Rod Davis’ background in project management, either as builder, or later as developer, spans 34 years, and samples of his projects are photographed below. Rod commenced as a builder’s, design and construct project manager, after 5 years at the UNSW’s Faculty of Architecture, specializing in Project/Development Management and Quantity Surveying. He went on to hold board positions in both public and private companies, and later, as an elected government official.

Many of his roles were as a hired consultant Project Manager, while occassionally he developed his own projects, such as the Boathouse, a boutique hotel, just below. Over the last 18 years, he has worked mainly in Tropical Australia and Asia, mostlty in tourism, in consulatnt project management, but also in roles including hotel management, online reservation, politics and media. Rod has had 10 years as a broadcaster, founding or owning small radio stations.  He led pioneering projects in online hotel reservation, and as elected leader, he successfuly reformed  Port Douglas’s tourism promotion board, to become one of Australia’ most successful LTO’s. His associated work in town planning, in the progressive matching of development presures, to sensitive environment issues, won a substantive Australian awards.

In between projects, Rod has sailed much of the world, or toured it by motorbike… the more adventurous, the better (ask for the PIN to the travel tales, in this blog, if you are interested).

The ethical, profitable, and harmonious delivery of each project, is core to Rod’s daily, smiling approach.

THE BOATHOUSE, PORT DOUGLAS…(below) designed, developed,

operated and formerly by Rod Davis.

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FULLMOON TERRACES, PORT DOUGLAS…designed, developed and owned by RD

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99 WALKER STREET, NORTH SYDNEY.

Management of design,  followed by  the onsite builder/developer’s

project manager for Girvan Bros.

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MANGO LAGOON RESORT, PALM COVE.  Developer’s Project

Manager, for Paul Richmond. Part of this 50 unit resort is for the disabled.

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ACCOR, PALM COVE. Developer’s (APVC) project management by RD

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NOVOTEL RESORT, NUSA DUA, BALI , for Accor’s APVC.

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ST GEORGE PRIVATE HOSPITAL, SYDNEY. Developer’s design chairman

and projects QS, including state of the art operating threatre design.

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270 VICTORIA AVENUE, CHATSWOOD, SYDNEY, Australia’s first,

flush, silicon glazed, curtain wall. Design managed, then built by RD

for Girvan’s head office. A subsequently much copied technique.

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255 ELIZABETH STREET SYDNEY. Developer’s Project Manager for CEL.

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WOODVILLE ST HURSTVILLE. Design management and  (30 week)

construction as project manager for Girvan.

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BULKY GOODS RETAIL CHULLORA. Design management, joint

venture placement, followed by developer’s project management.

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EXILE BAY, URBAN REDEVELOPMENT. Developer’s design approvals

manager.

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ABLE POINT, AIRLIE BEACH.  Joint Venture Placement and initial

master planning.

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AID WORK, POST TSUNAMI, SRI LANKA. Leading the fund raising

campaign, then delivering schools and halls to southern Sri Lanka.

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TALALLA BEACH RESORT,  Assisting the delivery of tourism

projects, Sri Lanka.

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BEACHES PORT DOUGLAS, Developer’s site Project Management.

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RENDEZVOUS REEF TERRACES.  200 villa hotel refurbishment

as Body Corporate’s Project Manager.

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PORT DOUGLAS WATERFRONT REDEVELOPMENT

Master Planning Chairman,  as Douglas Shire Council’s, Port Douglas Councillor.

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ROD DAVIS… rod@destinationex.com

Indonesia…+ 62 (0) 857 39145969

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Some leave their heart in San Francisco. In The Philippines, I abandoned my bike in San Francisco. It’s about as far away from cack hole Manilla, as you can fly, ferry, and ride, in a few days visit.

I had no preconceived ideas about the Philippines beyond the usual stereotypes. The reality of some of the stereotypes hit me barrage of guns, blood and sex.

It’s not a pretty sight, Manilla, even for the most hardened of travellers, like myself after 350 days on the road. But kind like the kids swimming in sea water and shit that stinks from 400m back, I could find some entertainment in Manilla. Remind me to make any yachting stay over at Manila yacht club as brief as possible, for fear of death from (04) 1832-4874aromatic fecal poisoning. Sure to form, the US has left its imperialist calling card in Manilla, with rampant prostitution, gun mad mentality, and a rich, corrupt and permanent rulership, that serves its self lavishly, whilst impoverishing its populace. The Economic Hitmen like Perkins sure did a masterful job in fucking the poor Philippines. I have a social theory, now well developed after months in impoverished countries, that goes like this>> The more evil, greedy and corrupt the governance, the more tolerant, shiny and lovely the people. The Philippines is a classic example.

Sure, especially after Thailand, the Filipinos can’t cook, but hey, they can sing…in fact they are the most musical mob I’ve met. If you can’t sing, or play a musical instrument in the Philippines, you are a foreigner.

And you ain’t experienced the Philippines, as Lonely Planet suggests, unless you have drunk the cheap local suds, and slaughtered a tune or two at the local karaoke bar. I complied. But I went one further. I did the Sound of Music in helmets. What the?…you may ask.

Well, a cute singing and dance instructor called Ella Marie  decided to hijack my  life for a few days, and off we sailed, by scooter, to a few hundred beachside miles, of Gloria Gaynor hits, like, ‘You’re just too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off’ a you…”.

I, on the other hand, could take my eyes off the road, even though I was theoretically driving. You don’t have a back seat on bike as far away from the handlebars as you may think. And as Ella could ride as well as sing, and, well, ah, she just took over the driving (and singing ) bit, from the back seat. Technical types might note…. the scooter had no foot pedals, it was automatic. So down the coconut lined villages of southern Cebu and Negros we rode, half the time me driving, half the time the back seat in control,  hands under my arms, and much of the time, singing along like right idiots, in helmets. Or one helmet, at least.

I might add, Ella certainly did not slaughter a song. Infact, at any of the several karaoke bars we dropped in at, Ella slaughtered only competing singers. She was a pro. And, added to that, as a dance instructor,was  given to 3 second pole dancing hints, that showed who was in charge.

Karaoke is new to me, and I gotta say, those corny organ background tracks, are just as atrocious as my attempt at banging out a song, especially when I had the stupidity to go with song like, ‘Wild Thing’, which sure could not make, ya heart sing, when the backing group was a deaf mute organ arrangement, and I was the singer.

That said, I am not discouraged from singing along on my occasional stints as a morning DJ. Besides, the real tune in the background generally saves the day, my song just adds much needed morning stupidity. ‘You feel like heaven to touch, I wanna hold you so much’, is in for a good thrashing next session that I’m on the Port FM mike to all those local listeners. Poor fucas.

I used to have a cute little sawn off Mossberg shotgun myself. I handed in to the cops, like a good law abiding citizen, after the Port Arthur pig shooting comp took to tourists. The cops dutifully hand-balled the gun to the crims, who robbed a bank or two, got caught, returning my gun back to other cops, who then dobbed, and it became a headline parliamentary outcry. So it was quite interesting, seeing the weapon of choice, for 2 out of 3 guards in Manilla was my Mossberg, pistol grip shoti. The fucka used to give me tennis elbow of the wrist, after a single shot. But hey, it used to sink those empty beer bottles (oops).In Manilla, they have the sexy stainless versions, and being that it rains on the guards, who comprise about 20% of the street population, it’s nice keeping ya gun hot and shiny, as in Manilla, thanks to the US rulership, guns, crime and blood are the order of the day. I ought t’ know… I was both robbed, and muddled up in murder on my front door step. As you do. In the Philippines.

I was leaving the Philippines on the back of a miracle of timing and location, second only to winning the lifestyle lottery in a one in 1.3 billion chance. That’s how many dudes there are in China. And the one odd email I shot off to China, happened to be the one in 1.3billion, I needed to meet. Not only was it, a one in 1.3B win, but it was a once in 5000 year dynasty chance.

Let me explain.

I have this fun idea. It’s to build the world’s first fuel cell boat, to circumnavigate the planet. Not your every day idea, sure, but hey, I like it. To that end, I took all my money, and most of my time for a few years, and paid to have the worlds sexiest tech boat designed. I then tromped around the planet, idea in hand, trying to meet guys who could provide the shit, to make my idea work. And I made my idea work. Both in gas to hydrogen kit, photovoltaic’s, electric propulsion, and wild arse, extreme tri, naval architecture. I’ve talked about it before… www.trybrid.org  . Taking Hybrid one step further. One small step for man, one huge swim from Rodkind, if it blows up.

Funding for a multimillion dollar game like this does not fall outs of trees. Unlike me.

So it was as big a surprise for me, as it was for Billy, the one in 1.3billion guy in China, when my TRYBRID email popped up on Billy’s screen, complete with URL to the TRYBRID plan.

It turns out, Chinese heavyweights, had passed a message to Billy, the vice president of the ShenZen yacht building industry. The message, as I understand it, was to find a marine project of high profile,that could be joint ventured with Australia. 

You gotta be kidding me. 5000 years of dynasty, 1,300,000,000 people, and by coincidence, I walk into the scene, to the right guy, on the right day. Try tell me the cosmos does not write my scripts, and I’l laugh. Mind you, after the Philippines, they sure like a laugh at my expense. I swear I could feel a gang of ghosty beings, cacking themselves behind me, as I ran after that fucking bus.

So off I went on the train, headed to China, from HK, and once outta HK, in no man’s land, I paid my $30 and had a visa into ShenZen.

ShenZen was a bit like Dubai, except with people. Zillions of them, shopping like a crazed obsession, bugga the old communist stuff.  It was bling buying madness. So I got in on the gig, with some useless shit, which I dutifully possessed. I even pretended to be my old business man self, and not just a wondering yachty, and hired a regular business hotel room, the one where you can stagger in half dead, blindfold ya’self, and still not miss when taking a piss.  $50 did the trick. The next day I took a confused taxi driver to Nanshan, two infact, the first one gave up and dumped me in a Confucius confusion. Eventually I ended up at the base of the hot new Penninsular waterfront towers, ready to meet the affable and man of the moment, Billy. The day was fun, how could it not be with Billy, and after a full day of conceptual briefing and DYI instant power points, it was time to debrief,  over a million drinks, where the de-briefing did not involve dancing on the tables with undies on our heads, albeit Billy did receive some sexy invitations after the event, apparently from girls who had acquired our cards. Go Billy. The next day flying to Manilla was one where I would have preferred to have had a liver and gut replacement, but I recovered. Two days later. Billy has a way with words, like the girl, who he described as being so ugly, her dad had to tie a pork chop around her neck, just to make the dog play with her. Or the one with an arse that looked like a 100 pounds of chewed gum.

It’s noisy in Manilla’s tourist strip of bar girls, barred girls, and girls behind bars> its no sleeper’s heaven. So to keep the hangover at bay, I got a room, alongside an all night construction zone, atop live music, with no aircon, and slept like a log with the windows wide open. One night in Manilla is too much, and so by lunch time the next day, I had bought a ticket outta there, that afternoon infact.

Landing in Cebu city from Manilla, is like the passing through the anus to the sphincter. Splash down wasn’t too bad, as I took a discount offer on a worn out resort at Maktan beach, where even Koreans think twice about holidaying. But by mid morning, I was on bike headed outta there. Stopping for a fried fish head, I noticed you could buy a sim card with hours of internet for about $4, and before I knew what had happened it was late afternoon, skies were grey, and I was miles from my Moalboal destination. But at least I had done my Trybrid online duties. You don’t win the lottery, and not follow up the collect.

Making ya way outta the greasy never-never of and Filipino city slum, on scooter with the handling characteristics of a  roller skate on qualudes, as the light is fading, is not a real good idea. I rode all over Europe for 5 months, and never failed to make destination before dark, for simple survival reasons. But here in Cebu, where the only traffic rule, is run when ya hit someone:  its madness to ride late. But hey… I was not gunna cop anymore Filipino city shit, still recovering from my lack of whiskey drinking practise. So deep south I rode, and the more I got outta the city, the cuter it looked, through the windows of the dimly lit, bamboo farm houses, at least. Then it was over the island mountain range, to the west coast, and on deeper south.

Moalboal was quiet a pleasant surprise. It’s a tiny dive tourism village, with quite an impressive coral drop off, 15 from the beach. I hired a $12 room, over the beach, and ordered a beer and was fed barbecued chicken legs, by the barmaid whose sister was the BBQ vendor, and in so doing, made the BBQ chic legless.  Or chicken legless, at least.  Wandering home fulfilled, I stopped for a beer, and there met a crew, with Ella sitting elegantly in million dollar Channel like, black opera dress gig, that was the real thing, not a Filipino copy. She had already got an audience on the hop, as though she was Imelda’s  Marcos’s personal shoe manager.

The next day, her and a crew all met for a ride, then a swim in the sensational limestone waterfalls 20 miles south, wearing very skimpy beach attire,  which them became very out of place clothing coverage, when we had to ride another 60k, back to the nearest urban ATM, in her, bikinis,where suits where needed. Fuck it, I reckon. It was the Philippines. Besides, even the cops were impressed.

It’s a odd place  Moalboal. I arrived at night, as I had mentioned. It’s a tiny dirt street, flanked by cute little hotels and restaurants. The restaurant at the end of the 200m strip, is called the little restaurant at corner, as that’s what it is. Locals and divers chill out after bubble blowing, beer and boating. It’s delightfully peaceful, or so I thought, when walking home. The street was dimly lit, and just near my old boatshed type room, a crowd was quietly just milling about, as though there was a town meet about to start, or had just finished. I was chewing on chocolate, just wandering past, when I saw a guy lying on the ground peacefully, in the dim light. In the first pass, I just figured he was pissed, and had gone down. But just as I passed, I caught glint of dark red on the ground. That was blood. Congealed blood. I stopped, took a better look, and it was more than just blood on the concrete, as he lay there, arms  relaxed, face calm, eyes closed. He was not unconscious. He was dead. Stone dead, with bullet hole clean through the neck. No one said or did anything, they just stood there quietly.

He’d been drinking with his mate, something went down, god knows what, and with everyone owning a gun, bang. End of conversation, enter a new dimension.

It was a couple of hours before a cop came, shinning his torch on the wound, and sat at a chair as the corpse’s foot for an hour, doing nothing.  Still no one threw a sheet over the poor guy.

They are catholic in the Philippines, poor people…the bullshit about heaven and hell shit. Prey for the dead, it’s a transitional time, thoughts can help. Intents too. Such is the quantum world, consciousness is misunderstood, but not entirely by some of us. Someone has to send a message to the confusion of death, albeit 300,000 research results  from NDE , the near death experience stuff, all say similar things…a peaceful, white light entry, soaked in loving calm, and greeted by friendly familiar beings…read the incredible research papers, it’s amazing.

But this was no NDE. This was just, D.

When the mother arrived, she went hysterical, collapsed fighting in the arms of swarm of locals, who all took limb, and commenced caressing massage. Beautiful but heartbreaking. Everyone has a mum, a sister, or a child.  Murder in the small village of Moalboal is not a regular thing. But shootings in the Philippines are a daily massacre. Elections are soon, and the cops want all arms taken away for the expected blood bath. I’d say they have a fat chance. All you need to do, to get a gun in the Philippines, is prove you are doing business. Pistols on special, on page 3 are regular ad. Take ya pick.

With a government powerless through its own internal rot, nepotism and crime.  With former presidents walking free having stolen billions. With poverty so cruel, it’s brutal.  What hope is there, after the economic hit men, working for the UN, the US and the World bank, all the same filthy animal, have made their loans, built the 1% local elite their power stations, crippled the country in debt, and starved the masses of hospitals, schools and infrastructure, what remains is the third world, where billions don’t have all they need to eat, today. Food commodity prices are down, yet food prices for the suffering masses have tripled in 2 years. Go figure that.

When Thailand and even Indo has moved ahead, when even Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos have dignity, the US’s former Philippines is destitute.

When will the world wake up to the scams that the west play on the third world, to maintain and enhance their poverty. When will people wake up to the evil that is the reality of the World Bank and the IMF, and international, ‘aid’. We are blind in the west, just soaking up the bullshit of press releases, that conceal the designer theft in giving one dollar in aid, whilst extracting 20 dollars in interest, and when there is no interest can be paid, the, ‘concessions’. The ones that keep the poverty alive.

You get robbed in the Philippines. I had had a bad afternoon. The bike had been abandoned in San Francisco. Ella didn’t looks so happy, sitting roadside here  high heels, as her mobile phone belted out, ‘Almost paradise’. The locals gathered around, we negotiated a manger for the gearbox-less scooter, and hitched a ride on a bus, back to the only big city in Negros. Not happy. No sunset ending in Lonely Planet’s special spot. We were a day or so out from Cebu, and we had no wheels. So when the bus dropped us of in town, it was already late, and most rooms, bar one, were all booked for the fireworks fiesta. We found that one room, and things started to look up, as we wandered into the 20,000 head  crowd, packed along the waterfront esplanade. The drag queen MC, announced this and that, and one of the announcements said be careful with cameras and wallets.  My, on checking was already gone. No wheels. No cards. No cash. Not good. Miles from nowhere. So that night was spent on Skype, battling with call centre insultants, cancelling cards, and happily, getting emergency Western Union cash, ready the next day. It was long night. It had been a long day. Ella was stella, and had backed me up with her own meagre resources, like a true digger. Pay in the Philippines, ain’t flash.

That had never happened to me, in years of travel.  So it was no joy, when just a 2 days later, when we finally pulled into the chaos of Cebu city’s bus terminal, a teary Ella in hand, to jump a taxi for the hotel, pre flight to China, the next day. Thank Christ the taxi driver asked me a question that needed me to go to my bum bag, less cards, with some cash, and a passport intact. Because that bag, had been left on the bus, and the bus had disappeared, along with 100 matching types, into the Cebu city traffic chaos. This one was worse. No cards, no cash, no passport, no way to pay the taxi, no phone, no camera, zippo… and no way outta the Philippines,  for an important meeting in China the next day.

Panic would have been an option. Talk about a Year of Living Dangerously, so it was time to give chase, so belt through bus depots we did, guided by fast translating Ella, only to find where ever we went, the bus had been and gone, or so we hoped, not being sure where that bus was. Frozen in 6 lanes of jammed traffic, wall to wall in grey damp slums, it was like a bad nightmare unfolding.

Then there was a glimmer.

Ahead, maybe 400m ahead, was a bus, with maybe, just maybe, similar markings. The traffic was slow, but moving, so it was choose, either sit and sweat it out we would not be caught at lights as the bus pulled away, or make a run for it on foot.

Never chase a bus in Crocs, in the wet, without first slipping the heel strap down. As each step slid backwards in the Crocs, the bus pulled away.  Running down packed lanes of Filipino traffic, and patron saints become an issue. As the chase extended from block to block, just as I would get within 100m of the bus, it would pull away. Kinda like those nightmares being chased by the gorilla, in golden syrup.

The whole gruesome scene played on my mind. Was that our bus? Could I catch it? What would unfold now, with seriously no money and ID? How would the China stuff up play out if I missed the VIP’s?

Mid stride, it occurred to me, that my cosmic script writer, whilst perverse and sick in sense of humour, generally allows a happy ending after a tough lesson, and I just, kinda, said, OK boys, fun trick, but get me my bag back, pleeeeaaase. At that moment the bus got jammed, I caught up gasping, and banged on the door, to see a grinning driver, holding my bum bag like a fresh caught rabbit, held wiggling by the ears. That driver got his best tip of the year.That was more luck than is fairly bestowed on regular humans, so many thankyous were bestowed upon the gods, as we celebrated, in the back seat of the cab, along with a cab driver, who could now get paid, after we whipped his arse, into doing driving stunts, only Hollywood would demand, with not a cent to pay him. He too was well paid.

That night, I over did it with the gratitude for Ella’s chase management skill, with a slap up, 5 star, personal butler, 5 course, poolside , moonlit dinner. It was still cheaper than a two mains at Salsa. Ella was not happy to see me get out of the dawn, hung-over cab ride, and fly in to the never-never, the cruelty of third world povo’ entrapment, burning me up, at the unfairness, of us in the west, being free to travel, whilst anyone in the Philippines has no choice, no option, when it comes to things like buying jet tickets.

The drama didn’t stop, and as I went to board the Cebu airlines connector to Manilla, the fucas did the usual local airline thing, and just cancelled the flight. At the departure gate.

Making China again slipped into oblivion, so a few stern, gun-behind-the-grin words with the flight desk, saw me scrape the last seat on the next flight, which if lucky, might just get me onto the flight to HK, by seconds. But it was not so lucky, when I got out at the domestic terminal, to be told, the international terminal is 20 minutes away by cab.  Through Manilla traffic. By this time, chronic cab rides, were, were getting on my nerves, but again, the fat tip, the mounted kerbs, the running the red lights, and the diversions throughs petrol stations at blocked intersections, greased me to the terminal with seconds to spare. Throwing bags through security checks at the same time as jumping cues, making apologies, and swearing curses, was rewarded by Cathay Pacific delaying the flight, so I made the seat. What a seat sit that was, pure marsh mellow melt down. And get me outta the Philippine they did. A teary girl behind.  Two mad taxi chases in two days, a robbery, a recovery, a bag chase, and a party. In a word, fuck.

Round 2 in ShenZen was a successful as the first trip, as the TRYBRID idea has legs capable of competing with any other idea, whether in technology, political logic, and environmental common sense. This time I had the ear of the best and brightest in Chinese yacht building Ben, who despite my protracted technical rave, got the thrust of what TRYBRID was all about, with positive response. Ahead, was a shot at the invitation, for China and Australia to talk, the subject being the joint development and demonstration of TRYBRID.

The gap of a week or so between round 2 and 3, gave R&R opportunity in Bali, the last of 52 amazing weeks on the road. Bali ‘s sheer size and power as the world’s most mega tourist destination only just recently sunk in, with the experience gained by comparing Bali to every other holiday destination in the world. Show me somewhere with more tourist infrastructure, and I will be impressed. Show me a more creative community, anywhere on earth.

The Eat, Prey Love best seller, that was the decider on one of my best friends divorce decision, as the story goes, has the world travelling  spiritual seeking writer, get well  and truly laid and loved in Bali. I took some inspiration from this idea, as did Julia Roberts, who just happened to be in Bali, filming the film of the book of the same name, which added even more appeal to my libidos imagination. Mind you, Julia isn’t my vision of the humble, self aware, self amused type, that I had pictured as the autobiographical writer of the book. As the story goes, the writer lobs into one of the local Balinese shaman’s pads, having once before met the guy, seeking guidance. Seeking reassurance that the Ubud shaman could remember her, she was disappointed to find that the said shaman, who had predicted that the girl would change his life, could not remember her for quids. Some shaman. Anyway, he was right about  the life changing bit. After the book was published, his work healing the local destitute for free, came to grinding halt, as he jacked his prices to Deepak (throat) Chakra rates, with a 3 month waiting list of listless whiteys. When the film comes out, he’ll probably be doing a world tour of 5 star hotels,  ministering to guru desperate wana-bees.

The appeal of the arguably over developed Bali, had for me been waning, on the back of a half dozen tours of duty there, primarily on business trips,  where I was shopping and shipping dozens of 40 foot containers  back to Oz for resort and hotel projects I had been managing. So it was nice to be in Bali, simply to have fun, and catch up on 3 of my best friends. Fraaaaaaaanc, Sarah, and AdO’. But my waning allure to Bali, a place most Australians have been to many times, took a new shift of focus for me on this visit, when the sheer fun of the social life, of the world’s hippest expat crew, started to sink in. My libido loved it, my liver hated it, my livingness loved it.

You can’t go much better than the combination of Franc and Sarah, when it comes to social buoyancy and enthusiasm for enthusiasm.  Talk about beer group pressure. Yes, the bill at Ku De Ta did get the better of us, but so too did the ambience, vodka and sunset style. The beers at the beach esky, the Ryoki club and everything in the middle took its toll, but not before the music, the debate and the view made the night a smiling memory. Even if cop a roasting for my extreme views on the world. Hey, it’s an extreme story.

The outcome at the Changu Country Club was indeed shocking after the gala lunch for the Melbourne Cup, as both Sarah and I had Shocking as our sweep stake winning horse, the few million rupiah in winnings made Shocking’s win a fine omen with which to prepare for round 3 in ShenZen.

It’s a long haul of clearance in, clearance out, weird backroom cues to get a $30, 5 day visa into China, through endless passport cues. Add to this, hotels in HK and ShenZen that are barely big enough for a bed, with a window not being an option on the list at my end of thr road broke budget, and the whole process gets somewhat tiring, especially lugging the last weeks of Asian cost saving purchases in clothes, ready to shift from bikie/yachty, to crooner of Parliaments. Add black shoes, a helmet needed to ride to Canberra on the F650 BMW, before the arrival of the beast of burden BMwee, containing my other helmets, currently all at sea headed to Sydney.

This takes the toll to about 40kg, in 3 bags, hardly ideal for lugging on buses, trains and streets of China, but hey, after a year of this hardcore travel shit, I can cope.

The round 3 in China ended up being a meet and greet session of some fun loving, heavy hitting  types: ‘millies’ and ‘billies’, as Brian Ray used to call his billionaire mates. Then there was the cool TV, diplomat celeb Shaun, China’s first circumnavigator, and possible face of Trybrid for Chinese TV. The coolest of all, was an unassuming Steve, in jeans an T shirt, who seemed to have no issue just calling up the heads of the navy, or the heads of energy , or whoever, to get balls rolling, as if it just was a party invite, to some Uni mates. Go Steve, U da Man.

The process of briefing these guys, and secretary general types, was all rather casual over tea at Hi Te, ShenZen’s cool luncheon spot, and with sexy photos of Trybrid on the laptop, and a story that even convinced me, the TRYBRID idea took flight in the minds of China’s elite. Let’s face it, a few weeks before the Copenhagen Climate Change conference, as Rudd lectures climate sceptics, at the same time as Australia exports more carbon than the Arabs, it seems kinda useful, that I could create a joint Sino Australian world tour, that shows off clean, green, use of energy, halving fuel consumption, and putting a very hip face on the LNG and CNG stuff that when turned into hydrogen and piped into fuel cell, saves the planet. What doesn’t go through the fuel cell, gets feed to gas and H2 fired diesels, where the emissions are good enough to feed the kids. And if all else fails, with a tennis court of solar cells, whilst the sun is shining TRYBRID is making waves.  Neat, little ones.

The implications of the idea are really only just starting to sink in, to both me, and others who ponder it. China can take a fuc-off boat, with Australian diggers on team, smack into NYC’s down town, Wall Street dock, and unveil what is arguably one of the world’s coolest looking floating things, with most definitely the world’s most hi tech solar, hydrogen and LNG process kit on anything afloat, and shove it right up the west’s arse. Atop all this, consular officials from China and Oz, can jointly woo and Hu the world leaders on the back deck, in barrage of chicken sangas and dry whites, claiming the high ground in solving the climate change and peak oil paranoias, whilst back home, shipping out carbon like there is no tomorrow. How politically perfect can an idea be? And all through this, I get to see all those ports and harbours, river and canals, that I ain’t yet seen. What a great idea.

So back to Oz I fly, needing to meet the guys, who meet Hu’s guys as their daily bread. I’ve been priming my State and Federal MP’s in readiness, and I carry letters proposing talks, by way of kick start. God knows if I can pull this one off, but I am over worrying about it,  and with year’s sacred training under my belt, assuring me to hand controls to the universe, so like Luke Skywalker, I just trust the in the force.

