Book Review: Endless Horizon by Dan Walsh

A Word of Intro

SO CAL. The frequently referred to land of fruits and nuts. Best climate in the country. Classy women and hot cars. Could be, it’s the other way ‘round. Grooviest, ‘this is it!’ places to dine…this fortnight. Happy hours where the mere thought of a cigarette will get you run out of town on a surfboard. The heart of sunshine where political correctness is turning everything gray. This is where I grew up. With the Beach Boys and Sex Wax and Graham’s Drive-In. American Graffiti reality TV.

Grew up and became a cop, ‘til my back gave out on me. Ahhh, new career choices abound. It became quite regular, for awhile, to attend parties where wine coolers were the beverage of choice. What do you mean a Silver Bullet? In a bottle! I suppose you smoke, too? Well, in the morass of self defense and the justification of values the question usually popped up, “Do you miss being a cop?” followed by, “What do you miss about it?”

Took me awhile to figure it out. What I missed. It was the people. I missed talking to the crooks, the homeless, outlaw bikers, street folk, Hare Krishnas and massage parlor operators. Often psychotic. Never dull. Street people have a unique perspective on life most will never know, understand, or even want to.

Streetwise Dan

Dan Walsh knows. He understands. I just finished his book: Endless Horizon: A Very Messy Motorcycle Journey Around the World. I guess it falls somewhere between Travels with Charlie and the Choirboys. It is getting lots of good press. The online forums either love it, or hate it. I loved it. Loved it so much I read it twice. Back to back. Once wasn’t enough.

Walsh is a motorcycling journalist whose dispatches from the road were published in Bike and Motorcyclist magazines. The first time through, like a combo plate, was hard to digest. Maybe I was in too much of a hurry. Most likely it was his Brit accent.

Which brings me back to my intro. Walsh doesn’t mess around with wine coolers and the like. He gets down with the street people. No Hilton and prescribed adventure here. “I’m looking for the cheapest kip in town, ideally run by a bald man with a hairy back and gravy stains down his vest.” He travels solo and takes life as it is dealt out. That is why I liked the book so much. It is also what probably puts off a lot of people. Not many feel comfortable dealing with street folk. If you don’t like touching people don’t become a cop, or a motorcycling journalist taking to the road. I felt comfortable with his travels and the people he rubbed elbows with.

Bon Voyage Twice

The book starts with a frail main squeeze relationship that weakens when he takes off on his Yamaha XT Desert Rat for Africa. The first step in a ‘round the world venture. The book can be exciting, especially when lost he rides through a minefield rather than backtrack in the hope of finding the right set of tire tracks back to the correct route. Can’t get much more on the edge than that.

Walsh returns to the UK for a year with a trip to the US squeezed in. Then he picks up a BMW F650 in Toronto and heads off to Buenos Aires. Along the way he finds the Great Dismal Swamp, New Orleans and the City of Angels. It was here abouts that I started to relate to the book. I could close my eyes and smell the stale beer and body odor in Venice as the afternoon fog mingled with smoggy haze. When he slides across the border into Tijuana I start feeling at home. By the time he reaches Argentina I am ready to saddle up and join him. Well, maybe only as far as Central America. I found what I want there.

Walsh On Walsh

What is nice about this book is he actually spends time talking about the bikes and the problems with them he encountered. Too many books talk where stayed and sights seen, with little about the bike. I happen to like to read about the bike. I can go sightseeing out of a Lonely Planet guide.

He also talks about himself: his relationship problems, his insecurities, and an analysis of his life with alcohol. Deep stuff, thoughtfully written, which is a bit of change from his rough and risqué style. But, mostly it is about the people he meets. The friends and lovers he encounters. And, a solo ride around the world. That, to me, is what life is all about.

Book Review: Around the World on a Motorcycle 1928 to 1936 by Zoltan Sulkowsky: Part 2

Yes, to really enjoy this book you need to know the secret. The book is really no more than Sulkowsky’s journal notes of the trip, expanded upon after he returned to Hungary. The text seems to skip from one situation to the next very quickly. For instance, when the guys meet with Benito Mussolini only a couple of sentences in the book mention it. Then the story moves on. It is the same with most all famous people, political or celebrity, that they meet. Just a couple lines about the meeting. Most folks tend to go on about meeting someone famous. Name dropping.

