonely out on the road, even if you speak the local language. One sight in Ann Arbor that I will always remember is the sign at the Farmers’ Market that says ‘No pets, bicycles or solicitors’.

The bike got a much-needed and fast service. Then it took me north again, up through the Norman Rockwell country that makes up central Michigan, to Sleeping Bear Dunes on Lake Michigan. In the campsite that night I had a steady stream of visitors, fascinated by the sight of the little bike. I scored a dinner invitation, a gift of a kilo of smoked fish (fishing is big up here) and an evening sitting around drinking other people’s beer. Very nice.

Not so friendly was the gun shop I saw the next day, offering free targets – large pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini. This was during the time when the Iranians were holding American hostages. I reached the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with a terrible hangover.

I had been attempting to cure a cold with bourbon, successfully, but was paying for it. John from Boulder rode into the campsite that night on a BMW R60/5, which he’d come over to the east to buy. Bikes are much cheaper in the Eastern States than in California or in John’s home state of Colorado.

He had a story about being mugged, too. Apparently a 5 ft tall mugger had approached John, who measured 6ft 4in, near Times Square and threatened him. ‘He ran away pretty quick’, said John, ‘When I pointed out the error of his ways. But you gotta give him credit…’

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part lSome interesting road signage discovered…

I received the inevitable American invitation to come and stay before we parted in the morning, and took off a little before John. He passed me not long afterwards – the BMW had longer legs than the little Honda.

Upper Wisconsin was strange, with eerie abandoned-looking farms, rusting cars and run-down petrol stations along the highway. Things got better as I went farther west, and by the time I reached Janesville (the sign outside town just said ‘Janesville – a friendly place’) I felt as though I was in the prosperous Midwest you read about. Towns like New Ulm, Balaton and Florence remind you of the many nations that supplied the settlers here. Mind you, it’s also pretty boring country. Flat as far as the eye can see…

That didn’t change the next day, but it was pleasant just the same. First, in the diner in Lake Preston, there was a complete set of Australian banknotes in a frame over the bar. I asked the bloke next to me where they came from, and he thought about his answer for a while before saying: ‘Feller useta live here now lives there.’ They’re a concise lot in the Midwest.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartStopped with the Honda before a chain tension

At my next petrol stop I was invited in for coffee and brownies and then, when I stopped to tighten the chain, the side stand broke and the bike fell on my head. Fun all day! I slept in the campground in the Badlands that night, among the grotesque landforms that give the place its name. Spooky, with spires of soft rock reaching for the full moon, not a blade of grass or a bush on them.

The Harley shop in Rapid City was very helpful, and even managed to locate someone who would weld my side stand back on for a few dollars.


Whew. That was a long episode. Let’s see if I can be a bit more concise out West – next time.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear | Part 31 | New York to Blue Ridge

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

Leaving New York I’d have to glue my tank up again – more than once – but I scored a Marine Corps sticker from a newfound friend and I met the pilot of Air Force One.


With the bike locked to a light pole, I went out for another night on the town. Once again, there were no dire consequences in the morning because the American beer is simply too mild to cause hangovers and I only had a few bourbons.

That morning saw me stuck on the freeway within minutes of leaving the hostel. There had been a downpour, and half the road was under water – the half going my way, of course. Finally, on the way out to upper New York State, the buildings gave way to greenery. All of New England turned out to be surprisingly lush, which was still new to me at this stage. New York State looked rather as I’d imagined Louisiana.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartNew England turned out to be surprisingly lush

I made my way north to Old Forge in the next few days. In Kingston, in the obligatory aluminium diner (run here by a Vietnamese family), I encountered ‘Doc’, the head of the town emergency services. This includes ambulance, fire brigade and rescue. He was an ex-Marine Colonel, and insisted on giving me an enormous Marines badge sticker, a small American flag and a free breakfast. The hostel in Old Forge was equipped with a large group of bicycling Canadian nymphets, who entertained me splendidly during my stay. They even fed me.

My petrol tank, once broken in Malaysia and often repaired, had been cracked again during the flight. I had to glue it up once again after I had noticed petrol running down over the hot engine. I turned east then, to head for Vermont and later the coast. By now I was learning to navigate by route numbers and had no trouble finding my way about.

I picked up a bit of sunburn buzzing around the little lakes and extensive forests of New England, and didn’t mind one bit. It was beautiful and serene country, bathed in sunlight – with just the occasional thunderstorm and downpour to keep it interesting.

Concord didn’t impress me so much. The home of one of my very few heroes (actually, even then I was beginning to have second thoughts about him), Henry David Thoreau, it was far from the small town surrounded by forest that he described last century.

Now, it was a particularly nasty urban sprawl, reminding me of nothing quite so much as the Latrobe Valley in southern Victoria, one of my least favourite places. But then Concord hadn’t been Concord even in Thoreau’s day, and he had cheated on that stay in the woods anyway…

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartOngoing work was required on the Honda

That night, after tightening the chain on the bike for the third time, I finally discovered a reasonably drinkable beer. It was called Molson’s, came from Canada and at least had some flavour. Still no strength, though.

This was turning out to be a relaxed, lazy sort of swing through pretty countryside, rather different from the America I’d been led to expect. Even Boston, my first big city outside New York, seemed a laid-back place to me. I drifted through on the main roads, stopped for a cup of coffee at the Transportation Museum, and then carried on towards Cape Cod.

A group of three Canadian bikers passed me and then stopped to have a look at the XL. In honour of America, I had dubbed it ‘Hardly Davidson’, and these blokes thought that was very funny. Mind you, they were on a Z750, a GS850 and a Z1000. They could afford to laugh.

It was misty all the way out to Cape Cod, so I couldn’t admire much scenery, but there was enough to admire by the side of the road, anyway. Everybody was having a garage sale – some of the stuff people were unloading really tempted me. There were a couple of Buddy Holly albums, for example, in near-perfect condition, for only $2 each. Two bucks!