I tell myself, when shit happens, just recognise it’s the universe with a message, or a redirection. I could never pull of a gig like this one is shaping up, by being Mr Big Dick…so I take the 3 Eckhart Tolle tips: accept whatever happens on the day,  whatever will be will be,  then add enjoyment,  kay sera, sera…or put another way, add fun, and finally  > get enthusiastic to rope in others… all quite simple , really.  Whatever happens under these rules is always cool.

At the end of a 365 day mega adventure, I am really impressed, not so much but what I have seen, but more, by what the universe has taught me. I am now well versed on all matters esoteric, quantum, political,  DNA meets twin serpents, and more simply, I know pretty much where the hearts and minds of human consciousness are at. This, is much more valuable knowledge that any PhD. My summary? Humanity has never before in history, been at such a fast changing, and critical time in consciousness evolution. And the game ain’t idle. Humanity is surfing its biggest wave ever, and I got my toes upon the nose, and I’m riding high. Or so it feels.

So. Where were my favourite spots? Answer: San Blas Islands, Panamanian Caribbean. The Andes. The Slovenian Alps.  Laos.

Someone asked me, what was my favourite experience? They say death is extreme life. At the time, some of my more hair raising experiences were not fun, but in retrospect, it’s where my most colourful memories reside. Like being surrounded by 500 Shining Path revolutionaries in the Altiplano riots of the high Andes. Then there was the bit, as we stuffed passports in the water proof bags, getting ready to abandon ship on a Farc infested coast of Columbia, in the middle of the night, not knowing if our fate was a rocky headland, or a surf beach. Head-on’s with looming Lamas built awareness.  Low flying zee BMwee through the spring time lane ways of Cornwall, or along the roadside race tracks of the Croatian coast and the Slovenia Alps, was bike touring in the world’s best thrill zone. Eating real Italian food with famers, west of Perugia every day, in between restoring old farm houses was my idea of siesta lunch. Crikey, where do I stop…I have retina impressions more vast than I can possibly restore. When St Peter and I do the life video re-wind , inside the pearly gates, there will be a 30 minute delay, whilst we run through my tapes.

Meandering down the Mekong’s slow boat to Laos was old style travel fun. Bikes in the Andes, Laos, every country in Europe, add Thailand, Indo, and the Philippines, and I am a bike touring convert till I die, may it not be soon. Bikes and boats are the only real deal way to travel, other ways are lame.

365 days on the road, starting with Obama’s election, with a briefing in LA, from sage and shaman , the late great Rose, ending up in China, proposing an outrageous hi tec, Marco Polo tour. Rose was right in her prophetic suggestions, and I can only recommend everyone start any voyage of discovery, with a chat to ya local sage. Life is what happens to you whilst you are making plans for other things. So if life is indeed a journey, when life is a journey happening within a journey, it stands to reckon, ya on the right track.

Yesterday some Hasan psychiatrist guy, coffin nailed a dozen US forces in his own Texas barracks, and filled another 30 with lead. The day or so before, some Mufti, trainee, Afganee squadster, did the same thing to a half a dozen, now dead English colleagues. US soldiers are going all out to beat last year’s record of 128 military suicides. Bull shitter Gordon Brown, after propping up Armani smack dealer Karzai, and his warlord mates, is being forced to fess up to the banality of doing in Afghanistan, what  Alexander the Great too, failed to do. Afghanistan, like the Golden Triangle before it, exists simply to employ the smack traders, their CIA accomplices, and the military industrial complex who paid for Obama’s win, and who as always, pull the real strings. Democracy? Are you kidding me? We have the best democracy money can buy! And has bought time and time over.

But the cool thing is,  many more in the world than I thought, regardless of arch establishment illusionists BBC and CNN, are awake up to what is going down. And real soon, what is crumbling now, could well  be a 911 dustbowl of lying politics, criminally negligent medicine, quantum denial science, and fear mongering religion. Their number is up. When the world wakes up to find Gaia throwing in some changes bigger than a CO2 scare, as the tectonic plates grind ready to slam, and as the weather goes more weird than the figures explain, the process of change is arguably about to be accelerated at a pace, second only to my week in the  Philippines. Everyone knows in their castra-phobic bones, as Hollywood releases its latest fear mongering 2102 block buster, that something is afoot. Truth is to me at least, the world ahead, if we make the leap, is apparently all about Golden Age. And believe it or not, I suspect we are already making the leap. You don’t ferment change, unless shit goes down. But for now, the wave is thundering to a 20m, tow in monster, and from my point of view, it’s time to grab the jets ski tow rope, and get inside that tube. It only comes along once every 12500 years, and I’m up for the ride.

Fullmoon parties, pool parties, foam parties, black moon and half moon parties, reggae parties….anyone would think Koh Phangan in Thailand had something to do with parties.  They have a beach party on the fullmoon each month, that is indeed a bit of an international phenomena, and at the same time, same, same.

By coincidence, it was fullmoon the night I set foot on Koh Phangan, along with a D Day landing of international partygoers. I’ve never seen a ferry full of such excitement. They came from Dubai, Dublin and Damascus. Berlin, Beirut and Brighton. You name it, every nationality was represented.

About 750m of beach bars, and a couple of hundred franchisees bid for punters, like bull market traders after the Lehman’s crash. In most nightclubs, you need to cue, beg and wink to be given the privilege of being ripped off $8 for post-mix mess. In Phagnan, it’s the other way around, the barmen, women, and their families, each squeezed into about a meter of beach front  franchise, do performance acts and serious theatre, simply to sell a drink. But drinks don’t come by the glass, but by the bucket > so buy the bucket I did.  $7 gets you into a 6 inch bucket full of ice, a hip flask full of ya’ favourite poison, and a tin of soft drink to stomach it, and often, a shooter bottle of red bull, to keep you conscious. Ya gotta love that Red Bull’s Taurine…or whatever it’s called, the secret ingredient first invented to boost half dead soldiers under night after night of enemy fire in Nam. Night after night of heavy partying in Thailand obviously must have its similarities.

It’s all a bit toxic really, but hey, ever since tribal man was hoofing down the psilocybin laced psycodelics before a bit of foot stomping shamanic fun, tribal dance has not always been a health sport.

In Thailand a few years back, Thacksin , the rightwing  capitalist in left wing disguise, drove Thailand from worship of the spirits, to worship of the new TV, washing machine and condo, and in the process, he decided that the chilled-out, Thai stick culture of Siam had to go, along with most other traditional ways, and so he dutifully got about shooting, on sight, about 20 drug dealers each day. No filling the courts and prisons. No trials. No questions. Just shoot’em dead. The result was the whiskey and beer culture,  along with its sad bed partner, mindless materialism, sweeping over the old Thailand, in due reverence to the world’s command and control office the at the US’s FDA.  So the new pissed parties of the once hip Koh Phangan have a dancer-to-watcher ratio of about 1 to 4. Compare this to Melbourne, where 5000 head dance parties have 4 dancers for every 1 watcher. It would not be unreasonable to suggest some bio chemistry of the illegal kind is behind such ratios.

But on cue, and seemingly unnoticed by the crowds pouring onto the beach in 5 wide human streams, the Fullmoon rose over the water, adorned herself with a mystic ring, and dutifully oversaw all that is sexual and rhythmic about her partner, Gaia. Longtail’s powered on their turbo diesel Toyota’s, slicing silvery paths across the bay, as they shipped in yet more farungs, for their beach bucket bonaza.

It was the end of the footy season, with St Kilda just losing to Geelong in the last desperate minutes, after 40 years in the desert,  and now with maybe another 40 to go. Geelong, on the other hand, had to do what all footy teams do once the fitness season ends, and the booze and pillage season begins, by shipping the team out on mass (so as the Aussie press doesn’t see what the boys get up to). Some get blown up. All get pissed. Some get obviously more than just pissed. And in the safe knowledge that a million Kath and Kim’s are hanging out to give them happy endings, the Geelong boys tend to get a bit extraverted, shall we say, when let loose on the Fullmoon beach parties. They sure made enthusiastic drinking mates, as each bucket comes with 3 straws, and a range of flavours, all of which the boys insisted I sample. I had qualified as a  their drinking mate,  simply by being a Aussie male, oi, oi ,oi. Urp.

The under 30′s scene of Koh Phangan, a few miles from Samui, is a lot messier, but not to dissimilar to the goings on of the Lamai bars, in the outrageously over developed Koh Samui. I suppose I shouldn’t judge Samui as over developed, when in fact the same thing can be said of just about every Asian resort beach town. Infact, to the land bound traveller, just about any third world beach, has seen some disgusting side effects of tourism.

I sailed to Thailand about 22 years ago. I loved it so much back then, that we threw a 2 month party in which I ended up being married in a big raft up of yachts, in Ko Phi Phi bay. Back then Patong was a cluster of girlie bars and street vendors, not the highrise town planning debacle that even a good Tsumani couldn’t clean up. No one had refrigerators, and so the seafood was so fresh it wiggled.  Even straight laced retired bank managers, cruising  on their yachts , could be seen shopping in Phuket town for their groceries, giggling and eating munchies, in a land where a pound of pot was neither a big crime, nor more expensive than a slab of beer. Half the successful drug runners of the world, with their 60 footers and Milano model girlfriends, were at anchor of Phuket in serious seagoing kit. Tales of gun battles at sea, simply sailing the Malacca straights were not uncommon, and everyone was well armed, me included, and the arms didn’t just sit in their pouches rusting, they had, regrettably to be drawn and aimed, on  a couple of occasions, in my experience at least. Thank goodness the trigger never needed to be pulled, as a smiling Thai waving an empty engine oil container, as his fishing boat approached, sure could be quick to swap a grin for an AK47 . My pump action, sawn off, pistol grip Mossberg, sure had a way of getting the message across when displayed. In the late eighties, it was not unheard off, for a Thai fishing crew to do a quick night time beach landing, fully armed, and hold up the entire guest list of the Patong bungalows.

It was even wilder in the mid seventies, when I first hit the Malay Hotel in Bangkok at 20 years old, the hotel being the origin of several movies on the subject that followed. The Malay was where everyone went, on a budget. 6 or 7 floors of farungs ( thats me), stoned hippies ( that wasn’t me, then at least), mixed in with Thai girls, GI’s , con men and cops, all of whom blended together in some kind of Hunter S blur of daily madness. I had to slip nervously out of the hotel to the airport, when I got caught in conman pincher movement, catching onto what was happening earlier than my conmen had hoped, and in usual Rod fashion, blew the lid on the whole deal, the corrupt receptionist with the key for the room thief, the, “I just want to practise English’ new best friend, and their copper cover, leaving me with no option but to get the fuck outta there fast, or be just another murder statistic at a time in the days of De Niro’s Taxi Driver saw NYC as the world murder capital, but where infact the murders in Bangkok outnumbered the daily NYC body count , 4 to 1.

So 34 years on, Thailand sure is a different place, for the farung at least. Gays happily live in harmony with the femine ways of the all tolerant, Buddhist Thai’s. Single girls safely travel anywhere. The food is still the best on earth, both in flavour and value. The Thais are still gentle, cheery, and busy. Everything is just so easy, cheap and no fuss in Thailand.

Especially after coming here from the rip-off Europe. As a simple example, in Europe, getting into new SIM card is a dreadful exercise, with a Euro per meg,  or a pound per minute, with guys like Vodaphone so anal, that you can’t  even top up with anything other than a local credit card. In Bangkok, you just hand $10 to the smiling girls at the telco desk, and in 60 seconds  you get ya phone working with 200 minutes of call time, or 200 minutes of internet, regardless of the download amount, and without, as in England’s case, 4 or 5 trips to the Vodaphone outlet, to simply get an email.

A taxi taken miles into Bangkok  from the airport costs $12. Hotel rooms are possible at $10, some bland, some fantastic. The freshest food is always from street vendors, where a dollar a meal will do. You can off course swallow the tourist, I need luxury pill, and pay through the nose, for which Thailand is quite grateful, and the tourist is quite stupid. There is a big difference between a traveller, and a tourist, albeit we often end up face to face. And face to off-yaface. ( Or, as they say in Newport Rhode Island…‘shipfaced‘).

Have you ever felt ripped off and burnt by a dentist? There is no need to feel the $pain anymore. My dentist in Port Douglas, went white, when I had the audacity to suggest, he, the consummate professional, ‘was a bit expensive’.

He only made me wait a month for an appointment, then wait an hour reading his Reader Digests, then he got me for about $400 for 35 minutes work and couple of fillings.  Need new crowns? Kiss bye bye to a grand or two per tooth in Australia, as the mainly male dentists stick their fat hairy hands down ya throat, in deep contemplation of the next holiday unit they are about to buy, and compare this, to the delicate, skilled hands, of all female dentists working next to the Bangkok Phuket Hospital, who explain exactly what they are doing, who are cheery, well or better equipped than their Australian counterparts, and who are cheaper by miles> for example $30/filling, or $450 for crown and root.

Fuck the theft that is non Medicare covered medicine in the western world. The West is getting so sick, and so ripped off by the drug and medico industry, that is high time, ah, so to speak, that we all said fuck you to western dentists, and took a holiday every time we needed some major repairs.  Australian health care used to be about 7% of GDP, it’s now topping 10 to 11% and headed for 15%, and at that level, as the West goes down and the East rises up,  the CNN’s ‘road to recovery’ may well end up being as long as the seemingly perma-recessed Japan, after its 80′s splurge. As the west eats its poisoned processed foods, applies its SLF carcinogens in shampoo and shaving cream daily, believes the fluoride lie, inhales the gas-outs, fries in deadly oils, smokes and drinks as though it’s a national pastime, and in so doing,  drives up cancer rates to one in 2, filling the old age centres with decrepit, demented basket cases, all who expect the very best in heath care, after a life of not even giving a shit about diet or exercise. And healthy nutters like me, (bar the odd beach bucket)…end up footing the bill for societies’ irresponsible attitude to their meat carcasses.

Phuket is an amazing new centre of the marine industry, with once DYI, international-only sailors, replaced by fly in, charter a plastic-fantastic,  in a new era of happy-daze sailors, in all their cheque book stupidity.

Rob, hi Rob, my host and buddy in Phuket, first told me about Phuket, when by sheer coincidence, I ran into him and his lovely Michelle at the world’s most remote island atoll, in the centre of the Indian Ocean.

Earlier, 26 years ago infact, my then 31 foot yacht was delayed, having fun in the Percy Islands off Mackay, and our incoming guest, Michelle, impatiently awaiting for us in Mackay, met Rob on the docks, hopped aboard, got married to Rob, at another outragoes raft up, this time at Airlie beach, and they both sailed the world for years, raised two cool kids, and ended up in Phuket, where they had originally suggested I go, 22 years ago. Being that I was headed around the world back them, and as I was halfway across the Indian already, the lure of Phuket had to have been strong, to make me effectively abandon the circumnavigation, and back track, up over the equator to Phuket. We all end up in Phuket at some time or another. Rob now skippers  140 foot of white boat, Michelle teaches, Phuket booms, and life goes on.  aND All because we were late getting to Mackay, 26 years ago. If that’s a ‘sliding door’ experience, it’s a sliding hangar door.

I have a design for an adventure canoe, of the trimaran, Polynesian type, in aluminium, that breaks into 3 parts like a rowing 8, that I was interested in pricing in Asia. My current obsession with long-tail engines, saw me chasing down engineers in the back streets of Phuket,  and tripping offthe Jap rebuilt diesel shops, as well as test driving long-tails off Rawai beach.

Blimey, 100hp of 2000cc ,  Toyota turbo diesel sure shoves some energy into the ocean, and one of these engines on my super narrow, Borneo river exploration canoe, would see me deep into the heart of  Apocalypse Brando darkness, in a flash.

I had already spent few days in HK, feeling like I am at the door to China, but curious as to what’s behind the door. I am also interested in pricing my 33m TRYBRID, as well as my small adventure toy, and had stumbled into a connection with a Billy B, who tells me the Chinese Govt could well be interested in doing something like my TRYBRID>the solar hydrogen, diesel-electric , trimaran thingo. So maybe I will find out what is behind that door soon. I love the Chinese energy…the West has no hope competing with the industriousness, and simple productivity of a Chinaman on a mission. HK is a buzz, and every time I go there, I make a B line for the goldfish markets, to indulge in the fantasy underwater world of the tiny apartment living Chinese, who, like me as a boy, find great serenity and peace, simply gazing into the wonder an interesting fish tank. Call it eccentric, yes, but hey, I like fish tanks.  There is no pet shop centre on earth, to match that in Hong Kong.

Asia is rattling and rolling with Tsunami’s, earthquakes and typhoons, as Gaia looses up a bit, presumably before letting the big tectonic one go. If you can believe the prophesies.

I better jump on my scooter, and go find a room. 135cc of latest Yamaha propelled me with great smoothness and little fuss from one side of Thailand to the other, via Khao Lak, where a police patrol boat still sits a few k inland after the last big wave. It poured as I wove my way through towering limestone mountains, crossing the peninsular. I stopped to watch elephant loggers at work in the mud, and was relieved when a local knew the stop button words for an elephant that came rushing out of the jungle towards me, towing tree. At $5/day for the bike, and maybe $4 in fuel, why the hell would you not tour all of Asia this way> no need for 1100cc of zee BMvee for the slower roads of Asia. The modern step-through, with the engine integral with the gearbox and rear suspension, is a fantastic machine, and it’s odd that whilst these bikes are sold in their millions in Asia,  but they are never released to US, Euro, or Australian buyers anymore. They cost about $1300, and I want one, and infact the design for the 40ft adventure canoe, includes a cargo hold for a motorbike. Fuck the stifling cabins, we will live under a sampan canvas roof, and carry only essentials, namely a bike.

I want a life of longtail motors, super scooters, $1 meals, and a million islands. What I am doing now, is just practising, experimenting. And so far, so good.

Thailand is kinda like Panama, except Thailand has the Pacific for sunset and not sunrise, and it has the Indian, not Atlantic on the other side. It felt kinda’ similar, in concept at least, darting from one side to another. In Panama, you did it in lunatic cabs, in Thailand, I did it as a lunatic on a step-through. Both times I took the transoceanic ride, it poured. So picture the farung on the step-through, at 90k and a million revs, with a $2, see-through wet weather gear a’ flapping, taking GPS directions from his new mobile phone. Kayak’s duffle bag as a back rest. Vietnam rippof North Face day pack in the through part of the step-through. Visibility was as good a mud diving.  The poor Google Earth GPS was suffering,  what being stuffed in my loins, where any self respecting machine would  loose it, with a stream of instructions through the ear plug, whilst driving on straight jungle freeways, that advised me to do a U turn now> turn left in 50m> turn right now> in 500m keep left….all in the space of 10 seconds. A fat drunk wife with an upside down road map would have been more informative.

Nonetheless, I found Koh Samui, and I found my way back to Krabi. All rather wet, I add, but grateful that it was tropical wet, and not European wet, after having fluked 4 months of sunshine in Europe just gone. It takes about a day to get from the northern beaches of Koh Phangan, across the island on rented bike number 2, onto a ferry full of post fullmoon party fuckups, then across Samui on rented bike number 1, to another ferry, this time with locals and trucks at half the price and twice the distance, then from Indian to Pacific oceans… and under a hot shower in a $7 hotel along the muddy river of Krabi. I love Krabi. What a perfect name it has. It’s real. It’s full of transitioning types, but compared to Samui of Phuket, it’s a farung free zone. A farung is a foreigner, and only Thais make the farung word a national icon, being that Thailand, like Turkey recall, is just about the only unconquered country in Asia.

Mind you, when the charming, almost gay king soon dies, it’s a battle between his debauched, belligerent son, his daughter, or his alcoholic, bridge playing, fat ugly wife, the queen. Given the perilous state of Thai politics already, when the king drops off the perch, Thailand’s record as an unconquered nation is up for grabs. But then I recall having the same discussion 22 years ago, and all that has happened since, is more of the same same, namely, some idiot tries to be a smart arse leader, and there is yet another military coup. The military has always run both Indonesia and Thailand, there are only occasional pretenders to the throne here. The US likes it that way.

I kinda like the back beaches of Koh Phangan. It’s the island that is as messy as all the others, but there is a collection of odd Thai freaks and party nutters there, that distinguishes it from the other tourist sell outs. It’s a lot more fun than sexless Sri Lanka. They have made excess into a routine business in Phangan. It reminded me of Bocos Del Toro in the Panamanian Caribbean.

Seeing what has happened to Thailand would make the first banana-boat-from-Bangkok tourists of the 1970s’ weep. I was there back then, but never saw Samui when it was tourist free, in its idyllic, half-Chinese, fishing village state. Mind you, I had a lovely evening eating and dining on powder white sand spit, alongside fishing village kids playing at Ao Chaloklum last night, at the end of the road in Koh Phangan, listening to Bob Marley, but without de herb of de 80′s.

The same death by tourism demise can be seen in Bali. Tourism has just trashed these beautiful spots. It’s a crime. Or, as I asked myself in a more accepting state of mind, was it all worth it, as the great tourism boom of the last 40 years, has also acted and a melting pot, and meeting space for millions upon millions of now more tolerant and understanding human beings. Every cloud, as they say.  And Bali and Thailand played a big part in this creative melting pot.  Still, pity they sold out to the FDA, Visa and Radisson. It happened in my own home town of Port Douglas, once a sleepy fishing town full of nutters, artists and blue singlets. Now it’s home to the Gucci-wanna-bees.  It happened to Byron too… a spot where too many mushies, left handers and kombis, turned into a backpacker blood bath competing with the bid-it-up bourgeois of Whatevergoes Beach. Being a Jan Barham or Mike Berwick mayor of these places is a blood sport.

I also pondered the ruination of the Bali’s and Samui’s, in another light. Have we ruined all the gorgeous and romantic islands on planet earth? Is there anywhere cool, still left… un-fucked-up? I pondered it a while, whilst sittingin the saddle  frozen in a rain storm at 95km/h, concentrating on those little white lines of the legal kind. The answer didn’t take long to precipitate, not unlike my visor. My advantage over the average tourist is the yacht. From the yacht, the world is a way different place. The answer to the question about ‘what is left’ is a massive…. HEAPS LEFT! There are more, beautiful, untouched, still pristine islands and their communities out there, than any land lubber could possibly imagine. Just the secret islands of Pacific Panama are some. So too the beautiful San Blas…my current favourites. Then there are the thousands of islands in the Western Pacific….the list goes on and on. But maybe it’s best we have no list at all, as the best places are best kept as yachty secrets anyway. Tourism sure has made a big mess in the main, name brand islands, but in reality, much more remains authentic, and pristine. But you will never know this, unless you are willing to sail far over that horizon in small boat, and gratefully, 99 out of 100 people just won’t take that trip. Unlike Rob and Michelle Hossack, who would have to be just about the most sail travelled friends I know. What they have seen, you couldn’t fit on a 5 week, non-stop, 3D, Imax. There is only one way to see the world, and it’s on yacht, or some kind boat, with a motorbike ( or 2) onboard.

When I pulled out of Krabi, on the other side of the bay shielded by Phuket, i was surprised to find what i though was a 70k trip, was infact over 200k, to get north and up around the short bridge onto Phuket. That is the area dotted with massive, melted limestone towers, all delicately decorated with drippings of salad. Its a bit of an Asian phenomena, these towers and cliff of once reef, bursting out of the  jungles, and after a few million years of erosion, the melted candle look of the exposed cliffs is only rivaled in erosion spectacle by wind eroded sandstone. Its the dripping with jungle bit that gives the Asian stuff more spectacle than the sandstone rivals of say Sydney’s Broken Bay.

So there was no real issue when the trip went from 70 to 200k, when much of it cut through Phangna, in mile after mile of limestone, James Bond, spectacle.

I rolled into Phuket, poor little Yamaha having been red-lined along at 90 to 100kph, for hours. But the bike seemed to love it, it handled well, it braked like a car crash, was smooth as a BMW, but surprisingly, guzzled 3-4 liters per 100k, compared to 1100cc of my beast of burden BMW, which used 5-6l/100k. I was kinda expecting the step through to only need 2l/100k.

Removing the kayaker’s duffle bag to get at the fuel tank at a hand pump servo, the heavy steel ending on an ‘ocky strap let fly into my face, making a hole in both sides of my chin, which bled like an Othello death. The abuse levelled at the strap would embarrass my late mum. So off I rode, holding the blood flow with lashings of tissue paper ( toilet paper actually), on the hunt for super oxygenator, Hydrogen peroxide, as I wondered nervously if I should be heading to get stiches. It occurred to me, as the blood clotted, that after tens of thousands of mile, through Andes, Alps, desert, snow, and maniac Albanian drivers, that the one and only wound in all that recent risk, was the elasto strap hit I just had. For that, I was surprised and grateful, as anyone on a bike at speed every day, is a potential meat bag.

I drove past a poster for the Phuket Vegetarian festival, where locals slice their cheeks, and insert odd hardware, where one of the better displays, is a garden spade, in one cheek, and out the other. As if that would be hard. It occurred to me, that those dudes trance away, don’t bleed, and recover from DIY face wounds with miraculous speed, with no scar. So whilst driving along in the slow lane, holding the wound, I willed my immune system into miracle mode, sloshed it with peroxide, and sure enough, the inside wound the next morning had closed, sealed over, and no longer looked like an abattoir after a chain saw malfunction. The Biology of Belief. Well worth reading. Technically we are all just an energetic hologram, despite the ignored elephant in the scientific sitting room, and I’m finding it more and more useful, and effective, to zone in on any pain, feel its pain, visualise its golden gig cleansing, and visualise its smoking residue blow away, and for me, it works, kinda like sending in the immune army under subconscious command and control. Ya wont know if I’m bullshitting unless you try it yourself. Or maybe I’m just and old shaman without a clue. Maybe we all are.

After chasing up some more boat building information, and test driving few more long tails in the Krabi, it was time to head north, into what Apocalypse now might see as the heart of darkness, where other see a heart of light.

Enroute to the Thai Laotian border was a night in ChangRai, in an old hotel that had seen better days, and hunkier rack rates.

Everyone sort of walks around in the daze of the colour and lights of the ChangRai night markets. I ran into the French expat drinking team, a sober lot compared to Poms or Aussies, and was given 20 good reasons why French hate France. Having recently shifted my view of France from bad to good, I was harder to convince than some, until the bar bill came, which when compared to Euro prices, was the main reason why I guess, a traveller could hate France.

By some preordained act of God, I drifted out of bed, caught the first rickety bus to some unknown town on the border, hoping to catch the days slow boat down the Mekong. With immaculate conception, I dragged my wheelie bag down to the rivers edge, paid the ferry man, and 150 yards later, was in Laos, where I traded my last $75 Aussie cash for some Kit, or whatever they call it, wandered out of  mudside immigration, and enquired as to when the next boat to Luang Prabang in Laos, leaves. I was then rapidly packed into a 3 wheeler, and asked to walk the plank into 80 starring faces of the back packing rabble, as if I had help up the raising of the said gang plank. Good timing I figured, being 5 minutes later, and It would have been another night on the frontier. And I just fluked it all, from the moment i rolled outta bed, caught the bus, then ferry, all in the nick of unplanned time.

We are way up north here, Mekong west being Thailand, Mekong west being Laos, and China wasn’t too far away. It was here, or just north, that the Air America boys, and the rest of the evil cabal, tried to ‘bomb Laos into the stone age’, and neither the US, or  Australian governments had the dignity to even tell their countrymen, that they were quietly engaged in aerial genocide, the like of which few bombed countries had experienced.

