I could be hanging around auditioning for a part in the remake of a SOUND OF MUSIC, lying here in grassy fields below the Alps, but unless Julie Andrews is replaced by a singing porn star,  and unless I get back on track, the hills will likely never be alive with the sound of anything. There’s the sound of the snow melt stream, gurgling behind me, however. There’s few tweedy birds. And in a couple of hours, there will be a campsite once again full of chatty mountaineers. You can tell a mountaineers’ tent: its the one with multiple guy ropes. On the edge of a precipice, in 40 knot air, at 4000m, the added guy ropes could be handy, but here in a Chamonix campsite, the guy ropes are just added trip wires for vin Rod, returning from la toilette.

I arrived in Europe on a rusty Russian ferry, along with a bunch of truckies, bikies and sales reps, after being dutifully disembowelled via the bow onto a Belgium dock. 36 pounds and 3.6 hours to cross from Ramsgate to Ostend…  that’s 10 quid an hour to read, then reread the only thing I could find in the ferry’s,’70’s laminated lounge… a holiday guide to Slovenia, or Slovakia…or somewhere once Slow. Whilst on the English cell net, as Ramsgate faded, I shot off a few, last, cheap priced SMS’s, by way of thankyous and invites.

On boarding the ferry, I had been joined by two fit, handsome older Dutch guys, who had introduced me to the world of the super scooter, a phenomena more European than I had known, and one where, at 60 years old, for example, with 500cc of gutsy super scooter motor under you, with its miles of wheel base, wardrobes of storage, sofas of seating…you could simply zip over the English Chanel, hit the motorways at 130km, and tour the world in comfort and style, with only the passing derision of real bikers as a social setback.

Maybe I should try and be the first wanker to circumnavigate the world on a super scooter?  Sadly no doubt, being the way the weird world is, you can bet some dweeb, and his grandma, have already done it.

I don’t know much about Brussels other then what I read about  at the visible, and at the invisible level. At  visible level, Brussels is the seat of the giant nanny state known at the EUThe EU> it’s all about money honey, mixed in with a massive standards association from hell. On the invisible level, Brussels, is, and has been for years, Europe’s leading Iluminati operations centre. WW3, ex of Europe is now less likely.

But after a hammering ride, from mid England, to Europe’s Brussels’ and then onto Amsterdam, all  under pressure to make impossible ferry schedules,  and then to be caught in the heaviest trucking traffic I have ever seen,  well, by the time I pulled into a  Belgium trucker’s grill, complete with Brussels-does-Elvis decor, I was not in the mood for light banter, which was just as well, as after a month or two of English speaking destinations, I was once again parked at the Tower of Babel.  I note, nonetheless, what between the EU, Hollywood and Windows, it now seems everyone in Europe has ease of English as a second language, making me feel quite illiterate, but  nonetheless, happy not to have to make conversation in Belgium, where I have no idea what they speak anyway, nor did I care. The 500kg plate of fish and fried stuff arrived, and it was all I could do to, to just get through it, let alone talk.

Twilight lingers forever around the European summer solstice, June 22ish, and after the line of trucks banked up as though they were just about to be bombed by George senior, I took to doing the safer lane sliding technique, using the 4m wide, side lane as my personal road. By sheer bad luck, I was intercepted by Belgium cops, who then insisted their instant fine be full filled, by escorting me to the nearest ATM, to extract $100. This they did by escorting me down the left hand lane for a mile or two, which was the cause of the fine in the first place. Once in a free lane, they ran me well over the speed limit to keep up, and on arrival, stood there, like mafia beside a fluro Volvo, as I extracted their money from a Hong Kong Bank. I love globalism, it can fuck you up anywhere you go. I pointed out to the cops, that my disfavour for their instant welcoming committee would insure I would never again, in this lifetime , return to Belgium, and that a law that extracts penalties before a court case can challenge it, and which allows cops to demand cash by a police escort to an ATM, was surely a case of law makers gone mad, which, on contemplation, is exactly what Belgium is all about. So, I arrived in Belgium, ate fried stuff, was fined, and left. That should do for Belgium for another 33 years, as that was how long it had been before my last equally short visit.

These days, when you cross from one European country to the next, you are doing well if you can find a sign telling you what country you are in. The Welcome to the Nederland’s sign came in the form or some highway guide to local street speed limits. No one seemed to think it necessary to put up a sign saying, hey dude, you are now in another country.

A lifetime ago in the mid 70’s, I recall observing that the ‘alternative types’ that gave us that folly suggesting all you need is love, had moved on mass to Amsterdam. Back in the 70’s many of these artists, pot smokers and philosophers had acquired barges and wooden train cars,  so as to extend their Kombi space, and this hardware they had liberally spread around the disused islands and wetlands surrounding Amsterdam, decorating them with prayer flags and rainbows. One such island is at Zeeberg, about 4k out of mid ‘Dam. Arriving as the light had just faded before midnight, I rediscovered that all the 70’s hippies had not left, they had just made a motza by converting their aquatic commune into the busiest campsite I have ever seen. All of Europe, Russia and rest of the world had come to discover the Dam and participate in the great liberal dope smoking experiment that is the Dutch way. A tent by a waterway seemed better than a dorm at double the price, so I pitched the pop up tent beside a nest of swans and ducks, and proceeded to watch as hundreds of tents become fading party centres for aromatic smokers, and beer drinkers. The tent popped up, just as it did on the M1, and a few grazes aside, I had myself a Dutch waterfront.

I love the Dutch.

Who couldn’t.

Maybe it’s the liberal, tolerant greenie in me. Maybe it’s the old hippy. Whatever the reason is, I proffer an opinion that helps me at least, understand why I love Holland.

It goes like this. In England, and for that matter, Deutschland and France, where rolling pastures make getting fat, easier than living below sea level, especially for  those disposed to get fat on the back of others, namely the lords, barons and Louis the what-teenths,  who sewed up the locals as slaves, made their motza’s, and gained fame by one mindless European war after another, spilling industrial quantities of their serf’s blood. Meanwhile , the Dutch were busy bailing, and their feudal masters never got a chance to evolve. Dutch traded, as Europeans went to war. Dutch society was not, in consequence, I conclude, subject to the evil enslaving ways of their neighbours, and as such, had a moment to ponder more fully, the principle exposed (but rarely deployed by their neighbours) of Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite….or, in the loose Rod translation…we are all one family, of equal, free, men and women.

