From the Library

[Biggles]

The best trick in my repertoire was provided by a company called Schrader in Birmingham.  They made a valve with a long tube which I could screw into the engine instead of a spark plug.  As long as you had at least two cylinders, you could run the engine on one and the other piston would pump up your tire.  So I was able to pump up my tube, and it seemed all right.
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels p 129

[Biggles]

I waved to him and he stopped beside me.
"Can you help me, I wonder..." I said.
"Absolutely," he said.  "Most definitely.  I see you are having trouble, isn't it.  A spot of bother."
" Well, my tire's flat..." and I went on to explain.
"I will introduce you to Mr. Paul Kiviu," he burst out enthusiastically.  "Definitely he is the very man of the moment.  He is manager BP station Kibwezi Junction and he is my friend."
Mercifully the road was level at that point.  As I pushed the loaded bike along on its flat tire, Pius bobbed around me like a butterfly, calling encouragement, imploring me to believe that my troubles would soon be over.  His good nature was irresistible and I began to believe him.  In any case I was happy that something was happening and I was in touch with people.  At the time it seemed to me that what I wanted was to have my problem solved quickly and to get on my way.  I had a boat to catch in Cape Town and the journey was still the main thing.  What happened on the way, who I met, all that was incidental.  I had not quite realized that the interruptions were the journey.
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels p 130

[Biggles]

My confidence in the Triumph has gone beyond surprise and gratitude.  I now rely on it without question, and it seems past all coincidence that on this last day, the unseen fate working itself out in the cylinder barrel should manifest itself.  It is not I who am looking for significance in these events.  The significance declares itself unaided.  Just beyond Trichardt, in the morning, the power suddenly falters and I hear, unmistakably, the sound of loose metal tinkling somewhere; but where?  Although the power picks up again, I stop to look.  The chain is very loose.  Could it have been skipping the sprockets?  I tighten the chain and drive on.  Power fails rapidly and after about smell of burning.  Is it the clutch?  It seems to have seized, because even in neutral it won't move.
Two friendly Afrikaners in the postal service stop their car to supervise, and their presence irritates me and stops me thinking.  I remove the chain case to look at the clutch, a good half hour's work.  Nothing wrong, and then my folly hits me.  I tightened the chain and forgot to adjust the brake.  I've been riding with the rear brake on for four miles, and the shoes have seized on the drum.  Apart from anything else, that is not the best way to treat a failing engine.  I put everything together again and set off, but the engine noise is now very unhealthy.  A loud metallic hammering from the cylinder barrel.  A push rod?  A valve?  I'm so near Jo'burg, the temptation to struggle on is great.  At Pietersburg I stop at a garage.
The engine oil has vanished.
"That's a bad noise there, hey!" says the white mechanic, and calls his foreman over.
"Can I go on like that?"
"As long as it's not too far. You'll use a lot of oil."
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels p 169

[Biggles]

I spend two days at Naboomspruit working on the engine.  The crankcase is full of broken metal.  The con rod is scarred, the sump filter in pieces, the scavenge pipe knocked off centre.  The sleeve of the bad cylinder is corrugated.   I have kept the old piston from Alexandria, and put it back thinking it might get me as far as Jo'burg.  With everything washed out and reassembled, the engine runs, but no oil returns from the crankcase.
The second day I spend on the lubrication system, picking pieces out of the oil pump.  On Sunday, in bright sunshine, I set off again, for twenty blissful miles before all hell breaks loose.  The knocking and rattling is now really terrible.  I decide that I must have another look, and by the roadside I take the barrel off again and do some more work on the piston and put it back again.  By now I am really adept and it takes me four hours.
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels pp 169-170

[Biggles]

Joe's Motorcycles on Market Street, as agents for Meriden, took the engine to pieces again and sent me off with a rebored barrel, two new pistons, a new con rod, main bearings, valves, idler gear and other bits and pieces.  The broken metal had penetrated everywhere and again I was struck by the force of the coincidence that all this havoc had been wrought virtually within sight of Johannesburg.  I was very susceptible to "messages" and wondered whether someone was trying to tell me something, like, for example,  "I'll get you there, but don't count on it."
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels p 171

[Biggles]

Calling at a gas station is an event, particularly on a motorcycle with a foreign number plate.  In southern Africa everyone plays the number-plate game.  You can tell instantly where each one comes from; C for Cape Province, J for Johannesburg, and so on.  My plate begins with an X, a mystery all the deeper because some pump attendants belong to the Xhosa tribe.  Peeling off damp layers of nylon and leather, unstrapping the tank bag to get to the filler cap, fighting to get at the money under my waterproof trousers which are shaped like a clown's, chest high with elastic braces, I wait for the ritual conversation to begin.
"Where does this plate come from, baas?" asks the man.
"From England."
A sharp intake of breath, exhaled with a howl of ecstasy. "From England? Is it? What a long one! The baas is coming on a boat?"
"No," I reply nonchalantly, knowing the lines by heart, relishing them rather. "On this. Overland."
Another gasp, followed by one or even two whoops of joy. The face is a perfect show of incredulity and admiration.
"On this one?  No!  Uh!  I can't.  You come on this one?  Oh!  It is too big."
I am learning, as I make my way through my first continent, that it is remarkably easy to do things, and much more frightening to contemplate them.
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels p 176

[Biggles]

