Rider®
MOTORCYCLING AT ITS BEST
USA. March 1990
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Letter to the Editior, published
in the June 1990 issue if Rider magazine:
"Perhaps because my own mount is still hibernating in the garage, but
reading Tom Smith's "Scootering Around the World" in your March
issue was a profoundly moving emotional experience. Going beyond tales of
friendships that he made and the admirers he drew, Tom has stated in elopquent and poetic
terms the lure and charm of two-wheelded touring: the quality of a journey is not measured
by its speed, but by its memories. ... Tom is no sissy; nor Melawend a wimp ."
JIM WHITEMEYER, Wheaton,
Illinois, USA
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Tom's note:
It was a lot of fun
going to Rider headquarters in Agoura, California, and meeting Denis
Rouse (then Exectuive Publisher), Tash Matsuoka (then Editor,
just before he left the magzine to return to Hawaii), Mark Tuttle Jr. (who
took over as Editor, the position he currently holds), Donya Carlson
(then and current Managing Editor) and many more of the Rider
staff - great folks, all of them - a lot of teamwork, camaraderie and love of motorcycling
there! Read all about it in the book, IN THE LONG RUN: A Hopeful World
Odyssey.
Photo: left to right: Tash
Matsuoka, Tom Smith on Melawend, Denis Rouse. Photo by Mark Tuttle, Jr.
Entry in the
Odyssey Signature Book:
"Dear Tom, ...Your accomplishment
is truly incredible. I'm looking forward to reading your story and including it in
an issue of Rider as soon as possible...""
TASH MATSUOKA, Editor, Rider
magazine
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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION for the article
All photography for this article was by Tom Smith. First photo illustration: title and
first part of the article printed over a double page spread one an image of Greece, shown
in the upper right corner of this page. The caption reads:
Sunset at the Temple of Poseidon in Cape Sounion, Greece. Left (inset photo):
Smith and scooter, Melawend, in front of the pyramid of Chepheren (foreground) and Cheops
in Giza Egypt.
Other photo illustration: Tom and Melawend in silhouette at Kualoa Regional Park,
Hawaii; couple romancing the presence of the Eiffel Tower; Sudanese waving at the
photographer at the Khalifa’s house in Omdurman, Sudan; Tom and Melawend and cows at
Pokhara Gate, Nepal; and a monkey family at Swayambhunath, "the monkey temple",
in Kathmandu, Nepal.
And now here's the
story...
Scootering
Around the World
Little wheels on a big
adventure.
by
Tom Smith
"Darn it!" I said.
I’d lost my grip as I backed the
heavy-laden scooter down a few steps from Dad’s rec-room to his patio. She hit the
concrete with a pack-cushioned thud.
I had to laugh to myself at this auspicious
beginning. Dad and I righted the Honda and hugged good-bye. On that clear, cool morning of
May 10, 1986, I wobbled east toward the Niagara River to commence a journey around the
world.
My Cycle for Life – World Odyssey,
a solo journey around the world to promote peace and friendship, began four years ago as a
fantasy – one of those fantastic dreams we keep to ourselves lest others think us
crazy. A little craziness, however, goes a long way in preserving one’s sanity these
days. "Go for it!" holds validity.
I’d planned to go by bicycle. Why the
change? Why a scooter? (Author’s note – this is detailed in the book about
the journey – IN THE LONG RUN: A Hopeful World Odyssey.) Primarily, this was
based on a gut feeling I got when I sat on the Elite 250. "This is it!" I
thought almost aloud. With the help of Lapp Cycle in Fort Erie, Ontario (my hometown), and
cooperation from Honda Canada, the wheels were in place. I christened the scooter Melawend
for my daughters Melanie and Wendy (then 11 and 9 years old) and we were off.
After I made a 3,300-mile round trip in an
unsuccessful attempt to launch the journey by sea or air from Halifax, Nova Scotia,
Melawend and I finally found ourselves on British roads, thanks to Peace Bridge Brokerage,
a Fort Erie-based freight-forwarding company.