It amazes me, that without declaring war, without raising it in the press or in parliament,  such that western governments could dish out such massive suffering and death to a loose assembly of tribal villages, and then get away with it, is audacious and criminal. To this day, most people in both the US and Australia have no idea what went on in Laos, and how every western man and woman in these countries has blood on their hands,  blood that they had not even noticed.

It wasn’t just a quick incursion…it was year after year of high altitude ( gutless) bombing, using the most evil, and bloody aerial weapon, the cluster bomb. Cluster bomb cases don’t blow up, they open up, and their contents does the destruction, while the casing cops a few dents on landing. Cluster bomb cases are everywhere in Laos. It’s a disgrace. They work like this. Say you are sitting in your bamboo home, with the family. When the casing peels back, the bomblets spray. When the bomb-lets explode, it is as though those in the home are machine gunned with white hot shrapnel, from behind, above, to the left,  and the right..it’s a blood bath….industrial quantities of the stuff. Meanwhile, we all sat at home in the US and Australia, with no idea we were committing such crimes. Not good.

Such is the disgust with which I hold our governments, simply because they can act like this, going to war without even telling, let alone asking us, the nation. All the protestor focus went to Vietnam. Older Lao residents remember the family members lost…the blood, the anger….where the unknown enemy was above the cloud line.

Recall we killed, guess how many Vietnamese? You forget? Try 3 million. And ask yourself, what do you know of those who our mob killed in Laos? No Idea? Join me and the crowd. That in itself, is a disgrace on all of us.

We assure ourselves, that was then, and this is now, and we don’t do war without admitting it anymore. Except, well, except many…like this week, the warfare in Pakistan has hit the streets with more than just suicide bombers, but full blown ‘rebel’ military attacks. We hear more crap about Qaeda this and that, from CNN, but hey, we are secretly bombing the Pakistanis just as we did Laos, and hey, I don’t recall any US or Australian politician either asking us, or admitting giving to their consent to bomb Pakistan….and to bomb it with all the 100 to 1 kill ratios we have come to expect of the US vers the world.

But the Mekong has seen more blood than just cluster bomb remains. Laos has been raided by just about every neighbour for centuries, and the French more recently, for not so good luck. Wherever the French were the colonial rulers, just look at the track record>>>> Just about every one of their colonies fell into war. Nice one France.

The Mekong isn’t like one of those nice Rhineland rivers that slowly navigates its way to sea. The Mekong swirls and rages, with hull ripping rocks ready to wreck its traffic at every turn. So the boats that ply the Mekong, are for a start, super narrow, just to fit, and super shallow draft, just to clear the bottom.

Some of the boats need to do 6 knots before the prop can actually fully engage,  eventually covered by the subtle stern wave that is sucked up to cover the prop blades.

The Mekong ferries have truck engines complete with gearbox and clutch, and they work.  The engines, that is. They have to. If you had a feeble engine, you would never make it upstream with a few hundred tonnes or rice, through the rock strew rapids of the big river rip. The bigger boats are welded together with all the structural rigidity of a jellified condom.

Our journey was over two long days, so the headroom of the first day’s boat was appreciated. The second day, with height enough for a hobit was not so good for the posture.

Outback of the main cabin, somewhere between 2 and 3 bus lengths back, was the engine room, and beyond that, the porch come kitchen. It was here, I  bunkered down atop the cargo, with ‘the lads’, some of whom had hit the BeerLao for morning tea, and others who had lit up, rejoicing the difference between the Lao cops on the east side of the river, and the shoot to kill, Thaksin mob on the west.

It was a dreamy trip, with an overnight midway stopover between Huay Xai  ( Laos)/Chang Kong (Thai) and Luang Prabang  two days down the Mekong.

The overnight stopover in midway point Pak Beng, is a bit of a wild west experience, where I found myself again with one of ‘the lads’, a lad, (a frog) with some Thai language skills, who had worked us right into the main table of Lao whiskey drinking river men, with their fine hospitality and cheeky humour, until several bottles of the shit had hit the bin, there followed by me.

It reminded me of Kuta beach 1974, when I first arrived to be assuaged by offers of kit that would keep Hunter S confused for a week… yabba, whiskey, pot, opiates, and god knows what other local stuff was on offer from anyone capable of standing in the shadows and saying ‘pssst’.  As there was no power other than the odd generator, so too were there lots of shadows. The next day, the recently imported farungs were all headed on their happy hippy, ways into northern Laos, well stocked.

As the river approached Luang Prabang, the limestone karsts and their family of mountains started to get height.  The logging had taken its toll, but still, most of the countryside was unmanaged jungle, and in form typical of planet earth:  where it was too steep to farm, most forest was original and diverse,( albeit missing the odd monster log).

It amazed me how the local boatmen got these stretch long tails up and down the rapid sections, as the chocolate milk turbidity gave no clue as to what sharp rock lurked where, and navigation was all about reading the  water movement. Reef sailors could take a lesson or two from these magicians. Either these river boatmen are amazing experts, or dead lucky.  As the bona fide boatie, I spent the day in constant amazement at matters Mekong.

You could spend weeks plying the length and breadth of Laos in these river boats….and one day, I intend to do just that. My trip to Laos is primarily about reconnaissance, as remissfully, this is my first visit. I’ll be back.

By the time the sun was setting on the fast approaching Luang Prabang, I had already declared cocktail hour.  Accordingly on arrival, I spilled out over the gunwales into the adjoining shore bound boats, with overweight pack in tow and BeerLao in hand, hitting the river bank with a whatever-comes-next, beer buzz. What came next was marvellous. Thank Christ the Unesco Heritage listed Prabang was not bombed into a Neolithic pit.  Luang Prabang kinda like an Ubud-by-the-Mekong, 1970. Resplendent with architecture in the old French colonial style, spiced with 50′s kitsch, and all in an ancient Laotian core, the small riverside town is a welcome relief from the fuck-girl crowd, the mall rats, and the fat and ugly tourist scene that goes into apoplexy if left without air con for 10 minutes. Thank goodness somewhere is not so easy to get to. But getting deeper into the real-deal old Asia is still further upstream. So I hired 100cc and 100k/h of Honda, and headed north, adopting my usual pack-strapping methods, to Honda the mule.

3 hours north of Luang Prabang, there is a bridge over a river at Kwai….no….Khiaw….Nong Khiaw infact. Dark mountains flank all sides of this little wild west port, and with it, a few cheap riverside bungalows, with very happy hippy aromas emanating from their evening hammocks. 20 or 30 stretch river boats hug the shore, and some pretty fit types, lug sacks of this and that up and down the alluvial river banks, the red mud river banks that are the clotted blood of this the Mekong tributary,  the Nam Ou River.Headin north, was a beautiful bike ride, free of retail signage, free of traffic, free of modern housing, free of everything that modern Asia thinks is freedom.

I looked a bit odd, fully kitted on a step-through, but then hey, you should see what a Laotian farmer can strap to step-through.

Further into the original ‘heart of darkness’ was yet ahead, this time aboard and even narrower stretch boat, in with the chooks, and on top of the sacks of fish food. If you really want to step off planet earth for a while, and only have $10/day with which to do it, head to Muang Ngoi Neua. There you can live happily on the river banks, with the local community, not car, bike or tractor in sight. There too, you can stop doing, and start being. How many travellers in 2009, can really say they know or have seen the real Asia? You will find it still in Burma, and here, without the party politics, in northern Laos > a mere ant’s trail away from the Ho Chi Min trail.

The cluster bomb cases are thick on the ground in these parts. But if you trek bit deeper, as did I, you soon find yourself in totally indigenous local villages, where the odd hut will accommodate, so you can write that book, or meditate your way into sphinctorial bliss. I’l be back. Infact, I will be back to get even further north, way up the rivers into the Laos Chinese never-never. The places on earth where you can go into truly original landscapes are few and far between these days, and the Darian pass between Panama and Colombia comes to mind as one, and both there and northern Laos are on my list of, let’s explore destinations. I ain’t dead yet.

There is a sophistication in the rice growing, mud engineering of the Mekong that I truly seek to understand, having spent a few days trying to fathom the irrigation methods, the harvest and storage, and everything in the middle…and it makes modern industrialised farming look truly brutal by comparison. Water everywhere, but few mosquitoes….why?…fish of course. Log dams, seemingly beaver built, but methodical….why?….. to raise water into the irrigation channels. Boys with goggles on, in rice paddocks, off hunting whatever lives in the creeks. Older guys, in army greens, heading off into the forest with rifles across their shoulders.  Maybe to hog tie that US pilot for a few more years? God knows they deserve it.

A couple of nights on these turbid rivers, and the Kundalini in you unwinds like a snake in a prosaic jar. Along with the Andes, Laos is topping my list of charismatic, must re-do, travel spot.

Laos is indeed a photographers dream, and many a photographer were at work there. Many were published here, as well. Laung Prabang is deep in art, books, and matters culture. I could easily live there.

When Laos is maybe one of the world’s poorest countries, it’s sure way wealthier, in well being, than we in the West. You can read in it the faces. The West has no idea how stupefied, tox’d and weakened it has become. The West thinks its money buys wellness and happiness, but the West is deluded to the point of total anaesthesia. The clear expression, the bodies worked as they were designed to, the food clean, unprocessed and alive. The families tight and intact. Communities that still need each other. Housing that costs little, is thermally perfect, and is not used as a wealth barn. Spaces like this make room for laughter, and joy. And if you are wondering why its places like Laos, and San Blas that I so adore, it’s for reasons like these above. Having been part of a nation that participated in the attempted  genocide of this country bears heavily on my heart, as did my time in Vietnam.

From Laos, it was back via the unpronounceable Bangkok airport, for more modern, Brave new World brutalist architecture that is all the fashion in airport design these days. Norman Foster, for his HK airport, should be promoted to chief guards at Guantanamo. Doesn’t anyone stop to actually looks at what these mad men and making? Or is everyone overcome by the sheer, sheerness of the stupid things.  I’m over them.

Then it was time to hit a Hong Kong mattress all night long, and figure out how to get a visa to go to the real China, something I am way late in life doing.

From the rural, quiet old Asia on Friday, to the most berserk consume-a-thon I have ever seen, I had finally hit China. Communism? Yeah right. Its stuff-yaself with shit central. Nothing communist about this. But it’s a fascinating, 30 year phenomena….nothing like it before in the earth’s history. They think Dubai was grand build achievement. But Dubai is a fraction of what happens in China. I have never seen so many 20 something’s. Breed? You fuck me long time.

And from the grand expense ($50) of a flash business hotel here in ShenZen, I got to work preparing power point shit for the TRYBRID curious Chinese.

If the TRYBRID idea takes off in China, my life may well take a fast wild ride. Just like China itself.

see why i love Laos?

any photographer is good in Laos..although its takes an eye, not a camera…

tourism marketing Laos..where the bloody hell are you?

cluster bomb casings..obsenity in metal..shame on us

hit the road on ya Hardly Davisdon.

wwdouble you DUBAI.

It’s a phenomenon of the times. It’s extraordinary in the extremes of all that is good, and all that is bad.

It’s Dubai, or more accurately, it’s the UAE.  40C to 50C of camel depressing desert, which back in the ‘60s, hosted a few Arabs in boats, when up from the depths came a bubbling crude. Oil that is. Dubai gold. Or Abu Dhabi gold, at least. Dubai, Abu Dhabi’s  cousin state, seemed to borrow most of its neighbour’s oil doe. And when the Saudi’s had to be called in for a loan here and there, the Saudi’s added a few Sharia law conditions to the loan. UAE had two advantages, it was a British protectorate, not another state of the oil nazi US, and like Holland, Dubai, because of its (up a creek) trading location like the Dutch Rotterdam, became a trader not a warlord. Traders soon learn that multilingual, culturally tolerant behaviour is better business than sticking it to your neighbour ( or gassing them) like Sad and dead Hussein. Accordingly, in the UAE, there are about 120,000 expat poms, and just over 20,000 expat Aussies, and gratefully, fuc all Yanks.businessmen. Aussies are the preferred nationality to manage the construction industry, with Poms being the wanking bankers ( with many a deal secured and now torched outta London). It’s kinda fun that it’s us Aussies who are the main managing ‘doers’ of Dubai, as it is the world’s best construction and development training ground. As it is hard to get a regular mortgage in the UAE as a foreigner, much property is secured overseas, meaning much of the pain of the speculative bubble burst, bleeds the already anal haemorrhaging, and financially gluttonous England.

But don’t live with ya girlfriend, or you’ll get deported, to the airport (or the jail). Don’t get pregnant if you get raped, as you go to jail for adultery along with the baby. Don’t bounce a cheque, or, like in middle age Europe,  you go to debtor’s prison. When the boom collapsed, it seems the best option for many broke expats was to simply dump the new BMW, and head for the airport, as a first preference over bouncing cheque. In the streets below where I stayed, the dust encrusted evidence was everywhere, one guy didn’t even close the rag top to his  new BMW sports car, leaving now dust covered groceries on the front seat before doing a runner. The UAE was a late starter in the GFC, but when it went, it went over like a barrel of money at Niagara. Don’t be caught, if ya gay, being the ‘givee’. The ‘givee’ goes to jail, the ‘giver’ walks. With condoms being the biggest selling item in the all male Pakistani workers camp, ya gotta wonder what goes on at night, nonetheless.

As a graduate of a faculty of architecture, with a builder’s twist, to me, Dubai is the most amazing professional gawk of a lifetime.

Where we may be used to seeing a paddock of demonstration, project homes, Dubai is similar, except the homes come in a range of  60 storey towers, city wide. If you are ever in the market for a 40 to 140 storey tower, come shop at Dubai. At 98OM high, like a fairy castle stalactite, the tallest thing on earth will be opened in a month or two in Dubai. Go stick it, KL. And it comes alongside the hotel with the mostest, and it’s lapped by the fountain with water jets that would give you an enema through your cranium, in Walt Disney performing bursts, to acres of orchestral music, with hundreds of these jet bursts, maybe 15 storeys high. Beat that. Oh…I forgot, it has the world’s biggest luxury goods Dubai Mall alongside it too. If you ever wondered how to define every luxury retailer on earth, read the Dubai Mall directory.

There’s a fish tank in the new Dubai Mall, with wall of glass maybe 12m high, (god knows how thick is the seem less glass), some 40m across. If they burst that one, there would be more than one type of shark species swimming around Armani.

You can learn to ski in Dubai. In between shopping. Ice skate a tad in another mall. Feed the sharks in another. Or the seals. Take ya pick. Go could get some groceries, have a scuba dive, a snow ski, an ice skate, and be back home by lunch. Why the hell not.

But during Ramadan, don’t eat or drink in public, or at home for that matter, between dusk and dawn. But at 45C, a glass of water is sometimes an issue.  So don’t get caught sipping a water bottle. Or it’s back to jail. Such things don’t really enhance tourism prospects for all the acres of new hotels. Restaurateurs don’t do so well in Ramadan September, and it’s just as well they eat a lot of dates in Dubai, as a pig-out on dusk, with nothing in-between, must create a nice log jam on the digestive highway. But Dubai has got the traffic log jam issue well in the solution gun sights, building roads with more lanes that the Santa Monica freeway, for cars that, well don’t exist, or are dumped in tower block car parks. We’re ‘on a road to nowhere” comes to mind, especially viewing the freeway bridges that just end, in mid air, everywhere.

Power is a bit of a problem, but 25c/litre diesel aint, so half the new buildings just generate their own. Shit trucks line up for miles, well full of it, waiting to do a dump at the shit dump yard. Pipes are a bit behind schedule. Just as well for the dates again.

De main man is Mo, Sheik Mohamed, His Royal Highness, a guy who sure was in the right place at the right time, after his dad was just tooling around with camels and boats, till some bubbling black shit gurgled up a few years ago. From camel pets, to the biggest horse stable gig on earth. Add the biggest white boat on earth. Sheik Mo is indeed well loved locally, and with free heath cover, no tax, and flash shit everywhere, he has got a good track record, on the subject of benevolent dictatorship. It’s only us expats who seem to have an issue with Sharia law, and hey, who’s to say pashing pommes fucking on the beach pissed, is pretty anyway.

Sheik Mo’s mota, his 140m white boat mota, looked a treat framed between a few of his towers, out Jim’s window.  The boat, according to our magazine shots, inside at least, is more colourful that a hippy holiday in India. He da man. He da Mo.

Da Main Man just opened up a new Metro when I arrived, and for Ramadan Eid-end, every man and his dog was riding it. Real men ride up front. There’s no driver anyway, so ya might as well join the hordes of Paki’s gawking down the tracks through the front window, as the new trains rip around Dubai sans driver like an airport shuffle on ‘roids.

And its three cheers and holy shit for me mates Gerard, Jono and soon Jim, who as COO’s or CEOs, or da big boss men, have projects on between them, that would rival all the big building projects in Aus, between just two of ‘em.

Their projects come in batches of 40′s, 60′s and 80 storeys….. that’s tower blocks…. lots of them, and flash ones bro.

We all go oou ah when Junipers tops of a big’n in the Gold coast, but in Dubai, Shaun’s tower would be lost in the crowd. Fuck me, the number and height of the towers is beyond comprehension. Some, a handful , are indeed architectural masterpieces, lost sadly in the overindulgence. Many are impractical, but spectacular sculptures, where it’s obvious that the architect who go the job, was the one who got the biggest ka-pow effect in the unveiling before de man. De Mo, oftentimes.

The law to support this madness was a bit lagging. For example, you could line up all night, to buy a home unit, and if you got to the head of the cue early, you could zip to the end of the cue, and on sell immediately, pocket 15%, and unlike Aus, you pocketed the cash earn before the building even began, with no tax payable. This mania became infectious, with the average unit trading hands 7 times, before it got built. When the music stopped, (as the Greenspan trap snapped close with bye-bye Lehmans) the guy left holding the title to the unit was well fucked, as prices halved, and halved again, leaving acres of newly opening buildings, with no one home. They say they need several million more inhabitants, simply to use up the commercial space under construction now. But unlike Aus 1990, the developers have got most of the doe, bar the last 25%, there is no 19%PA debt to banks, the oil is a happy $70 barrel, and pumping away in the squillions, so there may be a lot of empty buildings and burnt London property backed mortgages, but De Man, and his Sheiks ain’t too fazed. They just need to think about a 10 pound pom immigration gig. If the poms can cope with 45C.

Many thanks to the hospitality of Jim Spencer, on ya Jim. Ya view rocks. Boats R US. Nothing like waking up to a clearing in the dust, 25 stories up, looking across Dubai Marina, through the world’s fastest and biggest growth of reso’ towers in human history.

And also to Jon Lyle, another of the sheik’s men in Abu Dhabi, on ya Jono….and also Gerard Carrollll> holy shit, no one will ever be able to even compete with your resumes, after your gigs go pictorial. We all once worked together, and went to Uni closely, and we continue to drink together.Even somehow through Ramadan. But don’t tell anyone.  Besides, its water of course.  After dusk.  And not until dawn.

It could only be done with armies of Paki’s, Indians, the odd Chinese crew, some Afghani’s and infact anyone who wants to quadruple their homeland pay, work in 45C heat, for less than a $grand a month.  Philipinos are smarter, they do food and beverage indoors. The local Emirates sure need to be tolerant of immigrants, as they seem outnumbered 9 to one in most places. But in their dish dash, immaculate white sheets and headdress, with kids paternally on their arm, the local Emirate lads sure know how to style it. Their backyard BBQ’s fill their driveways with Bentleys and half million dollar Merc’s, and when ya mate upstages you with a deadly, 6 cubic litre, US pick up, the mate with the Mack truck-pic up, upstages them all. In the driveway. Time to kill another sheep or two. Pity about no beer but.

With the US pumping arms and cash into the Rothchild’s, pseudo Babylonian state of Israel (“Is’  in Israel for Isis, “Ra” for the sun god, and ‘El’ for god or Elohim), and in the process arming the  Zionist maniacs with nuclear weaponry, it seems beyond belief that the west would be so audacious and hypocritical as to want to obliterate Iran for a possible nuclear program of their own. Even after Iraq and smack war Afghanistan, 70% of recently polled Yanks, are cool to attack Iran. What the?   If Iran is attacked, Dubai, just across the bay, could be bomb dust in minutes. Russians would love it, as the subsequent middle east oil blockages would then make their oil trice as valuable, and the only stock available, and they would be off on their dash to control central Asian hydrocarbons. So Russia is busy arming Iran, as the US pays $1600PA to every man, woman and child in Israel (whilst denying their own community health care).

The US embargo on Iran sure looks like bullshit when you see the millions of tonnes of goods being shipped there in Dhows from the Dubai creek. There is no where on earth like the middle east when it comes to fucked up, deceptive foreign intervention. If the western populations all could see what was going on here, without the lies of the western media, it would be shocked. But hey, Israel can kill 100 Palestinians for every one Israeli killed just last Christmas, yet the West, via CNN, see Israel as victims. The new big game, is who, of Russia, China or the US, controls the last big oil deposits on earth, in Central Asia. The US aint in Afghanistan to chase Bin Laden, no more than it is in Colombia to chase FARC , that’s just a smoke screen for the mums and dads back home…. it’s the oil in Venezuela  and Central Asia they want.

I had a week in Dubai, after a few fab weeks demobilizing in Holland near De Hague, with many loving thanks to Anoesjka and her family, who lent me a homely home unit behind the dunes. Holland is my favourite European country, the Dutch are way cool. The bike is soon in a container to Sydney ex Rotterdam, for all of $700, scrubbed for a day, with wire tooth brushes inside and out, ready for Australian Quarantine. It rained the day after I demounted, after almost 4 months of beautiful warm sunny European memory behind me, so I curled up and enjoyed the TV with added delight, cancelling the day entirely. I was sad to leave Europe, as Europe treated me to rich experience after rich experience, in mile after mile of breathtaking bike touring. You just can’t replicate the richness of travel, when you go in a glass and steel box called a car. Bike touring is living it, fully engaged.

Before I left Europe, I rode the length and breadth of Germany and Holland, meeting with the brilliant engineers and manufacturers of fuel cells, hydrogen steam reformers, and electric marine propulsion systems, who hopefully one day will be part of the fabulous www.trybrid.org project, to be the first to circumnavigate the world in 80 barrels. The Germans and Dutch are to my mind the world’s best and most innovative engineers, and to be hosted on engineering tours, by the best and brightest of the new energy innovators, was a special treat, and a great education. I think now, the final scheme for TRYBRID is taking shape, and conceptually, there is nothing like it, on earth. Maybe, just maybe, with possible partners like the crew behind the Masdar super green city in Dubai, TRYBRID will one day dock in Thames, as the guys conceiving and now starting this Masdar city, have conceived a renewable, self contained, Forster planned masterpiece, the likes of which has no competitor in green credentials , on this planet. May they, and TRYBRID, succeed. May Dubai recover, and survive the US’s seemingly evil intentions for Iran, a few miles across the bay from Dubai. Many thanks to all my hosts and friends over the last month. You rock. Ramadan’s month long fast and contemplations ended with a big splash out party as I left Dubai for Hong Kong.

Thanks also to the gorgeous Georgeous Stevens, and her pals from Brighton, with who I spent a last weekend in Brighton, learning more about the cutting edge of raw foodie culture and farming, with spiritually alive and vibrant approach, with clarity that I have never before experienced. You guys are onto something very special in Brighton. Thankyou Georgeous for your hospitality.  May Moonbean your rabbit be over the moon.

What a memory it left me. Next Asia.

So, what else can you find in the world, since the Berlin wall came down?

They say you can island hop from Greece to Turkey. So I caught the ferry from Mykonos to Samos, a Greek island, just 3k from Turkey. The Greeks have virtual ocean liners for ferries, most ‘70′s relics, from days before $50 international flights. I was grateful to be 4 stories up, and not on the foredeck of a yacht, as the winds that hammered the Med where beyond ferocious. It was enough wind to blow you off your feet, a gale bordering on a sunny cyclone. And it wouldn’t let up for days. Anything not pegged down, was gone.

Having run a shipping line ina previous life, or so I am told, I found myself pacing around  the many decks of the ferry, as though I was keeping an eye on the business. Mind you, my only business was buying the odd toasted sandwich, but that didn’t stop my incessant watch of docking precision, heal angles, and route planning. I should have just relaxed, like the hundreds of bodies strewn around the Borat decorated lounges and cafeterias, throughout the 5 ferry crossing that I made from Italy to Greece.

Ferrying punters just aint what is used to be,  before Ryan Air. Mind you, the Greeks have no shortage of tonnage, nor any lack of expert captains who can back 100,000 tonnes in 45 knot crosswinds, as though they were parking a Smart car. I was impressed. Reversing, spinning turns, in tight harbours, car ramps down and ready, all without a tug boats in sight. It would give any Australian harbour master’s health and safety officer, an epileptic seizure.

Ever since Onassis scored the US half the US’s WW2 Liberty ships for a dime, in a dirty deal with JKF’s dad Jack, (in exchange for funding sonny boy John into the presidency), the Greeks have ruled the waves. They also ruled US politics for a while, but got shitty with JFK, for welching on the deal, by leaving the mafia’s gambling thugs to get mashed in the Bay of Pigs?/ Castro fiasco,  such that when JKF would  not save their arse, so Onassis/CIA had John shot (with one bullet that did 3 U turns in flight), and then, in traditional mafia protocol,  Onassis stole the missus Jackie. Os so the famous Gemstone files revealed. And the ship is named in memory of the sibling.

But back to getting to Turkey. Trains were uncool ever since Midnight Express.

So ferry it had to be. I arrived at Samos on dusk , on a Saturday evening.

There I was told , the next ferry to Turkey, was on the following Friday. My self-sic sense of humour took over, as it was either cry, or more fun, laugh. And have a beer. I was then told there was no camping site on Samos, so , as  twilight became dark, I had to find a beach somewhere bike-able, and crash.

Banging pegs into rocky Greek beaches, at night, is only possible after several beers.

The next morning, below a quaint whitewashed Greek church kinda thing, I set to sea a fluffy turd, ate some muesli, and went ferry hunting. By 9.30, I was on yet another steel block of flats, heading to Chios, an island famous for not much, other that growing and making the gum in chewing gum. The Turks had routinely massacred Greeks, but because the Turks warring leader fancied chewing gum, the Chios mob had been spared the massacre bestowed on their neighbours, getting themselves out of an otherwise sticky situation. In Chios, for $100, you could catch a shitty ferry to Turkey just 5 k away,  compared to 250k, for half that price,  for intra Greek run. It seems Greeks and Turks have ferry protocol issues.

Turkey ain’t a part of the EU, and like Thailand, is one of the few countries on earth,  that has never have been overrun by foreigners, including Brussels based bureaucrats. So on arrival, they made me pay a $30 visa fee.

I thought Turks now liked Australians, now that we realised that massacring each other at Gallipoli was all a big mistake, and we really didn’t mean it. Meanwhile, idiot patriots revere crazed mass murderer , Winston Churchill, who’s stupid, arm chair idea, Gallipoli was in the first place.

I tried to declare the bike papers to one of the hoards of officers at the dockside customs and immigration,  and in the end, gave up and just rode down the line of trucks awaiting inspection, and was on the streets of Cesme, bugger the customs, by just gliding through the border gates like royalty.

Cesme was seemingly the Turk’s Costa del Sol , a cheap , packages, Spanish equivalent, complete with endless ice cream sales, miles of tacky town house developments, and  nowhere to camp. On the directions of locals,  I was sent to chaos beach, where it seemed anyone was allowed anywhere to camp, and along with piles or rubbish, and a few hundred late Sunday afternoon beach goers, I picked a pitch. My protocol leaves actually erecting the tent at dusk, not before hand, and as my tent erects itself like a 13 year old boys wet dream, its not big deal making home in seconds. I ate a meal on the tables set up on the beach, and marvelled at the fact that the Aussie dollar has now sunk to the level of being of rough par with Turkey. To everywhere else in Western Europe, we have the spending power of Mexicans.