Once at the Orleans, Massachusetts, hostel, I took the tank off the bike, scraped off the liquid gasket with which I’d tried to stop the leak, and re-glued it with acrylic glue, which seemed to do the trick.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartSuited up in appropriate garb for America

Crossing the high bridge at Newport, Rhode Island, brought to mind the grace of the yachts during the Americas Cup, and the film ‘Jazz on a Summer’s Day’, made here during one of the real Newport Jazz Festivals. It’s weird; we see so much of America on TV and in the movies that it’s quite possible to feel nostalgic entering a town you’ve never been to.

On my way up to the hills of Connecticut I stopped off for some of the dreadful, gummy American bread. When I came out of the supermarket, the bike was leaking petrol once again. This time it came from the carburettor breather pipe. I whipped the float bowl off, bent the float down and reassembled the carburettor. No more leak. Some time later, I looked down to find that the tank had split again, and petrol was dribbling onto the engine once more.

I stopped at a hardware store and bought a two-phase adhesive called Liquid Steel that contained, according to the box, ‘real steel’. I wasn’t going to have any more backchat from this bike! I glued up the tank and the tap, which was weeping very slightly, and gave the bike as complete an overhaul as I, with my severely limited mechanical ability, could; I didn’t discover any further problems.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartFixing the tank took many attempts

It was back to NY then to check for mail and amble around a little more. In the footsteps of Walt Whitman, I took the Staten Island ferry and was impressed by the Manhattan skyline from the water. Then I rang Road Rider magazine in California for the dates of the Aspencade Motorcycle Convention, a ‘do’ I had hoped to get to for years, and planned my trip across the USA. Very vaguely, I might add. I just knew I wanted to be in Ruidoso, New Mexico, on 1 October. That gave me some eight weeks.

Up and away then. Out through the Holland Tunnel the next morning, the bike was running rather rough. I had visions of breaking down in the tunnel – there’s nowhere to park – and being fined vast sums of money. But the bike kept running, and as soon as I was out of the tunnel and switched off the headlight, the engine smoothed out. Aha!

Middle-aged XL Disease, I thought. One of the symptoms is lack of electricity being generated, and the bike can’t even run its pitiful headlight. Mechanical menopause approaching here. Then on down the ribbon of car yards, cheap motels and gas stations that is Highway One until I got hopelessly lost in roadworks in Baltimore looking for fuel.

A thoroughly depressing city, it sticks out in my mind for the obvious poverty and overwhelming friendliness of its mostly black population. I mean, think about it – here’s a white boy on a motorsickle, stopping to ask directions from the bros deep in the ‘hood, and they say “What you doin’ here? You best git your gas and you git gone, my man!”

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartWashington wasn’t as impressive as you’d expect… at the time…

Washington provided the Smithsonian Institution, where I admired Buzz Aldrin’s toothbrush and touched a piece of the moon; the Star Wars subway, very efficient and pretty; and drinks at Matt Kane’s bar. This last proved to be the most interesting, as I had a few drinks with the pilot of Air Force One, the presidential jet, and listened to his Washington gossip.

It’s true, he gave me a book of Air Force One matches! I’ve still got them here somewhere. Other than that Washington was not pleasant. For a national capital it’s remarkably run down. Brothels and sex shops flourish within a couple of blocks of the White House, and there’s an atmosphere of menace.


The South

It was much better when I got out of town. I rode up the Potomac, and then followed the line of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. This is now a national park and is maintained for walkers, canoeists and bicyclists. It seemed as though there were thousands of butterflies, all keen to commit suicide on my windscreen or legs.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part QuotesThat night was my first camp. I’d finally run out of Youth Hostels. So of course I had a thunderstorm and nearly an inch of rain in three hours. Huddled in my little tent (I’d bought it for $10 from some Swiss blokes in the Gol-e-Sahra campsite in Tehran), I consoled myself with the thought that the enormous caravans and mobile homes parked all around would be far more likely to draw the lightning than my little XL.

I finally fell asleep while the thunder was still muttering to itself over the Shenandoah Hills. Over breakfast, I got an explanation of the mysterious term ‘scrapple’ that had started to appear on menus. “Wal,” said the chef, “yo biles up various parts of th’ insahde o’ th’ hawg, let it cool and then slahce an’ frah it…” Um. I stuck to bacon and eggs, over easy.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming PartChecking out some of the sights in America…


Next week I tackle the Blue Ridge Parkway and get a taste of the amazing American hospitality.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear | Part 30 | Arriving in USA

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

The United States of America is not one country but many. I set off on my little Honda XL250 to explore some of them…


United States of America

We were in brilliant sunlight at 30,000 feet as the Laker DC10 started its descent into John F. Kennedy Airport. Fifteen minutes later, on the ground, it was night – darkness broken only by the beacon of the dozens of aircraft milling around waiting to park or take off. I found myself hoping fervently that this was not going to be an omen for my long-awaited tour of the US. Half an hour later my fears were firming up.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part Quote

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part Quote

The immigration lines in the arrivals lounge were long, slow and staffed by people obviously bored with their job of keeping America safe for democracy. I got short shrift – two months to be precise – when I tried to get an entry permit to take me up to the date on my onward ticket – all of three weeks later than the two months.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Retrieving the bike from customs in America and discovering someone had dropped a crate on it

But – America, land of contrasts! – things were quite different at Customs. Not only did the officer disdain to search my luggage, but as soon as he noticed that I was a motorcyclist – easily deduced from the crash helmet under my arm – he engaged me in a lengthy and interesting discussion of bike usage in the US. He then closed his station and went off to find out the easiest and cheapest way in which I might recover my bike, which had come by airfreight, out of bond.

There are two types of Americans, I have come to realise. Those who can’t do too much for you, and those who can’t do anything for you.

Ten minutes later, equipped with detailed – though unfortunately wrong – information, as well as the address and phone number of my first American friend, I boarded the bus into Gotham City. For $5 the airport bus was good value.

You get to goggle out at the fascinating and scary concrete ribbons of the freeways, contemplate the towering housing projects and quickly summarise all the warnings about New York – while you’re still safe. As soon as you step out of the bus at the Lower East Side Bus Terminal you’re on your own. At 1.00am, for me, this seemed about on a par with crossing Parramatta Road (Sydney’s main traffic artery) at 5.00pm on a Friday afternoon. Death lurked everywhere.