My little Sound Of Music setting may need to shift soon, and the blisteringly blue alpine skies of Chamonix are making way for the afternoon thunderstorm, and it may not pay to sit on wet grass at the end of a 25m, 240 volt cable I found outside one of  the oh so French, squat toiltettes. Yesterday, after riding 630 k from Paris, I was drenched in seconds by a shower in the last 10k run, between the dark timbered Swiss style chalets. Its hard knowing which country you are in, as Italy, Switzerland and France are all neighbours here, and when I bought a bread roll for lunch today, it was a French roll, and the cheese I bought just up the street, technically it was Swiss.

In the Dam, the canals encircle the entire city, which is more a town, by comparison to the massive, 13 million pax Paris.

I love all things boatie, and to be allowed to float some outrageous home into the middle of a chic city, and then make like a liberal dope smoking artiste cum, intellectual, is my idea of rule bending , bending the right way.

By the way, the thunder and showers now make the tent a cute retreat, whilst Chamonix waters its window box geraniums, and everything is happy. I love living in tents. God knows why I once owned 23 houses when one tent would do.

So yep, I could well live forever in the Dam, in my cosy barge, with my trusty black pushbike, and mixing it with all those liberal philosophers, smoking, drinking or abstaining with friends as we chug down the city canals on a Sunday afternoon, in someone’s modified lifeboat> life would be, as they say, good. Crass motorboats and yachts just don’t qualify here, and so you don’t need to pay for the damn things, as they won’t fit under the bridges anyway. Kinda like some eye of the needle story… ‘All yee who want to enter the kingdom of heaven, must leave thy yachts and big homes behind, as all we have room for is a rented barge, ya black pushbike, and that’s it”.

Boating takes on a new twist when it passes by windows with Russian dolls for sale, by the hour, and with it, next door, odours enough to make Norbert the Nark epileptic.

I also love the way the Dutch ride pushbikes…and not just because they ride, but how they ride. It’s in the pose. One should, in my formal view, ride erect. Not because of what is in the  Russian Doll windows, but because of the ergonometry of the equipment. Dutch pushbikes are tall, with handlebars swept back to the natural fall of the wrist and hand, and are not lowered and crossed like our daft mountain bikes bars, or worse still, dropped by racing drop bars,  bars that no one ever uses anyway. The effect is gracious, and to ride around Haarlem accompanied by my dear friend Anoesjka, as her blond hair sailed along behind, on a sunny summers day in Holland, to me seemed close to heaven. Haarlem is a picture postcard satellite of the Dam, where any bright minded, loving mum like Anoesjka, would do well raising two beautiful twins such as her Nils and Yanika. Behind Haarlem are miles of forested dunes, in which lie clear lakes, and odd bunch of hairy Scottish cows, and so given the warmth of the impending summer, and to celebrate and end to the ever wet England, I stripped down to slugO’s, and did a few laps of the lake, with Anoesjka, Nils and Yanika as my hosts.

I spent almost a week in Amsterdam, returning to my urban , swan lake tent each night, to watch as either mum or dad swan, take turns on guard duty. With daylight never ending, plants are in overdrive, and with it, all the breeding couples of nature are hard at it, raising a family.

In town, the Dam, I could wander or ride about carelessly, as whichever way you went, it was a wonderland. Buddhists say peace comes from a lack of wanting, and with a bike with no storage capacity, a wallet on the fade, and a life well lived, I found myself slipping into a life of no wanting. One way to ruin a good holiday, is to remain affixed on shopping, finding that new thing to ‘define’ your ego, better that anyone else’s, back home.It’s arguably a waste of time, and ruins your ability to soak in the experience.   You take the photo, but never actually look at the subject.  I am a late learner in this field, and have not yet mastered the art of not wanting. My wanting usually comprises a daily hunt for a bargain discount salad, on the fresh shelves of a convenience orientated supermarket. This is not too onerous. I have plans to try and expose myself to people, places and opportunities where constant wanting is minimalist. The western world has truly managed to fuck with the heads of just about every participant, keeping everyone in a perpetual pursuit of something or other. I want out. Mind you…that’s wanting.

The sterility and methodical way in which ‘coffee shops’ ( not to be confused with cafes) administered high quality pot was indeed an international phenomena. All the types, grades prices were calibrated, with once famous Thai sticks now rated as cheap, low qual pot , as apparently connoisseurs now only want indoor crops, using $20 seeds, under perfected lighting, using god knows what chemical growing aids. The impact on the Horay Henry’s and Weekend Wally’s over from the UK is a sight in slumberland. Unlike lager louts, the lads who overdo it on the 4 Euro ready rolls, 5 Euro space cake, or 4-10 Euro/ gram of hash or pot, find themselves dossing off in public. This seemingly forms little threat to society, and the Dutch just don’t care….a sure sign of evolved tolerance. Once the tourists have got the pot thing out of their system, they can also notice that liberal, creative societies produce great architecture, fabulous art, and the world’s best combo of public transport and the humble pushbike. Comparing the decayed health of the English to the much fitter Dutch, you see the underlying worth of the pushbike really glows. I love the Dutch. And with personal experience with wonderful friends like Anoesjka, I am a fan.

Paris was another hearty ride south, and wanting to avoid the high cost motorways, I set the GPS to NO TOLLS, and headed into northern France, through the Somme, where those feudal arseholes like Churchill and Hitler cut their teeth. The feel of those killing fields still irked me, and the whole idea of a landscape full of muddy trenches in a European winter, and  being forced into sure suicide at the whistle blow of some obedient, just graduated officer, as you went ‘over the top’ into the machine gun fire,  is surely and hopefully a state of human consciousness that we have evolved from. I hope.

Paris is a beautiful city. The last time I was there was 1974. Back then, I camped in the Bois du Boulogne, in my Kombi, with my sexy girlfriend, and we did things that 20 year olds do, in proliferation, in the pop top roof of my Kombi. I was surprised that this woody campsite still existed, only 5k from the Arc du Triumph, (Napoloen’s tribute to a British Motorcycle).

So again I pitched tent in a summer heat wave, under blue skies, as the new Paris, all steam cleaned and on sale, presented itself unto me.  Gone where all the whores in mink coats that once worked the woody beds of the Bois du Boulogne, making an evening drive home, once an exercise in flasher’s advertising.