The guys with the AK47s seemed to think it was OK to camp. The dog walker was a bit alarmed that anyone dared to camp in thieving Turkey, but spared me a friendly hour of Turkish route suggestions. I’m kinda glad to be a silverback, as camping at any other age or by any other sexuality here, might be unwise.

But it wasn’t unwise, it was fun, and  good nights sleep on the edge of the sea, for free. I thought to myself, after years of sleeping in a house, that the fear of the sleeping boogie man, is a load of shit. The sleep bogie man, creates housing, the world around, as we know it. We should all just sleep on the nearest beach more often.

Mu first full day in Turkey was a laugh. And not being on an island, and being free to ride, I made like the dance song, to , ‘ride, ride…keep on riding, ride”.

It was a new experience to have no road map, no GPS, no Lonely Planet, nothing. Just a vague tourist map. Turkish signs , written it what might as well be yiddish, added spice. So fuck it, loosen up, get ready to get lost, and just ride. The GPS , sans maps, told me which was  north, and what was water, and what was land. That was ample. All I needed to know, was where the wet bit was.

So the first round-about threw me onto an expressway through 70k of country that would challenge the hardiest, dirt eating goat.  Wind turbines made up for agricultural handicap, and in no time, i was in a modern, multistorey city called Isnir, drinking chi, and eating some kinda Turkish sweet thing, of unknown make and model, like the dozens of new Turkish  foods, where I had no idea what they were made off. Little kinda roll things with peppers erect from each end, and weird hot drinks, which seemed to me like simple tea. Turkey is clearly the intertidal zone between the west, and middle east.  If a bloke called Constantine could re-dit the Jesus/Jewish gig, and modify ‘pagan’ sun worship into a religion that has held the world in a ‘Christian’ mind prison for 2000 years, all outta Istanbul, well, he’s a master bullshiter, in fact, he’s a master ‘Ist’-and-bullshitter’…. so Turks aint stupid. Unlike me. The Turks have a Machu Pichu kinda’ place, where Zeus and the rest of the stella gods were worshipped, just like in Machu PIchu, for 3000 plus years, through Hellenic, Turk and Roman regimes, and by fluke I found myself there, near Bergama, giving some Rod tips to the gods, ancestors and a bunch of incarnate ‘hang arounds’, as I’m want to do. My message is pretty simple, it simply says, ‘ Spirits,get ya shit together, get ready to party, its almost 2012, cycle shift time again.”  It’s hardly a detailed message,  but hey, it’s enough. After paying regards to Zeus, I pondered the 3000 years of Draco rule, where one mob after another ruled half the civilised world from this Bergama hill,  deploying the usual tricks, of hiding the real cosmic truths, enslaving the masses below, and guarding  the palace and their inner core mates, with fortress positioning and deadly armoury. Nothing changes.

Retuning from the mount like Moses with flat tire, I found a gas station to add 20psi to the rear knobbly. I  ordered a meal with me macho Muslim, all male mates, and indulged in my first  real Turkish barber experience, for one of those neo throat cutting shaves, in full traditional glory.  Now, given the gods, the back tire, and the facial hair where all in alignment, it was time to hit the coast again. This time, camp was to be  a beachside restaurant, where the deal was simple: eat here, and camping is free. Some  amused locals, one an economics grad with no job,( like most 2009 graduates), bought me a beer, as we sat in the dried sea weed, and discussed the basic similarities of all human plight,  despite the tower of Babel hurdles, whilst getting mildly pissed. The sun went down, along with another goat’s cheese salad, and it was another mad day on the road, to a place, where even now, as I write. here on location, I can’t remember the name. The Beatles are right… we are everywhere and nowhere baby.

You have some good days, and some fucking hardcore days,  especially when you a  fulltime traveller. Today , or the last 24 hours was rough. Turkey deserves all the shit it wears, from the nightmare tale told to the world in the cult film, Midnight Express. My tale gets a bit darker here. The twee Turk, who tried to practice his Borat English on me, on my first night, complained of the ‘undeserved’ reputation that the horror on film that  Midnight Express brought to Turkey. Fuck it… the truth hurts?

The day for me had a saddening and tough interlude. For a person like me, with maybe a deeper insight into what some call ‘conspiratorial”, the whole Gallipoli gig, is nothing more than a sickening piece of history, so badly understood, that grieving relatives have grave stones erected, stating, here lies a guy who was glad to die for his country. Glad to die? Yeah right, sure dad. I’m lying here, half my leg blown off, in the blazing sun, lead flying everywhere, in excruciating agony, as death approaches where medics fear to tread, I’m just 20 years old, and you fuckas, after I die in this miserable field of thorns , reckon I’m ‘glad’ to die for my country?

There is a plaque quoting the arch Iluminati tool Churchill, where he says the Turks will fall apart with a good army of 50,000 men and a few ships. One million men fought each other at Gallipoli. 250,000 of them died there. Churchill, you mate, are an evil, agent of hell, in there with arch Satanists, Kissinger and Hitler.

ANZAC cove, like many who visited it, with any degree of historical understanding, are almost brought to tears. It’s a good thing, about Australians, that masses of us   , make bus load trips to Gallipoli, every single day. They are not there for the trinkets and ice creams. There are none. ANZAC cove is a small beach, with a small headland. There are beaches just 900 m north or south, without imposing cliffs behind. If you were to make a beach assault, and had any sense of practicality about it, you would not do it at ANZAC cove. Curse you, may your souls rot in karmic demise, you British officers who had the stupidity to slaughter ANZACs with you insane geographical planning.

The chill sets in against the background of any typical summers day at ANZAC cove, as the beach is serene, coloured into the typical Mediterranean azure of the water…its a pretty little beach. The Gallipoli penninsular, is a gentle place, with charmed and lush farming, back from the beaches. They grow sunflowers there these days. My timing saw the sunflowers in wilt, with thousands of flower heads drooped as in prayer, as they shed there colour, petals, and life… as some sort, to me at least, of reminder of what happened there. Dozens of memorials, tributes and graveyards line the shores of Churchill’s little Turkish adventure.

What is it with the world, that sees millions of Australians relieved and sickened by the long overdue apology to the Aboriginals, yet no one, not a soul, even thinks to have the Australian and British Government apologise for massacring so many young Australian men, in pursuit of British Imperialism, to satisfy  Churchill’s lust for power and ownership of the Ottoman Empire. War history is a disgrace. Lest we forget? Lest we forget the truth…and the truth is, Australians should never have been at Gallippoli, no more than we should NOT be in Afganistan now, fighting a war, I can guarantee, on a wager of my right arm, that we will leave in defeat, as all before, after, as in the Golden Triangle precedent,, facilitating the world’s biggest and most blatent export of heroin, in world history. Stupidity beyond imagination? No, just more of the same, and whilst we never learn from history, we condemn more to needless death. Assault after assault was simply mown down by machine gun fire, and not to die instantly, but to be left, between the lines, with no morphine, no one to hold that fading hand, just a pitiful, agonising death, sometimes over days, in  a welter of dying mates.

I left Gallipoli, saddened and upset.

I was heading for Istanbul, 13 million Turks. Turkey is a fucking mess. It’s run by fundamentalist right wing Muslims. Making women wear neck to knee, with headdress, just to take a summers’ holiday. New money ( for some) is manifest in state, not local government  planning (  Turkish local government is a bureaucracy) ( like Melchert running Douglas?)…and the urban landscape of Turkey is a pile of rubble and rubbish interspersed with 4 to 5 storey , block housing, and for the ‘soma’ fed rich, the same thing in 3 storey, beachside town house developments. 80 million Turks means houses are no more, just mile after agonising mile of new developments.

I say it sucks, and Turks, wake up.

As for the natural beauty of Turkey, well, I ain’t seen anything worse in  Europe, put it that way.

So late in the afternoon, after taking a turnoff to Istanbul, i just said, fuck it, and as soon as I found a gap in the expressway guard rails, I did a U turn, and headed east back to Greece. I was not going to put up with life threatening drivers, and 13 million more Turks showing me how to ruin a great heritage with new found, debt driven money, simply because they too were succours for Greenspan’s  arch evil plan, to bury the world in debt so his immediate predecessors could get control, via weakened banks and governments, of world finance. Sorry Turkey, you are too ugly, too stupid, and I am too aware and awake, to sympathise with your noveau money stupidity. I’m leaving now. Or so I thought.

At the border, I was detained for nearly 24 hours. Why? Because the idiot customs, 3 days before at Cesme, had waved me through their gates without stamping my bike customs bit on the passport. Bad luck for me, as the omission had nothing to do with me, but was a failure of the Turkish bureaucracy. I arrived at the Greek border at dusk, and was shafted from one officer to another, I was stamped in, stamped out, and stamped in again. This went on as in true Midnight Express style,  where no one actually gave a shit about the dozens of detention rights they were ignoring, as all that mattered for the greasy Muslim career officers, was insuring they kept their noses clean.

I was forced back into the bleak, dry nowhere-ville of Turkey hinterland,(Ipsala) to a hotel designed and run by Borat, where,  I was ripped off, and fucked over. When i turned up for ‘breakfast’ the Borat clones showed me into a empty, purple decorated restaurant, with 400 seats but just one client,  me, and  then smiled as they proudly waved their hands over the lone table with today’s breakfast buffet, comprising some tomatoes, olives and goat fuckers cheese. So I took out my own Muesli, and asked for a bowl, by showing the stupid fuckas, the picture on the front on the pack, where this thing called a bowl was needed. It was as though I had asked for a space ship. The idiots had no idea what a bowl was, despite the picture, until I marched them into the kitchen, found a bowl amongst the rubble, and gave them a demonstration, of how, incredible as it may seem, you actually put this stuff called cereal in a bowl , and eat it. Without adding fucking olives.

The 300 room ‘hotel’ must have had 20 guests at max. Its lift only went 1 floor, despite being 5 stories high, built in the middle of fucking nowhere. The architects had a few mistakes, like beams below head high on main stairs, and power points all located behind joinery. TV was Turkish game show sing-a-longs, interspersed with ads for toxic household chemicals. Get me fucking out of here!!!

But again, no such luck.

By late afternoon, back at  Turkish border post,  hammered by thousands Turks in Mercs, heading back to Deutschland, I finally lost it. After being fucked around by one blame shifting officer after another,  the time had come to forget the obliging smile, and walk straight into the commanding officer’s grand office, demanding , as I held my wrists together as if cuffed, that they either arrest me here and now, as I was calling my embassy, or, let me fucking free, now!

The big hissy, after 24 hours of shit, was a big gamble. I had seen Midnight Express.

But fuck it, as least a bed in jail was free. My commotion set in train a  chook slaughter yard of headless blood spurting, as one officer after another started yelling at each other, until finally, they realised it was their problem, not mine, and if they detained me any longer, their problem will be a lot bigger.

‘Good bye Mr Davis’, was their parting words as my passport and papers were handed back.  Twisting the throttle to max, 10m out of the Turkish gates, I yelled a few Turkish bye byes and fuc offs, that they could have heard in Istanbul. My advise?… fuck going to Turkey, there are plenty of other places with goat fucking topography and shit food to choose from aside of Turkey. Whoever named the place Turkey, got it in one.

Its’ been a few days now, since I left Turkey, and I feel kinda bad about dumping on the poor Turks as much as I did. I hadn’t yet seen Albania. In Turkey, when I told a guy I was going to Albania next, he looked at me sideways, and said, “Are you sure?”.

The Turks, well, the people themselves are kinda cool, even the dicwits at the border were at least friendly, they even got me tea. Its the governments, as always, that ruin societies. Drive anywhere in Turkey, and you will see statue after statue, to some bayonet wielding mob, hacking into another. This is a bad sign, when it comes to a society. The border post had a quote on the wall, from the legendary, but duplicitous and evil tyrant Ataturk, ‘Peace at home, Peace in the world’…yeah, right mate, this from the super warring Turkish leader, with his own cruel little empire, once called Ottoman. At-a-boy, At-a-Turk. What a hypocrite. Gallipoli proved how good Turks are at war, remember?…they won.

I had a two night interlude camping on the nice beaches in northern Greece, SE of Thessalonica on the peninsular around Sithonia, where Greek retirees had built themselves a new, tacky, community along some sheltered bays and beaches. With increasingly arsey knack, with my new, don’t pay approach to accommodation, I just pitched my tent on the pine needles just back from the best beach location in the area, and, as it always true, the best things in life, and real estate, are free.

It was a big ride to Albania, not well helped by little sleep, after reading Ickes gob smacking recent additions to the already massive revelations about the grand lie known as 911.

It is beyond belief, the extent of the 911 lie,  it’s contradictions and outright bullshit .

What amazes me, is that most of the Western world swallowed the bullshit, and continue to believe the 911 by Bin Laden myth.

It will one day, go down in history, as the greatest ever fraud committed in the 20^th century. If you still believe Muslim terrorists where behind 911, after all has since been revealed, you are sadly, in a bit of information stupor, and I suggest you take 30 minutes out, to read the net, watch a DVD, or glance one of a dozen books on the subject. If you still believe all FOX has to say, just stick with games shows and eat ya fluoride tablets. There’s fading hope for you.

The EU must have dumped a massive, build now, pay ( the toll) later deal on Greece, and in a country where the roads are falling apart, they have built an expressway from east to west that has to be ridden to be believed, as never, anywhere on earth, have I seen such a, who-gives-a-shit attitude to civil engineering cost. Where maybe cut and fill might have breeched some of the valleys, the new EU road has mile after mile of staggeringly high bridges, and enough tunnels to outdo 50 years of Italian digging effort.  At 130k/h  across sweeping bridges, 400m up in the air, or roaring down mile after mile of through mountain tunnels, on a road almost to myself, for almost 300k, was something else.

The toll booths were still under construction. Some infrastructure bankers must have lit a few cigars, and popped a few corks when the ink dried in this deal. How absurd, to leave community roads in squalor, whilst building unused ‘roads to nowhere’ like the A2 in Greece. No wonder the EU is crushing so many in taxation.

But 911 and Greek autostradas, aside, I was, later in the day, in for yet a another shock,  on arriving in Albania.

The line up of cars on the Greek side of the border post , to clear police and customs was 4 hours long, in the hot sun. So much for the seem-less EU border idea.

With sly tactics, I was through the mile long cue in 30 minutes, simply by weaving the Beemer to the head of the car cue, and then de-helmuting, and sitting in the gutter looking destitute, whilst making  jokes with the drivers of the very front cars, such that they insisted I go first.

The Greeks side of the border was a mess. The Albanian side was a pigsty. Lonely Planet described the southern most town of Albania, Sarande, as Albania’s cutest seaside town. If Sarande is their cutest, then I would hate to see their ugliest: Beirut after a good shelling looks tidier than Sarande.  Lonely Planet, in there forever attempt, to be upbeat, have at times, lost it. When the travel hippies who founded Lonely Planet, sold out for $180million dollars, there was a message in there, for us the readers.

The first thing you notice when driving into Albania, are hundreds of concrete dome shaped things in paddocks everywhere. On closer inspection, they are bunkers,  bunkers that an atomic bomb wouldn’t worry.  700 thousands of them. For 3.5M Albanians. What kind of fucked up, paranoid society could have lived in such fear, that they built these gun shoot bunkers literally everywhere? The 50 million killed in the name of a sharing caring idea called communism, is clearly something I am yet to come to terms with. I’m told the communist leader insisted the enginner who designed the things, sit inside one, as a series of tanks shelled and attacked him. He walked out fine, just a bit shell shocked for the rest of his life.

Many Albanians, without no such thing as a car, lost their virginity in one of these bunkers.

The roads and environment leading to the Albania coast have to be seen to be believed. I thought Bolivian infrastructure was on the edge of rabid. Albania, or my first impression at least, made me think of Bolivia instantly. But it’s a different gig. Developers have been given a shit load of money here, and not an ounce of social conscious, and they have fucked the place overnight.  I had hoped for some old, real Europe, with donkeys and stone cottages. There still are cows and rancid horses grazing the garbage bins on the roads, but the stone cottages are now mere developer’s rubble, here in Sarande.  The Rubble from the building boom lines the road into the tourist ‘mecca’, that these idiots are trying to create, in mile after mile of truck dumps, interspersed with the odd bit of putrid garbage. Half built 6 storey ghettos, surrounded their neighbours in dust and rubbish,   and make up every third building, all frozen in half built states, now the Greenspan trap has snapped across the world’s fingers. The territory is mountainous and bleak to start with, a sort of biologically challenged area at the best of times, but after the addition of an influx of unconstrained earth moving savages, the environment has gone from bleak to depressing. It took centuries of previous conquerors to largely ruin dry Europe, but in the last 20 years, with bulldozers and excavators, the current generation has done more damage than a millennia of Romans and Ottomans. It’s an environmental catastrophe of massive proportions.

But all through this, there are dozens of new Mercs and Range Rovers, limping through the pot holes and rubble. I almost jumped of my bike in yet another log jammed, mud and rubble traffic jam and went up to the dickhead in the new black Ranger Rover in front of me, to say, ‘mate, why the fuck would you both buying and expensive  limo like this Ranger Rover, when you are living in a cack hole of this proportion?’ What is the point of such blatant luxury, if no one gives a shit about the ‘us’ part of living, to the point where the place is a pigsty full of faeces besmeared pearls? I obviously had some lessons to learn about the post commo, community consciousness.

I rode into the sunset through mile after mile of dry rocky, beachless coastline until I finally found a single beach, that is again, looked like a rock pile, meets quarry, with its beach decorated  with up-ended bunkers, makeshift discos , and a million holiday makers, and an odd camper. I found a spot under some olive trees, bought a beer, pitched my tent, and when I look out my torch, I noticed that what I thought was a large rag hanging in the tree behind my tent, was in fact a rancid, drying goat skin carcass. Turkey is all of a sudden looking quite civilised.

It wasn’t till my second day in Albania, that I started to understand what was going on.

I had decided to just ride on through the shit heap, and whilst there was an odd spectacular mountain pass, overall, the place was disgusting. It was everything I hate. I looked and looked, but not a trace of old, heritage was to be seen. There was shit everywhere, no town planning, and everything was an unfinished junk yard, covered in dust.

The Albanian idea of a beachside holiday town, are a sprawl of shitty apartment blocks, surrounded in rubble and garbage. Local cuisine?…dead sheep.

Let me give some advise of driving in Albania… Don’t.

These idiots, 10-15 years ago, didn’t have cars.  Back then, traffic cops controlled the traffic well…there was none. Roads then were fine, for donkeys.  But then, Albanians figured out how to get cars. They stole them. I’m told 95% of Albanian all cars, 10 years ago, were stolen from places like Germany. Today, every 5^th car is Mercedes. Today, I’m told, its only every second Merc that is ‘hot’. You can buy a Merc in Albania for chips.  So, in summary,  we have idiots behind the wheel of new 4 litre power packs, who have only just learnt to drive, on roads where donkeys now fear to tread, where are absolutely no road rules. It’s fucking dangerous shit, especially on a bike.

Some of the overtaking tactics, and driver stupidity, had to be seen to be believed. They may be maniacs in Naples, but at least Italians are world champion riders and drivers.

I was a nervous mess by the time I made it to a massive seaside shithole called Durres. I was under duress. I saw a internet cafe, and being outta touch for a week, just had to race in get my news, as the sun set, and i had nowhere to stay, in mile after mile of 8 storey abyss. So I just got on the bike, and said, spirits, save my arse, find me some recluse. I rode through mile after mile of ugly traffic jam, until the apartments turned into container depots. It was looking grim, but I had already conceded defeat, and was ready to sleep in sewerage. But I had an inkling, when i got a glimpse down the coast. So I rode, till the road turned to dirt, from dirt to rubble, and there infront of me, was a ram shackle kinda off, one-day-will- be marina… literally at the end of the road.

To my surprise, out popped an totally eccentric nutter called Wolfgang, who raided his arms ina wide sweep, proclaiming himself king off all i could see, and asked what I wanted. I wanted a place to camp.

I got more than a place to camp, I got fed, entertained, and informed. Wolfgang, as it turned out, was a former skipper, a writer, and marina manager, and more interestingly, he was a political shit stirrer, who had even the Albanian cabinet and mafia under his toe. Wolfgang had arrived here, 15 years ago, established a beach head ( literally) and fended of mafia, gun toting maniacs, corrupt governments, and had built himself the embryo of what will no doubt one day be Albania’s first marina.

In the process of doing this, Wolfgang had become the blog equivalent of Mike Moore, and had exposed, and undermined many corrupt mafia deal, and evil western corrupter. I had no idea how corrupt, how mafia impacted, and how desperate the situation was in Albania, until Wolfgang took me for a drive, for Sunday coffee, pointing out which evil fucka owned what, and who had been murdered to get it built.

The day I arrived, they mafia had just shot and murdered 4 cops, including the leader of the anti mafia police, which in itself is an oxymoronic concept, as the cops are so bent, there really is no such thing as anti mafia cops, they are just dealers in sentences. The guys who planned the sting,  where already in jail anyway, but not out of power. No one is safe, in Albania. You can just wheel in ya bulldozers, and build a block of flats in Albania, regardless of whether you own the land. It how dangerous and corrupt you are, that counts. I’m told much of the mafia expertise come from the centuries old alliance with the original and best mafia, the Italians.

The stolen Mercs still have the German plates. That way, they don’t pay rego.

My social conclusion, is the society in Albania is a rape victim in perpetuity. First it was raped by the communist government. Now, in counter swing, it is being raped by the mafia, the grand cleptocracy. No wonder the EU won’t let the Albanian in…they want their cars back first.

Drugs, false identities, laundering, black handed deals with equally black handed western governments and corporations, who are fully complicit in corruption process, regardless if you name in Vodaphone or Siemens…..this is the reason Albania now is a squalor of rubble and Mercs. It’s a disgrace. But hey Rod, welcome to the former communist world. Maybe all  I had to do, was accept it. I’m told Durres had prospered by being the port for the NATO transformation and aid, into the ideal NATO result: another mafia state, where the West could do all the dirty work that it finds hard to do in its own backyard. We, seemingly, in the West, are as much to blame for the corrupting  the once communist Europe, as the inhabitants themselves. We are the one, at government, and at corporate levels, shaking the black hands.

Looking at the dual headed, eagle-meets-serpent headed flag of Albania, on a blood red background, it’s clear, who and what the agenda is here, as the symbology, Iluminati-eque, or Sum-Aryan message, says it all in one.

Don’t kid yourself that the quaint ying-yang sign is about tadpoles, they are snakes in original form, and the mythology and symbology permeates every culture, religion, and politburo on earth, for those with a deeper understanding of history. But yes, there is dark and a light side to all the twisted  serpentine symbology, but it’s he who holds the knowledge, he who is ‘Iluminated’ , that controls the game, for either good, or evil. Unfortunately, for the last few thousand years, the guys at the top have favoured the dark use of the knowledge. It will be interesting to see if indeed, it turns out that the twisted helix of the DNA,  is infact  the real message being implied in the twisting serpents, as DNA is a whole new game.

I was told Montenegro, to the north, was also a mafia hole, just Russian mafia, not Italian mafia. So I rode right on through, in mile after mile of log jammed Mercs on never ending potholes, where it was impossible to figure where the potholes ended, and where the roadworks  began. It was seemless. It was high summer here, and every fourth car was part of a Sunday wedding, I would have passed at least 30 or 40 wedding cavalcades, today. Who the fuck would get married in Albania? I’d run.

The final bridge, feeding from a half built highways to a one lane, rusted out bridge,( to get into Montenegro), had a  traffic jam at the bridge alone (if you could call it a bridge) that was a 30 minute wait…just for 150 yards progress.

As soon as I was out of the shithole Albania, the farm land smiled, nature took a deep breath, and there was community intact, informed, and seemingly quite fun.

And it was still cheap, so for 10 Euro, I got my first room in months, and got to washing clothes, jet blasting the bike, and changing oil. I was in Ulcinj, where a million kinda fun Russians, do high density bikinis at the beach. But it’s almost civilised.

One of the first things you must do when you leave Albania, is shit out the toxic waste dump you were exposed to there. Fish, Fish for example…why did i eat fish in Durres, if I had just read the water was so polluted, it made swimmers rash up? I looked into Wolfgangs quaint Adriatic harbour, which he declared clean, but I noticed bubbles everywhere. Gas exploration has gone a bit too far in Albania…now the mud oozes Methane.

I was totally surprised, after the heritage destruction of Albania, to come across a seaside town in Montenegro, old Yugoslavia, where there is port of heritage excellence, its almost a world beater..it’s called Kotor as in rotor.

There is a fiord harbour there, flanked by massive mountains, along who’s shores is mile after mile of ancient stone seawall, with Devon-meets-Adriatic, little stone warehouses lining the foothills, all fully intact, and largely not ruined by Hilton, Vodaphone and the rest of  the usual suspects. The anchorage, from a boaties perspective, was magnificent. Even the once mega glam Christina O was moored here.

I’m staying here to explore.

And it seems Kotor, like its venetian influenced nearby Dubrovnik, was once, and particularly cultured, and seemingly prosperous waterfront town, or towns.

When regular homes and warehouses, cop ornate stone carved details, it’s obvious that there owners were not dirt poor. Ah, the riches of the once great Med. Now not a fish in sight, so reeling in Russian holiday makers will have to suffice.

This was Montenegro, another conspirator, I add, in shelling what Lord Byron once righty described as ‘the pearl of the Adriatic”. The Serbs once had the third best equipped army in Europe. In Croatia, at the receiving end of this all powerful army, they had partisan guts. I had coffee in Croatia today, with toughen looking kinda character, on a KTM 690, the real deal in adventure bikes. He had served 5 years in war, very recent war. War where the Catholic west met the intertidal zone of the Muslim east. A pal of his, with some anti tank gear he bought himself, crept up to the Serbian army, and one by one, he personally destroyed 40 Serbian tanks. Now that’s gutsy. Its a disgrace of monumental proportions, to think the world stood by as the animals at war, shelled Dubrovnik old city, as quite frankly, its architectural splendour out does anything in Paris or Rome.

The residue of Tito’s brutality, the massacres after and during WW2, added to the disgrace that was the most recent war in European history, have left a lot of older, uglier men, holding hearts of stone. The most cruel and savage of wars, is war with one neighbours, civil war.  I have had to really work at forgiving and improving my attitude to the Slavic mob, having had some very ugly experiences with them in the 80′s, when at 29, I had employed dozens of them building 30 storeys of just another thing, and my attitude was battling to improve, after i came across one evil old shit after another, all with the manners of Stalin, the happiness of a dead baby, and the appearance of a toxic waste dump. Unfortunately, these old bastards seemed to proliferate in the business of running what they call Auto Kamps, in Mein Kamp style. If it wasn’t for the cooler, younger generation in the former Yugoslavia, the place would be unbearable.

The Croatian coast is the best I have seen in the Med. I have seen a shitload of coast now, all France’s Riviera, the Italian coast down to the gorgeous Amalfi coast, and add in most of the Greek coast, many of its islands, and all of Turkey’s northern coast. That is a lot of coastline. So saying Croatia has the most blessed coast, is not an unqualified comment.

I add, however, that the Croatia coast in August is absurdly packed, fast becoming overdeveloped, and is a seasonal rippoff. But the blessings bestowed by nature, cant be beaten, as the mountain range that runs north south, forms spectacular backdrops, and with the same, parallel mountain range 10k offshore, almost the full length of the 600k coast, it’s a sailors heaven.

