Wandering through life

Sitting at my desk, all is quiet, only the sound of John Zorn's "Red Bird" playing from my little speakers. Outside a woodpecker is thrashing at the pear tree. 4 blackbird husband and wives, a blue tit whirls in the upper branches, a robin looks on sitting on the brick wall, four fat wood pigeons peck at the dropped pears, a squirrel bounds past. but no partridge. I tried recording the woodpecker but my phone kept interrupting the performance.

This afternoon I will be on Wavelength again on ResonanceFM. I am feeling rather delicate and a dreading it a bit as it will involve some physical exertion drinking salt water and reciting the lords prayer in French, modulated with Helium. I am taking a backing track of ambient vomit sounds just in case it all goes, well... pear shaped.

Wavelength is at 3:00 PM GMT on www.resonanacefm.com or 104.4 FM in the London area but you might already know that. If you don’t, then you probably will miss it.

I paid a very pleasant visit to the new Resonance FM studios in Borough High St on Friday where I met with William English. We played some files that I brought along on my memory stick. This included:

“Cesspit” – Singing down a cesspit in Alaska

“I’m Walking Out With a Mountain” Spike Milligan

“Porn Fart” Miscellany of found sounds and field recordings

“Goodbye Halo” R Stevie Moore (off his Zeitgeist CD)

We had a chance to have a little chat and he very kindly gave me a book "Along Some American Highways" by Andrew Cross which featured photos of interstates around the US. William asked me some searching questions which I rather ummed and rr’d my way through.

I understand that the studio will have vinyl record decks soon, but the equipment they have installed is very professional.

It will be repeated on Tuesday evening (tomorrow) at 7pm.

Well even with common sense the highway robbers come out of the woodwork, you name them; customs, insurance DVLA, import agents, shippers.

 I realised I had to pay VAT and tax on the vehicle to clear through customs, but on a creaky old bike, value on the invoice was $500 (£250) and still the bill came in at £585 (including airline handling) – I thought that was included in the shipping charges but no, they charged me for that extra.

Rang the DVLA today and to get a UK number plate (I have to do this within10 days of importing the vehicle) they require

New valid MOT (in spite of US road tax paid up until December!)
£50 registration fee
£64 tax disk
Form V55-5 completed
Copy of customs docs
UK Insurance, even though it is declared as off-road so I can rebuild the engine.

 I cannot put it on my current bike policy as Norwich Union do not like insuring on the frame number so I have to start a new policy which ignores my no-claims bonus… Otherwise it would have been £12 sigh

 Anyway, I will put it on the trailer to get the MOT, I cant ride it on the frame number until the DVLA give me a proper number plate. They really don’t want me to do this, I can tell.

Serves me right, should have left it New Jersey

I would like to thank a few people, some of who I really would have found things a lot more difficult without them or made the journey lonely and with no purpose.

So, In no particular order either of precedence or time:

Manny and Greg of Burnaby Kawasaki in Burnaby, Vancouver for sorting out the chain and correcting the handling.

Richmond Motorsports for the service.

Tim of Red Line Racing in Butte Montana for getting the rubber back on the road.

Matthew for keeping me out of trouble in LA and being such a gracious host.

Lynn, Andy and Desmond for a great time and putting me up in Hoboken

Harris for putting me right on a couple of things and selling me a great book!

Randy for scaring the shit out of me and letting me stay on his site free, also showing me another side of 61.

Bob Wood the hypnotist and magician

Alex and those at CHLS for letting me loose on the airwaves

Leslie for putting me up in Lillooet and giving me the inside track on all the weirdos that live there and all the friends for having such a good laugh

Gibbs and his wife and all the First Nation people who I was honoured to meet.

R Stevie Moore an Krystina for an impromptu evening and sleepover on RSTV’s studio floor.

Greg and Scott of shipmybike.com for looking after me

Mike for rescuing me in Palo Alto

Margaret and Paul for all the love and kindness

Thorsten for meeting up and sharing the Lower East Side with me

Evan for being my Engineer, Brian and all at WFMU for letting me play.

Scott and Miranda for confiding in me,sharing their dreadful experiences  and making me breakfast

Tina and Hans for making me so comfy in Smithers (the place)

Colleen and Ruth and some of the more sane nuns at Humuh monastery for being so kind to me

Todd for selling me a bike that held up

The three police bike cop trainers who did not laugh at me

Rob Simone for hooking up with me and sharing a few jars

Douglas for showing me his car collection and Joyce for a lovely dinner

William English for giving me moral support and the will to live

Maggie and Malcolm, the Gran, Petronella, Jonny, Julian, Kathryn, William, Alexander and Ackers for the love!

All the countless petrol station attendants, chefs, campsite managers lavatory cleaners, Canadian libraries and librarians, restaurant  owners, fellow bikers, festival organizers, blog commenters and everyone who has been so kind to chat and be so friendly over my trip.

Effric, Shiona and Rory for putting up with me.

The driving on Monday morning is remarkably sedate, I drop my bags off at JFK and the bike is instantly transformed into an agile greyhound, eager again to catch miscreants and speeding motorists as it has done for most of its life. However, I have clocked up 11 out of the 50 thousand miles it spent in its working life, all in two months. Well done, Kawasaki KZ1000 – I will reward you with a new set of rings when you get home. 