Perhaps it was because the sixtyish woman drove
her compact car too quickly, or I was turning too slowly, that I became intimately
familiar with English sidewalks the first day out in England. Melawend and I were bumped
onto the sidewalk on our sides, scraped and bruised. Thought five English pounds settled
the matter and good conversation followed, it is not a recommended way of meeting locals
of any country.
As we rolled through the beauty, history, and
rain of Great Britain, it became apparent that the sleek-lined scooter, motoring stately
under her burden of me and as much as 140 pounds of gear, was an international icebreaker.
Conversations began around my Melawend. We camped for the most port, riding up to a
farmhouse to ask the owner for a campsite in one of his fields. I was often asked to pitch
the tent near the house, to be invited in for tea or dinner and more conversation.
Sometimes in those evenings, new friendships were formed.
Whether I camped on humble farms or magnificent spreads like the 3,000-acre Glympton
Estate, the spirit of friendship was the same. International barriers of culture,
religion, politics, language and life-style were shattered by an unseen force – the
human desire to share knowledge, friendship and love of life.
There was always apprehension upon entering a
country; always a sadness in leaving. So it was with Britain after six weeks and 2,200
miles of saying hello and good-bye to such wonderful people as the Marshall’s and
Lowers, Lin, Lady Labouchere and the crew at BBC Newcastle.
Sailing on the M/S Venus across the
North Sea to Bergen, Norway, Melawend and I took on the Funicular, a residential
mountainside in Bergen famous for its steep, hairpin turns. We rolled to Porsgrunn, where
a flat tire cost $85 to repair. At a deserted Texaco station near Stockholm, I met
Henning, a Swedish highway patrolman riding a 10-year-old BMW. As we remounted the fallen
load onto Melawend, we talked of motorcycles, Chernobyl, and fishing.
All through Europe, I seemed to ride into
living art. Rounding bends and surmounting hills brought new vistas of regal mountains,
cattle in verdant pastures, and distant villages with prominent church spires. Each turn
in a historic town was like riding into classic paintings of cobblestone streets, iron
lampposts, overflowing flower boxes, cats sitting in doorways of stone houses, and
colorful bustling markets.
Melawend and I zigzagged through most of western Europe, riding up to the Matterhorn. We
resided in Paris during the September Bombings (two blocks from the carnage on rue de
Rennes). We finally put wheels and backside blessedly to sand at Valencia, Spain, to begin
a coastal tour of the uninhibited Spanish, French, and Italian Rivieras.
As part of the purpose of the odyssey, I
carried letters of greeting from the Mayor of Fort Erie (my hometown) and our Member of
Parliament, together with an invitation from our Chamber of Commerce for an exchange of
information with communities I visited. Sometimes the receptions were a bit overwhelming,
such as when the honorable Carlo Capano, Ambassador of Ceremony for the City of Rome
received me in the presence of photographers and reporters. My dress clothes had long
since been ruined by the journey’s rigors, leaving just the basics, so that in Rome
and elsewhere I felt like an ambassador in blue jeans.
In Athens, they charged from nowhere... three
dogs in ambush. The gold mongrel was closest and fiercest. No problem. I accelerated down
the sloped road and passed them. Suddenly, I slid on gravel, unseen on the pavement. The
rear wheel slid left and hit a tree. Melawend spun in recoil and I was catapulted to the
ground. As I lay in the pain from a torn groin muscle, the three dogs sat nearby wagging
their tails. Later, at the Canadian Embassy, Dr. Lichtenfeld said, "Pain is your
friend. It tells you what you can and cannot do." I understood, was tolerant for a
time, and then found myself saying, "Friend, you’re a pain!"
Bureaucracy can be such a friend. Bringing
Melawend into and out of Third World countries became a hectic paper chase. I’d been
spoiled in London where I was asked to produce a carnet or pay $750 duty. I had neither.
Fortunately, two senior customs officials happily exempted Melawend. I could forget about
a carnet until I was ready to board ship for Africa in Piraeus, Greece, four and a half
months later.