I am suffering coastal holiday saturation, after weeks and weeks riding along the beach ball, triteness of millions of Europeans soaking their sun starved bodies on every square inch of swimmable Med coastline. After a while, I’m left thinking, what’s the fucking point. Pay too much. Go to beach. Lie there till crisp. Do it again the next day. If ya young and cute, maybe get laid in the gaps. That’s about it. Oh, and if you get bored, do circles on a jet ski mindlessly, get pulled behind a boat on a parachute, like an idiot, or drink more beer. That’s maybe someone’s idea of a holiday, but it sure aint what travel is all about. Its soma in the Orwellian meets Brave New World. I’m a bit over it, and am heading to the alps, the urban, anything please, just no more stupid shops selling bright blow up things, or other colourful crap that gets thrown out as soon as the grey home life sets back in. What is it about holiday makers, that makes them want to buy silly, kindergarten coloured crap, as soon as they pull on a swimming costume? They do it the world over. I’m over it. Work all year, day in day out, just to go lick an ice cream? The world has lost all meaning, in its social purpose. Bring on the apocalypse, at least it could be a bit exciting. Oh, and not wanting to sound too racist, if there is going to be some devastating earthquake and tsunami somewhere, I recommend Albania. Woops.

As I pulled out of Montenegro headed to Dubrovnik, a black cat darted across my path, just as I hit the road.  I’m not superstitious, but when you are a 100km meat carcass, on a highway, sans airbags, you can’t just dismiss signs as impossibilities.

So I did my daily, ‘save my arse oh great spirits’ prayer, ending with the usual tribute the pagan sun god Amon, modified to what Christians have no idea what the say, when they say,’Amen’.

I didn’t get creamed by shit did happen. I heard a jerk and flutter at high speed, and once again , I looked down to see the self erecting tent gone. Recalling my M1 drama, I did an instant U turn, and floored it, back up to road, to retrieve the critter before it was pulped by a truck. But it was nowhere to be found. Not good. But on pulling up, I found it, jammed under the panniers, having been dragged at high speed for 1000m.

I had severed the frame in 4 locations, so the pop up, was now a flacid rag. I was within a few weeks of departure, heading back into rain territory, and was without a home, where room rates were 70% of my daily budget. Not good.

I stashed the ruins back alongside the bike, and in foul mood, headed north, expecting to quickly find a campsite, in which i could unfold my misery, and contemplate my demise. But , as the garage attendant informed me, it was 50 k to the next campsite, called ‘Rio’ something, and sure enough, it was a depressing , overpriced shithole.

The next day unfolded to a sensational sweeping drive along perfect road, up the Croatian coast to a funky homestead waterfront, where every room in the house, and every square inch of garden was rented to one of the zillion holiday makers doing the Croatian thing.

The next day, I got busy with splints, tubes and tapes, and somehow, put humpty dumpty back together again, recalling the greater misery of having sails shredded when at sea. Brian, or that was his Aussie nickname, was the manager, on the piss,and entertaining everyone, kids, mums, and madmen alike. Accordingly, he took a liking to me, and gave me some of his beer. The site was sort of half built, but it had a funky roasting fire, a stove, and an open air shower, a luxury, to boot. Adriatic azure lapped at the stome landing platforms, draped in windsurfers. I’d that afternoon, purchased a mile of orange adhesive tape, and proceeded to repair my shreaded tents in true Christo style. A few beers lead to some unusual splint materials for the 4 broken tent ribs. Australian etiquette required fencing wire to become one splint, strapped by cable ties, and wrapped in plastic, orange style. Brian, or Branco-something, came up with a novel spilt for one of the trickier corners, and now, a complete windscreen wiper, again cable lied and wrapped in plastic, orange style, keeps one part of the tent rigid.

Holes in the tent itself are now a mass of orange tape, tastefully offset by the moss green of the main tent body. The whole effect is quite cute. I wake in the morning to two orange eyes looking at me, like stain glass windows in a green array.

Now to matters motor cycle.

There is no question now, despite my reservations, that I have become a fullblown, fully qualified motorcyclist.

Months now, riding day after day, make all those weekend warriors on bike, look like true amateurs. I qualify my expertise on one basic fact> I’m still alive.

Biking is not exactly safe, especially in rock strewn Andean hairpins, and Albania intersections. Even  circling the Arc de Triumph is a challenge.

So I pat myself on the back, and get into the idea, the culture and the people. For some odd reason, these days, nearly all serious tourers, are over 45, many over 60, especially out of Germany, and good on em. One German rider i met, met was heading to the States for 6 months, looking as fit as a forty year old, with the blessing, I add of his cute wife, 20 years the younger. It only cost him $700 to ship his bike to the US, door to door, return included.

Now guys, any bike riders reading, there is, believe it of not, a place where you can get seriously fast and funky on bike, and still end up both alive, and with license.

There is Croatian coast road. First built by the Romans, then upgraded by Tito, and recently repaved and made redundant by a mega autoban just inland, from Zadar, ( without the cops radar) to Senj, on the northern coast of Croatia. You could roller blade it in comfort. But each bend is an immaculate conception of view, camber, and grace, and there are hundreds of uninterrupted miles of the fuca.

Hot modern bikes have tyres stickier than golden syrup, frames tighter than the 911 lie, and power packs that make the Norton Commando or Kawasaki Z1 look like prams.

I rode this road in amazed thrill. Even with shitful knobby tyres, now almost slicks, I was hanging it out. My removalist truck panniers, even with the height of GS, were almost an endangered species. To the left, was the azure of the Adriatic, ducking and weaving its way through inlets and coves, and flooded as a mountain range met its Atlantis farewell: a view of uninterrupted majesty. To the right and above me, was an outrage of the unsunken mountains, bursting up 1000m, garnished with a salad of hardly vegetation at the lower levels, and strictly hardcore rock at height. Spectacular.

Lefthanders were tight and terrific: these were the bends at the head of each bay. Right handers wrapped the headlands, with the view spetac, but with the need for the concentration spiced, as loosing it here, and it was rocky and wet ending.

They used to say the Italian Riviera was the grand ride. Not any more. Not at 50k, with every bend concealing an idiot doing a U turn to slide his Smart into a vacant parking slot. I met some German guys on deadly street racers, who, like me agreed, that the sexiest road in Europe, is the one above, to which I refer. They come here annually, just to leave  some rubber behind. They keep it simple, with full leathers, a credit card, and a sleeping bag.

Just before Senj, in Northern Croatia, we all ended up in wild side camping ground deep in a beachside ravine, where clumsy campervans and cars could not enter, and where a dozen or so tents  enjoyed a truly spectacular Adriatic beach, below 4 or 5 old stone fishing cottages.

The guys with credit cards and no tents, had done well that night, as when after midnight, the neo cyclonic winds set it, even though we were in the lee of the mountain, the wind flattened nearly every tent, and if was not for the old fig to which my tent was tied, it would be half way across the Adriatic with my  towel. Towels sink.

The water was clear to 40m. I swam and swam the next morning, but never found my towel.  120km/hr, within an hours build up, we get the wind risk that is the Adriatic. As my tent flatten into my face at 3 in the morning, all  Icould think was, thank Christ this is a tent, not a boat.

I rode in Slovenia the next day, by the by ways, and not the highways. What a relief it was, to be away from the moronic mentality of beach ball Europe in summer. No more crowds. No more traffic. No more signage, crap and over development. Up and up the roads into the Alps rose, each mile getting greener, and more real. Bullshit new blocks of flats disappeared, and mile by mile, everything became more Hapsberg, more Austrian. Sure, the Hapsburgs were evil Iluminati Satanists, but hey, they make great town planners, farmers, and architects. The Hills are Alive, with the Sound Of Music.

There is Slovenia, and there is Slovakia. It’s a fine point, but they are two different countries. Slovenia, is the most forested, and allegedly greenest country in Europe. Sure, on the autobahns, you can cross Slovenia in 2 hours, but not by the hay stack route I took. They have these things called a Kozolec, that are hay drying racks under snow deflecting roofing, that use a cool  grid pattern timberwork,  and they deserve the national iconic status they have delivered, and they, like all the pretty little challet homes , are fucking everywhere.  Yo di ley hi ho.

I ended up in a alpine resort area near Postojna, where a gorgeous alpine restaurant allowed me to camp in their spectacular garden, in the prettiest woodland I have seen in years, and guys, my spinach noodles with pumpkin has just arrived at my table, so uuroo till next paragraph.

Slovenia has got to get the big rave. Pity its so tiny, you could autobahn through it in two hours. I didn’t. I had no idea what to expect. I was stunned. Its bar far the best value beauty in Europe on my trip so far. The zig zags I did, on the back roads, were beyond belief, in alpine beauty. The limestone version of the ALPS runs  through Slovenia, turning crystal clear mountain streams into turquoise jewels…. all set against mountain backdrops, that has me reconsidering the Andes, as the worlds most spectacular mountains. Unlike Western Europe’s ALPS, the Slovenia version is more about nature than ski resorts and industrial parks in the valleys. Its not cheap, but its no sheer theft, like the western ALPS. If I were I skier, I’ld be giving the French and the Austrians the finger, not the cheque, if I were insane enough to go sking in $$$$ Europe.

I’m just an outright fan of alpine areas. Comparing they types of tourist along the med beaches, to  Alpine versions, I vote Alpine every time, as the Alpine ones are sporting, healthy, and into nature. The beach ones, are vain, lazy, and are just into suntans. The guys running the camping sites, are cool and sporting too, unlike  the fat ugly arseholes cashing in on their grandad’s waterfront land around the Adriatic, running the hospitality around the Med.

Slovenians are multilingual ,well educated, and flanked by Slavs, Italians and Germans.

My border arrival was met by the village fete, were the local dads were hacking up slabs of meat on throwing them on bread for the hungry, fund raising eaters, as the stage entertained with weird local dance and Slovenian music. I checked in on the gliding guys, the rafting guys, the kayakers, and believe it of not, the world high diving guys, who throw themselves into the azure lime flavoured rivers, from great heights. With the river water colour so alluring, who wouldn’t be tempted to dive into it.

The Slovenian roads were masterpieces of biker joys, and every bike rider in Europe, pack after pack, had come to Slovenia to ride the valleys and mountain passes. Thousands of us. The speed freaks, in leather and clip-ons, must be immune to paying local speeding fines, as they sure know how to hang it out at Mach 2.

There is a great camaraderie  amongst the international bike people, and everyone, but everyone waves the spare fingers above the clutch ( there is no way anyone lets off the throttle side)…. and I , with mega spot lights on each front pannier, like landing lights, return the waves with a handsome light flash. You end up doing this almost every second minute. It’s different to the weird French and Dutch, who wave with their foot when overtaking, very odd.

There is a whole restaurant and hotel set, specifically targeting touring bikes. It would be fair the call Slovenia, the bikers world capital. Go ride it one day.

I had a dive into the Alpine gorges, and was out again almost as fast as a reversed home movie, with instant less volume in the slugos after the icy hit.

After one free nights camping at the woodland restaurant neat Skocjan caves  , I had another in the spectacular Soca  Valley,  riverside, above Bovec, and a third night  in bed of forest compost, on the edge of a Lake Bohinj where it seems the whole place was designed by the gods of nature based tourism, in some fit of creative beauty. I really like the Slovenians, they are unassuming, cool, and not full of greed like us and the western Europeans. The old commo ways didn’t wreck everything, and my dream to see Europe in an authentic, rural kinda beauty, without the evils of the cleptocracy, and post commo mafia, was happily fulfilled in Slovenia.

I give Slovenia a 9 out of 10 to. If I was to buy a cut little alpine retreat anywhere in Europe, it would be Slovenia, the best kept secret. It’s as clean and charming as Austria, without the hype, and is historically a  Hapsburg, Austrian ruled gig anyway. When a beer and a meal is affordable, it makes life a lot more fun than much of the remaining rippoff Europe.

So I was in no hurry to leave Slovenia, but had kinda run out of Alpine bits, so slipped over the border into Austria, via those lime stone Alps.

Riding around Austria feels like being a toy man, on a toy bike, in a big model train set. It’s all so perfect, so beautiful, it makes me wonder how Austrians can cope with the rest of the untidy, imperfect world. If Hitler had been a bit more cool and benevolent, the Austrians may well have made good world leaders. Arnie and Adolf eh…Austria’s 2 grand contributions to world leaders. Mmm. Weird.

I wasn’t even going to bother dealing with the campsite and restaurant food price hikes when shifting from east to west Europe, so I bought some bread and canned bean soup ( delicious I add) and headed up into the Austrain woods, just below the winter snow ski line, 150 south of Salzburg, and wound my way up some foresters trail, made a fab fire, downed half a bottle or red, and loved it, remembering why I love home so much , as in Australia, it’s not hard to find real camping sites, where there is no one around, and you can make a fire, as here in Europe, after months on the road camping, this was the very first time I could actually sit a around  a fire in the woods. Europe has one big problem…500,000,000 Europeans, and not much space.

The next day I was going to do lunch in Salzburg, where the hills are alive, with the sound of mass tourism, to then spilt the city and camp.

My bike is an amazing thing. It has a benevolence born of angelic guidance. I recall the time in Ireland, when the old Beemer was about to throw a crank sensing switch, a potentially  super expensive, get towed fuck up, and the bike somehow, in a one on a million manipulation, konked out, and rolled to the door of a BMW dealer, who directed me to a repair guy who was so kind, so cheap, and so dedicated to helping, it restored my faith in mechanics. Had it happened anywhere else, I would have been fucked.

Today was the same. As I pulled into Salzburg, 100m from my destination, I felt the front brakes go soft, so I parked in on the river at the gates to the old city, took out my tools, whipped off the front disk calliper, and discovered a shoe thrown from a brake pad. It was immaculate timing, as the internet cafe nearby, led me to a equally close dealer, who had the part in from the airport within hours, but I somehow knew, the real reason for the Beemer’s choice of  splat spot was angelic intervention. My real worry on the bike was not the brakes, it was the tyres.

I had started with knobby tyres, which are bad enough at the best of times, but when worn to the core, with slow leaks from old nails, and a grip pattern so bad, it  reduced my road contact in dangerous ways, I was really running on empty, and it was getting dangerous, but with $500 needed for new tyres, and already living on beans with bears in the forest, there was no way I was going to afford new rubber in Europe. But as I arrived at the BMW dealer in Salzburg, home of zee perfectionist Aryan mechanic, I had whispered a please please to the gods, as I knew,  and the Beemer knew, there was a reason behind this twist of mechanical  fate.

There, in the back of the BMW bike workshop, was a pile of seemingly, as new Tourag ‘used’ tyres, and sure enough, I could help myself. Within minutes, the bike was stripped of bags, brakes and wheels, and for $150, an hour or two later, I had new brakes, spare brake linings( care on the kind mechanics), and new rubber. Very sexy.

Once again, the Beemer had delivered a little pain, for a lot of gain, and in a place, more expensive than just about anywhere else in Europe. This was getting to be beyond coincidence.

It was at this point, that I decided this bike could not be sold, as it was vehicle blessed.

I had just the night before, studied and read more confirmation of the intuitive benevolence theory, the one of just surrendering to the cosmos, where the theory goes kinda like this…if ya just do what ya soul wants, and float along on ya lilo, whilst others paddle like fuck to do this, or do that, and instead just be, then the cosmos tends to look after you….. sure, it throws some little nasties at you, but nasties designed to help, long term, not hinder.

I’ve travelled now for 5 fulltime years of my 54 so far. Each time, towards the travel’s end, I get a bad case of, ‘oh shit’… ‘I got to go to work’paranoia. Even now, I go, oh shit, it’s a recession, my career type is largely unemployable, and I could be fucked real soon. But then thinking back, I have never been fucked, and always, things work out just fine, on the day, regardless of the months spent worrying about the future. So when, these days, my mind reverts  to ‘oh shit, where’s tomorrow’s money gunna came from’,  I have to whip myself back into the now, tell my egoic self to go fuck itself, and, as in today’s case, just soak in the absolute beauty and magnificence, of riding through the drop dead gorgeous Austrian countryside. If you look after the now, the rest is not an issue.

The number plate of the bike is so perfect, and so odd, I add, for British plates, as they read, “Que Sera Sera’. I couldn’t believe it, when after owning the bike for a few months, I read the plate for the first time.

A 62 year old Italian guy, also touring on a BWW, noticed the plate straight away, along with the obvious fulltime traveller look of the kit, and was instantly impressed, breaking immediately into song… “whatever will be, will be, the future’s not ours to see, que sera , sera”. The tune stuck in my head for days, quite happily.

I like the story of the old Indian grandfather, teaching his young sqaw-sters, a lesson in life. As the tale goes, the old guy explains, he has two wolves competing in his head, one wolf obsessed with fear, anger and greed, and the other wolf into peace, love and fun.

The kid asks, ‘So granddad,’ which wolf wins?’ And the old Indians replies, “The one I feed’.  So it is, it seems with Zen and the art of touring.

Just across the border from toy train-s-ville-Austria, is the place that the evil but stylish Hapsbergs had as the base of their glorious kingdom. Its a place that was well fucked over by the Hapless bergs, overt feudal masters,( unlike today’s covert feudal masters). The place to which I refer is the Czech Republic,  one of those central European hot spots, that every emperor and his sycophants want to rule.

The first world war almost got flame going here. The Nazis were appeased, between the wars, in another ‘shadow government’ deal, and took out, not only Sudetenland, but the whole fucking country. Hitler lost. So Czechs , who’d been slaughtered by the Nazis, then slaughtered the Germans, in their farewell march. Stalin had a go next, he slaughtered a good hand. Then local  liberal socialists, 40 years ago to the month, wanted to put a ‘friendly face’ on socialism, to which the Russians responded, (with no idea what a friendly face even looks like),  by wheeling the tanks into Prague, or Praha, as they call it locally, Praha .  The Russians kept up the grim face, and oppression, until , a few weeks after the Berlin wall went, the velvet revolution freed Praha ha ha, with the final joke being pulled by the EU, a ‘velvet’ takeover, is ever there was one. These days, the country is besieged by tour groups. Poor fucking Czechs. No wonder they are such a cool, cultured lot, else could you do but laugh, when the only other alternative is to cry, Praha ha ha.

I rolled through the old abandoned border posts, through forests, where once the guard towers and Cold war freeze kept the escapees’ under the thumb. Whores sitting on highway fencing, and cheap junk markets mark the first ignoble, and uncharacteristic greeting as you enter from the Austra german border. I thought I could wing it through northern Austria with no map, no GPS, and no idea. I was wrong. I got so lost, I said , fuc it, head to Germany, as at least I have the German charts on my GPS. But no doubt, like many an army before me, I tried my entry where one mother of a river, sent me back to square one, before I finally found a way, into CZ.

There was a lake district near a place called Horni Plana, and never having seen a sexy timber tool before, to Horni Plana I headed. Instantly, the toy trainset perfection of Austria faded to a real, authentic, and gorgeous, rolling rural vista. And the prices dropped by half. Beer was no longer $6, it was $1.50 for 500ml. I pitched camp lakeside with swarm of Germans, Italians and Czechs, and  unzipped the tent door the next morning at dawn, to see a lake blurred in deep, sexy fog. Just up the road from the lakes district, was a former medieval town called Ceskey Kromlov, that would have the take the cake, for Europe’s best walled town, bestowed with the coolest clock tower on earth. Moted, manicured, and packed, I was indeed impressed. But I hadn’t yet seen inside Praha.

Rolling into Prague late in the afternoon, I pulled up chair on the river, and ordered a coffee, an obvious mistake, when the Italians next to me pointed out that the beer was half the price of the coffee, and it’s the best on earth. It’s where the invented Pilsener.  And Budweiser is actually local town, not a beer logo. There is nothing special about the countryside, and the outer ring of ‘burbs’ in Prague, and I was wondering if the stories of the place’s magic were just another trick.

But then I rode a bit deeper, got a beer, and took a wander. Oh my god. What a Disney wonderland, is Prague on dusk. There aint not palace in Europe like the Prague gig. Its more a suburb than just a palace. Every dick and his Masonic obelisk has stamped his Iluminati print on this town, and they don’t even hold back on the covert bit, as the full overt third eye atop Baal’s penis, complete with winged serpents, crucfix’s and  coats or arms all blend into the most blatant statement in demonic/Babylonian symbolism in Europe, just dripping from every inch of the palaces, and their mates in the church and military ( all one gig actually).

Its maybe pagan occultism underneath, but it sure makes for magnificent architecture, and a cityscape like none I have seen. Jeesh, how much blood and plunder must have funded this place. It’s magnificent, and to the 1 in 500 tourists who actually understand the message in the statues, symbols, obelisks and gargoyles, its sure more deep end gig, than a Da Vinci Code tour. Layer after historical layer is there, from Gothic to Baroque to Bauhaus. Deco has never had it so good.  No wonder Prague ruled much of Europe for so long.

Frozen in time by a deep chill of the Cold war, Prague rocks. I camped two night in an apple orchid, in an old homestead’s riverside backyard, and dodged the falling apples, taking the odd bight out of ones that took my fancy, and hey, apples fresh from the tree sure taste better than ones that do a 6 week tour of the markets by semitrailer. If this was the Garden of Eden, I ate enough apples to commit the original sin, and twenty copies.

But the beer and the hoards of ice cream lickers took its toll, as always. So too did the pizza and the liquid chocolate waffles. I was pondering what a wipe-out it would be, if the pot tourism of Amsterdam, was overlaid with the cheap beer and Disney castles of Prague…the place would be overrun with armies of dazed, open mouthed, droollers.

You can afford to eat almost anywhere, even prime time spots, in Prague. Do the same in Paris, and your credit card with self implode.

I had an appointment in Germany on Monday, so on Sunday morning, I took a bite of my last apple, and headed to spot that sounded cool , in the few lines describing it in Lonely Planet. The Czech German border area, in sandstone, forested canyons, had the good start name of Bohemian Switzerland, and was once, I gather, the domain of woodsmen, and river boatmen, all in some log cabin meets crazed artist and royalty blur. I had been blown away by the Slovenia’s version of woodland retreat, and I thought there was nothing cuter on earth. Sure, Switzerland and Austria are the supposed log cabin capitals of the world, but to the travel wary eye, these absurdly wealthy countries have ruined their heritage, by forever perfecting it….to the point where a Swiss chalet just ain’t the real deal anymore. One the other side of that iron curtain, it’s another story altogether. EU or no EU, the true authentic character of log cabin charm, can be found in Slovenia, and, here in CZ. In Austria, the 3 level, old original chalet I have all to myself tonight, would have cost hundreds of Euros, in Switzerland, for just one room. I have all ,of the most charmed lodge, I have ever stayed in, alongside a bubbling brook, with immaculate alpine gardens, and heritage gems all around, for all of $30 night. With meals. How could I resist. Fuck camping tonight. The French charge the same for a cramped shitty campsite, and the filthy French arseholes don’t even provide toilet paper for that price,(and no, no bidet either).

I’m enjoying the couched and low ceilings of the lounge rooms, off my choice of bedrooms, and might retire for some reading now dears. Ya gotta love CZ.

Dresden is just across the border from Praha,  and Dresden is maybe better known for dying than living, so I was a bit surprised when I rolled into the part or Germany than was verboten on my last visit, as Dresden has be dressed up and rebuilt, and is all quite spiffy, considering we heroic war victors bombed the fuc out of it, slaughtering tens of thousands in a firestorm of Slaughter House 5 proportions, including the destruction of the gracious old city. Considering the West’s outrage at the bombing of Dubrovnik, we’ve obviously got a short memory.

I was in Dresden for lunch, which i had actually brought with me ex of the Czech breakfast laid on in my own personal chalet. God knows how much of Europe can shit anything other than furnace bricks, after adding meats and cheeses to bread, for breakfast each day. I’m convinced whole national psyches are a product of what and when people eat stuff. There is no myth in the concept of anal retentive, or full of shit. Toxic lower bowel means shitty attitude. But regardless of the perils, I sliced the rolls in the main square of Dresden, and set about having an indulgence of cheeses and cured meats that only a bunch of old style, ex Commo famers could produce…besides, it was cheaper than paying German restaurateurs. The jump back into Western Europe and the Euro almost doubles some prices….petrol in Germany is for example is $2.60/l….a lot more than in CZ. Albeit some things in Germany make Ireland and France looks a complete rippoff. I like Germans, they like Dutch are liberal, progressive and funky, even with strong alternate crew. Germany is the world’s most efficient machine. The machine tends to have  bad health and safety record on issues of the heart, but its head and sexuality compensate.

My first stop was Leipzig to meet Christian Machen, the worlds first man to make a hydrogen boat, and the leader lynch pin in a small group of interested partied who form the World Marine Hydrogen  crew, and as I am planning the worlds wildest hydrogen marine project, the meeting with Christian was an essential and fun bonding at first sight, which went  long into the night, and across a few days, and hopefully, many more years.

Christian is an expert, an innovator, and drummer, a fun dad, and a engineer….almost a perfectly balanced human. I camped either in the uninhabited part of his huge home reno project, or camped in its old orchard garden, whilst rolling in and out of wotif teco discussions, which almost conclusively brought an end to some overly ambitious, and multimillion dollar on board experiments on the TRYBRID project, and got the whole thing back on track. The cold hard facts about the promised land known as the Hydrogen economy, is that it remains a years away whilst we endure 40 more years in the hydrocarbon desert.

Accordingly, some of the green dreams of Trybrid needed a slap in the face, no more attempting ( with $500,000) to electrolyse H2 on board, loosing 60% of the solar energy along the way, and no more spending another half mill trying to clean up the Hydrogen to 99.999% pure, for automotive type aspirations, by way of PEM fuel cell. Dump the half mill worth of 6000psi, carbon fibre H2 storage tanks, and their oil free, high tech compressor.  Instead  let’s just look and see what we can do with natural gas or LPG, by combusting it with H2 in diesel engines, or by putting steam reformed natural gas made into H2, and feed it through a fuel cell…. all a lot simple , more practical, and millions cheaper.

So the next day i rode all the way to the south of Germany, to see WS Reformers face to face, and eyeball their gear.  Their gear makes Hydrogen rich gas outta natural gas, by mixing it with steam, and running it over a cathode. The units to do this are the size of the stainless kitchen tidy bins, but we may need many of them.

I found out all sorts of interesting stuff here at WS, including rumour of incredibly cost reduced fuel cells that may well suit the steam reformed H2 idea. Germans make cool engineers at birth, but over lunch, with the worlds very best and most progressive engineers, it’s a sheer pleasure talking engineering. Hydrogen stuff makes automotive or other mechanical engineering look dead boring…what is happening in Hydrogen, is exciting shit.

I stayed overnight near Wurzburg, then on return, stayed in the Black Forest,  near Switzerland, presumably called ‘Black’ ,after being forested into oblivion, in clear felled site of the alpine tourist towns, such that it must surely be a black listed environmental disaster zone by now. Compared to the Alps in Slovenia for example, the German part was an environmental disgrace. Germany is big on machine-able enviro issues, but not so cool on simple mother earth issues.

For example, on energy, the size and proliferation of the massive new German wind farms has to be seen to be believed, so when oil runs out, (which will be well before the climate goes weird), Germany will be ready.