What a huge, beautiful city,  Paris>the inner parts at least. It took me a while to get my head around the main markers, like the Eiffel and St Germaine, as the GPS destroys any sense of need to pay attention to signs, and each day was an open shirt and shorts ride, down the rues and avenues of gay Paris.  It’s a wonder the homophobes allow the gay Paris nomenclature, but hey, it works, poof or no poof. As I rode in by Beemer from the north,  my close friends Steve and HB drove from the south, after Steve had ridden all around the south of France shadowing the Tour du France, which commenced the week later. So like media and rider, Steve and Rod took to the streets by $5000 motorbike and $20,000 pushbike, as you do, and with aid of GPS, rode to the training loop, where Steve did laps as I bought groceries. Paris is made for two wheels, as the millions of super scooters, and hot and hard motorbike hardware demonstrates …strewn legally all over the footpaths. I love the way you can park a motorbike anywhere in Paris or Amsterdam, whilst motorists hire Hilton Hotels to house their cars, as Hilton is cheaper that the parking stations.

I should take a minute to update my latest writing point, to add I have again retreated to the cosy tent for the passing of Chamonix’s afternoon thunderstorm. First, it rained harder than I had noticed.  I wrongly thought that the chilled stream beside my grassy recluse, was  water of the melted ice from of the Glacier Bosom, or whatever, above me, but infact the stream also drained grasslands and Christmas tree forests that separate me from this trillion tonnes of glacier breast, sitting above me, in the stunning 4800m fortifications of Chamonix. Accordingly, the stream flooded briefly, taking with it my neatly packaged nicoise salad, and bottle-a-red, as I typed on obviously here in my tent.

The freshly chilled dinner had been kindly retrieved from the jaws of grate, and placed on the bank for its owner’s retrieval. So let’s have a glass, eh? Its bloody expensive here in Western Europe these days, but 34 years ago, they had some dirt cheap, fun wines, that were very cheap. You can’t buy a bottle of soft drink for a Euro here, but you can buy a bottle of red .

Or 1.30 Euros to be exact, or about  $ AUS 2.40. That’s cheap piss. Suspecting it was secretly fine wine, the first glass happily confirmed my suspicion. Given some airing, the price was right. In between was the desired effect.

About my tent. It’s decorated. That light , multicoloured Mexican blanket from San Cristobal carpets the tent, which is as long as it is wide, making sleeping angles generous. Always look for a hollow, not a hump, when placing the sleeping position. Make like a dog. Sleeping is on a wafer, quick blow up mattress, which is surprisingly comfortable for master grasshopper.

The tent has inner and outer linings, green outside for a low profile, but with an inner lining colour that is unknown to mankind,  and which fucks with the cool, outer light filtration, man, making it like living on earth, in 2009.

All small tent occupants, best use clothing for reading pillows, mine in 4 mesh laundry bags, aside its own kayaker’s sealed sack. In bright orange.

The kitchen is on the tent’s left porch, and the pantry is on the right porch. When it rains, a $4 blue sheet extends the verandah to shelter the cook. Hi teck.

Add some books and maps, and we are close to done, as most gear remains in filing figured panniers. After weeks in the saddle every day, you get ya head around bike and camping stuff.

The tent would not survive a snow dump, but it handled its night in the black dog weather of the English Moors with ease. It’s lost some skin in M1 braking exercises. Its lit by LED’s head torches and book reading clip-overs.

Bike rider’s aches, now strengthened, disappear, as new ‘statue man’ issues arise. Sit in seat and make only subtle movements, and do it, fairly still, for hours, and then days, and new adaptations and disciples are needed, like Yoga for Bikers, or Sleeping Bag Yoga. Or whatever> a glass of rabid red.

Paris is, to anyone like me, with an interest in building and architecture, a great view. I like architecture where all the effort in making artful buildings is simply given away as a public view.  No gallery ticket needed. But if ticket to view outstanding architecture were on sale, Paris would be $100 a ticket.  And you would get your money’s worth. It needs to be said, that that the human man hours needed to carefully carve the facades of Paris are mindboggling. The 3D, humanoid, floral or geometric stone carvings are works of art in streets of chewing gum removed. Below the masterpieces, everyone focuses on the bright lights of the CHANEL retail, but Paris from first floor up, through attics upon attics, into Moulin Rouge-esque,  giant portholes, well, you are looking at architectural poetry. Throw in the odd palace or basilica, decorate the gaps with the colours of cafe seated Parisians.  The Parisians de cafe all face the street, as if watching the tennis, and well, they watch. There’s a good look to see in Paris, if you have an eye for subtle quality, and style. Regrettably, global fashion monoculture, has taken something very special away from the once beautifully dressed French and Italians, as everyone must get casual, Billabong makes billions, and some of France’s distinguished heritages in fashion, get lost in the blur of global and corporate fashion.

Paris has its fare share of the Iluminati’s nod and a wink symbolism, not the least being another original pyramid topped obelisk, in centre court,  but compared to the demonic Westminster, Paris is tame, Da Brown notwithstanding. Paris is however as big a player as they come, on matters Rothchilds, for example. It was very odd seeing Murdoch’s Times ribbing the current Rothchilds with a page one story of how the Rothchilds family so benefited from slavery, despite all their paid intuitional contributions to the contrary,  in news just this week. Their time in total secrecy is ending.

The worst Parisienne Iluminati offering is recent, and placed  over Princess Di’s death spot, where (Sum-of the-Aryan) Queen Seminaris’s torch, aka the Statute of Liberty torch, is set into a pentagonal star. This symbol leaves a sort of ‘we were here’ calling card, to those understanding the Di story, and her battle with a family, a family with all the hidden manners of a reptile.

Biking around is a world unto itself. Being, or needing to be above the weather, good or bad, is a good exercise in acceptance. It makes for a brazen, let’s do it kind of attitude. It’s a good thing to know you can remain outside of the ‘system’, of you own accord, albeit, if only by  by polythene and steel. Independence when travelling, if nothing else, is cheap and easy by bike. Bikes are not bad on fuel, by the Beemer has been guzzling fuel when tyres were wrong, so I am yet to master fuel use, but a new set of smoother tyres would be a start, so we will see what tyres cost in cheaper Eastern Europe.  Truth be known, small new common rail diesel cars are more fule efficient than big bikes. Beemers are all pretty sturdy, but they have issues. I use an added rubber chock to seat the side stand higher, and to prompt, ‘chocs-away’   before takeoff. I would like handlebars 40m more rearwards, and higher. The fuel gauge is getting misleading, making fuel stops like prostrate problems. No rear chain is great. The boxer engine sound is great, and with 1100cc, i mean, the fuca has grunt. If a guy tries it on with a sports car up the arse, in the outside motorway lane, headlights on, you can throw it down a gear, roll on the full throttle fuel injection, and even with 60kg of kit, the sports car hasn’t got a chance…. as from any speed, the big bore BM’s blister.