I didn’t have any American change, so one of the taxi drivers – a sizeable black person – lent me a dime to ring the Youth Hostel. They didn’t answer, so I decided to go ‘round and wake them up. The loan of ten cents had put me so much in the moral debt of my driver that I didn’t feel able to protest his charge of $8.50 for ten city blocks…

He did me a favour by pointing out that I was in one of the toughest neighbourhoods in Manhattan, and to watch out. If anyone tried to ‘put trouble on me’, he suggested I keep walking. I amended that to ‘running’ and thanked him.

The hostel was closed for the night, of course, but I got a room in the hotel next door, as well as a much appreciated snack in the hotel’s all night coffee shop. The bellboy pointed out that the TV would operate only if the bathroom light was switched on; I gave him a dollar and fell into bed. I am a creature of sunshine.

The next morning, with temperatures climbing towards the century mark they reached every day while I was in New York, I felt immeasurably better and more in control. I checked in at the hostel, stowed my baggage and went out for a walk. As I left the hostel, my eye was caught by the unmistakable shape of the Empire State Building, visible through a gap between some other buildings across the road. I stopped and admired it for a moment, then turned and began to walk on.

‘Hey, buddy.’ A well-dressed black bloke standing in a doorway marked ‘NY Community College’ called me over. ‘Buddy, I been workin’ here for 20 years. Ever’ now and then, folk stop where you did an’ look up in the air. What you lookin’ at?’ I motioned for him to come back a few steps with me, to where he could see the Empire State, and pointed.

‘The Empire State?’ he said. ‘Oh, yeah, sure. The Empire State. Yeah. Never thought o’ that…’ I’m still not sure if he was taking the piss. Well, actually I am.

It was beginning to get muggy, even early in the morning, and I turned up towards Central Park. It’s a blast walking through New York. I doubt that there’s a more interesting place on Earth. And it’s all the people; the diversity, the style, the craziness. In Central Park, this being summer, it was all hanging out.

I have never seen so many scantily covered ample breasts and buttocks in my life—and most of them on wheels, too. Roller skates everywhere, people with radios clamped to their heads bopping, rolling, even dancing… and rippling – the males with muscles, the females mainly with, er… other tissue.

The remainder of those couple of days is a bit of a blur. There was Greenwich Village, with the frisbee experts working out in Washington Square; the great food in the delis; the spectacular comics pages the Sunday papers serve up; the sight of miles and miles of smog from the top of the Empire State; Waylon Jennings at the Lone Star for $1 cover charge; and the terrible beer.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part PICT

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part PICT

Stopped outside a United States Post Office

I approached the beer scientifically. One evening, I bought one can each of six different beers and retreated to the room I shared with a swarthy Frenchman and two melancholy Danes. As I listened to tales of touring the US and Canada by BMW – this from the Frenchman, who’d shipped his bike over and spent eight weeks buzzing around – I sampled the brews.

They were all awful, without exception. Pale, flavourless and nearly non-alcoholic, they all tasted the same. Bad sign.

One of the Danes explained his melancholia, too. He had, it seemed, been mugged. His papers, money and travellers’ cheques had been taken – in Miami, of all places. I’d always thought of Miami as a sort of geriatric anteroom to a morgue, but it seemed street crime was a problem. For the Dane, anyway. His consulate, fortunately, had come to the rescue. They had replaced his passport on the spot and had lent him some money.

With the mugging story still fresh in my mind, I descended into the subways to make my way out to suburban Jamaica to pick up the freight papers for the bike. Graffiti on the NY trains is of a very high standard, and the trains themselves are occasionally even air-conditioned.

Papers in hand, I presented myself at the freight depot. It seemed that some mud had been noticed under the guards on the bike, so the Department of Agriculture man had to be called. Foreign mud is a no-no. I sat around, gasping in the heat, for an hour or so until he came. After one look, he decided that he wasn’t worried. Ah, mud shmud.

I was then free to deal with the lady from Customs, who suspected everyone and everything— she gave me a hard time because my bike registration papers had expired, but finally relented. She did not mention insurance, fortunately.

So I had the bike back – rather bent, since someone had dropped a crate on it, but still my bike. I had to straighten the shock absorbers with a crowbar, but the rest of it wasn’t too bad and went back together quite well. It wouldn’t start, though; throwing away the contents of the float bowl and pushing finally did the trick. My grateful thanks to the guys at Seaboard World, who donated a gallon of petrol and then pushed. I couldn’t have done it without ya.

My first encounter with the freeway system, on the way back into Manhattan, wasn’t reassuring. The signs were so cryptic. What do I know from 72nd Street? Signposting is all very local, unless you’ve memorised the route numbers. No denying that the freeways get you around at a great rate of knots, though.

I was back at the hostel before I knew it. I fitted my lovely new Oxford Fairings windscreen out in the street, and attracted all sorts of loonies. One of them insisted on telling me the long, dreary and predictable story of the disintegration of his Gold Star BSA.

There are British bikes slowly corroding and dying all over the world. I know this because I have been told many times.


Tch tch, that’s enough slinging off at British bikes. Let’s head out for New England, instead, and enjoy summer in the forest.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear | Part 29 | Bulgaria to London

Motorcycle Touring

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

Don’t trust the Hungarians, according to the Romanians. And vice versa. Just as well they’re all good people.


The Eastern Bloc, and back to England

The customs man at the Bulgarian border asked us for third-party insurance, which we no longer had. When I told him this, he rolled his eyes heavenwards and waved us through – he couldn’t be bothered getting the forms out.

Bulgarian roads were pretty nasty, mostly cobble stoned and wavier than the Bay of Biscay in a gale. Someone once said that the potholes were the size of small planets. Big moons, maybe. Fields were being ploughed by small tractors with treads instead of wheels, possibly lightly converted tanks.

We felt our way gingerly through the forested hills to Veliko Tarnovo. The campsite there turned out to be the most expensive of the trip, but at least it had plenty of hot water for the showers, although I cannot for the life of me imagine why the taps were electrified…

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part Quote

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part Quote

Perhaps some of the cost of the site was an entertainment charge. We were certainly entertained, by singing and revelry, until about 2.30am. It was a party of East Germans who were no doubt glad to be away from the Stasi. We in our turn were glad to get out of Bulgaria after our extensive stay of 24 hours – that was all the time our visa gave us.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Accommodation could at times be expensive, but a hot shower was always appreciated

Good thing, too. Among other things, the roads had finally done what even the Yugoslav ones had not managed— they had broken the bike’s luggage rack.

