Give Me The Proletariat Every Time...

This is old news but it made me laugh to read again, so I decided to share it with all of you. I used to make my living some years back routinely writing book and movie reviews. I occasionally still get the urge to do so, generally when some stinker of a flick or a novel motivates my sense of editorial revenge. For example, it is widely held that Harrison Ford has never made a bad movie. He broke his winning streak with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This movie sucked so badly that it would stick to the surface of a waterfall. And we are talking about a really impressive waterfall, like Angel Falls in Venezuela. I never wrote about it here as it held very little moto content, other than in the opening scene.

Angel Falls in Venezuela. Corrosive waterfall mist dissolves clothing, 

which makes things tough for young mothers accompanying class trips to the site.

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia -- Click to enlarge)

Yet the exploits of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman were making the rounds in the book “The Long Way Round” back in 2005 and I felt compelled to read it. Not quite a review, I did comment on a particular aspect of the book on a BMW list three and half years ago. That comment is repeated today at the request of Bruce Furnival, a dedicated reader of Twisted Roads and a friend of a friend (Jim Ellenberg).

Absolutely starved for motorcycle adventure, I went from page to page in the "Long Way Round" with the same expectations I had when reading "Kon Tiki" nearly 40 years ago. I found myself getting a little annoyed. For one thing, I thought it took balls for the authors to ask for free motorcycles that they planned planned to ride into the ground.

No one ever gave me a free BMW to ride around the world. And it's not because I haven't been asking. Both of these guys were supposed to be big deal actors. Can't big deal actors (one of whom had just come back from singing "Until The Day I Die" at Nicole Kidman) just write a $20,000 check for a GS? (Author’s note -- I have since learned that Charley Boorman was hanging cabinets in London for a living at that time.)

Believe me, if I was a famous writer like these guys were stars I wouldn't walk around with my hand out looking for a motorcycle. I might try and get sponsors to mention in a book... But I'd be more interested in getting out on the road if I had cash of my own. This is probably why I will never have any real money.

The accomplishment of their ride cannot be disputed. However, MacGregor's constant pissing and moaning about getting out among the proletariat got tiresome fast. I have imagined myself in similar circumstances.

The proletariat are swell, but I don’t feel compelled to sweat alongside them in a ditch at the end of a long day in the saddle, hoping they’ll share a bowl of goat’s eye soup... Not if there’s an alternative close by.

The Scenario: 

I come roaring into a town festooned with yak shit. The aroma of yak shit is a pleasant diversion from my mesh jacket, which has been percolating like an aquarium filter for the past nine days, channeling a torrent of my sweat into the arid earth. The jacket now adheres to me like a tattoo. An eerie silence hangs over the town, as the proletariat stare at me like extras from the original "Night of the Living Dead" movie. Five seconds later, their ranks stagger toward me as the instinct for robbery temporarily overpowers their reflex for murder. It appears I will be the subject of a brief ethnic cleansing, though "cleansing" appears to be a lost art in this part of the world.

Suddenly, a battered sedan of the Kazakhstan secret police pulls up. Two goons in leather trench coats get out and spray the crowd with automatic weapons. They gesture for me to follow, and we trace a winding road through a community of rusting sheet metal and cracked cinder block wattles, barely held together by conspiracy. The townsfolk are gathering for their evening meal of entrails and dirt in broken pottery. But our little tour ends in a walled compound, where a 24-year-old woman, wearing a diaphanous thong, cuts the clothes from my body and rubs me down with cool cloths. Her twin sister  hands me a Tom Collins, and leads me to a suite lined with pleasure silk. They make it clear they know I am a writer on a 1986 K75 with a Sprint fairing, and therefore, they will do whatever it is I want.

"Screw this," I scream in rage. "I want to be out there in the yak excrement with the zombies. I can find naked twins who think I'm a deity in a free deluxe hotel suite just about anyplace."

That sounds like me doesn't it.

©Copyright Jack Riepe 2006
AKA The Lindbergh Baby (Mac-Pac)
AKA Vindak8r (Motorcycle Views)
AKA The Chamberlain -- Perdition’s Socks (With A Shrug)