If ya wanted to see Europe cheap,  do it by a small commercial micro van, leave the signage on as camouflage, and sleep where you stop,  staying outside of the new rules that push all vans into parks at $70 night.

The GS is high and mighty, and is quick to take a fall in a carpark. I’ve lost her, several times, always avoidable, always giving me the shits, the panniers a hammering, and the passersby, some new obscenities to dwell on. Did you read that? I called it, ‘her’. That’s a worry.

I rode on through the ALPS, trying to avoid the toll ways, by tailgating trucks through their auto lanes, until the mother of all tolls caught me in a combo of border guard and toll gate, to pass through France, under 11k of Mont Blanc, into Italy. The G8 was being hosted by the modern day Mussilini, BertaTVini, and so Italy was watching it’s borders. My in and out of Italy ride saw chilled out EyeTye cops, wave and point at me, confusing me, until I noticed the ‘chocs away’ choc had just done a drag up the Alps, and what was once wedge edge, was now bullnose.

Again, what kinda of world have we made, if everyone wants to detonate the leaders of the world’s most powerful nations. Its kinda suggests that the worlds most powerful nations have, for some very good reasons, enemies at every border. Chief fascist host, BertaTVini, along with his Sarcosy-up mate, along depressant Gordon Brown, and fraud Obama, would have you believe that the reason why the world wants to see their carcasses hanging on the gates of town, is because the, the other guy issues..the ‘ists’….those ‘ists’ are bad, but without manufactured, ‘-ists’…. there would be no need for their G8 agenda.  The G8, they are perfect. The G8 never puts a foot wrong, besides, the G8’s foot is busy…holding down the neck of the world.

Anyway, expensive tunnel tolls, and G8 meetings aside, the instant view of Italy out the other side of the Mont Blanc tunnel was a shock…different weather, different geography, and pasta. The Alps are a splendour in their sudden up-ness, and jugged edges. At 4800m high for mountaineers atop Mont Blanc, they should note not juts mountaineers, but guys on bikes get to 4800m in the Andes. The Andes, now there is a grand set. Its all very pleasant around 30C in southern summery france, Alps os no Alps.

The adventure sport guys are out hiking, biking, the tour de France in away, the kayakers are yaking, the mountaineers are mounting….its game on in the Alps. Pity the ALP can’t learn from the real Alps. In Chamonix, there are lifts that high that St Peter takes a levy. A couple of dozen paragliders guard the gates of heaven at 4000m up. A giant glacier looks like the poster from a death by Ice Age 3, hanging over the chalet packed valleys. They sure have taken up skiing in a big way, with the added cash from the debt binge. The snow fields are edged with the usual development scars, built along beautiful authentic alpine villages, in a blur of Swiss-meets-Italian meets French, home building styles, agreeing in an alpine style devoid of borders that gives us timber lofts, wide eavs, and painted shutters….all that is missing is the glass snow cone covering.

Even the flowers in the window boxes are postcard.

It’s good riding around the s country. Packs of guys out on s super bikes have passed me on wide, mountain-side sweepers doing 140k and accelerating, their arses on the outside of their race seats, and their super wider, low height tyres, sticking like shit to tarmac. The views are sensational, albeit sobering , remembering the death fall of Steve’s pushbike colleague’s, over the Armco last week, and as such, one tends not gaze away to much. The best mind for riding, is presence. Stay in the now, take it all in, don’t pass judgement, just accept and enjoy the ride, whatever comes. ‘It’s all good’…to quote a modern masterpiece of surfers wordage.

I camped alongside an alpine river, in the woods, outside of Braincon,  just within French alps again, and had to stay 2 nights because of the breath taking scenery, trout 2m from the tent. Plus, oil needed changing, and back rest fitted. I noticed a swimming ‘noodle’ , bought it, and added a fat outer hard foam, at 180mm wide. I then jammed a chord through its guts, and strapped it down, just where your spine exists the bike seat. This adds some immediate spinal leverage help, right at the crucial rider’s stress point, and it works so well, it costs so little, i should patent it. I’ve already dreamed up how I could use my foam sandwich experience to make a whole new front and rear pannier set, with inbuilt inverter, 3 litre water storage, laptop slide lock and seal, and a stove at working height. And when you fall and break it, it’s just out with some fibreglass tape, epoxy and foam, and all on location.

The bike disgorged some manky oil today…..I  resolved i will be nicer to the bike’s engine, with fresh supermarket oil, more regularly. I still need to change the gearbox and diff oil. I like the way you can understand your bike, in times where computerised servicing has made everyone’s car a mystery to the home maintenance man….when you buy a new car, you kiss good bye for the need for a home workshop. I favour selling my chip filled French car, and just owning one simple bike, next year. And I will do the maintenance, and i will understand the damn thing. That’s a revivalist idea.

Bike life is big. I’ve sort of re-sorted my approach to touring, in a give-in, tune in, drop-out kinda way. I don’t look for backpacker or camp sites to head to, anymore. I just go with  whatever time, place and thing, is going down. I’m assisted in this carefree method by a never ending array of little international tent signs, 2k…or whatever…just take ya pick. Ah the marvels of southern France in the summertime.  And they are not all gaudy slide pool van parks. Some are very woody. As now…. somewhere halfway to today’s, who cares destination Avignon. I’m in an orchid beside yet another river, and the odd car passes every twenty minutes, heading into a pine gorge, with what seems like the original Roman road weaving around its serpentine bends. Real French Provencal farm houses, with grapes up the walls, dot the valleys.

And on matters serpentine. I’ve just knocked off a latest well argued hypothesis, that the huge array of serpentine imagery in history, myth, old religion and last nights dreams, whilst carrying a library of tales, is, in a more modern and alternate view, the intertwining double helix of DNA. Like snakes around a doctors sign. Some now say, it’s the DNA, the designer, neo quartz crystal, that gives access to all that is known, via the other-side,  and can, in an even more new theory, contribute to our visual access to this dimension, this level of the Matrix.  The coin as to a cathedral understanding of atomic density, when an object needs to be seen by the eye,  in terms of brutal physics,  well, there really is not enough  ‘molecular density’ to avoid making this screen see through.  But that’s a whole side track.

