Jupiter's Travels

BOOK REVIEW

JUPITER'S TRAVELS

by Ted Simon Penguin Books 625 Madison Ave.

New York, N.Y. 10022

This story of riding around the world is billed as a marvelous reading adventure and features a cover photo of author Simon on a thrashed Triumph. It's true that Simon made his journey on a Triumph 500, but nobody should buy this book thinking that it is the tale of a motorcyclist riding around the world. Instead it is the tale of a round-the-world traveler who happens to ride a motorcycle, and does so only to make his journey.

His errors in riding, blunders in approach and maintenance (or lack thereof) show up time after time. He is not a motorcycle enthusiast. Lots of things terrify and thwart him, from riding at night to deep, silty sand, and his descriptions of crashes make you wonder if he ever tried standing on the footpegs when faced with an obstacle.

More disturbing is his bizarre attitude towards his “mission” and his place in the world around him. Rich description and insight quickly fade from his words after a few chapters, and Simon dismisses entire countries in a few hallucinatory words. What seems to upset him the most about America is the fact that he isn't received as the savior of Triumph and given a hero's welcome in Los Angeles. In Australia he decries stereotyping of aborigines, yet unfavorably stereotypes white Australian city dwellers.

In Asia Simon sees someone eating quickly with chopsticks, and wonders why someone would “choose” such a slow way

of eating and then learn to do it quickly, apparently A) judging chopsticks to be1 slow because he can't use them quickly,, and B) assuming that people in given cultures consciously chose the components ok their culture which they use.

It doesn't make sense, and neither does* his cry that the Triumph technicians have lost the faith because they say that pistons-* don't last over 10,000 mi.—Simon got 12,000 mi. out of one set but then seems to replace them and re-bore the cylinders in every other chapter from there. Sometimes the problem's cause isn't described, other times he forgets to add oil to the tank.

The title is a reference to Simon's imagining en route that he is a god, as in Jupiter, and when an Indian is talking astrology and Simon hears the name, he takes it as his own, in his mind, anyway.

Lots of people have ridden around the world, on longer routes than Simon's, and,* their tales tell of a lot more fun and a lot less personal agony and sorrow. One guy made it trouble-free on an XL250, and the piston managed to go the distance.

Simon's tale is, largely, one of woe, a primer of how not to do it. Interesting, sure. Fun, no. John Ulrich