I had my first intensive training in the wild west of the German autobahns, and after double strapping the tent and the kit, I soon found myself in the pack doing 130k as though we were all just  waiting in check out cue. It was here I learnt why serious tourers buy BMW’s, not Jap crap, as at speed, the purr of the boxer BMW, a design coup now over 50 year old, combined with the truck’n stability of BMW carcasses, makes the GS the only logical choice for the high speed, long distance rider. They are like mules on steroids. But farrrrk….when some guy overtakes in the outside lane at close to 200kph, it scares the shit out of ya…the lesson: never change lanes without a good look backwards first. The nice thing about German autobahns is they are both free, and the best roads on the planet.  The tolls to do the same run in France cost more than the air ticket for the same distance.

So I rode back into Leipzig to enthuse of my latest news a views with Christian, encouraging him to be the engineering director for the project, on the propulsion side, where solar, diesel, hydrogen and a bunch of weird hydrocarbon gases all come together under the control of fancy software, and lots of bright shiny machines…. orchestrated hopefully by Christian…besides, he’s done it  before.

The ride into Berlin was sure different to when i last did the trip 34 years ago. Back then, Berlin was a captured island inside the iron curtain, where the road into Berlin went through communist turf, and it seemed no communist was gunna allow West Germans to maintain the decrepit concrete highway feeding Berlin. The concrete slabs back then had become more like launching ramps, which would launch my Kombi at each join, making for an Evil Knievel  ride. These days, if you can detect a 20mm drop over 20m you are doing well….how the Germans get concrete to set to such exacting levels is beyond me…and I thought the Yanks made good roads….not by comparison to Germans.

I love Germans, but Berlin takes the cake…. I have only just arrived at this writing edition, but  just as the mayor of Berlin once quipped, ‘we may be poor, but we are sexy’…. and this sure rings true for the funky, alternate, liberal, artistic Berlin. Hey, if we too were gunna be nuked any day , for going on 40 years, I would party till debauched became an art, too.

Berlin, is my favourite grunge city in Europe. More history, has gone down here, in the last 70 years, than anywhere on earth. 10 million soldiers all had in in their Russian or Allied sights, when they stormed the place, killing a million in Berlin along the way, before hoistinga Red flag on the Reichstag.

In 1990, when the then spokesman for the besieged East German government, was hit with questions in the first international press conference of the party’s existence, he got caught on the hop, when reading from a government  press release, suggesting travel restrictions between east and west german sides, would be releases. In a hungover sweat from doing vodka shots till 4am, the night before, when asked when the border restrictions would be relaxed, he could find nothing on the A4 sheet, and began to sweat, so instead of finding a date, he just read the date on the top right hand corner of the sheet, making east to west passage effective, well, ah, immediately. 5000 east Berliners immediately confronted 3 East German border post guards. Stasi ordered they shoot. there were 5000 protesters, and only 11 bullets. The rest is history. The wall was breached and flooded, and the single biggest historical event in that last 25 years began to disassemble the evil communist states. The Nazis had 1 spy SS per 6000 people. The KGB had one internal spy per 2000 Russians. The Stasi had 1 spy per 60 Germans. 1 in 6 East Germans had done deals for the Stasi. It was the sickest, most cruel oppression of the western world.  And it breached, all because of a hangover in reading a press release.

I love it. Berlins is, as they say alive. If you are sick of Berlin, you are sick of life. If I were to live in Europe, fuck the fancy Paris, the money deadhead London, and give me Berlin, ( with amsterdam a hot second)…anyday.

Viva la revolution that is the collapse of the iron curtain. Just 19 years ago.

The LUCK OF THE IRISH …is contagious

The ferry that takes you from Wales to Ireland is kind of like a giant cafeteria bedeck with flatscreens and lower decks. All my preconceived ideas about the ferocioty of the Fastnet killing Irish sea, were laid to waste as the 3 hour crossing could have been across a lake. Such is timing, and sea crossings.

Ferries now crisscross Europe and the UK full of campervans and semitrailers, by the dozen. Back in the 70′s the hovercraft across the English Channel expensive and, in my experience at least, deaf defying….falling in 12 m drops, throwing the contents of my kombi around the walls and ceilings, and making all but the hardcore few immune from joining the gastric gas ambience of a cabin full of vomit.  I thought Cesna’s in a storm were bad, till I tried the Hovercraft in a Force 400.  God knows how they weren’t banned earlier. The trip I took was once of the last for the hovercraft….good for hovering over a lake, but not the English Channel. So  the cafeteria crossing watching Sky news was droll.  Murdoch’s Sky was leading in the  manipulated media’s, cyclical demolition of the British government, currently led  by morose Prime Minister, Gordon Browns. The Rothchild’s simply discard on mob, in readiness to bring in the next Blair, this time a Tory, but in reality, just like the swap of Bush to Obama, there is no real change, as all funding dependant leaders are adherents to those, who behind the scenes, pay the bills behind the bills. Put any politician on a high wire, with 48% of the votes against him on one balancing pole, and 52% on the other, and its arguably dead easy to nudge the highwire  anyway you like, left or right, given black hand in media, or bureaucracy, or corporatocracy. When all black hands come from the one source, both Tory, Labour, Democrat or Republican leaders, they are all puppets on the highwire of a successfully divided and conquered system. Round of applause please, for the Black Hand. True professionals.

Onboard the ferry, truckies snooze, or fiddle with their phones, seeking payment via SMS arrival notices , asking to get paid in Euros either in Ireland or from Europe, from whence they come, being that Ireland and Europe are all one, in terms of currency (and most of their law), if you can believe that Irish buckled to Brussels,  after years of fighting England.  Go figure?

Landing in Dublin, it was nice to see that there is an unwritten law allowing motorbikes to park for free, on discreet pavement choices of their choosing. I choose just outside the front window of a hostel called Avalon, and moved in, along with panniers and tent. I don’t travel light, its neither safe nor hygienic, as one round the world yachty once put it.  It’s was Friday afternoon, in the season of the 11pm twiglight, and every street table and chair in Dublin was alive with chatter, every pub was  abuzz, along with every cafe and street corner.
I had never been to Ireland, but I had be warned to expect unexpected friendliness. As the coffee clouds in my first Guinness did their inversion lava lamp display, a quick look around the pub revealed an immediate characteristic of the Irish. They were listening, not just talking. They were engaging each other, not just on terms of being in the same social strata, or for sex, or for work, but just for the sake of humanity. Old gentlemen, chatting to younger women. Eccentric nutters chatting to suits.

The raven hair and blues eyes of the local lasses, sprinkled with a few freckles, sent mating tones through my Celtic DNA. What a lovely scene Dublin made.

With the same communicative openness of the New York, Ireland added a dash of compassion to all its gestures.

What a change from England. Whilst England has never looked more shinny and prosperous, its social connectivity was in tatters, with the press obsessed with moralistic trivia, and some 300 surveillance cameras prying into each person’s life, each day. Bobbies who once were armed with batons, now carried submachine guns. The enemy of Britain was not the Nazi, it was now the resident. The local was the suspect. Despite the outrageously clear evidence linking MI5 with the tube bombings, having set up the

‘terrorists’ in what was meant to be an exercise,  an exercise that went bang instead of futt. The next day, on the BBC,  the truthful but bungling statement by M15′s PR managers was ripped off stage with a shepherd’s hook before the second round of questions had been thrown. It was, apparently, just pure coincidence that M15 had a full blown bomb simulation exercise running at the exact time and place where the actual bomb went off. Yeah, right. NORAD 2.

Odd the way witnesses said the floor of the train had been pealed upwards from an under carriage explosion, considering the supposed bomb was in a backpack. Kinda like a jet fuel fire, maxed out at 1200 C, melting twin tower steel, that only melts at double that temperature. England, base station Iluminati, had fallen well into their myriad of ongoing, “Dead Babies R US’ plans. The people had been so poisoned and anesthetised that Prozac was now in the eco cycle of the meadows and brooks of rural Britain. Cardiovascular disease was at record and growing records, and every second bloke could expect to contract cancer. Apart from that Britain was in great shape.

Ireland, bless it, did not show billboard road signs, with an insignia of a surveillance camera at every second main road. The Irish weren’t exactly healthy lot, but at least they were not as sickly as the Brits, off to Tesco’s preserved food aisles, in their battery powered wheelchairs.

Ireland is beautiful, I soon discovered, when my oversize gloves made a mistake on GPS, consigning me on my first day’s ride to tiny mountain back roads, across moors, and down through winding forests and farms into valleys full of picture postcard cottages. Cork was a bottler. Wicklow’s way was a winding wonder. And then at the very tip of the windswept farmlands of southern Ireland, in the Ring of Beara, high on cliff overlooking the incoming Gulf Stream,(long may it hopefully circulate, eeek) was a Buddhist retreat and cheap hostel, built in the original farmers cottage, surrounded by fuchsias and organic veges.  Sogyal Rinopoche, spiritual director of Rigpa, and author of the palliative care text, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,  a text sold by the millions, had set up this retreat for funky backpackers, nearly dead, and deep retreat hardcore, all in their comfy space, spread around the headland. Meditation space, for the big chill of the morning sessions, was perched in a carpeted glass house, looking miles out to sea, across a roaring coastline of breathtaking, or maybe, breath conscious views.

If I were to pick a religion to adopt, I would adopt Buddhism. But then having seen what thieving and superstitious acts that some  traditional Buddhist monks indulge in, I might please elect to admire the core teachings, but not engage in the religious adherence. The practise of stilling the mad mind of man, is a practice well worthy of pursuit. Buddha was a hit more than 2000 years ago, and since then, the evolution of consciousness has shifted up several gears, and is heading to either a global car crash, or higher game, depending on whether the human heart, or the Lords of Form, win the next set. Apparently, the big game has a grand final real soon. So whilst the Buddhist teachings make grand foundations, there is now a higher structure we are working on. Precariously.

Winding through the back bays and green lane ways of southern Ireland, with the boxer engine of the BMW humming away like a wing full of Lancaster engines, it was a gentle thrill that no car ride can duplicate. 70kg of kit, in panniers bolted to bomb racks seemed to inspire, rather the dampen the ride, albeit in car parks and tight turns, the height and weight of the overland frame was a right regular pain in the arse, falling over at least once a week, and to my horror, denting my otherwise shiny and perfect, red and white fuel tank. But shit happens, and I refuse to minimise my camping, library, and weird food stocks, simply to emulate an Easy Rider with fat credit card. As for the dented tanks, hey, I just say I had them personally shaped to fit the panniers.

And shit happens when you least expect it. When an engine starts a dead spot splutter, my mind goes first to water in the fuel. But modern fucking German engineers are too smart by halves, putting sensors in German bikes, where even anal proctologists would fear to go. So on the morning after the day I had given the BM a nice scrub, and with a feeling of confidence in BMW engineering, the engine began to die. It took its time, fading in and out over 20k’s, until finally expiring with just enough momentum, to roll right to the front door of the nearest business. By chance, a BMW outlet.  It was as if the bike wanted to return to its makers. They didn’t do bikes, but they did know who did, so a day spent waiting around a small Irish hamlet, was rewarded with a GS expert, driving away with the dead bike on a trailer, suffering a terminal ‘hall ‘switch fault, that had the right of life and death over the engines pulse, and in this reality, I was left twiddling tralee, trala, in town called Tralee. So much for Galway and a visit to Roisin in Belfast. Me in a tent, under a big oak, in campsite, listening to the rain drum the outer lining.

Back in Dublin, I had stumbled into a street protest that never seemed to have an end…the crowd ran for over a kilometre, with thousands out to protest the workings of the evil Irish Roman Catholic church, and its co-conspirator, the State, after report after report had lifted the veils on what amounted to systematic abuse, and in some case torture, of 160,000 institutionalized kids, under some 216 catholic institutions, since the 50′s. After all the paedophilia, the abuse of children, by the dark, unquestioned ways of the all powerful catholic church, comes as one of the obvious nails in the coffin of an institution who will never be resurrected. Just as predicted, and infact prophesised. Thousands raised little shoes in the air, in silent protest. Police guarded the gates of the Parliament, where the thousands marched, and the church did its best to ignore the clamour, in the crumbling ruins of what was once the unquestioned dominance of the church, state and constabulary. Their use by date is approaching.

The pain of the now grown faces of the once abused kids was palpable. Catholic institutions can be bad…but Irish Catholic ones can be terrifying.

Riding around the freshly glaciated bays and valleys of southern Ireland, in and out of the coves and harbours, made even the beauty of even Devon and Cornwall compete. The green lined roads are beyond beautiful, but are a risky ride, with nowhere to run, when a bus or a van one comes around a narrow corner on the squeeze.

It’s not dark till after 10 pm on approach to the summer solstice, here in Ireland, so when to start dinner is a very confusing concept. Who needs daylight saving when day its never dark. I would not want to be here for the winter solstice.

I have a great fondness for camping. I actually like a fairly flat micro mattress, and having spent up big, on an all down sleeping bag, I prefer a cosy tent, even under heavy rain, than a sterilised hotel room. There is something beyond cosy, tucked up in a hikers tent, when it’s hammering down outside. Other hiking/biking campers, stick their noses out of their tents after the morning showers clear, like snails rolling their eyes out of their shell. I admire the touring push bike crew, for their ability to travel light, a skill i refuse to practise.  A spirited retiree has bought an new version of the classic Triumph Bonneville, parked in the camp site alongside me, and he’s doing what he always wanted to do from when he was 20 something, with a pregnant girlfriend. England is awash with retirees on the road.

They specialise here in building cute-sy fibreglass motor homes that are the equivalent of a thatched cottage on wheels. But unlike the thatched cottage, and more like the medical condition of the inhabitants, the white motor homes are connected to tubes are more reminiscent of colostomy bags, and pacemakers. Inside the heated vans, lined up like housing estates in bland van parks, the retirees watch Sky on through their dishes and flatsceens, whilst frying up their food, and boiling the buggery out of their veges, popping NHS pills by the handful, and wondering why all their mates are going down like flies. Some of the really adventurous ones bring their electric shopping mobiles for the odd trip to the shower block, albeit most vans now have bogs and showers. With every second person now contracting cancer, the retirees, who long since abandoned their personal responsibility for their health to the advice of their doctors, the marketing of the processed food companies, and the veiled push of the drug companies, it was interesting to catch a BBC doco drama about the pressure being applied to supply life extending drugs to terminally ill cancer patients, where the drug is that useful, that after toxing you, you still end up dead, but at a cost of $100,000 per script, per year. In dollar for dollar comparison, the retirees who never even tried to look after their now decrepit bodies, are being allocated funds at 140% higher dollar per life saved, than younger members of society with terminal issues.  Palliative care, as say the Buddhists promote, looks more at the quality of how you die, rather than just when you die, and funds to the struggling social workers who try to get support for the terminally ill, in their homes, with their families, have seen all their funds vaporised by government spending on drug companies, who profiteer off keeping neo corpses in suspended mortality. Dont kid yourself, cancer is big business, and my earlier story of the murder of 9 out of 10 UCLA breakthrough researchers, with a credible cancer cure,  still does not see the film and book of their incredible tale even get a peak.

Enough of the nearly dead. Let’s get newly wed. I surprise myself with my lack or recall of just how many friends I have secreted away in my mind, as lost in Europe somewhere. There is always someone who has a contact or email link somewhere. So I finally mastered Skype, Vodaphone deals and with some detective work, I located more old mates and girlfriends. But as this is a story in the now, not the future, I’m not there yet. But if the damn part arrives, I will be on a ferry and back in England in a flash.

Friends in Dubai tempted me to ride through the middle east, and come visit….a totally insane idea I am considering with dutiful spinning of the Google Earth roulette wheel.

I fancy some escape from the ridiculous prices of Ireland and the UK…where a pint  costs $8, and a load of DYI washing and drying costed $17, and head for the old and authentic eastern block Europe, and with it Greece and Croatia for some sunshine, so I can afford to socialise. I have some appointments in London Paris and Amsterdam first, but then they are sort of on the way anyway.

The EU countries, UK included, were wide mouthed succours for the shove-it-down-ya throat debt on offer from the banking cartels, fattening us geese in readiness to squeeze our liver.

Well its liver squeezing time, and the unemployment, bankruptcy and ‘where’s my fat cheque’ depression has set in with earnest. With every punter once getting a loan approval bigger than Ben Hur, they all turned up at the  Saturday morning auctions to throw debt swathes at property sales, with all the abandon of an approving funder, and in so doing, bid each other up to the point where the same miserable, post war housing, sold for 3 or 4 times its real worth in wage affordability terms, and no one batted an eyelid. Dinner party talk was al about how much stuff we had stuffed into. The impact was that rents skyrocketed, the banks quadrupled their gross, and a simple sandwich for a traveller like me, given the rental overhead, costs $8 here in Ireland. The Irish were late starters, but pig at the trough first timers. With every would-be professional deciding to become a property developer, builders became swamped with work, and they too tripled their prices. I was privy to the gorging myself, managing the construction of two big projects, where at the start of the boom some 5000m of housing was built for a third of the price of similar housing across the road in 2006. During the boom, the builders all arrived in shiny new, fully optioned up, four wheel drive vehicles, and refused to do tough work, and charged triple for the privilege of turning up occasionally. Lawyers gorged on the conveyancing. Architects, (40% now unemployed here in Ireland) where working around the clock. Councils could not get planners as they had been ripped off by developers. 1 in 30 of us, a four fold increase, became ‘financial services’ managers, plundering the system by devising derivatives so complex that the holders could not figure out if they were infact a debt or an asset, but what the hell anyway, they made the loans based on 40 dollars lent, with only one dollar in the bank. And Greenspan, and the Illuminati Banks of England and Bank of America all fuelled the deregulatory fire, so that when they suddenly pulled the cash flow choker chain, they could get what they want, namely, a series of governments willing to do whatever the banks wanted, ‘it’s unprecedented’, including facilitating the formation a world banking governance, years premature of a world government, and as the matriacal Rothchild’s once quipped, who needs control over a country’s government, if you control its money anyway.

But all this seeming doom and gloom conceals the real benefits of the recession. Hey guys, loads of ‘stuff’ does not make you happy for long. Infact it’s often, or more like, eventual, that it makes you miserable. Looking back on my life, and I have owned the odd waterfront, and few dozen homes, its painfully obvious that the most shinny enjoyable times I have had, were at my most broke, and my most miserable and stressed times, where when I was up to my neck in my stuff. It took me a sound and thumping fall, to finally help me figure out, that if ya don’t stress in pursuit of  more wealth, you actually end up doing really well, in real wellness terms, by not giving a shit. My financial collapse would sell a million $2 novels, what with all its off-the-wall , off-shoot, stories of mafia bankers, crazed millionaires and bleeding edge entrepreneurial madness. And after going broke, the tale of going from private sector to public official would sell another million comedic paperbacks. I better not start the recollection, or this motorcycle diary will loose another wheel.

Let me throw something in…’happiness’ is a passing myth…. it’s as fleeting as a fart…what is real, however, is enjoyment, or IN JOY THE MOMENT.

The difference being with enjoyment,  is that the real yououts in the sparkle, from inner to out, where as with happiness, you are looking for some external boost to support you.

You can get enjoyment out of doing the washing up, with a laugh and some enthusiasm…. but those looking for happiness rarely include washing up on their list happiness’s pursuit, and counter to advertised beliefs, they sadly miss some of the best parts.

The Irish, much as they were quick to fall for the money trap, are better placed than most, to return to matter of enjoyment, and the heart, as  seemingly they are better connected than most. Besides, they’re good fun.

But its great to see people waking up to the fact that the best thing to hang onto in life, is not stuff, but relationships. When your feel rich, you become an island, capable of calling in anyone you need, by phone and credit card. In our former society, we had to enlist the help of our village community, to gather the harvest, or to build the newly wed’s home-sweet-hut. This made us intertwined. So destruction of the man-as-an-island financial lie, is a lie well worth disembowelling. Quantum physicists and mathematicians have long known that all things, us included, are intrinsically connected: all the mystics, indigenous and enlightened mob know we are one, but given $400K spare equity in ya home, and a credit card waiting to be plundered, we all completely abandoned the ‘we’ for the ‘me’. But times, painfully for many, are changing. And for those addicted to the wealth before life game,  there may be more pain is ahead.

The recession is a win for the heart, at the expense of the head. And all the ‘evil’ players who orchestrated this giant fuck up, need an appreciative round of applause, as without their dark agenda, we would never be given a chance to see it, and reject it. You rarely learn to change a car battery, unless one have had one go flat on you first.

The wait for the bike’s new crank shaft sensor, down in southern Ireland came to a sudden halt on a balmy solstice twilight, after 3 days in Tralee, when a GS angel Liam rolled into my campsite, declaring my Beemer working. Liam had sourced a second hand crank sensor, retrieving the bike after borrowing mates bike trailer, dismantling a good chunk of the engine, all done at night, like flight engineers in the Battle of Britain, Liam drove me back to the bike, charges only 80 euros for his time, and after giving me some inside tips on GS maintenance, waved me on my way. If corporate BMW had done the same service, it would have taken longer and cost 4 times more. Poor BMW…its been so fattened in the boom, its about to get an ugly dose of the mirror, showing what rip-off twats they really are, serving to either status challenged wankers, appreciators of good engineering, or, who, like me in the 80′s, suspected part of their life can be defined by their car. With  heavy days riding agenda ahead, with a plan to cross Ireland, the Irish sea, and half of England, the camp was stripped to fast exit status for  an early get away. The bike as usual was loaded like a camel.

Knocking off Ireland was done by lunch, aboard a high speed cat, full of semitrailers…and with my destination deep in England, still ahead, it was just as well I was well motivated, as it was a solid night and day, thundering ride. My destination was the meeting point of where 500 other around the world type bikers, had gathered for what is the worlds largest gathering of   motorised adventure travellers, and their Mongolian worn kit. Much of the kit was German, mixed in with a range of heavy dirt bikes, the odd Harley and some storage enhanced trail bikes. Whilst the pay-to-play riders on the brand new 1200cc GS tourers had the flashest kit, it was the old beaten up BMW bikes that was clearly the coolest, or at least, most character packed gear.

I could has won the world award, for the most shit ever bolted or strapped to an old beemer…albeit I had steep competition. Some bikes were that travelled, they made around the world yachties look lazy. One unique specimen had welded a massive,  pizza delivery style pannier set, into and around the tight frame of track racing  superbike, and he had it in all parts of the world…including muddy Congo river crossings, all with clip-on racing bars, and full sports seating stance.

The touring crew is mainly all over 40 these days, as the image of bikers as the young Marlin Brando, or the stoned Fonda fade away, replaced by the middle age, who now rule the touring teams. And in fact it was the 60 and 70 year old world tourers who had the most sensational recent stories, and with it, the philosophies and books they have written. I liked the perspectives of one old codger, who looked fondly on the time his old beemer fell for the fourth time that day, breaking his leg, but with shock, not hurting at all, as, or so he argued, the experience of recovering in some remote Kenyan village was well worth the eventual pain and delay. Life is about what happens with other people along the way…its not about the destination. In the case of the broken leg tale, the rider/author also argued that its important to select a bike that is not too reliable, as it’s what happened when you break down that is the real chance of experiencing life,  atop which, one should never make plans when riding abroad, as it will deny you of the delights of living now, and not for tomorrow.

Accordingly, the best kit to my mind was the older, beaten up BMW, without all the electronic sensors that will leave you completely fucked in the middle of the Sahara, with no Ewan McGregor film crew and chopper, to fly in the factory computer whiz, to reset the chips. The older the BM, the less the electronic bullshit and the tougher the engineering.

I was told my older mota was a rare anniversary edition at the top of its tougher genera, a restoring thought, given my earlier grumpiness at the bike’s 3 day breakdown. But had it not broken down, I would have missed meeting a play full of great  Irish characters, not the least of whom was Nolan the nurseryman, who takes the odd annual walking tour through a park in the middle of Tralee, where we were introduced to a range of ancient and beautiful trees, many of whom had grown up along with Mr Nolan, as he had lived alongside the park all his life, and would no doubt have 60 bark rings on display if he were to loose a limb. There is a marvellous simple nature, in being a giant oak, a silent demonstration of how to live aligned with life, with no need, unlike us, of needing to know our name, let alone our place.

Be a tree. That’s all a tree does.

Be a human, is more than humanity can do.

A must see on any world trio is a tour of the, Micka and Jackie’s Gardiner’s Kingdom of Safron Waldron, the realm of prince Conor.  The rural setting alongside Cambridge, just outside of London, is a lovely place to make family. Stumbling around Cambridge with Micka in the perma twilight of the summer solstice, more by ‘trolley’ than by good sense, saw a fitting end to a tour of England, before hammering off to eternal Amsterdamnation.

Cambridge, complete with all its demonic decoration,  is the final nod and the wink, in the closed package known by some as establishment rule, but which behind the scenes is a bit more centralised that a mere establishment. All the established myths around medicine, archaeology and silo’d science remain unchallenged, and are now arguably fading vestiges of total cover up and bullshit,  and with the aid of the Oxford, Cambridge and Ivy League professorial decrees,  the core educational doctrines remain stinking bullshit. Before WW2, Iluminati through their lower team leaders, in the form of the Fabian Society, insured that the  prestige university scholarships, then professorial appointments, went only to those who sought never to challenge the established lies, where for example, medicine denies the energetic influences manifested in say acupuncture, archaeology denies the advanced understandings of  say Mayan and Egyptian history, by perpetrating the simplistic myths that say pyramids are mere tombs, and which in science, continues to deny the implications of the multidimensional universe, and the fact that there is only energy, not matter. But such weighty matters were not the focus of the few lagers downed canal side in Cambridge when Mike Gabour rang for our monthly radio interview, with us on the piss, and home sweet Port Douglas doing breakfast.

The interview made some amusement of previous day’s, highway camping escapade, when my pop up, 3 man tent, ‘inflated’ on the M1 at 120k/h, with the same effect as a  dragster’s parachute, unannounced. To complete the move, the parachute tent,  then ejected itself under full reverse thrust, and proceeded, at 120k/h, to do a full pop up, and erect itself in lane 3 of the 4 lane M1, coming to a quaint and cost campsite stop, in front of a stampede of white knuckled truckers,  trying to decelerate 40 tonnes, without causing a 20 car pileup in the process.

As for me, I was running back down the motorway, in the lee of the tent, with a look on my face that said, if you run over my tent, you will have to run over me too. That’s my home there…. and sure, it may not be the quietest place to set up a tent, but, but….

After Dell’s world wide guarantee fell into corporate tatters, with their repair codes needing 40 minutes of pass-the-buck international call centre denials, I gave up on the Dell arseholes ( we hate you Dell and Vodaphone) and I just ordered a new laptop charger, cursing Dell, and waited till the postie wheeled in with the part,  the next day, before heading for Ramsgate, like a bull at a gate. All was going to be a breezy ride south to the lunchtime ferry to Belgium, until I realised, in our sideways state the night before, I had left my GPS in Micka’s car, and Micka had gone to work. The sideways memory engaged to add more chaos, as we hadn’t actually taken Micka’s car, and the GPS, a tool to find things, was infact sitting in the driveway, in the other car. If only GPS units had a function to find GPS units. I would kill for an invention to locate car keys, reading glasses and missing socks. At least these days, you can walk around underground car parks, pressing the remote door locks, until you see a flashing car somewhere, often your own.  Finally, we figured that the GPS was not lost at all, it was right under our nose. But by this stage the ride to Ramsgate had become a compulsory 120k/h running of the bull, and so greasing aboard an old rusty ferry manned by Romanians @ only 36 quid, was a peaceful departure to the Brave New World, of Orwellian styled UK. ‘God save the Queen, its a fascist regime…” Thanks goodness for the Irish, that they are now more a part of the EU, than the socially sick UK.