TO understand the history of the dragon, or serpent tales, I’m ploughing through Pinkham’s, The Return of the Serpents of Wisdom.  Now in my storage and well read ,is “2012 Return of Queztcoatl” …the winged serpent gig, but as well, a consciousness shift observation. These books are a wild read, at the edge of the game, and contain a very interesting hypotheses. When the layers of  evidence by way of indigenous, mythological and religious views are  overlaid with what’s new in quantum physics, and molecular DNA a new cosmic rational is emerging . Science, just as much religion, must free itself from its silo’d ways, where no one is allowed a full spectrum view. Doctrines founded on unchallenged presuppositions too often make sciences, such as anthropology, useless .

Me?  The universe? I reckon it’s a fun, multi dimensioned eternity evolution game, where the score is kept in love.  DNA is the decipher molecule of this ‘arrangement of energy’ we are in… and , I observe, things are changing at an exponential rate, and along with it the consciousness, and I smell a bigger game afoot. Plus, I love a good game.

And there is a big but silly game playing out on the French Riviera. I changed my typing school to the beach, at St Tropez. I rolled down the slopes from the haute Provence yesterday, watching as oaks changed to olives, and wheat morphed to fields of lavender. The GPS dutifully wound me through the centuries old back streets of a dozen little Provencal villages, where I would indulge in coffee, buy some pain, oops, bread, and with it, some of the bacterially enhanced local cheese…soft style. This would mean off with the gloves and coat , out with the side stand choc, and the bike was left standing alongside some centre plaza fountain, whilst I did as French do, and sat around and chat…or read. It’s the real deal French farming thing in Provence, with many of the once populace villages sold out to British tree changers, the odd assortment of organic types, mixed in with brash, new money wankers, whose new homes are coated in the  standard washed apricot, but not from of local oxides, but from Granosite, in latex based plastic paint, like their fat wives makeup.  But at least, overall, the place is real.

St Tropez, on the other hand, is an interesting mess. Rightfully the coolest place on earth, in 1960, St Tropez is now, the show and tell kindergarten for the poor suffering rich whose childish mission in life, is to arrive at show and tell, with a better and bigger toy story. The rich really don’t know how bad they have it. Aside of living in a permanent state of wanting, it’s so hard keeping up. The teenagers are the only ones left with anything like sexy bodies, unlike the image of Brigette Bardo in,’ And God Made Woman’. The blokes are spending up big, to attract the non existent Bardo,  and are perpetually challenged by other rich guys, who, as soon as you have launched your 100 foot with $10M, some upstart Russian cleptocrat, pulls up alongside with 200ft and $50m worth, bedecked in Russian dolls of the unsavoury flavour. The costs are huge. The sex is lousy. The relationships are a mess. And no matter how much a guy spends on label brands to decorate the missus, his eyes are always on other arse. May god save the poor rich.

It’s a traffic jam of Ferraris and black expensive cars, paying $20/hr to park in St Tropez. The cute Provencal style fishing village that was once the real St Tropez, is now a spec in the middle of an ugly development boom and mindless retail overdose, and the village’s architecture is lost behind boats bigger than blocks of flats. The floating flats must be seen stern to, so the ice creaming licking public can get a suitable dose of jealousy, to match the jealousy of the rich guy paying for the charter, who sees bigger yachts next door, and cute arse everywhere, but in his grubby hand. What a pointless exercise in futility. When will humans wake up to the masturbation,  that is staying in a permanent state of wanting. Needless however, it all makes a for a grand spectacle.

Wanting nothing, carrying my own lunch and dinner, after a trip to the patisserie, the view of St Tropez is fascinating if nothing else. Riding its streets with the most travel hardy kit in town, seemed to impress the toy boy mentality of the macho types, whose local god is 2000hp on both port and starboard sides of the 50 foot Cigarette. Weird Buelli bikes, unseen before sports cars, and freshly launched mega yachts mark the end of the latest debt binge cycle. Behind the fake whitened smiles, there is a fair dose of oh shit, I’ve overdone it, financial crisis.

The public believe public guys like Bill Gates are the richest guys on earth, but little do they know, the seriously rich, those who for example control the Bank of England and Bank of America, never let on how filthy rich they are, nor who they really are, as they quietly hire hoards to set up foundations and philanthropies to conceal their dirty deeds, and  with it, Gates slaying mega wealth.

In tune with my, who-gives-a-shit attitude to tonight’s campsite, I left my hunt for spot to drop, till after dinner, knowing campsites where everywhere. I was right about availability, but wrong about price, when quoted $100 to simply pitch a small tent a few miles around the bay from St Tropez. I add, for $100, it was untidy, unmown, cram packed, and fronted a packed highway one side, and degraded beach the other. With a fuck that, polite no thanks, I headed inland, to be robbed a lot less, to camp in an even uglier campsite. I have concluded, from now many camp site experiences, that the more you pay, the worse the campsite. Many try to get their annual dose of nature by camping in Europe, but get as connected to nature as effectively as a colostomy bag .  Shit is hard to contain. The whole modern world is becoming denied of an enduring, experiential nature connection, especially in the dreadfully overpopulated Europe, where maybe it’s a saving grace that the fertility rate is plummeting. I’m studying the Pinkham book that assembles all the views and history of the Serpent, or Dragon based belief systems, which have been, and remain at the core of all the spiritual/ religious influences across earth deep into millennia, as well as being the inside understanding that gives the Iluminati the jump, and I am left wondering whether the Aryan, population culling agenda of the black side, serpent agenda, is so black after all? Maybe we are on a planet designed for 2 billion but carrying 6 billion? Hands up those 4 in 6 we need to exterminate? Oops.

Here on the beach in St Tropez, humanity is on display in all its overpopulated manifestations. Gone are the mythical bold and beautiful of St Tropez, replaced by the usual DNA mix of ugly and attractive, as much a product of age as anything, and with 60 and 70 years olds displaying their fat and wrinkles in their nude obsession, and the mums and the kids and the dads all just trying to make sense of life, in their short holiday from the office, it really looks like humanity as just as diverse and confused on the beach at St Tropez, as they are in traffic, trying to pick up the kids. ‘We’re on a road to nowhere,’ comes to mind, but the slurp of the ice cream, and the warmth of the sun on your back, hides the confusion for another day.