"No carnet?" the official asked
sternly. "Impossible to enter Egypt." He moved on to others who produced the
orange-colored booklet of vouchers, which are stamped and removed upon entering and
leaving a foreign country. Greek customs was baffled when I re-entered their country so
quickly after leaving it. One learns to despise the "impossible".
Dad took on the burden of securing a carnet
from the auto club by putting up twice the value of the scooter. It was good timing
though. Needed parts from Canada were re-routed to Athens (where they were much easier
to receive, Customs-wise, than in Egypt). I spent a month recuperating further, which
I put to good use learning more about Greece.
Melawend has a sticker on her steering column
that reads, On Road Use Only. Fine, but many of the roads you find in Africa are best
defined as "Any Which Way You Can." Not really scooter country. The dirt/rock
track up the Ngong (Out of Africa) Hills in Kenya felt like riding the scaly back
of a writing dinosaur. Deep potholes concealed by bull dust on the road to Hell’s
Gate near Lake Naivasha shook the heck out of me and the Honda.
African roads hold surprises. I had the most recent Michelin map of Northeast Africa,
which is excellent in detail and information. One critical part of the route in Egypt,
east of Mount Sinai, was shown as "recognized or marked tracks." When I rode up
to it, I beheld a beautiful stretch of fresh asphalt through some of the most savagely
beautiful, desolate land anywhere.
I ultimately rolled through the Sinai twice (and
climbed Mt. Sinai twice) and cruised beside the Nile in Egypt three times. The longest
one-day run of the journey was a 14-hour, 560-mile ride from Cairo to Luxor.
"Someone must be watching over you," said the manager of Egotel in Luxor the
next morning. "It’s crazy on the roads here at night."
I had indeed survived the dark terror of people
driving without headlights and of animals, pedestrians and bicyclists invisible on the
roads until you were virtually upon them.
People were friendly, such as Amer Abu Khamis,
a well-respected camelman at the Pyramids of Giza, who was to become a trusted friend; a
perfume merchant who offered hospitality you could "choose but not refuse" (one
of his guests had bee Cecil B. DeMille during the filming of The Ten Commandments); or Ali
Ahmed from Kassala, Sudan, who, on the ship from Aswan, Egypt, to Wadi Halfa, in the
Sudan, taught me of Allah in a most-kind manner (contrasting sharply with the physical
confrontation by a fervent Muslim in Asyut). In Egypt, I met up with a surprising number
of motorcycle riders on dual-purpose bikes.
In the Sudan, Melawend took on a stretch of
virgin desert with ease. I later rode on the top of a train to Khartoum with other
Sudanese passengers (Melawend rode in the drafty dusty baggage car.) We rolled
unobtrusively through the bustling capital of the Sudan, a Mecca for travelers in Africa,
yet rated as the world’s second-worst city for terrorism, next to Beirut. A
long-legged friend, who rode somewhat nervously as my passenger in Khartoum and later in
Nairobi, referred to my lane splitting as "the Khartoum syndrome." Melawend and
I took wings over the civil war in southern Sudan, thanks to Sudan Airways.
In Kenya, I let Melawend’s engine idle at
the entrance to Tsavo National Park on the south side of the main Nairobi – Mombassa
road.
"You cannot take this scooter into the
park," the gatekeeper said, not unkindly. I knew that. A little knowledge of wildlife
told me a lion, cheetah, or rhino could easily chase down a scooter and its rider. I was
all for meeting inhabitants on their own ground, but not on the run. Besides, I thought,
I’ve already had close encounters of the scooter kind with these and other animals
near the Nairobi and at the Mount Kenya Game Ranch (co-founded by the late William
Holden). At Tsavo, preservation of life and wheels took priority and we sped off to
Mombassa.
"Not even the chairman of the line can put
his family on one of the ships," said the vice president of the shipping company in
his high-rise office in Bombay, India, echoing those frustrating days in Halifax. I’d
actually been aboard an Indian ship bound for Bombay out of Mombassa but had been refused
a passage to India. I flew to Bombay on Kenya Airways and was there to get the final word
from the top authority. It seemed true worldwide: work-way (non-paying) passengers
or non-union workers are not allowed on cargo ships. (Until 25 years ago, it had been a
popular way to work one’s way around the world.) I’d heard tales to the
contrary, but "through channels" – no way.