Romanian Customs must have had us pegged as International Drug Runners. They searched everything on and off the bike, even though their drug-sniffing dog didn’t show the slightest interest in us.

The highlight of the ceremony came when one of the male customs officers found a suspicious small cardboard box filled with what looked like miniature white sticks of explosive, with fuse attached. Neither of us spoke Romanian, and Annie finally got through with a bit of French.

“Pour Madame,” she said. The customs officer looked at the box of tampons, went bright red and couldn’t give them back quickly enough.

We then had to change $10 per day of our visit into the local currency and should also, apparently, have bought petrol coupons. Nobody told us anything about them, so we rode blithely off. As it turned out, only one petrol station asked for them, and they filled our tank anyway when we shrugged our shoulders.

The roads were noticeably better than the ones in Bulgaria, and we made it to Bucharest for lunch. We ate at the Carul cu Bere, a restaurant in an 18th-century inn. The food here was superb, beer came in great stoneware steins and was delicious, and it was all quite cheap.

I know the people were being oppressed by the government, but everyone we saw seemed cheerful enough – even the ones eating the awful greasy ice cream. Ben and Jerry’s, Romania is yours for the taking.

It was frustrating trying to find somewhere to camp. Most of the sites listed in the official booklet (another damned official booklet) were either closed or had disappeared. One was even closed for stocktaking!

“One tree, check. Grass, sort of, 80 square metres, check. Pile of gravel, one of. Where’s the pile of gravel, Karoly?”

When we finally found a site the bike immediately attracted a crowd of truck drivers. While they were admiring the twin disc brakes up front, one drew me aside. He told me that he was Hungarian, and to be sure to lock everything up. The Romanians, it seemed, were all thieves.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Official channels were not reliable in those days when it came to which camp sites were open

Marvelous, I thought. Later a Romanian told me that Hungarians would sell their grandmothers for a packet of cigarettes. Why do neighbours always delight in blackening each other’s names?

This slanderous tendency isn’t restricted to morals. When I made a disparaging remark about the Bulgarian roads, all the Romanians were tickled. One of them pointed to the dirt track we were on and suggested that that was what the Bulgarian roads were like. I said no, worse, and he pointed to the ploughed field next to the campsite. When I nodded, they roared with laughter and then bought us beer.

We had a race with a diesel locomotive up into the Transylvanian Alps and lost when we came to a red light. It was unfair – there was no red light for the train. These mountains are beautiful and full of old chateaux and grand hotels from the days before Communism. Most of them had been turned into workers’ holiday hostels – one improvement, anyway. We saw no signs of direct bloodsucking.

Somewhere in the north of Romania we lost the rubber plug out of the cam chain tensioner. I manufactured a new one from rolled-up adhesive tape and wired it into place – it seemed to do the job very nicely. We were once again trying to find a replacement gas bottle, and in Oradea near the Hungarian border finally found a gas depot.

It was closed, but there were some people outside and one of them took our empty bottle, passed it through the fence to somebody inside and got a new one back for us, free of charge. Nice people everywhere, or maybe they just enjoy sticking a thumb into Authority’s eye.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

The locals proved friendly everywhere we went, although the rivalry between nations was obvious

The border with Hungary was easy, except that once again we had trouble changing unwanted money back. It’s against the law to take Romanian money out of the country but they wouldn’t give us anything else, so we had to spend our remaining cash on the el cheapo souvenir wooden plates with pokerwork decorations which were the only things for sale. Could this have been deliberate?

The roads to Budapest were smooth and straight and almost unbelievably flat. With conservative and polite drivers as well, Hungary is one of the most pleasant countries in Europe to ride in, although things weren’t quite so easy in Budapest.

Annie checked with the Tourist Bureau and they told her that the campsite was closed, which seemed a bit unlikely to us. We rode out there just to make sure and lo! not only was it open, but it was open the whole year round, and it was a pleasant enough site despite the loud disco music from the restaurant at night. Isn’t it great to see Western culture spread behind the Iron Curtain?

Budapest has excellent public transport and is an altogether prosperous city. The people still didn’t look happy though, and the truckloads of Russian soldiers we saw were pointedly ignored. We took the road along the Danube on our way to the Austrian border and were rewarded by quiet country lanes and lush greenery.

The border was quick as they were only searching cars, not bikes. There’s a tip there, unless they change over on even days… As we rode into Vienna that afternoon, the back wheel of the Yamaha started making the most peculiar scraping noise. I tracked it down to a shoelace caught in the rear brake caliper.

An overnight stay in Vienna, in a clean and well-equipped campsite, and we were on our way again – no more time for sightseeing. The border with Germany is a one-stop affair – the guards showed our passports to a computer, which raised no objections, and we were simultaneously out and in. Coming into Passau, we started chatting to a bloke on an ancient BMW outfit, and he showed us a good pub for lunch.

We camped in Nuremberg that night, near the stadium made famous by the big Nazi rallies. It’s a parking lot now, which seems appropriate. The campsite was excellent, as all German campsites seem to be. Then it was up the Autobahn, on to Brunswick and a few days with relatives.

Then a long day across to Ostend and the late ferry to Dover. Due to delays on the ferry – it kept yo-yoing around in Dover harbour – and problems with the ramp, we didn’t get ashore until well after midnight.

The Customs man asked us where we’d been and wasn’t at all impressed by the 18 countries I rattled off. He just asked whether we’d picked up any ‘noxious substances’ and when we said no, we didn’t think so, let us go.

Miracles do still happen. There was a bed-and-breakfast place still open on the Folkestone road, and the first thing our landlady did was offer us a cup of tea. We were back in England, all right.