I took a swim. It was cold, and clear. 34 years ago, I watched on amused as Italians kitted themselves in diving gear and spear guns to get the big one. From the Med. In town today, I visited a shop selling all manner of guns, pistol crossbows,  spear guns and fishing knives. I wondered, as I did 34 years ago, if there was one living thing out there, that Europe hasn’t already killed, other than cows they give the bolt to, by the hour. There certainly are no fish in the Med, either now, or 34 years ago, bar two very nervous looking slimy mackerel. In 42 years, they say all ‘table fish’ ex the ocean will be nonexistent.We kid ourselves that the solution is in ‘sustainable farming’ of fish, as we deny the truth of where the food for the fish farms come from, as it’s the same food that feed the wild fish already.  If you take giant krill seeking vacuum cleaners to the Arctic waters, and start sucking, you just hasten the end to the worlds oceanic life, from the base up. That apocalyptic shift, or aliens on the white house lawn gig, or whatever: it maybe ain’t such a bad idea, long term, if it happens soon. Personally, I go for the post 2012 paradigm shift gig, where we regain our cosmic, access all areas, back stage pass, and become cool as a humanity once again, tuned into the truth, whole truth,  and nothing but the truth. But who knows what will happen.

With about  1,000,000 horse power of mega yachts parked by the hundred off this beach, at least if we have another Dunkirk, we will have the boats to pick up the retreating army, all before morning tea.

In France, they have a very un-Australian attitude to egalite, liberte and fraternite on the beach. Half the beach is effectively franchised to slumberland beach umbrellas and waiter service. Resorts get exclusive use of their riparian beach zone. Boaties paying to come alongside a public wharf are charged in units of thousands per night, to dock. The water front here is not a public space. This I do not agree with. The ocean is the one place on earth, where ‘possession’ is hopefully remaining intangible. I would  likely be wrong about my aspiration of ocean egalite, as even my own greedy Howard led country, moved its international waters boundary hundreds of miles north into former Indonesian waters, when it could see the opportunity to pretend to save the Timorese, so it could move on and grab the massive oil and gas within the undersea area. The new oceanic boundary forced Timorese tenure back to the beach head. This was all done in the guise of saving the poor Timorese from the evil Indonesians, when infact Gough Whitlam and all his predecessors had been in cahoots with indo military junta. Current PM Rudd is a  worse nightmare for Indo justice, as in his diplomatic duties days, he was posted under a famous Australian foreign minister, who was in deep with the Indo generals, and infact, the Aussie posting where Rudd lived, was just across the road from the Indo consulate, so beer and BBQ’s with the neighbouring diplomats wedded Rudd as drinking mate to the very Indo generals-esque who were so deeply behind the massacres in Timor, Aceh, and still today, on the Indonesian controlled side of New Guinea. So my lectures to the French about freedom of the oceans have an eroded foundation.

What is it about the lure of living beachside, whether here in the South of France, or Florida, or our Gold Coast, that tends to bring out the most unfulfilled desire in humanity…the searching but never finding phenomena. Why is it, that these boom town exoduses to the beach can so effectively ruin, overdevelop and trivialise life so successfully? My own once ‘sleepy fishing village’, hometown of Port Douglas, is as classic an example as any. And I am a guilty participant. When the dream sellers get marketing budgets as fat as we saw in the last debt binge, they can soak the media with dreamy visions of topless girls standing in sarongs looking wistfully over tropical sunsets, where, with just a few signatures on this contract, (press hard please, 3 copies), you will alter your life to live in paradise forever. But paradise is just another traffic jam, despite the Bently’s 500hp, and no sooner has the developer delivered the new apartment, than the dream itself disappears, and you wake up in debt, in traffic, and in as much shit, as in the urban lifestyle you kidded yourself you left behind. THE LIFE OF PERMANETLTY WANTING.   It’s wanting.

Its a lovely afternoon here in the sunshine, and it’s been a few months since I enjoyed a seaside, Caribbean azure swim. But I hope the Adriatic coast isn’t such a mess as this overcooked French Riviera. Its tits have sagged. The cut and tuck has turned its eyes into slits. And it can’t get laid, even after the sale to end all Persian rug sales, it’s still unlaid.

Whilst the Med held a great reputation for sailing, as did the eastern Caribbean, the truth is that both places are overpriced, overused, and overcooked. If your goal in life it to show off your new $300,000 wrist watch, and the ‘stuff’ that accompanies it, you will maybe find the image of what you want in the Riviera. If you just want your watch to tell you the time, you could waste a lot less time pursing the $300,000 watch, by giving the whole show and tell game away.  Instead, go to the San Blas…the beaches are better, the boaties are real, the locals are even more real, and the cost is a tenth. There are no traffic jams in the San Blas’s capital, Carti. There isn’t a single car there.

So by day here in France, it’s a banana sliced onto muesli with water, honey and Maca powder for breakfast…as all these foods can survive in hot panniers. Lunch is a camembert and avocado roll, made on the some park bench somewhere, and at night, its either rice risotto style, with tuna and camembert, or pasta…again, all determined by what carries well outside a fridge. Given the need to get bread rolls fresh, as is French bread culture,  aided by no bread preservatives,  so it last one day, I deem it culturally necessary to shop daily for bread and cheese. I don’t eat much bread (gluten) or cheese (acidic animal fat),back home, but then, when one is on  a budget smaller than a Bardo bikini, it’s a case of …‘When in Rome’. And besides, weird Provencal soft cheeses, and the fresh loafs that accompany it, are a simple delight. And they are cheap.

There is a world famous, or so i deem, bike ride to be had along the Riviera. Its the height of European summer, its school holidays, and all or France, and most of the rest of Europe, have come to play on the Mediterranean plages and lidos of France and Italy. There is mile after mile of what constitutes a beach, covered, from east to west, in umbrellas and deck chairs.

No sooner than I had  pulled up, just inside the Italian boundary today, and as I was decanting myself  some bikers hot tea, above and over the wall to the beach below, I could start to here pop disco coming from below. There in the shallows stood about 100 women and girls, and 6 or so men, in their whatever swimwear, and they were all happily doing morning Macarena exercise class, led by dancers on mike, in Marg  Simpson wigs. Only in Italy.