‘God save the Queen, Its a fascist regime’

S. Vicious.

The Sex Pistols 1975

‘Evening Sar…a, copy of the Daily Tele by any chance?’, twipped the ever so sweet, British Airways hostess, as I settled into a part of the jumbo I hadn’t paid for.  A tip here. Always be the last one onboard, and grab the best looking seat left available.  Maybe I overdid it a bit, as I later found out…. what with the British having more levels of social status than they have Royal everythings, I had apparently plonked myself in a class somewhere between first class slumber booths, and my, economy cattle .

Opening the paper, it’s was 20 pages, one after the other, of government destroying freedom of information exposes, on the pig in the trough habits of hundreds of MP’s, at a rate of about 10 MP’s a day,  apparently strung out to sell the Tele for weeks. Just as the MP’s had ripped off the taxpayers, getting their moat’s cleaned with toothbrushes, so too did the Tele rip-off the independent journo who had done FOI . hard yard, court time, to win the eventual High Court battle, that released a flood of tirade and disgust, at the 600 plus MP’s.

The MPs like a scene out of Animal Farm, were not amused, as they squashed, shoulder to shoulder, into the House of Commons, like some sort of industrial pig farm, in suits.

Limitless electoral and career damage was done to hoards of them, as the public cried for an election to behead the bunch of them. I know the feeling.

NYC’s JKF was fogged down, with dozens of jets cued for their chance to hammer down the strip, with wingtips fogged out of sight, and then leap skywards, into the grey nothingness, where once up above the clouds, it was a nice bright evening. It was not such a nice bright morning when I landed in London.

Normally I wouldn’t give a shit about the weather in the UK….assuming it to always be shitful. But it was particularly bad this morning, and somehow, I had to get 50 kg to Taunton, in Somerset, load it somehow onto a bike I had never seen, but owned, and ride off, decamp, and sleep in the unfolded contents of the kit bags, all in a wet, freezing, UK gale.

I told myself, as the wipers on the bus to Taunton sloshed away the rain, that it was time I toughened up. The heaters fogged the view of the cruel outside view. Yes, I could just give in, $cough up, and head for the nearest B&B, or cosy pub. But nope, Rod, I said to myself, Rod, you are gunna do this mate, toughen up.

The bike dutifully unfolded, as did a half dozen boxes and bags in the wet back yard, where the bike vendor, Paul, (Director of Humanities, Psychology) Smith, watched on as my insanity unfolded with it. Given a few hours, the bike looked like the Beverly Hillbillies Model T, and I was heading to Beverly Hills. All I lacked was grandma in a rocking chair on top.

My bike was a BMW R1100GS, the Lancaster bomber of off-road bikes…..the type Ewan McGregor had immortalised in the doco series, The Long, (or maybe, The Wrong) Way Around.

Guided through Taunton by the ever gracious Paul, I was ended up at the nearest camping ground, which was a cross between a Steptoe and Son set, and chook farm. The owner made cider here, bred birds, and greyhounds, and to add a level of colour and chaos, threw in few peacocks, who behaved like the politician from whence their name was derived, giving me a dose of attitude bad enough to make Shirley McLean fuck Andrew.

Hours unfolded the next day, as I tried to figure out what gear should go where. I already had a pannier set on bike, but I had 3 more coming, to be rigged in a truly Lancaster bomber way, ready to burn Dresden. In the meantime, I had to store and strap gear in bright, yellow and orange, rafting bags, as well as using my suitcase for a surprisingly comfortable backrest.

Day two, and it was off to the Moors of Dartmoor, to where the Hound of the Baskervilles awaited me. Some miserable campsite behind a cosy pub tested the blizzard capacity of my popup tent, as I drank Jail Ale  made, I presume, in the next door, 650 head, Dartmoor prison. In prison, they had central heating and cable TV. Committing a crime looked logical, after night 2 in the tent.

But ahead was a few charming nights in St Ives, the UK’s prettiest seaside port, where the albatross sized seagulls, cried  listlessly in the night, with all the dying soul of Davey Jones. There, the tide tried its best to suck the entire town out through the stone wharf fortifications, the walls that had guarded hardy fishermen, deep back into ancient history. Where the pirates of Penzance, and black capped skippers had once recovered their circulation in the sheds, chapels and pubs of the waterfront, now, ice cream sales, and Devonshire teas fattened the bewildered tourists,  pram pushers who sought, but never found authenticity in their experience. The whole of southern England had become a weekend retreat for jaded, overweight, and limp dicked tourists, wandering the shops of useless trinkets, oblivious to the soul and history of one of the most beautiful seafaring destinations on earth.

Running against the tide, the odd authentic salt, mended his nets, or pottered around with his diesel launch.  The local newspaper reported the resurrection of the ‘Spirit of Dunkirk’, when a bunch of 14 ex urbanised shopkeepers, threw a few blankets at the door of a florist, whose piping overflowed. Those who died in sea of industrial grade blood at the real Dunkirk would have rolled over in their grave at the thought of the analogy. Such was the limp life of ice cream sales in St Ives.

To me, the charm and cosiness of Devon and Cornwall is unsurpassed the world over. The feeling I get from the low ceilings in the 400 year old pubs, is like that childhood shiver of excitement you get, from building your first cubby house. Buildings lean in on the street, like some Disney designer deformation. Twee bay windows, and thatched attics put the snug, into smuggling. Streets are so tight, that anywhere else on earth, they would be deemed one way. But not in Devon. In Devon, they put double decker buses down streets that anywhere else, would be restricted to push bikes and pedestrians. And it’s two way.  l love it. Except when I’m forced to wheel 400 kg of bike and payload, backwards up a laneway blocked by an oncoming vehicle whose mirrors are scraping both sides.

Waking in the upper bunk of the St Ives International ( and local dropout) Hostel, I could not fathom, what sort or early morning council vehicle could sound like a trashing machine made of hard nylon flappers. The sound came and went. And when it came again, it turned out to be a sort of snowmobile with plastic feet, around a caterpillar tread, towing a cat tread, lifeboat trailer. How silly of me for not having picked it earlier.

They like their heroic lifeboat stuff around here. Considering the paucity sea safety offerings in most places I had just sailed, maybe Cornwall lifeboat rescue addicts should consider an outreach programme. No sea to rough, no muff to tough, Cornwall sailors will go down on anything, ah, oops, any sea, sorry. One 3 tonne lifeboat behemoth, that was rowed as propulsion, was dragged by horse and men, on a wheeled cradle, up inclines that snow skiers would love, and over 15k of moor land, to be launched at Pormouth, in to effect a  rescue of some hapless ship wreck victims, in a classic tale of sea rescue determination. Me. I liked the idea of wheels under a boat.

What I yearned for, was a real dose of English countryside, and to find it, like all modern poms, I went online. Online, I found Westermill farm, and arrived at the farm gate to the excitement of several Border Collies, and a milk and honey farmers’ daughter, giving the dogs what-for. This was Exford, a twee hunting village, with two pubs, and a shop or two, surrounded by thatched cottages and real farms. Dark green Land Rovers were parked in front on the pub. Sweet, rosy cheeked girls in riding gear walked their horses, and the beer was slow, flat and fat .

My campsite, on the rich green pasture, so lush, it made willows weep, bordered a brook, gentling gurgling past my tent. It was just me, a farmer and his son and daughter, and a few hundred cute lambs. Roger, the farmer, was the same age as me, and when I was raiding England, at $10-a-Day, 30 years ago, he was raiding Australia, as a jackaroo, prawn trawler man, and truckie. We both had similar aged kids, but he’d inherited 500 acres of England, to which he was tied, whereas I just had a bike. It gave us both, interesting contemplation of our 54 year old, juxtaposition.

Riding around the moors, farmland and quaint seaside villages of Exmoor in the height of springtime was a sure delight. The sweeping  roadways took on an added allure, as a green, vertical, trimmed hedges formed a ‘wall of death’, that turned mild speed, into a call to acceleration that even Lawrence of Arabia could not resist, seconds before he died.

England in springtime puts new dimension into the colour green. On one of the odd days when the sun shone, every man and his motorbike hit the road, and sweeping and climbing through the English countryside by motorbike, on a sunny day, is a touring treat par excellence, making up for all the other rigours of riding hand over fist.

Glastonbury just popped up on the GPS by coincidence, as if to say, come here now. I had heard all the stories, but wasn’t ready for what presented itself, as smack in the middle of town the polite English speaking woman on my GPS told me I had arrived at my destination. The square was packed full of more weird colourful and  semi inasne people that you could fit ina Fellini movie. This was the Star Wars bar, earth embassy. More ley lines, Kind Arthur tales, and spiritual diversity packs the main street of this place , than anywhere on earth. I tried and I tried to make it more that 100m from the backpacking central square, but it took me hours, in fact 2 days, to make any progress.

There were that many interesting things to see and do, I was trapped like a fly in golden syrup.

For starters, I bumbled into a conference called Megolithomania, with more writers, explorers, and new agers than I knew existed, and book signings for several new release books, that lined up, one after the other. It you had a view on matters Stonehenge, Egypt, Druid of leylines….there was a writer with a book to be released there for you. After contributing to a discovery of megaliths in Australia’ s Daintree, where our find was welcomed with disinterest or derision, is was like walking into the promised land, finding a whole profession of experts who were brimming with of amazing speeches, slides and insights, that made Australia look totally backwards on the subject.

The last book on the secrets of the Sphinx theorises that the undersize Pharaoh head was a late add on, after the Jackal style dog, Anubis, the Doberman with rabbit ears, was defaced of nose and eras in one of the many marauding armies arrivals, and besides, the Sphinx was never at sea level, it was in a moat flooded by the Nile annually, where embalming rituals saw son of the dead, dad, pharaoh, wash dead dad’s guts in the moat, to sanctify them before embalming. Or something like that. One thing is for sure, those Egyptologists are into a massive cover up, as any idiot can see, multiple underground chambers below the sphinx have been blocked in, or filled with concrete. Something to hide, oh dear Iluminati establishment?

There is a steep hillock called Tor in Glastonbury , on a site so sacred it had had Neolithic types in deep ritual here for centuries, it was  the main pilgrimage centre for middle age types lobbing in from Europe. Christianity was founded here by the bloke who took Jesus off the cross.

The remains of Glastonbury Abbey, out my window here, are on view for 5 quid, and are a testament to all that is evil about the my Church of England’s, founding history. Horny and horrible Henry the Eighth,  as you may recall, wanted to dump his Spanish wife, for a French bitch, and was not happy when the Glastonbury Abbot would not agree to his demands for a divorce, so Henry burnt down the abbey, dragged the head abbot around, tied to a fence, cut his guts out whilst alive, stuck his head on a stake, and with it, burnt the most precious library in Christendom: to ashes….and this ladies and gentlemen, is how the Church of England was formed. With this limited historical background, I was somewhat pissed off, on enquiring who pocketed my 5 quid entry fee to the ruined Glastonbury Abbey, to be told the Church of England trousered the money…after their founder had wrecked the place.

But the real action was just ahead. Obeying the GPS as I cut and sliced down mile after mile of Wiltshire laneways, I was off in pursuit of the real deal in paranormal signs…I was off looking for crop circles. For crop circles, you need crops, and as spring raises the wheat, so too do ET’s flatten a bit. And the centre of all things crop, and all things Neolithic mystery, is Avebury in Wiltshire, where the world’s biggest stone circles make Stonehenge look like a weary tourist trap. What was it about this area, that gave birth to more than 5000 year of ceremony and pilgrimage? Encoded in those stones, was more than just quartz crystal. Crude as they may seem, the Avebury Stones are the early editions of man’s 12000 year pursuits in building megaliths, pagodas or cathedrals on a grid of sacred sites, where Avebury,  like Glastonbury, is the intersection point of all sorts of energetic magic, beyond the 1% spectrum we humans can detect. This grid, now complete, after thousands of years of work, stand ready, as the unity consciousness grid, for the time, maybe post 2012, when humanity realises it’s us, not me, that is our path. If not, its bye bye planet earth.

So when you have crop circles laid strategically at the edge of the Avebury circles, it’s seemingly not just a coincidence. The controlled media just dismiss the new batches of crop circle as the work of pranksters, but any trained observer, can easily detect the clumsy tread print, and board shifting marks of man-made crop circles, that make up less than 10% of the maybe 100 or more crop circles arriving, some in an instant, during daylight hours, all around Wiltshire. Some arrive at the rate of 7 in one night. That would need about 700 drunk pranksters all out flattening wheat on the one night.

The Masons, doing the grubby dirty work of their unidentified  Iluminati masters, may have erected their typical spire obelisk as a message on the hill overlooking Avebury, but the ET circle-makes ignore them , imprinting their circles all around the evil obelisks, in defiance. Go ET.

The  crop circle that most impressed me, was a huge, geometrically perfect series of spinning, ying and yang cycles,  on a rotor, which had only be made some 48 hours before I arrived. If farming pranksters made this one, they should give up farming, and take up geomancy and design sales. But it was obvious that 100 drunks didn’t make this mega glyph.

Since the 70′s, the circles have evolved , from a basic circle, to forms so geometrically complex and beautiful, that they hint at something very big ahead, if one just joins the dots.

One crop shows the exact star formation at Dec 12, 2012.

So it was no surprise, when I slipped out of my tent at night, to see a wee UFO light bubble, dancing along the horizon, like the sing-a-long dot in the Aeroplane Jelly add.

It had been a great day with the ‘croppies’, having had a picnic in one huge circle, after a photographic session using long poles, as choppers and ultra lights photographed from above. The Silent Circle cafe bookshop, the world’s one and only crop circle base station, was the scene of a hour or two’s chat with Charles, croppie prince, and we could only conclude, that the veils keeping humanity asleep, are looking like being torn asunder, real soon. Bear in mind, the 2012 Mayan agenda, says 2012 is the year earth’s consciousness shifts form a ‘one world’  global perspective, to a galactic perspective, suggesting we then join in a bigger community, and todate, the Mayan projections have been without fault.

The incredible SHOUTING messages from above, are seemingly being ignored, as local traffic simply goes to work, down roads alongside the amazing new circles, without batting an eyelid. Talk about asleep. Humanity is arguably in for some huge shocks ahead. The hypnotism that ignores the truth, across mystic, medicinal, archaeological, and energetic paths, has a use by date. Is it 2012?

My guess, is when or if the ETs do arrive, the governments will do all they can to create fear and panic, to portray what will likely be a helping hand, as a killing claw. The years of cover up on the ET issue defy truth, and add to the list, as long as your arm, of the world’s blind denials.  Hey, if they can do what they did at 911, with impunity, they can do anything. And they are.

But bugger the asleep world, as I am wide awake, and me, I love the gifts and hints from the ET croppies, with their instant zap blasts, that bend stalks like as though they were melting plastic pipes, but with no heat, and no harm to the stalks. Seeds taken from the circles are robust and vigorous fathers. The circles themselves are beautifully charged, literally, and are a lovely place to have a picnic, and a little lie down, as did I.

Synchronicities has been running rampart of late, as are karmic loop lessons, as time seems to speed up. One such synchronicity turned up with immaculate conception, leading me immediately from crop circles and Neolithic megaliths, to the greenie, alternate, liberal, healers home, of Brighton, where the Peer may have burned down twice, but the town is alive with hip insight. And just as one thing leads to another, I walked back into the life of my long lost flatmate George, Georgeous to be complete, who had, like the wise and the alert, made her way into a clean life, of fun loving service, sweeping me along into new worlds of life force nutrition, in a whole new menu of raw food antics,  that makes TV chef Jamie Oliver look positively stuffy. I could learn from George, George could learn from me. And given our propensity to automatic fire jokes and quips, we had a right regular laugh.

In the background, the Times ran photos and newly revealed storied on the world’s shameful turning away from the massacre of Tamils by the Sri Lankan government, under the convenient Bush era excuse, of rebranding freedom fighters as terrorists. 20,000 were massacred.  Triple the official line. That was double the Iraq 2 year total, and 5 times the comparable period in Afghanistan, or smack war deaths.

The Sri Lankans mowed down the surrendering leaders with automatic fire, clean and clear into the group holding white flags. Doctors in field camps pleading with the Red Cross to have the shelling of the hospitals stopped, saw the coordinates used to shell the dead and bleeding, 2 hours after the pleas were made. They rounded up pinned civilians on a beach, and killed them at a rate of 1000 a day, breaking all international agreements that disallow overhead, shard shattering munitions to be directed at hapless civilians in ragged tents on a sand spit. The human rights abusers all got together at the UN the next week, to sanction the Sri Lankans crimes against humanity. So much for the UN being there to protect humanity. The UN should be disbanded forthwith: it’s a disgrace, and a sham, some say, me being one. After the world wept when the Tsunami killed thousands in Sri Lanka, no one batted an eyelid when the Tamil massacre made Afghanistan look peaceful. Peaceniks, deluded by the Obama myth, have in 2009, dropped their cause, in the absurd belief that Obama means peace, even after he just doubled the attack forces in Afghanistan.

On the other side of the duality, I met filmmaker Nikki Williams who has been working on the Time of the Sixth Sun, who like me, has been tracking the shifting consciousness towards the seemingly tidal shift near 2012. Her work reveals the thinking of the world’s best writers, shamans and teachers, mine is more a personal spiritual comedy. Let’s face it, the Rapture could be fun for all the family, if everyone just lightens up a bit. This cosmic gig is as much a comedy as it is a drama, given the understanding of the instant, replay relief of reincarnation, coupled to the likely Luna Park ride ahead. Hey, from my viewpoint, it’s time to get out of the rat’s exercise wheel, and onto the merrier go around.  Besides, word has it that we all get free upgrades in the cosmic game: in   next big match. 6 billion have turned up for the grand final. There won’t be crowds like this around forever, if the male fertility rates keep dropping through the floor. And given the seemingly dramatic drop in fertility, through a range of fake oestrogens and poisons in your cool aid water, is infertility really such a bad way to reduce our population from 6 to 2 billion, without bloodshed? But we are at peak load population right now, and some freaks like me, reckon all our karmic reincarnation contracts,  contain, access all areas, backstage passes, a place, where, ahead, as on the stage above, so too will it be in the mosh pit below. It will rock.

London, in 1975, had a notable song. I recall it coming through the ceiling speaker of Sainsbury’s, as I filled my shopping trolley, via Capitol Radio.

The opening line was, “God Save the Queen, its a Fascist Regime”, sung in rather non dulcet tones, by one, Sid Vicious, of the Sex Pistols.

The album was called “Never mind the Bollocks”. Idiot coppers deemed the word, ‘Bollocks’, an obscenity, and confiscated the first releases, hitting headlines everywhere, and creating massive sell-outs.

My arrival in London, after several decades away, came on and Abbey Road album cover, picture perfect, 28degree, sunny day. London looked beautiful, in its springtime greens. It was not the same funky London I had lived in the mid 70′s. Just of Church St, Kensington, not far from the murdered Di’s palace, was where I had onced lived in romantic blur of a 20 year olds romance. The street where I lived, was then full of meagre Morris, and rusted Bedford vans, and on return, it was wall to wall with black Aston Martins and Mercs. The plunderers had made a motza in London in the last 15 years, and it was on show everywhere. Money for one beer in 2009 would have bought 7 or 8 in 1975. London was a lot more sober, wired, and flash.

Where London was awash with radical street fashion in 1975, in 2009, corporate fashion muscle wiped the soul of London fashion away like a deodorised kitchen chemical. Gone were all but a tiny residue of truly hip, out there looks. In 1975, 30 or 40 Kombis and their owners lived permanently on the street outside Australia house, in a live in motor mart for travellers like me, breezing it in at “Europe on $10 day”. 100 bucks is tight these days. Parking in London is now a matter for the pay to play elite. So arriving by motorbike suddenly made a lot of sense, and a space for a car would cost more than a hotel room, in most countries I had just visited.

In the 70s’ coppers were armed with a mere baton, and a helpful attitude. In 2009,  London coppers wear flak jackets whilst on traffic patrol, and the street guys have sub machine guns, and looks on their faces, like they would like to unload a magazine or two into anyone daring the stare them down. Like me.

Whereas in NYC, with tens of thousands homeless on the streets, the British, to their eternal shame, have made begging illegal, in a rich get richer, the poor get the picture scenario, complete with posters imploring the public, not to give a beggar a penny. British have a way of covering up their infections, like mascara over a one inch deep boil. Making conversation with bright young girl, forced to sleep under bridges, through her tears, it became apparent how desperate life in London could become, when they fine you for begging: as if you could find money for a fine before food. Homeless, under this rule have one option left: crime. Besides, British jail has cable TV and a warm bed.

British press as a general rule are at the lowest of world standards, and highest on the world ranking of trivial judgmental gossip.

Meanwhile the demonic symbology just evades everyone’s senses, plastered all over the architecture of the church, parliament, bureaucracy and royal palaces of world’s number one Iluminati base station. Distracted by Da Vinci kiddie grade understanding, the public never dig deeper, to wonder what is behind the ‘Sum-of-the-Aryan symbology, the serpent/dragon residues of the Draco, Draconian, and Dracula sources and sorcery, that is the unbelieved truth behind the ruling agendas, deep into history.

I dropped in the House of Commons, the people’s court, via a series of machine gun and sharp shooter gun emplacements, complete with anti tank technology, in a general understanding that there is nothing in the peoples parliament, that is really about us the people. Hundreds of surveillance cameras recorded my every move, and a rate per head, of 340 shots for every man woman and child, in UK, each day.

Inside the debating room, as in all Westminster Parliaments, no one was listening. Maybe 10 of the 600 odd parliamentarians were in attendance. No one even cares, that the antiquated parliament, has seating that can squeeze in just over 400 members, while there are over 600 elected members. After two weeks in the UK, the usual manipulation of the fall of Gordon Brown’s government was well underway, just as planned, with the crisis in MP’s being sacked, resigning or withering under a hammering from expenses related exposes, in readiness for the Iluminati’s next version of 33 degree Mason, Blair, in his all smiling Tory equivalent. The Tory’s are not elected yet, but you could bet anyone’s mortgage drowned house, that it will happen.

The pommes are a sickly looking lot, having had a traditional diet that would kill a lab full of fat rats, and this added to the UK’s chemical crisis, where the water itself, direct from the streams, is polluted with prosac, which when coupled to the centre aisles of Tesco, selling evil processed food, to traffic delayed and time short shoppers, and you have a big mess on your hand. The government, of course, through its own dedication to pumping chemicals and Govt approved deadly food and cosmetic poisons onto the people, are as complicit in the mass murder of their population as anyone. So it was no wonder some waffling MP, on the floor or Parliament, was making a speech to no one other than some dosing parliamentary butlers, and a handful of tourists behind the glass wall, like me, about the growing stroke problems. The speech lamented the fact that stroke and cardiovascular disease was now rampart in the UK, more so than anywhere in Europe, and the figures were on the rise like the bankruptcy rate. And that was just heart disease, costing the community 7 billion quid a year. That’s before, or course the other scourge, cancer, was accounted for, attacking 1 in 2 men, up from 1 in 30 or 40, 50 years ago. Some freak once wrote, that in the last days, disease will be rampant. No one seems to notice, degenerative disease is beyond plague proportions. But ads of the eternally young, in advertising and TV images of  the British, ignore the deeply personal truths, and we just accept the new ways to die, as a regular part of life.

Motoring around London, under do-as-the-GPS-says ease, is quite fun, in a bike courier kind of way. Harrods was a treat for non shoppers like me.There is not a thing I need, or for that matter, could fit on a bike already loaded like a Lancaster before a bombing run, so, given freedom from wanton desire, Harrods presented a chance to see, feel and touch all sorts of design and manufacturing excellence. I had no idea what a rack of slowly spinning tubes was for, but hey, I don’t have a dozen automatic watches I need to keep wound up by walking. So why not buy a cabinet to wind them? I had no idea there was such huge range or watches available over the counter at $300,000 a piece. How fun. I tell ya, it’s getting tough and competitive to be rich these days. Just when you think you have made it, by blowing $30,000 on a gold Rolex, some fuca turns up to lunch, 10 minutes late, according to his $300,000 watch.

Golfers can get cool, by aquiring a mini Hummer style golf buggy, just in case the bunkers get real.

And they had a real wooden horse, not one of those cheap fibreglass ones, as a saddler and polo outfitters accessory. The poor fucas working in the perma-perfume of the entry areas of Harrods…if they only knew how carcinogenic that blur of smell really is. It’s just as well they sell cosmetics along with perfumes, as the tox’d sales assistants need every bit of makeup they can muster, to cover up their work induced toxicity. Just like air hostesses…getting the equivalent of 5 full body Xray radiation scans, every long haul flight. There ain’t enough atmosphere at 30,000 feet, to keep out the radiation , that pieces a planes shell like air.

Heading out of London, on a sunny Friday afternoon, it seemed only logical to do the super yuppie thing, and go via the Park Lane BMW service centre, on the way for a smashing weekend in the Cotswolds. Oxford, cute pubs, charmed B&B’s and my favourite human here in Europe, Anoesjka,  my most reincarnated, beautiful, repeat offending partner, who was flying in from Holland for the weekend. Like all BMW service centres, time stress is the main ingredient, but having all day, I waited around the cafes and yard hands of Battersea, in pursuit of that $10 part, the one that stops the back break jamming closing, and throwing me under a truck. In Oxford, the evening before riding to Birmingham Anoesjka at Birmingham airport, I camped in the most overprized, overrated and only campsite in Oxford, where nearly dead British grey nomads but the grey into campervan, sit and rot retirement. The poor Brits, they really have overindulged, and underexposed themselves, to the point where retirement is a series of failing health episodes, and excitement in the Tesco shopping aisles on a battery powered, wheel chair trolley.

The pub to drink at, for and old rower’s private school boy like me, is the Head of The River Pub, close to the finish lines of Oxford vs Cambridge duals. In my day, Head of the River races were closer to, Give Me Head, of the River, after the em-blazer’d, boater adorned, drunken lads were allowed an annual liberty or two, with the new thing booze, in the car parks alongside the rowing races. Messy.

And at Oxford, a day after the private school boys had slugged down the champagne bottles, after their last exam, the waterside pub was more about recovery that recidivism.

The gorgeous Anoesjka arrived in the very worst of British weather, and after being ripped off by the ever deceptive marketing practises of the new UK, paying a night out for 60 minutes in the car park, we made our way onto the grey, wet blur of the UK motorways, pulling into to dry our shoes in Stratford on Avon, where Shakespeare  once put his boots under the electric hand dryers of  the riverside pub. As the weekend clouds parted, the green laneways, and ridiculously quaint and pretty villages of the Cotswolds, made a weekend two-up by BM’ kinda fun, with quaint pubs by night, and cosy Bed and Breakfast lofts for lazy sleep ins. Every time I catch up with Anoeskja, (maybe soon Dr Timmermans, PHD) it’s an ever increasing story of acquired wisdom, and joyful family,  ranging across all fields of politics, food, athletics and spiritual growth. What a star.

May the relationship rock on through a few dozen more intertwined lifetimes.

Birmingham is pretty grim city, but it is home to the cutest, most colourful hostel I have yet seen, and who cares what is happening outside, when Birminham Backpackers in going off inside.

But Ireland calls, if for no other reason, than this: I’ve never been there.

The Disunited States of America

I’ve wondered, once personally settling on the analogy that LA is the mouth piece of America,  what then, is the equivalent body part for New York?

Is it the brains, or the sphincter? Maybe it’s the pineal, but with a bad blockage? I ain’t figured it. New Yorkers see it, in their number plates, as the Empire State.

So how fares the Empire?