Not these guys. That wasn’t their gig. That’s when I figured it out. The book is about everyday people and culture. That's the secret. That’s what slowed me down. Once I started to pay attention to the everyday folks these two Marco Polos came across, the cultures they strove so hard to understand and explain, Around the World became an adventure, an education. I didn’t want it to end. I read more slowly and enjoyed more. Another secret: take your time reading this book.

Did I mention when these guys got lost THEY ACTUALLY ASKED DIRECTIONS? Unfortunately, when they did ask, the locals knew little more than they did. It became a matter of finding the best road and hoping it led where they wanted to go. Many of those good roads were … ah … not so good. They did use discretion, though. When confronted by bandits (more than once) they opted to run, rather than ask “Which way?” Road maps weren’t state of the art back then, even if you had one. GPS! What’s that?

This book doesn’t read like some cultural text. It can be quite funny. Take, for instance, when the Harley breaks down (gotta bite my tongue here) in the middle of the Australian outback. Our two heroes are down to very little food and water. There are wild animals howling in the night. They are thinking of when the next traveler will find their bones and wonder who they were. There may have been a bit of hallucination going on. They wrote letters of farewell to family and friends. Just in time, they hear someone coming. They are going to be saved! They look out through the shimmering heat waves to see a cotton caravan approaching. Not just any cotton caravan. One huge wagon stacked high with cotton bales being pulled by sixteen camels.

Or, the time they were held ransom in the middle of a river by the fellow that brought a knife to a gun fight.

While Around the World could have used some sort of time line to anchor it to history, it is a minor point. What impressed me was the display of Hungarian national pride. Whenever discussing anything to do with their country, or their heritage, Hungary was shown in a positive light. National pride is something seen too little of these days.

There are just too many stories to talk about. The cultural studies are really amazing, opening us to worlds that will never be seen again. Worlds between World Wars. A time of Depression and change and innocence. It is truly an adventure.

Gertrude Stein said, “If it can be done, why do it?” Well, this adventure hadn’t been done. They took the challenge. They did it. This is a must read…especially if you own a Harley.

Book Review: Around the World on a Motorcycle 1928 to 1936 by Zoltan Sulkowsky: Part 1

Two Hungarian guys and a gal, part of Gertrude Stein’s “lost generation,” find themselves stuck in Stein’s Paris of the 1920s. Sulkowsky and his friend Gyula Bartha decide to travel the world on a sidecar equipped Harley Davidson. They are joined briefly by a young female Hungarian artist, Boriska Tila. Tila accompanies them around Europe and through the north of Africa before she is forced to return to Hungary because of illness. The boys continue on for a total of eight years, 170,000+ kilometers, and their story is fascinating.

We need to keep in mind this adventure takes place during the Great Depression. There were few jobs and little money available for our young heroes. How many of us would take off into the unknown without resources to fall back on? Given the opportunity, how would you survive?

Our guys looked up every important person in every community they visited, every Hungarian resident, Hungarian club, and Automobile Club contact to introduce themselves. Then they held lectures, for which they charged attendance. They wrote books and pamphlets which they sold along the way. They printed up the photographs they took and sold them as well. Many of those photographs are included in the book. I was surprised how many Hungarian folks were to be found in some of the most rural – read desolate - areas of the world. During their trek they ran into the likes of Benito Mussolini, Prime Minister Hamaguchi, General Chiang Kai-shek, Mayor Walker of New York, and President Herbert Hoover. In Hollywood they stopped off to rub elbows with Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, Joan Blondell, and John Barrymore.

It wasn’t all as easy as that, of course. After all they were riding a Harley! Okay! Okay! I was just teasing. It was a lot easier to take apart the 1928 model Harley than a modern Electra Glide. They often had to dismantle it to carry it across rivers, through sand dunes, and over roads too littered with boulders to ride upon. The bike held up very well. When they did get to Milwaukee, Harley rebuilt the bike for them, although the Motor Company gave them no financial support. This was a major disappointment.

This is a fairly hefty book at 408 pages, plus a translator’s forward and small index. Oh, I have to mention the translator, Noemi M. Najbauer. Najbauer does a beautiful English translation from the Hungarian. Some translations I have read didn’t quite come across as easy reading. This one comes through the process with four stars. Even then, I found it took me awhile to wade through the book. Usually, I plow through a book in a few days. But, it wasn’t the translation that slowed me down. I found that I was enjoying the Around the World on a Motorcycle to the point I was slowing my reading pace so I wouldn’t finish it.

That was when I figured out the secret!

Next time we will talk about that secret and investigate the book a little more.