I meet a vile green Harley Davidson chopper with extended forks at the traffic lights in Valley Stream L.I. I lean over and ask if he was shipping the bike and he said yeah, do you know where Jamaica Ave is? I said I did, as I was there three days ago. I roar up the street, the chopper struggles to turn the 90 street corners.

Greg, the boss of Berklay Inc. shipmybike.com meets me, we do the paperwork and I hand him the sacred title document – without which I could not sell or export the bike. I tape up the battery leads and we remove the petrol from the tank. He takes me in his car to get a spare key cut but we fail to get one made as the blanks are unusual so we make do, Greg will Fedex the key to me at home so I can pick it up next Monday, all being well. Greg tell me the only reliable carrier is Air France. No one ships this type of freight to Heathrow, Lufthansa, SAS are useless he tell me. Air France will put the bike on the Eurotunnel train and it will end up in Heathrow by rail.

He also tells me that he is the only person freighting motorcycles.; a signed Orange County Choppers poster on the wall next to me, countless dusty plastic models of bikes, all sizes grace the scruffy little office, running so smoothly and efficiently. Only one other guy is doing this, from Moscow, he only does 50 bikes a year, I do many more. He owns his aircraft, a mafia guy allegedly. He does a lot of cars, the new Dodge and Mercedes for example – they are cheaper in the US than Europe so he ships them straight into Russia.

Greg takes me to Valley Stream  station , the lon Island Railroad train takes me into Penn Station and I wander like everyone else looking for happiness but not finding it. I decide to text and ring the kids and Mrs Jtreg and then ring my daughter to check what her wishes are in my brief time in Manhattan. Urban Outfitters is tracked down sweatily, I feel sick and tired and everything tales on a hallucinatory appearance, edgy and mad. I am thirsty, hungry and tired, dive into a forbidden place and order forbidden food. Wendys. Eurggh, I feel I am getting a heart attack and barge into the single rest room, sign on the wall: dining room for patrons: 20 minutes allowed.

Staggering out of Wendys, I wipe my greasy beard. I look down at my filthy sneakers, unkempt hair holding my plastic bags. A man with a mountainous polythene bag filled with drink cans  nods agreeably at me, recognising me as his peer. I cant face another ride on the subway, even though logic would tell me to use the last day of the 7 day pass I purchased. I jump into a pristine air conditioned cab driven by a young Indian who is murmuring into his Bluetooth headset as we weave through the back streets, avoiding the jams along the main avenues. Take me to a good multiplex. Sure, I will take you to one off 42^nd St. I thank him for saving me for the bizarre psychological onslaught of the streets, I have no strength left and fall asleep bathed in the panororamic violence of The Bourne Ultimatum

I have no strength left so I hail a cab on 42nd to find a cheap motel near JFK – A Palestinian English professor takes me there, we have an interesting discussion on the way and he reverses up the freeway to get into the motel entrance, all is well and I am almost home.

If you have been reading about my journey over the last 10 or so weeks I hope you have been enjoying it, if so, thank you – I enjoyed writing it and am grateful to have made it back unscathed – I will now have to adjust back into the old routines but something tells me it will not be the same, just as well, really.

I am no Ted Simon (Jupiters Travels)  but what it has done is to reveal a little more inside and out and also inspired me to see a little more as well if I can manage that. It also inspires me that most people, wherever they are, are wonderful, really.

photos later

After a night in a motel on the 1 and 9 highway north – my room had no windows but I did not care because I was so grateful to find a refuge from the lunatic driving, lack of road signs and enormous potholes that typifies the New York and New Jersey area. Lynn sends me an email confirming that she is expecting me that day to come over and spend the day. I give her a call, using up the last 5 minutes of my 7/11 phone card (amazing value) –  she gives me clear directions and I pack my bags, heading over to Lynn and Andy’s house not far from the Red Carpet Motel.

When I was clear of the 1/9 highway, it was so much better, up the steep hill, past the assortment of houses, some with sidings, some faux stone. I stop and buy a plant and wind up the leaves and flowers up in stretchy plastic so that I can strap it to the mountain of luggage on the back of the bike.

I arrive sooner than expected and find Andy watering the front garden. I meet Desmond and Lynn and we have a relaxed lunch and wibble about Newport Museum to take a closer look at the great collection of Tibetan art on display. I am struck how quiet the museum was, so near New York City. So empty because most of humanity ignores Newark, rushing into the Holland Tunnel so they can wander aimlessly around Times Square in a daze.

 Desmond, Lynn and Andy and I keep setting off the fragile alarm systems near the display cabinets and it becomes a running joke as to who would set the next one off.

 We set off home again to play crazy 8s  while Lynn, with her boundless energy braves the supermarket and Andy barbeques meat vegetables and peaches for our meal. Desmond off to bed, his brain now shut down from its intense days work we are left to listen to some records before we turn in. Andy, like Lynn has encyclopaedic knowledge of music. His speciality is Jazz, Lynn champions women musicians and vocalists on her radio show alongside many new finds. It was the end of a lovely day – it was great to see them again – time passes so quickly.

Absurd beard and a certain DJ with her son

 We all start yawning and I realise how tired I have become and remember the next day I have to take my bike to Long Island, sadly the last day of my 11,000 mile journey. I sleep a dreamless sleep in Lynn's studio and next day hug my friends goodbye to face the grizzly drizzle and the Monday morning commuters.