The run to London was just a formality. We were back, 194 days, 20,000 miles and £2000 after we’d set out. A great trip, albeit with its ups and downs. And then there was the next one…

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

After 20,000 miles Annie and The Bear arrive back in London but the journey is not over


Yes, this isn’t the end. America is yet to come, back on the old Honda XL250 and in a place where everyone remembers Kings Cross.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear | Part 28 | Pamukkale to Bulgaria

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

Last we settled down Pamukkale, to the chirping of the frogs, now we make a beeline to Bulgaria, and answer the age old question of, ‘Can you repair a BMW with a pair of truck tyre levers?’ Yes you can.


The frogs in the pool did their best to keep us awake and there was an attempt to short-change us in the morning, but other than that, Pamukkale was a pleasant place. On the way out of town the clutch on the BMW started slipping quite badly, but Michel adjusted it up as far as possible and managed to make the bike rideable.

The road we had selected to take us back to the coast was marked as ‘stabilised’ beyond the little town of Kale on our map. In Kale, we stopped for a glass of tea and Annie and Cathy were the only women in the tea house. No-one appeared to be concerned. We donned rain gear, and the locals tried to dissuade us from going on. ‘Rocks this big and mud that deep!’ they said.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Stabilised conditions were’t what we expected… the locals were right

They were right, too. ‘Stabilised’ turned out to mean deep, gluey mud and we lasted a little more than a mile before deciding it wasn’t for us. That road was 56 miles long!

Our alternative was better, and a filling lunch of kofte (meatballs) and beans was enlivened by a conversation with a couple of bank tellers, who were delighted to exercise their English. They told us that petrol prices had doubled in the previous month. We still thought it cheap.

On the road down through the ranges, Michel suddenly pulled over to the left and stopped. I followed, put the side stand down – and the bike fell over on the slope. The stand had broken through the tar, and the bike tipped, spilling Annie and me off – right under the back wheel of the BMW. Now Michel had pulled over because he thought he smelled something burning.

His first thought, therefore, when I dived under the back of his bike, was that I was putting out a fire. So he dived off as well, also ready to extinguish the blaze. Confusion reigned for a minute until we had it all sorted out, the XS back on its wheels and Michel reassured that the R100 wasn’t about to go up in smoke.

Annie then saved the day by producing the brandy flask. Those Vetter fairings really are good – better than any crashbar – and there’s room for a brandy flask in the pocket. There wasn’t a scratch on the XS.

We found a campsite out at Kemer, past Antalya – it was free because the season hadn’t started (‘No, no’, said the site manager, that meant only that he couldn’t charge us, not that we couldn’t stay; in fact he turned on the hot water for the showers) – and we did a bit more lying around in the sun, as well as going for a run down the coast to Kas.

This stretch was as pretty as ever with its steep, pine-covered hills and empty beaches. The road that was being built when Charlie and I had come through here a year and a half before was already disintegrating.

The Yamaha handled the potholes and gravel noticeably better than the BMW, despite the stuffed shocks. The BMW also had a flat tyre on the morning of our departure. Nothing to do with Turkey, this was an after-effect of the encounter with the rock in Yugoslavia. The tyre had sustained a slight split on the inside, and this had been plucking away at the tube, finally tearing it. I’ll say this for BMW, they supply an excellent pump.

After another ethnic lunch at Antalya, we rolled east along the rather featureless coast. In Anamur, the bikes were parked on an embankment above the market square while we did some shopping, but suddenly a gust of wind caught the BMW and flipped it onto its side. The bike landed right on the edge of the embankment, slipped over and crashed down a foot and a half onto its back on concrete. Then it tipped onto its side. Almost a complete somersault.

At first it looked as though the only damage was a broken mirror and a cracked fairing, but when we tried to ride away the back tyre was rubbing against the guard. The fall had bent the rear frame loop.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Enjoying some refreshments off the bike

Fortunately, another campsite presented itself just down on the beach. When the owner realised that we were having problems with the bike, he told us his friend had the tools to fix that, and would be around in the morning. He then invited us to dinner and drinks.

A thoroughly drunken night followed: we tried to teach our host some Australian songs (no, no, once a jolly swagman…); he recited a great deal of poetry, we did some dancing; there were drunken protestations of eternal friendship; and in an incredibly badly judged display of helpfulness I gave two guys a lift home high into the hills on the big Yammie – both of them on the back at the same time on single track paths alongside irrigation canals.

After I delivered them I had no idea where I was. Well, actually I knew where I was. I just didn’t know where anywhere else was. I navigated by the lights of the town down by the water.

Annie misjudged the strength of the spirits and went to sleep in my lap when I finally got back, and what eventually saved us was the nearby shop running out of raki. We had to switch to the considerably less alcoholic beer. I’ve seldom had such a good time.

We ‘repaired’ the R100S in the morning with the special tools our drinking buddy’s friend had – a couple of enormous crowbars – took a look at the marvelous Crusader castle while our hangovers abated and then tackled the cliff road east. This is a great run through stunning country, made less pleasant only by the lumbering timber trucks.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

We managed to find several locations with a hot shower on offer

We had trouble keeping up with the flying Mols as the BMW’s handling came into its own on the tar. Camp was at the BP Mocamp that Charlie and I had disliked so heartily on the previous occasion. Everyone wanted a shower. The place was still as expensive and the staff as rude as before, but at least the water was hot.

Then on to Mersin, where a tractor tried to run Michel off the road, and up through the Cilician Gates to the Anatolian Plateau. The dual carriageway claimed by our map turned out to be sheer optimism—all they’d done was make the old road less passable with their road works.

The Rock House Hotel at Goreme was closed, perhaps because it was still early in the season, so we went to ‘Paris’ Camping instead, which not only had hot showers but free gas cookers and tables and chairs. A few days passed pleasantly enough with sightseeing and clambering in and out of stone houses, and we changed the rear tyre on the XS without any of the problems experienced by the bike shop in France. Well, getting the bead on the tyre to pop properly wasn’t easy with only a hand pump, but the security bolts gave no trouble at all.

We climbed to the top of the stone fortress at Uchisar, and one of the town urchins chased us all the way up to sell us a guide book. Unfortunately, he’d gone by the bikes – full German registration on the Yamaha and German tax-free registration on the BMW – and had brought the German guidebook instead of the English one; a wasted climb.