I hit India at the worst possible time –
during the hot, dry season. The thousand-mile trip to Agra was a blast-furnace run through
sun-parched plains and mountains. With her liquid-cooled four-stroke engine running
smoothly in the 118-degree heat, Melawend took 10-hour rides with amazing fortitude while
I guzzled tow or three bottles of soda at each stop. By midday, truckers would have their
hulking monsters parked at shaded open-air truck stops, hoods up as Melawend breezed by.
If riding through the perilous traffic of Third
World countries could be compared to courses in video games, surviving Egypt was like
passing VG-101. India was the Master’s course. With your entire being attuned to your
machine’s controls, you weave around pedestrians and bicyclists who seem to have no
sense of traffic. You edge by camels, goats and their keepers and pause to watch children
splashing in ponds with water buffalo. You dodge the deadly earnest motor-rickshaw drivers
and families in huge wooden carts pulled by oxen. You were wary of dozy truck drivers. The
backs of their overloaded beasts have pretty scenes painted around the huge words Horn
Please. You skirt lazily wandering sacred cows (to which you have to give way), and
the occasional dog and the inevitable, universal jackass (in India, primarily the
four-legged variety). The object is not speed, merely surviving to reach your destination.
But as the game (the ride) is a challenge, so the contacts are true rewards – the
heart made warm in meeting these curious, friendly, helpful people in their awesome land.
Melawend often drew small crowds but never
moreso than in India. At the Cargo Complex near the airport in Bombay, at least 100 young
guys gathered around so tightly, it was difficult to load the scooter. When it came time
to go, 100 outstretched arms pointed the way to New Delhi. I felt like Dorothy starting
out on the Yellow Brick Road.
Nepal was cooler, greener and quieter as the
land rose up beneath Melawend’s 10-inch wheels. Along the terraced hillsides near
Tansing, the starter-cable connector broke. Appearing like the Munchkins in The Wizard
of Oz, a small group of Nepalese children gathered around to assist in the easy
repair. On the road to Kathmandu, as on the whole journey, Melawend proved the ideal tour
vehicle. Here, the pastoral beauty of the Himalayan foothills surrounded me, as we passed
like a gentle breeze through this peaceful, mythical land.
From the surprising comfort, harmony and diversity of modern Singapore, to the pristine
beauty of Tioman Island, Malaysia, to the initially intimidating, then warm and inviting
worlds of Tokyo, the eastern segment of my odyssey became more one of people than of
travel – more tales for the book to come. (IN THE LONG RUN: A Hopeful World
Odyssey)
I made the longest stop of the journey in
Hawaii and became more involved with motorcycling. Two of the MSF’s (Motorcycle
Safety Foundation) top instructors, Morgan Keene, co-state coordinator and Dan Martyniuk
conferred and then concurred that, yes, it was time that I learned how to ride a
motorcycle – some of the dynamics of motorcycling and component skills of safe
riding. Having completed the course, I’m pleased to report that I came away with a
greater respect for motorcycling, the people involved, and, at the heart of it all, a
deeper love of riding.
At Sandy Brodie’s Waipahu Cycles on Oahu,
I worked as a promotional "liner" and part-time painter. Melawend got some TLC
under Sac Verdadero’s expert hands. To this point, the Honda had covered about 30,000
tough miles without even a tune-up. A compression check revealed she was down 60 percent.
A new piston and rings were installed and a few other parts were replaced; nothing was
broken, just worn. (To date, Melawend is
still running on her original shock absorbers.)
During the four months in Hawaii, I was privileged to cover about 2,000 miles on Oahu,
Hawaii, Maui, and Kauai. Dear reader, the Aloha State is a rider’s paradise! Whether
you have a dirt bike, dual-purpose machine, or big touring bike, You’d love the
diversity of Hawaii’s landscape, which is primarily rural or natural. You can weave
your way up the sides of volcanoes; lose yourself in deep, lush valleys; or wind along
some of the world’s most spectacular coastlines. A prime example is the famous
"road to Hana" on Maui, with a count of 617 curves (I lost count at 92!) along
it’s 38-mile length. For off-road racers, there’s little to compare with the
challenge of the Mauna Kea 200.