Ya’ve gotta love the Italians. Even 34 years ago, they were the most fun. And in high summer, as they all clamber to the sunshine to reclaim their olive skin rights, they are, of their own doing, a sexy lot. Plus, they are motorbike mad. And by mad, I mean mile after parking lot mile, of beachside scooters, super scooters, and ferocious bikes. Everyone, but everyone is on two wheels.  Being in motion on two wheels deems you, in Italy at least, the right to illegally overtake in packs, it allows you to park anywhere you like, show off ya latest squeeze, you name it, bikes and scooters are essential hip kit, in the eyetie summer. So my, ‘removalist truck‘ as Mike Gabour got in one, insultingly, about my bomber bike,  nonetheless makes a bit of a visual impact, and I notice the odd head twist with a, ‘…did you see all the shit on that bike’… look. There is a sea of hip new scooters on attack, but no one but the Italians can make bike with spunk. Ya, ya, mein BMW has now taken zee vorld by GS, but the sexy bike remains an Italian icon… starting with little monsters like Ducati. Aren’t Buelli eyetie? And Moto Guzzi, and MV Augusta, with Laverda  remaining to be revived in Triumph, and a sea of deadly handling micro’s, as when you are young and only allowed 50cc of power, it’s amazing what you can squeeze out of 50cc with new light tek.

So instead of simply going through the hills by tunnel, and over the valleys by flyover, I took the 1960’s route along the coast, as there is hardly a bit of it that is not a visual, aromatic and G force winner. Architectural gems, with faded green shutters against terracotta shaded walling, set of by sandstone toned edging, wove a common theme amoungst the pines in full aromatic blume, with azure bays below, bedecked with anchorages and marinas by the mile. It was like riding a never ever land of Rose Bay S’s. I have never seen so much boat hardware anywhere like this. It seems everyone in the debt binge has bought a boat. Billionaires have pumped out $30M white boats,  built at a rate up from  a couple a year, to one a week. There is now little difference in size, between a small cruise ship, and  huge private ‘yacht’. (I dislike, and we should ban the way millionaires deem their greasy, power guzzling motor boats as ‘yachts’).

Dutch Royal Huissman are the world’s premier yacht builders, to my old fashioned mind, and last year they launched 53m and I guess $120M in a yacht styled in the ways of the all action, US east coast Gloucester sailing fishing boat, with a few modern inclusions, like the biggest carbon fibre rig on earth, when launched. It was called Meteor, with Edwardian trimmed and varnished cabins, finished to levels of perfection that amaze even the expert. With a real yacht shape, a full keel, and the world’s smartest technology behind the kit, when it laid done 40,000 miles in just two years, it has flexed its mighty sailing muscle at all sorts of traditional mega-glam, yacht series. It’s huge. The crew on these boats have seen some boom years, as new laws and insurances have made opportunities for the likes of the well qualified Barrier Reef trained sailors, whom all took a Master this or that qualification, at a time when both mega yachting, and new regs both boomed together, putting many happy go lucky  Aussie boaties, suddenly on big salaries, with regular flights home, all insurances and expenses  and holidays.. So chatting to the female Kiwi boson of the 53m Meteor was fun.

The industry, is of course, in the second tier hit of, ‘oh shit, the party is over’, recession. If you had something like $200,000E to hire Meteor for a week, you would have a lot more choice these days, than just one or two available mega yachts…. anything from 3 to 8 levels of them. One recently launched, with a bow sloping backwards to the stern, like a cheese knife, had 4 levels of ‘60’s office block put atop the submarine style hull, and from its sides, many big floating toys were being unloaded. Wealth: the world has never seen as much of it, as its can see today, especially here on the Riviera. Pity the Golden Calf has to be sacrificed to the smelters again.

The winding ride itself can’t be left unmentioned, as the bends are like Grand Prix roads, some literally, and in a land where they make Ferrari and MV Augusta, it’s a sin against the daring, to make the nearly all whole coastal Riviera ride restricted to 50k. But with the amount of humanity using it, it clogs in a an instant, as someone needs to edge into a reverse park, and I really think riding the Riviera fast, like we could once do, is now left to winter, after midnight, on a points free licence. I basically sat back, and said fuc the speed, enjoy the feel and the view, even if all day, barely made 150 miles.

I just set the GPS to find a campsite coming up, took a pick, then another, and ended up, both  last nights and now, camped on old elevated and stepped  olive groves, modified to campsites, full of summer made Europeans, blisteringly glad to be out of the cold and dark.

The view over the Mediterranean below is pine and olive framed. I had a beer at the lido this evening, (and Hover’d the bar munchies, like a typical, irrepressible, bum traveller) as the 6 pm beach goers enjoyed full sun,  and the DJ was warming up,  and the beach showers alongside beside the bar, added sparkle to the exiting wet bodies.  All was good.

Further down the road, Monaco arrived. They say one of the best motorbike rides, here on earth, is along the Italian Riviera. That was before the 50 k speed limit was introduced, to reduce the number of prangs, from cars trying to find a park. Miles and miles of parked cars, match the miles and miles of sardine beach umbrellas and as far as making speed through the magnificent sweeping turns, and indulgent views, you can just forget it. Besides, the views are so sensational, why rush? Each new headland brings  vista of geographical alcellence, architectural mastery, and it’s all bejewelled with my favourite material decoration> boats.

Italians are obsessed with beach culture, as were the Aztecs were with human sacrifice. Instead of rolling beheaded heads down the stairs, the Italians send tall and tanned, and young and lovely things, gracefully down the steps to the beach, where these Italians, reclaim their olive skin rights, on masse.

Firenze blessed me with a mansion that had turned into hostel, and grown into a camping ground, only 4 k form the Duomo. Nothing like pitching the tent in the former baron’s rose garden. The city itself? Well, you could not, I suppose, ignore the superlatives of Renaissance art and cultural excellence, that define Florence….you could not help but admire the Medici’s  magical Iluminati architecture, but given the whole fucking tourist world has got to tick the box called Florence, and given the sheer volume of crass, ice cream licking tourists, now days including Serbians, Russians and Koreans, and in my opinion, lest just say, I’m just glad I saw it all 34 years before.   A million tourists can wreck anything.