On the way to Ankara via Kirsehir everything was green again. The fields and meadows were feeling the spring even here on the high plateau. Crossing an embankment, the Mols hit a pothole and bombed the unsuspecting peasants below with one of their panniers – the Krauser came off the bike, bounced along the road and then dived down into the fields, but there was no damage beyond a few scratches.

Now you know why BMW riders with old Krauser panniers always have straps around them. The main road to Ankara hadn’t improved since I’d last travelled it and we had to contend with long stretches of gravel and dirt. The Ankara campground had taken down its sign, but I remembered where it was and we managed to wake the guard.

Although my old friend Rochester had gone, we were still not allowed to camp on the grass, just like old times. When we went off to do a little shopping, we discovered that a kilo of onions cost the same as six bottles of beer. There’s a moral there somewhere.

It was back out into the grey air and heavy traffic of Ankara in the morning. Martial law was in operation, every corner had its soldiers, and at strategic intersections there were rows of tanks. The tank crews were really taken with the bikes and waved enthusiastically as we passed. We waved back, of course. Of course!

Suddenly the BMW started to lose oil rapidly, and it didn’t take long to find out why. The sump was gradually lowering itself on its bolts and spitting out oil. Michel tightened it, making ominous comments about Turkey and BMWs. Then we were off to do battle with the traffic on the Istanbul road.

The less said about this run the better – we were forced off the road once each and didn’t really enjoy it. The first tanks at the outskirts of Istanbul were actually a welcome sight, and when we stopped the crew of one of them insisted on giving us cigarettes. Soon afterwards, we rolled over the toll bridge back into Europe.

We located the most convenient camping ground, set up the tents and ducked off to town for dinner; I took the others to the little kebab bar Charlie and I had found, where the food was as good as ever.

We resealed the sump on the R100 S with liquid gasket and I put the stays from the top box back into their proper place on the rack. I thought we were through the worst of the roads; little did I know.

After the obligatory rounds of sightseeing, which are more worthwhile in Istanbul than in most places, we raided the Grand Bazaar. It sells everything from everywhere – all at negotiable prices. Never believe what the merchants tell you, just dig in and enjoy it.

They have some beautiful things – I bought Annie a miniature painting on ivory (yes, I know, ivory – but it was clearly quite old and the elephant would have died a long time ago) and myself a pipe, an eagle’s claw carved out of meerschaum.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Turkey offered stunning scenery

The radio featured marvelous selections from sixties and seventies rock as well as classical music, and we played a chess championship. I won! But only because all the others were even more beginners than I. An idyllic existence, despite martial law and shootings.

Then the Mols were off again to southern Greece and the sun, carrying with them our Scrabble set as a farewell gift. We turned our wheels towards Bulgaria and then home.

The trip had lasted over six months by this stage and we were quite happy to have it end. A tour has a sort of natural lifespan, although most people have to get back to work before it runs for that long. The lifespan of our tour was coming to an end, and it was time to let it die gracefully.


Turkey was pretty interesting. That was nothing compared to the Eastern Bloc, though!

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear | Part 27 | Athens to Pamukkale

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming


Last we arrived in Athens, now a bit more of Greece, and then off into the wild wonders of Turkey. Few countries in the world have more interesting people.


We set up camp, bought some wine and sat around feeling miserable. The next day we had trouble at the bank and begrudged the Bulgarians their extortionate fee for a 30-hour visa. A pall descended that wasn’t broken until the Mols arrived, grinning from ear to ear.

Michel and Cathy had left London in the cold and drizzling rain, and had had much the same weather until southern Germany, when the snow had started. On the autobahn to Austria, they had been riding through snowdrifts and had camped in them in Salzburg.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

The luggage rack on the XS had cracked from being overloaded, meaning more creative solutions were needed

Finally out of the heavy weather on the Yugoslav coast, they had had a slight argument with a large pointed rock which had bent their front rim and flattened the tyre. Michel had bashed the wheel back into shape with his axe, replaced the tube and they’d ridden on. And they were cheerful when they arrived in Athens!

We rolled out the plastic jug of retsina and sat down for a little party. It was good to see them again. The hangovers in the morning were something to behold, except for Annie. She’s the only person I know who knows her limit – most of the time anyway. We packed up rather gingerly and then flew up the motorway. None of the speed traps were interested in us.

The strain of keeping up with the R100 S showed on the Yamaha’s worn-out shock absorbers, and I wallowed around the corners the BMW was taking in style.

The weather was deteriorating again, but we got away from it by spending a couple of days on Thasos. This island is less than an hour from the mainland by ferry and specialises in honey and having its roads sink into the sea. It’s a pretty, pine-covered place and has a good campsite as well as miles of coastline suitable for free camping.

We had a barbecue on the beach, using a suntan lotion shop display rack as a griddle, and sank a few beers. Then it was time for a run around the island, checking out the sunken roads – there were several places where you could have gone skindiving without leaving the saddle – and back to the mainland.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

The bike drew plenty of attention during our travels

On the way up to Alexandropoulis, over those pretty mountain roads, a police car came the other way around a corner while I was way over the centre line – they didn’t bat an eye as I corrected and drew sparks from my centre stand.

The rack on the XS had developed a couple of cracks in North Africa when we had overloaded it so badly, and these were getting worse. Reluctantly, I decided we wouldn’t be able to carry spare petrol in Turkey.

We had another game of hunt-the-gas bottle for our little cooker. You can buy the cartridges everywhere, and you can generally buy large caravan-size bottles, but the little ones are hard to find. A kindly German-speaking cab driver finally took us around the town looking for one, for free, and found it.

A knowledge of German is invaluable in Greece and Turkey, as so many people have worked in Germany. Our cab driver, for instance, had saved enough money while working there to buy his cab, which he had then driven home to Turkey.


Turkey

The road to the border was indifferent and the service on the Greek side quick if not exactly courteous. The Turks were working at their usual pace – dead slow – and held us up for a while, but at least there weren’t any Customs searches.

Pull Quotes

Pull Quotes

The road down towards Gallipoli was initially quite good and for a while I thought we were in the wrong country, but it soon deteriorated, and the Mols took flying lessons on a tricky humpbacked bridge. We had lunch there and a German couple, he on an XS1100, she on a CX500, stopped and told us that a few years earlier they had managed to get a 2CV Renault airborne on that bridge.