I didn’t quite know what to expect after two days and 1600k, on the road in Mexico, when driving to return my hire car, and jump a jet from Mexico to NYC, in the midst’s of the world’s paranoia about swine flu. The viral source was blamed on Mexico, to deflect heat from the real source in the US,  where, with aid of some toxic US export pig farming techniques across the border, (after the offending US pig farmer had been fined out of his fat soaked profits in the States) the US exported the new strain south. The most dangerous bug was being propagated by CNN, and the rest of the brain dead, colon fermented US media, with is easy to deliver, paranoid news exports to the poor Mexicans.

Anyone who got flu in Mexico, was deemed a swine flu victim…500,000 die each year of regular flu.  It generally leads to death by pneumonia’s drowning.  At one point, the toxic media claimed had 145 Mexicans had died of swine flu . The media barely bothered to apologise when it ended up only 7 of the 145 were swine flu.

But by this stage, getting to Cancun airports saw me pass through more roadblocks than the road to truth. Firstly, there were the ridiculous army manned blockades, with soldiers wearing masks, apparently, with US funding, trying to stem the flow of drugs to the US, whilst the US did nothing to stem the arms flows for Mexicans, who could buy cheap assault weapons, in the US redneck states with impunity. Meanwhile, the fully corrupt Mexican police made sure it was business as usual, at about 20 mutilated and often tortured, and dumped bodies a day. And the idiots were worried about one pig flu death a day?  And all the while, the US consumed its way to a wired or stoned existence, by the Mexican delivered truckload.

Then there were the impromptu medico blockades…often 400m up the road from the army blockades, and 500m short of the Federali’s blockades. All were a useless waste of time. I passed through dozens of them. One, and only one, scanned my body temperature. This they also did entering Cancun airport, but nothing was done at the US end. Hey, with Iluminati guys like Gore and Cheney standing to reap millions in profits from their scam on flu drug sales, why slow business? And surprise, surprise, the last big sale of anti flue drugs was 3 years ago. And all of a sudden, its pandemic flu time again. And you guessed it, the last massive dose sold, has a use by date.  It’s now. Time for nose in the trough again, eh Cheney? And all you liberal greenies out there, like me, don’t be fooled by Gore’s Nobel Prize, he has been in on the dark side for years. I remind you, they gave mass murdered Kissinger a Nobel Peace Prize.

And I quickly add, Gore’s carbon crusade was planned 30 years back, and is packed with purposeful fraud. But that is another long story.

So it was a long drive through Mexico, from the pot-in-public, chilled out Zipolite,  the filter trap for the world’s insane intelligentsia…to NYC, filter trap for the world’s wired intelligentsia. After 5 months in the next best thing to the third world, a gear shift from 5^th to 1^st was going to stress the syncro. But NYC has a lot going for it, and my mind takes but a nano second wind its tachometer to NYC pace, and stay there, redlined, all day.

So I was pretty happy to get out of the fast dying American Airlines, the airline the is indeed the AA of air travel. Too many years on the piss, and AA can’t even manage to cook its guests an onboard meal these days. But the moment you strike up ya’ first conversation in New York, its heaven. Besides, they speak English here, a great luxury after lumbering with Spanish for 5 months.

I was expecting more flu clearance paranoia in the US, after several countries had already closed their borders to us Mexican’s, some, like China, incarcerating us. But nothing. Into the shuttle, and through the dark, wet, James Dean poster streets we drove.

Accommodation in NYC is exorbitant at best, so I had already resigned myself to a dorm bunk, which, in NYC, can be trying, given the hours travellers keep around here. 28 years ago, when I last lived here, we were usually just heading out to breakfast at sundown. That was when they reopened Studio 54, and my travelling companion girlfriends had roped me into their elite circle friends around the 18 head work team, who were the door staff at Studio. And being that everyone in NYC needed to know someone, to get back into their newly reopened Studio 54, we were treated like rock stars. From dusk, to well, dusk.

But at 53, my agenda was not about after midnight, this time around. Back in the late 70′s NYC was a pretty tough city. Tourists never went into the caves below know as the Underground, as not all came back up intact. There were more parts of town that were off-limits than on. You needed exceptional eye control in the street, to insure you never made eye contact, if you were brave enough not to wear shades. But despite the tough side, NYC 1979, had plenty of soul, spunk and eccentricity. The film Taxi Driver captured New York in 1970s, just perfectly.

So it was with considerable surprise to find New York, now totally different, beyond friendly, and seemingly quite consciously alive.  This well being consciousness had grown out of the pavement like unstoppable weeds.  It was a low fat, gluten free, no-car-horns-allowed, potpourri of eccentricity. On speed.

Every post 911, vain, would-be super hero had joined the NY Fire Department, so they could ride the big red trucks, usually pointlessly, but with wild, sirens blaring, escapes though a town,  a town seemingly  either made of match wood, or faulty smoke detectors.

People still bought impossibly large and hairy dogs, and winced as they pooper-scoopered their doggy’s do.

My task was to equip myself to be fully independent of everything that was NYC, by procuring enough light weight camping gear to enable me to live on an Adriatic headland until 2012.  It was an expensive exercise, self justified by leaving the actual purchase to the day of my 54th birthday.  As well as camping gear, I stocked up on a bunch of new books about the acceleration of consciousness , towards 2012, (my pet interest), along with some books to slow me down on the subject of the heart and stillness.  The later, not to be read whilst in NYC.

To mix it up a bit, I took a dreamy morning off, to glide by push bike through the fresh spring growth, of a sunny day in Central Park, followed abrubtly by Not Rays Pizza in the hardened Brooklyn. Noticing that in Brooklyn, I was also in Muslim Central,  so I thought I would have some shit stirring fun, and bought myself a $12, Mohamed perfect, Yasser Arafat scarf,  and promptly caught the underground back to the heart of darkness, Wall Street, for Friday ‘arvo, knock off drinks with the beleaguered traders.

Sitting there in the throng of yuppies and ‘greeders’, the beer conversation went something like this, ‘Ah, so, where are you from?”….as they looked nervously at my Bin Laden attire, where of course I took delight in coughing bit, and replying, ‘Who me?…Oh…I just flu in from Mexico’.

Catching the train back from Wall St, just sitting, waiting on the platform, buried deep inside my high volume Ipod world, I noticed an older Afro American being helped, stumblingly along the platform.

Clearing some bench space to seat the man who was obviously in great pain, we struck up a conversation sparked by his plea for a quarter, to eat. I suppose most New Yorkers are so jaded by the begging in the midst of such opulence, that requests for a $quarter rarely get air. But I wanted to know what was going on here, was this real?

Real? ….. well, it was indeed a tragedy on broken legs. Harry, as was the withered 57 year old man’s name, had been shot,(in the head I add), after getting in the way of thieves in his 20′s. Since then, his wounds had destroyed his balance, and he was perpetually falling, breaking things, and his last fall, after a hit by a taxi, had left him in a big mess.

The disgrace of America, is that it abandons its own, in the Iluminati’s presidential pursuit of funding the world’s biggest army, and it’s evil foreign interventions. America second biggest disgrace, is its people’s ignorance of where their money is spent.

Harry was entered into the US social security net, but that did not mean he was able to eat, or cover medical expenses. In his shaking hand he held a single white bread sandwich. He asked me for a hand, in simply buying drink, and he experienced his very first Gatorade, via me. Then the train arrived. Harry reckoned he would be fine, but he was so crippled that I had to drag, then carry him into the car, swearing at the guards for closing the doors on us, whilst Harry’s crippled foot dragged behind, jammed in the closing hiss. On board, heading for Harlem, Harry insisted he would be OK. He wouldn’t be. So I pumped his hand with my greenbacks, and rallied around the black commuters, to find a helper to get Harry off the train at 93^rd.

I teared up as I climbed the stairs out of the tube. What kind of fucking cruel insanity allows a government to wage war on the world, whilst turning their backs on their own? For fucks sake, even Mexico has some sort of public heath for all.  But not the US. The US sends $1600 PA to every Israeli just to insure war is forever. The US, The Fourth Reich in jeans?

It was the same again the next day, just shopping for some laundry detergent, in the hip, gay, Chelsea district. This time, it was seemingly healthy young black guy, but with a face so beset with pain and tears, you could not walk past him, as he begged, maybe for the first time in his life, for 50c to make a phone call. He had been robbed, and was destitute. New York can still be a tough place to live. There are 30,000 homeless people trying to survive in New York, as the limos line up, their drivers waiting onboard all day, simply to drive their pig wealthy owners home. It’s a disgrace.

But whist it’s a disgrace, it is also graceful, and it could be fairly said, that New York contains both the very best, and the very worst of humanity. It is an exact replica of the world’s consciousness. It is an exact replica of my own consciousness. And yours. Everyone’s, infact. It’s the reptilian wrapped around the ying and the yang. The duality of good and evil. Its Earth, 2009.

Moseying down town to price some camping gear, I stumbled across a big hole. No one too seems determined to fill it in, given that is been there since 911, 2001. There on the hoarding was a graphic of what was proposed. Where the twin tower’s foundations first underground explosions went off, (with enough thermite to melt down a steel works), were to be two giant underground waterfalls, sort of like the Hudson was following through to China, in some perfect perverse symbol of US’s current financial reality.

There was construction underway, where the tower containing the embarrassing Enron files, and the Mayor’s emergency response office, once contained in 42 levels that  just decided to fall over, from the inside columns out, in perfect choreographed demolition. No one really noticed that this building was neither hit, nor was seriously  on fire, nor had suffered any serious damage. It’s just collapsed as a sympathy vote.  Yeah, right.

Then off course, the 10 second fireball that was reduced to a mild suffocated smokey residue, managed miraculously to melt basement steel to red hot puddles that stayed  red hot for weeks, dozens of stories below the fire. The fireball was a mere odd 1000 degrees cooler than what was needed to melt steel, let alone explode it. It was just coincidence that George W’s cousin was in charge of security at both the ‘hijackers’ departure point, and the security that ‘rewired’ both towers ‘security’  in secret, weekend work before the miraculous collapse. Being that the Bush family had been 40 year partners of the Bin Ladens, is was sure a good idea that the only plane in US skies, after 911, was the one removing the prime suspects family.

But books, films, documentaries and dozens of eye witness accounts tell a much clearer story of the most outrageous case of treachery against the American people by the American people, in modern history.

To my mind, the unquestionably most mind blowing aspect of 911, is the intensity of the cover up, the criminality of the media compliance, and US societal ignorance up of the single most, outrageous, conspiratorial act, of the last 100 years …the fact that most of the world still thinks that the tower demolition was an act instigated by Bin and his Arabs, is to me, gobsmacking. The evidence undermining the official story is so extensive, so well circulated, and so blaringly obvious, that I am left wondering, how deep is the shit, that this planet is really in?

The king has no clothes. His balls are dangling away on parade, yet the crowd still admires the sparkle of his nonexistent, imaginary clothes.

Anyway, things worked out just fine for the 911 planners. The building owner, who was facing an asbestos clean-up bill of more than the tower’s sale value, doubled his doe on the insurance scam.
George and Dick got the wars their handlers needed.  New Patriot Acts advanced the Sum of the Aryans’ agenda. The world is now attuned to the guns, detectors  and surveillance being pointed at us,  Joe the plumber. Overall, from the Black Hands viewpoint, 911 was an outstanding success.

Buying some camping gear seemed somehow appropriate, alongside the big hole. When I entered the Tent and Trail shop, a lightning bolt hit next door, at ground zero, that sounded identical to a bomb exploding. Everyone in the shop winced then ducked, reassuring me that Zeus, if no one else, agreed with me, and was sending his compliments.

The disgrace that saw even progressive, inquisitive media, like our ABC and SBS, toe the official US government line unquestioningly, to my mind, remains a journalistic disgrace, lain at their feet, tantamount to Colin Powell’s career wrecking WMD bullshit, to the UN  and us, the world. Lucky my radio show was not on air at 911, as I was a cynic from the moment I watched the non prestressed building, made of bend-before-explode steel, explode live on my late night Australian TV. Having designed chaired, and then project managed the construction of a 30 storey prestressed building, I knew a bit more about these matters than most. So had I hit the radio waves with my cynicism from day 1, 911, I would have been lynched. Now at least, I suppose we can talk freely about this matter, but still the truth eludes the masses.

When walking to my appointment with Zeus, I came across a scrum of some 100 journalists crowded outside a police station, a few hundred metres from ground zero. What was this fuss all about, I wondered, wandering up to the most mis-fitting print jouno I could spot, attired in an immaculate suit. Here we had the press of the best and brightest city on earth, mere meters away from where the biggest piece of journalistic subterfuge, remains an open wound, and what could it be, I wondered, that had the whole pack on alert, here in downtown NYC? What mindless piece of public distraction was today’s hot story all about?

It wasn’t about how the President and All His Men had destroyed the towers.

That’s not a story.

No, today all the headlines were about Keiffer Sutherland’s annual act of insignificant mischief, (he had head butted someone), and was about to turn himself  in. World headlines found this demanding viewing. You can deceive the entire world with bullshit about 911, but when there is a little bloodied nose in a night club, it’s HUGE NEWS. The well attired Vanity Fair jouno waiting around, explained the days press pack agenda to me, and from there, I went on the raise the 911 media conspiracy audacity, and with some mutual reassurance, we both went into long, head nodding debate, about the perversity of a world media that averts its eyes from the 911 truth, whilst zooming in, with 500mm lens, on socially sick trivia.

New York for beginners is all about walking. Mile and miles of intensively interesting life keeps the feet busy, and the head agaze. Where locals always jump the walk by scampering underground,  by comparison, newbies walk.

NYC. It’s huge, it’s fascinating, and it’s all laid out with street numbers that reassuringly track your progress and location.

I wana feel a part of it, New York> New York. I wana wake up> in a city> that never sleeps,( but I don’t want to do in on uppers).

Giant WHOLEFOOD stores flood the city, where checking out punters, cue to pay at one of 30 pumping cash registers, holding seemingly fresh food in their hand , deluded into believing that the WHOLEFOOD brand assures them that they won’t be the one in two, who now gets cancer. The food seems fresh, big,  and bold….but it’s just as toxic, and packaged as ever. There is a about a teaspoon a day of hard to remove toxins in everyone’s urban diet these days. 3 of 4 apples  now need to be eaten, here in 2009, to provide the same nutrition as one apple in 1959.  Such is the ruin we have wrought on Gaia’s soil.

I met up with a beautiful friend, and Australian mother who had lived in NYC for over 20 years, and we did lunch across the road from her families Tribeca home, one of the 1000 rare NYC homes with garage. I quietly smiled as she unfolded happy story after happy story, one of which caught my attention. She, like half the world, have faced one of the dozens of recently arrived diseases, brought on in large part, by the  toxic modern world, and the last time we had met, I had suggested she try using a product, that her naturopath had subsequently encouraged, called Zeolite.  Zeolite is a simple volcanic mineral, with a honeycomb molecular structure, in which there is a small positive charge that has a way of attracting, caging, then expelling toxins and heavy metals, from inside the cells,to out, via the waste removal paths. The drug cartels are desperate to kill it off. But my friend, much to the seeming horror of her doctors, had got well. The same doctor, asked, what protein was my friend using, and was confused when her answer included the simple and well known Spiralina.  Its 2009, and he has never heard of Spiralina? And he swore the Hippocratic oath, from Hippocrates, who said all cures can be found in  food? The doctor thought a nice fat steak it what was needed. What hope is there, with Dr Ignorant idiots like this for healers? But in NYC, there are many in the know,  who are wise up about survival in the toxic wasteland, that are the centre aisles of urban shopping, and the bathroom products we adrons ourselves with.

Poor old NYC is going the way of the Fourth Reich itself….its aging and, arguably going under. It won’t be too many decades hence when Americans kids will be working in sweat shops making Nikes’ for Chinese wrappers.

I look out my hotel window, a Last-minute.com, $50 a night escape from the dorm,  located here, around the corner from the Empire State building, and a bit further away from the more elegant, and glorious tribute to the steel building mastery of  NYC city, and there it is>>> the Chrysler building. Along with the Brooklyn Bridge, the underground system, even the 70′s post modern ghost, the twin towers, NYC is the city of steel, where the US’s greed for cheap energy,  forging steel from iron, to create the world’s most powerful industrial nation. Cars weighed in by the ton, and the energy they burnt, said fuc you to the places the US oil was raped from. So looking out to the star of the show, the all steel Chrysler building, it was to me, and interesting moment in the rise and fall of the  Fourth Reich,  the USA, to read that the industrial giant Chrysler had gone into bankruptcy last week. The world biggest car builder, GM, is hard on its heels.

Across the road the Rothchild’s controlled Bank Of America is busy plundering the last survival $stash of the debt buried US, and the nations ‘savoir’, the great deceiver, Obama is doing his masters work, by raiding the till, the piggy bank, and borrowing  trillions to ‘bail out’ the US.

Bail out?

Its no bail out…it’s to  bury the US, in my view.

The latest  Obama, ‘stress tests’ suggest arch criminals like Bank of America and Citibank need yet another $750 billion. If you blew a million dollars a day, from the day Jesus was born, you still would not have spent a trillion dollars. And the US owes many trillions, mostly to  Asia, mainly China. The writing is on the Wall St.

The plan, in my view, is to get the western economies that weakened, that they will be willing to write any legislation that the Iluminati banking cartel wants…and the banking cartel wants a one world, centralised banking system that it can easily control…and with the aid of puppets like Gordon Brown, and Obama the Wonder Boy, the banking cartels are getting what they ordered, as I write. The irony of the filthy deal is that the western governments are borrowing the trillions to enact the bail-out, from the same banking cartels that they are giving the money to save. Unbelievable, if you stop and look at it. The banking cartels lends the State, money it does not have, to bury the State in debt, so the same banking cartel can pocket the bail out funds through the back door. And it’s not the End of Daze?

Streets are lined with desperate and dateless beggars, as the black limos await their master’s call.

Meanwhile the artists, prophets, healers and musicians do their thing. The city is alive with culture, and counter culture, across the counter. Parks are full of music. Posters and T shirts decrying the filthy conspiracy of  911 and its bullshit oil wars… ‘dying for the lie’, are on the streets everywhere, as the voice of people tries to make its way through the pavement, like a Spanish Rose in Harlem.

Last election, Obama and  Hilary Clinton were crawling all over each other, to claim the mantle of the biggest peacenik. Now in power, they are busier than ever, ramping up the Smack Dealers War in Afghanistan, in readiness for a blocking move on China and Russia, to take the Central Asian riches, of the last places the US is yet to rape, where energy riches abound. Pakistan teeters on the edge on implosion, just as planned.  The US is busy next door.  As per usual US  policy, whislt the US populace is kept in the dark, the covert ops in Pakistan to trigger the next Nam are well underway as I write.

The military industrial cartels, the same ones as running the designer bankruptcy games, are licking their lips, as the US populace blindly adores its new president… the one who offered CHANGE, but who pursues Bush’s same game with different spin, the president candidate who offered HOPE,  as hope is intangible, and cost free, and, in short, is hopeless. Has anyone stopped to read the book written by Obama’s chief foreign policy adviser, Brzezinski? The book is a perfect foundation for the Project for a New America, a document that would put a smile of Hitler’s face. Wake up liberal greenies, you are being conned by Obama, just as you were by George W’ seniors successor elect, Billy Clinton. Father Bush had Clinton picked out years ago, just as the black guy president was picked out years ago. Noticed who are the current best bosom buddies of bullshit world peace talkfests…you guessed it….the Bill Clinton and George Senior partnership. Hillary is next, making it 30 years of the designer, Bush-Clintonocracy. Bill was the best Republican President the US has had. Meanwhile, the US, long the work tool of the Bavarian wing of the Iluminati, is  being used, as one writer put it, like this…’America is being used to destroy America.’ How true.

I still love New York, because it’s full of New Yorkers. It’s the Government that worries me. For example. I wandered down into the underground, with $2 to feed the slot machine for my last ride of the week. The first two machines I tried, failed. The next one was being attended by a technician. So I walked around to the fourth option, but before I got there, 120kg and 190cm of black US security guard had Sumo hit me at grid iron speed, no explanation, nothing, just whamo.

As I recomposed myself, with a, “What the hell mate?” I was again manhandled by this US security guy, as it dawned on me that the technician was emptying the cash. A quick, ‘stand back’ would have done, but violence suited the US Govt attitude faster. The next bit stunned me. From the govt thug, “Want me to get a cop”..and make up some false charge and have you taken away in cuffs…

Who’s worried about the crims, it’s the Govt who worries me. I open the paper, and there’s a picture of boy scouts in SWAT team gear, complete with real assault weapons, training up on ‘how to raid a pot plantation”. What the fuc?  Obama the fraud, has just welched on his promise to stop military tribunals ex Guantanamo, and is doubling troops into Afghanistan.

If some civic shit went down in the US, now with its ready to roll concentration camps, Joe the Plumber would be fucked.

In the fluster, with designer same-colour-all-notes, US currency, the ticket machine gobbled my $20 note, instead of an intended $1, and so some deserving , money-for-the-homeless volunteer worker got $18 worth of free rides to work, from my exiting donation. These vollunteers, in NYC, are now on every second corner, as Black and Hispanic neighbourhoods get repossessed at a rate of 8 in 50 homes, as of today’s New York Times.

All this fuss’n a mess’n makes for good entertainment, but life in NYC has a used by date, and as much as I love arriving in the Big Apple, it’s also equally as satisfying to leave.  The big apple was the reward for the horse that one the big race, and these days, NYC isn’t winning every event So, ‘darling sweetie’, where better to depart NYC for, than the traditional, posh summer escape plan, Newport Rhode Island. As a yachty, with little or no addiction to sport other than a penchant for yacht racing, Newport seemed a logical personal Mecca for Rod Bin Sailing. As an Australian yachty, there is some sick and macabre pleasure in walking the turf of the cheating, lying and scheming New York Yacht Club, to relish the historical glee in Australia’s removal of the Auld Mug from the pompous glass box that once housed the America cup. It sat in that box for over 100 years, till Bondy, Ben and Bertrand levered the cup off its bolts with their now, 25 year old, winged keel. The New York Yacht Club still has acres or waterfront lawn mowed at the end of the street called America’s Cup Avenue, just there’s no America Cup races there anymore. I attended the Aussie version of the America Cup in Free’o, where we put on a smashing event, and sportingly gave the Cup back to yet more Americans, who continued their practise of cheating and deception, racing monster cats against inherently slower monohulls.

After the Aussie event, I lived in Free’o for a few months, before sailing over towards Africa, and in the gloom of the Cup hangover, during which time  I had a glimpse of the depression that must have settled over Newport in the last 25 years.

But Newport has survived with considerable grace, and yachting, albeit with a retro flavour, rocks on regardless. With a harbour full of gracious old 12m yachts, and a seasonal  flurry of the world’s most gracious mega yachts visiting as a part of the escape-the-hurricane season, to enjoy the Maine Coast season, an American tradition going back the Vanderbilt glory days, still keeps Newport alive.

We found the only cheap hostel in town, in all its 100 year old, all American timber plank glory, and set about exploration by pushbike. I have never seen anything like this place. The all American dream is so beautifully defined in New England’s timber cottages, in spring time, green, fence-free gardens, with the beautiful American flags fluttering from the poles above the front door. Spring was in the air, and buds were at every limb end, tulip bed and Budweiser bar. Clam chowder, $12 Maine lobsters, fries and buns made a blocked sewer of my well stuffed digestion. Is that with a Coke?

Yacht restoration was everywhere, infact, a school of old timber yacht building was my neighbour, and the students weren’t just restoring old 6 and 12m yachts, they were building new ones, to 1930′s, Olin Stephens plans. If, like me, you had spent 5 years building an opening quaint hotel called the Boathouse, and who had sailed on timber boats since the 50′s, Newport was my sort of  idea of design style heaven.

And it was quite good fun at the bars too. A day trip to Boston saw me drop in on a pack of Volvo 70 yachts, on their around the world race, the biggest thing, I would add, I sailing terms, for the 2008-9 racing calendar. Boston being half Irish, (as well as Boston Legal), was a spot where our tour of the Freedom Trial led us into an Irish Pub, where Volvo competitor Green Dragon was all the talk. Later that night, after too many beers, Billy Burke, the Irish sail master of the Newport Sailing and Athletic Club (where the main athletic sport is raising beers to the gob), had me convinced that I should go to Ireland, where in Galway, I could greet the same Volvo boats after they cross the Atlantic, in all of about 6 days, a trip that would take me 2 or 3 weeks in a regular yacht. A day later, I was on flight to the UK.

But not before a visit to the mansions of Newport. Many unbelievably posh mansions are open to the public, presumably because the posh owners had such twats for kids, that they gave the home to the Newport Preservation Society, before the kids got a look in.

They have this theory in Boston, that some guy called Revere and Adams, and their mates, dumped some tea into the harbour, gave the Brits shit for a while, and theoretically America got independence from Europe and England. I personally think the “Revolution” was just a PR war, where the Brits and Euros never gave anything away. And proof on my theory can be seen in the gilded glory of the European and English mansions that the industrial rulers of the USA have on display in Newport.

Take the Vanderbilt’s mansion known as Breakers. I have done the Palace of Versailles, and a few other pompous gigs, but the Breakers, considering it was mere beach house, shits on any European Palace when it comes to The Lives of the Rich and Famous. Every square inch of the Breakers is a budget, ball breaker.

I was amazed. And in Bellevue Avenue, along the Newport cliff tops, its mile after mile of opulence, and magnificent estates. Servants dishing up grand breakfast, down to the beach with the guests, then some golf and tennis coaching, and maybe some afternoon sailing, all with 7 outfit changes before another grand debutant ball, with presidents, kings of industry, all sliding down the banisters on the servants trays. But that was in the past.

Some, like dear Doris Duke, didn’t know what to do with all her money. She was the richest woman on earth in the 60′s. Daddy had died, like hundreds of thousands of his clients, after he had convinced the world to take up smoking his cigarettes, and dear Doris, she inherited the lot, had no kids, so had camels grace her lawn instead. The lawn, in all its perfection, is now mown by a keen surfer, who looks longingly out to sea, dreaming of waves, who  is trapped by his two kids and a mortgage. But at least he has a job.

I love a good boat bookshop, and so I can only dream of being published on the shelves of the best boat bookshops on earth, in Newport. Not that this story has much to do with boats at the moment, but hey, I’m sure they will renter the story, but as for now, I’m not writing my script. Some other lunatic is doing that.

All that wealth in Newport, and all that energy in New York, tells a tale of capitalisms finest hour. But somehow or other, I get the feeling the clock has just struck one, and America ain’t one anymore. Reporters looking for hope that there is a green sprout of regrowth in the western economy, cited Porches’ success is introductory sales of its latest opulent machine this week. What they didn’t mention, was that the all sales were all in Shanghai.

But much more important changes are underway in America, than mere economic or political changes. All the Alfa male models of politics and industry are crumbling in the States, as a new, more subtle feminie consciousness is being brewed below the headlines. The gnashing of teeth, the exposure of deceptive politics, and a world financial system that turned in world gambling den, are all on display for Joe the Plumber to see, and as he loses his job, his home, and is forced to contemplate what is really important:  hanging on to things, or hanging onto relationships?

The whole Western world’s consciousness is being forced through a process that is indeed both tough, and wonderful. And it’s all tracking exactly as had been predicted and mapped by the Mayans and others, thousands of years ago. And to me, watching it all unfold, and with it, contemplating what is implied in an extension of the calendar, is a treat that sends shivers privately down my spine, as I walk alone, but fully connected to every man and woman on the streets of NYC.