As Singapore Airlines had flown us to Japan and
Japan Air Lines carried us to Hawaii, so Hawaiian Airlines returned the scooter and me to
good old North America via Los Angeles. American Honda assisted me with a donation of
Hondaline riding gear and some cash, which helped pay the way home. Minolta Corporation
(an original sponsor) speedily provided equipment transport and emergency service.
That long-awaited last leg – the ride
across the United States – began with a leisurely exploration of the panoramic
Pacific coast between Los Angeles and Port Reyes, north of San Francisco. We followed
California’s Highway 49, the route of the Gold Rush hopefuls of 1849, to a masterwork
of Mother Nature – Yosemite National Park. Then it was an easy ride up to laid-back
Lake Tahoe and to glittering Reno, Nevada, where the fifth of Melawend’s rear tires
was installed.
Because of the hospitality I’d been shown
in Egypt, I had taken Melawend’s worn rear tire, cleaned and signed it with a message
of goodwill to the people of Egypt. It was enthusiastically received by the Secretary
General of Cairo. Perhaps as an ashtray, I suggested. "No, no," he said.
"This will go on the Governor’s wall." In Kenya, such a tire was received
by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife who suggested it might
be hung in the national museum. The final location of the tire received by the Assistant
Press Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the old Executive Office of the White House remains
to be learned. Though there was much support and cooperation at the Soviet Embassy in
Singapore, an attempt to take the odyssey to the Soviet Union was aborted solely due to
lack of financing. The tire prepared for Moscow awaits delivery.
All across the United States – along
Highway 50 in Nevada ("The Loneliest Highway in America"), across Independence
Pass in Colorado, on through Kansas and Missouri, down the Mississippi into Tennessee and
up the Blue Ridge Parkway to Washington, D.C., reaching the Atlantic at Cape May before
going on to New York City where Melawend was welcomed to and I was given a VIP tour of the
United Nations – I was warmly received and accommodated. There were "thumbs
up" from people across America; video cameras angled back our of passing cars; young
boys on BMXs looking lovingly at Melawend; farmers on tractors waving heartily; a salute
from a young guy in military uniform; inviting warm smiles from some lovely ladies; waves
and good conversations with fellow riders; meeting young and old people for whom this
journey represented a fantasy that could happen or won’t happen, but did in a way
when they touched Melawend. The USA leg became a part of the big heart of America showing
itself – its dreams, hopes, and spirit.
That heart, and perhaps that someone who had
always been watching over me, was shown again near Washington, D.C. I was down to 30
dollars. The driver of a late-model Corvette convertible pulled me over. He had taken out
his wallet.
"I’m not collecting funds," I
said, explaining my journey.
"I understand. I’ve made it and
I’d simply like to help you." He pressed a fifty-dollar bill into my hand,
wished me well, and drove off.
On July 2, 1988, with 35 cents to spare, his
gift had carried Melawend and me to Buffalo, New York, and over the Peace Bridge home to
Fort Erie. We blended into the multitude of Canadians and Americans along the Niagara
River who were celebrating 176 years of peace in the bilateral Friendship Festival.
Melanie, Wendy, and I fell into each other’s arms beside Melawend and all of life was
a celebration.
Looking back, the journey confirmed the ideals
upon which it had been based: Despite vast social differences and a world of troubles,
there dwells in the hearts and minds of the great majority of people the desire for peace
inside and worldwide. Whether our individual worlds are large or small, there is a biding
tie between us – love of life.
There is a sign near the airport in Kathmandu
that reads, "Tourism is a Passport to Peace." On that note, whether you ride
around the world or around town, may peace and love of life be with you.
###
Copyright © 1990 - 2006 by Thomas
Martin Smith.
All rights are reserved.