We had intended to have a look at the site of the infamous Gallipoli landings of the First Great Unpleasantness, but couldn’t find any cliffs that looked likely. Later we found out that the landings hadn’t been at Gallipoli at all, but on the other side of the peninsula. No wonder it was a disaster.

The ferry to Canakkale in Asia Minor had just left when we arrived at the wharf – it was only running intermittently due to a diesel shortage – so we were facing a three-and-a-half hour wait. A man at the wharf told us about a local ferry that ran from a place a little farther down the coast; I wish he hadn’t tried to help.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Missing the proper ferry had us taking a local alternative…

This local ferry was a mildly converted fishing boat, with extremely flimsy water pipe rails and nothing to tie the bikes to. We shared it with a defunct tractor and a van, and it was so crowded that the bikes were right on the edge. We hung onto them for grim death all the way across the Dardanelles. It would have taken only one largish wave…

Past rows of closed campsites – the season hadn’t started in Turkey – we rode to Troy for a look at the ruins. The place is quite a mess. Apparently there are numerous Troys, one above the other, and it’s all a bit of a chore sorting it out.

It is very impressive, though, to see several thousand years of civilization in a few yards of hillside. You’ll be glad to know that the wooden horse is still there. You can even climb up inside and play Greeks and Trojans.

On the way back to the main road, a kid lobbed a rock at us. My feelings about this kind of thing hadn’t changed since the last time it had happened, in Afghanistan. I turned around and went back with the motor on the red line in first. The kid ran as though all the demons in hell were after him, and I guess the big Yamaha sounded a bit like that.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Turkey offered stunning scenery

I caught him and gave him a dressing down in front of his mates. A bit self-righteous, maybe, but if it stops him and his friends from throwing stones at other bikes it will have been worth it. So there.

Lots of pretty hill country then, and for the night a tiny campsite marked ‘Kampink-Piknik’. It was quite idyllic, but they’d run out of beer. I guess no place is ever perfect.

The BBC World Service news on my little short-wave radio was cheerful and informed us that three people had died in political shootings in Turkey during the day and that a military coup was starting. I’m glad to say that nobody has ever shot at me – well, not for a good long time, anyway – and nobody shot at any of us in Turkey.

I told the manager of the campsite about the military coup, and he said he hadn’t heard about it and anyway who cared. Next morning we had to search for a while before finding a petrol station that would sell us juice, not because there was a shortage of petrol but because the electricity was off. Not all stations have hand pumps.

At one place we looked like being out of luck when three Italian campervans pulled in behind us. A bevy of bikini-clad young women exploded from the vans, and all of a sudden petrol was available after all, even if it had to be pumped by hand.

The road to Izmir reminded me of Greece. As soon as you got into the town limits, the tar stopped and the gravel started. After Izmir we were on the main road again and diced with the buses and trucks down past Ephesus to the coast at Kusadasi.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Finding petrol and gas bottles proved difficult in Turkey

The town is a port of call for many of the cruise liners that ply the Mediterranean and prices in town go up between 100 and 2000 per cent whenever ships are in port. We learnt to do our shopping after they had left.

There were some attractive bike leathers for sale here and I was tempted, but they weren’t all that much cheaper than in Britain, and you get after-sales service in Britain. We lay in the sun for a bit, and I bolted the stays from the top box onto the bike frame instead of the rack. Not quite so elegant, but it put less strain on the cracks.

Going inland, we followed the country lanes for a while, riding through the little villages dozing in the sun, before we returned to the main road and the traffic. At Pamukkale, an area of hot springs and calcium deposits that turn whole hillsides white with dozens of stepped warm pools, we camped in a tiny site with a large pool. The pool was bigger than the camping area.

Our host was a keen man after a buck, as a lot of Turks are (and you can’t blame them), and we had a classic run-in with him. Michel priced the beer, an essential step if you don’t want to find yourself with an enormous bill. He was quoted 40 lire for a bottle. We both hit the roof, as 30 is considered expensive, and our genial host backpedaled rapidly. ‘Oh, you want the beer for drinking! That’s only 30.’

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Taking a rest when the road conditions deteriorated


The beer for drinking wasn’t bad, and almost drowned out the frogs during the night. But our bikes kept lying down.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear | Part 26 | Dubrovnik to Athens

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming


A recalcitrant bankie in Titograd and Easter in Greece – the world is a strange and wonderful place.


An absolutely horrifying detour through the mountains claimed us as soon as we left Dubrovnik. The ‘road’ was a more or less recently graded dirt track, and over the 40 or so kilometres it lasted we counted three trucks that had simply fallen off the roadway; two of them were lying on their sides, and one had rolled over onto its roof.

The bike dealt with the surface quite well, due no doubt largely to the fat rear tyre, but there was chaos at the other end as cars and trucks squeezed past each other on the narrow cliff path. We were more than glad to be on the bike.

Just before Titograd we fell foul of a radar trap. For once, I actually had not been speeding, but you can’t argue with Yugoslav traffic cops, even though their equipment was more than a little questionable.

“Our radar says you were speeding.”

‘That isn’t a radar. It’s a hairdryer.’ It was, too.

“It does not matter what it is,” he snarled and wiggled his submachine gun suggestively. I paid the fine and rode on, seething. Still, if they caught me every time I do exceed the speed limit…

The Titograd campground had been vandalised badly since Charlie and I had stayed there 18 months before. The pretty lady wasn’t in reception, either – in fact, there wasn’t anybody in reception at all. I finally found someone at the hotel that adjoins the site and they told me to camp anywhere I liked, the site was open and free.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

We bribed the campground guard in drinks to keep an eye on our gear

Annie thought they just couldn’t be bothered filling in all the forms. The watchman came past, cadged a couple of drinks, and promised to look after our tent extra carefully. I went to the bank to cash a travellers’ cheque and had to scribble my name on it four times before the teller was satisfied that my signature matched the sample.

