From the Library

[Biggles]

"You want us to open up the engine?" he said bewildered.
"Ah... yes... please" I said, a little perplexed, wondering how I could have been any more explicit. "But what if we find something wrong?" he shot back.
"What do you mean?" I said - a little exasperated. "My clutch has been re-built with scrap metal by a little Chinese man who lives in a closet and works on the pavement under a beach umbrella. I've ridden thousands of kilometres across deserts, along rutted mountain tracks, through rivers and been bogged knee deep in sand dunes. My bike needs to be examined and repaired properly! That's why I came here!" - I was ranting now.
The office manager listened politely and with great restraint, sensing my growing frustration, and said calmly, "Well, you know, the clutch, it is a complex piece of the motorcycle."
"You're telling me... I stuck a wrench in there two months ago and almost killed myself!"
"You know, it is illegal to ride bikes larger than 250cc in Iran; we have never actually serviced a bike like this before..." he confessed. The Mexicans looked away.
"But I saw a bike like mine in your showroom!"
"Shipped here in error... it's only on display because we have nowhere else to put it and can't afford to return it. We don't know how it works."
"No problem, just do your best," I said cheerfully.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p363

[Biggles]

Depressingly, I could now trace my remaining journey on a single map and could count the days left until I finished with my fingers. Whether the road actually got better from here was almost a moot point now; for I was certainly going to finish. The roads were all well made and paved, people spoke English, there was solid and reliable infrastructure, and barring any mechanical disaster or traffic accident, nothing really stood in my way anymore. The goal that had seemed so Far And Away when I set out from the Pacific shores of Russia up near the Arctic Circle and had then became a pipe dream, as I broke myself and my bike in the bogs and marshes along the Road of Bones, was now becoming a reality. It was a strange sensation that left me feeling melancholy.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p385

[Biggles]

And I knew it was time to finish when, just a few days before the end of my journey, I came to a fork in the road where a muddy unmarked dirt track led off in one direction and a neat sealed and signposted roadway continued on. Where once I would have instinctively taken Frost's "road less travelled" I now craved the certainty and reliability of the big, wide easy path - the bigger the better - for sadly, the highways and freeways had now become my preferred domain; I had simply lost the desire or gumption to explore and take risks anymore.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p395

[Biggles]

Upon reflection, the great joy of my trip had revealed itself slowly, delivered in a complex and seemingly unrelated series of events and encounters. But now, suddenly, all of these fragments resolved themselves in an epiphany: the source of my quiet elation and deep tranquility was absolute and fundamental: the simplicity of life on the road (eat, sleep and ride), the spontaneous generosity and genuine camaraderie of the people I had met, the immense, diverse beauty of Nature and the wonder of Man's achievements.
The Road Gets Better From Here  Adrian Scott p396