The great freeways sweep me on past Stellenbosch and Belleville towards the ocean, into the suburbs of Cape Town, winding me down effortlessly and without error as though on an automatic flight path to the heart of the old city and setting me down in the plaza beside the ocean.  My joy is almost hysterical as I park the bike, walk slowly over the paving towards a cafe table and sit down.  I have just ridden that motorcycle 12,245 miles from London, and absolutely nobody here, watching me, knows it.  As I think about it I have a sudden and quite extraordinary flash, something I never had before and am never able to recapture again.  I see the whole of Africa in one single vision, as though illuminated by lightning. And that's it.  I've done it.  I'm at peace.
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels pp 180-181

[Biggles]

Mourning becomes electrics.  Among the dunes and bushes of a camp site at La Plata, south of Buenos Aires, I searched for an electrical fault.  I never found it, but when I put everything together again, furious and frustrated, the fault disappeared.  Not an uncommon experience.
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels p 267

[Biggles]

I was particularly interested in Pete because he had just ridden a three-cylinder Kawasaki on almost the same route from Rio to Panama as I had taken.
"Remember that bridge coming into Ecuador?" he asked.
There was only one bridge he could have meant.  It was built like a railroad track, but with planks instead of rails to take the wheels of cars.  The sleepers were set about eighteen inches apart, and there was nothing between them but air, and only river beneath.  It might not have been so bad if the planks had not kept changing direction, so that it was impossible to build up any momentum.  I had fallen halfway across and was lucky not to have gone through into the river.  Bob and Annie had also fallen on their Norton.
"Sure I do," I said. "I fell on it." He howled, and grabbed my hand.
 "Me too, pal. Which way did you fall?"
"Into the middle."
"Jesus.  I only fell against the side.  Boy, that was some ride.  I'm really glad I met you pal."
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels p 309

[Biggles]

The bike is tired also, but that is only a figure of speech.  I do not credit the bike with feelings.  If it has a heart and soul of its own I have never found them. People I meet are often disappointed that the bike does not even have a name.  They often suggest names ("The Bug" is top favorite) but none of them seem to do anything for the bike or for me.  For me it remains a machine, and every attempt to turn it into something else strikes me as forced and silly.
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels p 314

[Biggles]

Suddenly I realize that I have wandered into the middle of the road, and look up to find a huge truck bearing down on me out of the rainstorm.  It is far too late for me to react, and it is entirely by chance that the truck misses me, by a hair's breadth.  As I realize what I did, how close I came to being literally wiped out, obliterated, I feel that fearful rush of heat and cold sweat that makes the heart nearly burst, and feel immensely grateful for the warning while wishing I knew to whom to be grateful.  A God would come in useful at times like that.
I can count only two other times when I came so close to an end.  I must be really tired at the back of my skull. I must be careful.  I must never let that happen again.
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels p 315

[Biggles]

By the time l got to Mexico City one cylinder was smoking just as it had in Alexandria, but this time I was better prepared.  I had two spare pistons with me, both oversize so that I could rebore if necessary.  Was it necessary with only three thousand miles to go?  This time though, a friendly Triumph agent was there with all the equipment and the will to help.  It seemed silly not to take advantage.  Friends of Bruno put me up; Mr. Cojuc, the agent, did the rebore; I put it together again in his workshop, if for no other reason than the close contact this gave me with Mexican workers made the experience worthwhile.
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels p 316

[Biggles]

The coast road north of Sydney is called the Pacific for 650 miles until it gets to Brisbane.  Then it becomes the Bruce Highway.  Another five hundred miles north is Rockhampton, right on the Tropic of Capricorn.  I crossed the tropic (for the sixth time on my journey) four days before Christmas and headed on for Mackay.   
Since Brisbane the arid summer of the south had been giving way slowly to the tropical rainy season of Queensland.  In the southern droughts the cattle died of thirst.  In the north they drowned and floated away on the floods.  Australia runs to extremes.
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels p 341

[Biggles]

If the Nullarbor was not an ordeal, it was perhaps a last straw.  Bouncing over it was too much for the spokes of the rear wheel.  After all they had been through in two and a half years. I had been warned.  In Melbourne and again in Adelaide I had replaced broken spokes, and I checked them every time I stopped for the day.  At Eucla, where the dirt ended and the highway began they were still in order. The smooth tar enticed me to greater speed. After five hundred miles, just before Norseman, I noticed a growing vibration through the steering head. I stopped in the absolute nick of time.
Only four of the twenty spokes on one side of the wheel were left, and the rim was a terrible twisted shape.  A few seconds more and it would certainly have collapsed. I shuddered to think of the mangled mess that that would have left.  As it was, I spent one of the nastiest hours of the journey rebuilding the wheel in a twilight plagued by squadrons of vicious mosquitoes.
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels p 363-4

[Biggles]

The journey continued, as it always had, with this close inter-weaving of action and reflection.  I ate, slept, cursed, smiled, rode, stopped for gas, argued, bargained, wrote and took pictures.  I made friends with some Germans, and some English, and some Indians. I learned about mushrooms, potatoes, cabbages, golden nematodes, Indian farmers and elephants.
The thread connecting these random events was The Journey.  For me it had a separate meaning and existence; it was the warp on which the experiences of each successive day were laid.  For three years I had been weaving this single tapestry.  I could still recall where I had been and slept and what I had done on every single day of travelling since The Journey began.  There was an intensity and a luminosity about my life during those years which sometimes shocked me.
Ted Simon.  Jupiter's Travels p 406