Then on into darkest Yugoslavia, up hill and down dale on steadily worsening roads. We took the main road, not the track that Charlie and I had taken, but at times it wasn’t much better. Winter had destroyed more than one bridge and undermined the road so often it was like a trials stage. In one tunnel there were great ice pillars, formed by water dripping from the ceiling, but we made it through to Skopje and then over quite passable back roads to Ohrid.

We heard a sad story that night in the cevapcici bar where we were having dinner. A young Yugoslav soldier came over to us and introduced himself in fluent Australian. He had been taken to Australia by his parents when he was two years old and had lived in Canberra for 16 years. Then he’d come back to see his relations and the army had grabbed him for two years’ national service.

They were pleased to get him since he had just passed his apprenticeship as a diesel mechanic, and they didn’t have many of those. He had eight months to go, and was counting the days. “When I got here I didn’t even speak the language,” he told us sadly.

Our landlady gave us a heroic breakfast, including a gallon of coffee. Annie had washed a pair of her knickers and hung them on the back of the bike to dry, something we often did with wet clothes, and the landlady nearly cracked up. She thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen, and called out all the neighbours to share her glee.

The people at Bitola were helpful and pointed out the road to Greece, which was just as well as there wasn’t a single road sign in the whole town.


Greece

There were money-changing problems at the border (never change more money than you need) and the obstinate Greek Customs man wrote the bike into my passport, which was near to being full, instead of Annie’s, which had more space. But you couldn’t really stay annoyed long. Spring was with us at last – it had been following us all the way from Sicily, and now it was finally catching up.

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part quote

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part quote

After a run through fresh greenery we made camp at Meteora, below the famous rock cliffs like stone trolls with monasteries for hats and long trails of poo from the toilets overhanging the cliffs. We watched the tourist buses rolling up, and it struck me as odd that the monks should be able to reconcile the religious life with showing tourists around all day. Do they pray for a good tourist crop in between counting the admission money, I wonder?

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Around the world with The Bear Peter Thoeming Part

Spectacular landscape was admired in Greece

There was a large chrome and glass establishment in Kalabaka which advertised itself, in large day-glo letters and in English, as a ‘typical Greek taverna’. What would Anthony Quinn have said?

Annie was befriended by a little black dog we nicknamed The Sheik for his habit of creeping into our tent when we were asleep. He followed her devotedly everywhere she went. The proprietor of the site didn’t know who owned him. ‘He just likes tourists,’ he told us.

The Plain of Thessaly, although it sounds good, was dull. The excitement set in on the mountain road after Lamia, where a new road was being built and the old one had been sort of lost underneath, making it pretty rugged. At one point we stopped and were passed by a wartime German Zündapp outfit, pressed into service to deliver vegetables and elderly Greek ladies.

After passing the great olive grove of Itea, we climbed the cliff to Delphi and camped right on the edge of the drop. The scramble around the ruins was well worth it, but it’s best timed for when the tourists are at lunch. Delphi is one of the prime sightseeing spots in the country and becomes badly crowded even in the off season.

We chatted to an elderly, tubby cop who was quite obviously in the grip of a lengthy love affair with his Harley-Davidson. He showed us where he’d painted this antediluvian monster himself, careful dabs of the brush over rust patches. A German arrived in the campsite one night on a shiny new BMW R45, still in shock from travelling on the Lamia road.

We told him to try the Skopje-Titograd highway if he wanted a real experience. He was cheerfully horrified when he saw us loading the bike with all our worldly goods, and asked politely if he might take pictures. No doubt he’s still scaring fellow motorcyclists with them, back in Germany.

The road to Thebes was fine, except that the surface deteriorated badly whenever we went through a town. Often town streets were dirt, not even gravel. Perhaps the powers that be feel that it’s a waste of time tarring them – they’d only wear out again anyway…

On the motorway the radar caught us once more. This time I wasn’t going to put up with any nonsense, and anyway I’m not scared of Greeks the way I am of Yugoslavs with submachine guns. I pointed out, at the top of my voice, that I had not been speeding as they appeared to claim, but only doing 100 on what was after all a freeway and didn’t they have anything better to do?

We were both still angry after the hairdryer episode and Annie joined in with my tirade. They eventually shooed us away, dazed by our combined assault. Around the next corner we found a sign indicating that the speed limit was 80…

Athens was, as always, dusty and noisy, with cancerous traffic. We picked up some mail, including a pair of visors kindly sent by Bob Heath and a note from the Mols saying that they’d be joining us a week later. That night, we were overcharged for our dinner of calamari down in Piraeus, and the waiter plied us with free retsina when we complained – we felt that we were getting this travelling business sorted out pretty damn well.

The week until Michel and Cathy arrived was spent exploring the Peloponnese. A couple of days lying in the sun at Epidaurus with an excursion to the well-preserved amphitheatre were followed by a visit to Sparta. Then we headed over the ranges to Kalamata and ran into more snow. It really is true; you become much more sensitive to nature’s little quirks on a bike…

On Easter Sunday, the proprietor of the ‘Melbourne’ cafe in Hora bought us some cakes and coffee. People kept giving us Easter presents all day — boiled eggs dyed red, biscuits and even a cucumber were thrust into our hands by people standing beside the road. Everyone was out in their front yards, roasting lambs on spits; the countryside smelt like a vast Greek restaurant. Olympia, which we’d intended to make the high spot of our day, had been closed by a strike. Back to reality!

On the tollway back to Athens, the toll collectors in their little hut waved us through for free, but it wasn’t a good Easter for everyone. As we crested a hill, a puppy wandered out onto the roadway. I made a crash stop and Annie scooped it up, but its owners weren’t to be seen. It had obviously been abandoned.

We stood by the side of the road for a while holding it up as we’d seen people in Morocco do who wanted to sell pups, but nobody stopped. A puppy isn’t a terribly sensible companion on a bike trip, especially when you have to cross borders. We really didn’t know what to do.

Finally, we took it along until we reached the outskirts of Athens, found a prosperous-looking suburb and dumped it on someone’s front lawn. We assumed that its chances would be better there than on the motorway. But as we drew away, it was already tottering back out onto the road. A sad end to Easter, both for the pup (I presume) and us.


Feeling down? Don’t worry, just wait until the Mols get here. Read about their arrival next time.

Source: MCNews.com.au