So, with and overdose of the crass meets masse, i tuned the GPS in on the other side of Italy, and headed for a region completely of the wives-who-do lunch list, and abandoned the Tuscan orthe Provencal, and headed to a place now one knows, called Cupramontana…. about 240 k north east of Rome, in rolling farmlands, where the real Italy still exists.

I admit, I was joining in with German friends doing the EU exodus, who had moved from one of the dozens of all-business, cold and miserable, northern European cities, to buy and old stone farm house in sunny Italy, where the animals once lived in the now renovated kitchen. So I suppose, German and Australian yachties, drinking $2/litre, farmers-own wine, and indulging in the mastery of real Italian food and produce, is not really an all-Italian thing, but hey, there were no tourists in sight. Anywhere around the world, you can find a deli selling fine Italian cheese, wine and assorted wonders, but nowhere on earth, is the food and produce as delicious, fresh and masterful, as in rural Italy itself.  Fresh bread is about timing, not preservatives. Wild and weird cheese, is about bacterial immediacy, not refrigeration. Wine is best at 5 Euros for 5 litres, without the marketing, chemicals and 5000k transport, when it’s bought from the famer next door.

Lunch, is best at 10 Euro’s for several courses, in a packed worker’s restaurant, where there is no menu, just today’s selections. Its best to drink the cheap but excellent wine with lunch, and have a siesta snooze, as it ain’t dark till after 9 anyway, so a morning spurt, a middle of the day laze, and a spruced up evening are, in my opinion,  a superior way of living.

I was helping my friend, Peter Kaiser, and his cast , but never cast-off,  of girlfriends and ex’s, spanning ages from late teens to late forties,  all go about la dolce vita. This, as an artist builder, and Caribbean sailor, on perpetual annual cycle, makes for a  lifestyle  rich in charm, even if a bit cash poor. Summers for Peter are spent renovating old stone farm houses, whilst the European winter is spent between San Blas and Cartegena, either in a sensational hilltop farm, or  a glorious Sparkman and Stephens, classic 50 footer, in the azure San Blas. Some people have it tough. Peter Kaiser isn’t one. Pete was very successfully in the glamorous fashion photography business, but now is more busy with building, boats and babes, the essential 3 B’s.

I’ve taken a few lesson is stone wall building, adding mortar where once only mud held home together. The many rocks that once annoyed the ploughs, have all migrated into walls , most 600mm thick , after a few thousand years of cultivation. The old oaks, they serve today, both as shade trees, and as ancient beams, holding the floor above, above. Lavender and roses go bloom’n berserk.  A vegie garden here, without mulch or fertilizer, and buried in weeds, just oozes life and taste, on the sheer botanical exuberance of the Italian summer.

I weeded Pete’s vegie garden, where even snails have so much to eat, they barely dent the lettuce. I soon fell into the refined work, play sleep regime of the real Italy, like a high diver splashing down into fresh marshmallow.

In the best seller, Eat, Prey Love, the travelling author, over indulges on food, here in Italy, before Ashram’ing out, and then getting laid in Bali. According to her book’s theory, my trip has just begun. Eat, eat, eat and drink, is my way here, and having earlier dropped , I guess, 15kg with some Peruvian parasites, I am as capable of consuming food, as is an empty local silo,  in filling itself with wheat. Pour it in.

If you have read thus far, congratulations….as this chapter is already too long, and should have been posted weeks ago. To post it, I need a good internet connection and several hours to upload the photos and roughly tweak their position . But Europe has very few internet opportunities, bugger all internet cafes, and those that exist, are a rippoff.. The third world has far better public acces to the internet. Here, if a hostel or camping zone has wi fi, thye charge sometimes $8′hr for access, compared to dirt poor, quater the price Peruvian of Mexican accommodation, which provides the same thing for free. So if nothing else, this is my own diary exercise. In a wrld of far to much information, if you have read thus far, well done, ta.

The simple delights of a week in the Italian farm lands, changed pace, the day i mounted up, and headed to Rome. The process of the long bike ride, has become a ritualist does of fun, aided by warm weather, and always fascinating back routes, that the GPS takes me through, if given the right, chiled out instructions. Like the ride to Rome, that somehow found me on lcountry laneways, dissecting village markets, and an abundance of farming harvest enough to make you into a pasta, wine and cheese fanatic. Italina sure know how to do mobile makets, with caravans of fold out shade, all hydraulically powered from the roof of the van, or in the case of the deli van, more like some stainless transformer toy, ona grand scale, where the curved glass displays have as much gastronomic abundance as pregnant tits.

Purple is this seasons colour, and Italy, as the world over, has given in to Chinese imports masquerading as chic Italian fashion, this year, in purple. Accordingly, the market vans have racks full of purple this, and purple that. It   was the same in Paris, as i discovered, when shopping for a purple handbag with HB. Interestingly, here in 2009, purple has another meaning, and is the colour of the spirit, or Holy Spirit, if you like the line your local bishop will take, as he’s beena purple sash wearer for years. Even the orange people morphed to purple after all their orange attire stained the undies, and eventually went manky.

On the instruction of my GPS, I was told all raods lead to Rome, and just chill out, and one way or another. By lunch, I will be in Rome, so enjoy the coffew, buy some fruit, and while you are at it, why not buy a radio. I owned a radio station once, and have avidly listened to radio for 50 years, ever since i was given a crystal radio and ear piece from Hong Kong, in 1950 something, which amazes me to this day, by producing  radio programme, without a battery in sight.Ya gotta love radio, the oldest of all he electronic media, and the only medis that gets you when in the shower, the car, the kitchen and the workplace, like some perma background, for the subconscious. Anyway, for $11, i had a piece of cute junk, that given the right conditions, could listen to a million different bands, from the world over. But when in Rome, listen to the world’s most passionate version of radio: Italian radio. Its like Italy is in permanent start of romantic wanting.

Rome, like all the big feature tourism destinations, was amuck with rubbernecks. I just wanted to drop by the Vatican for a chat with the Rat singer , me mate the Masonic , Germanic, , Pope, but apparently 100,000 other had the same idea, so much so that his Holimess, only sticks his tortise head out the window once a month. Not a very social guy.

Sure enough, to my enquiring eyes, there was the serpent symbology taking pride of place, smack in the middle of St Peter’s square, all over the Sumerians phallic obelisk that stakes its claim to pride of place in the all the world’s most important public places, with 99% of the population having no idea what it all means.

I downed yet more sensational pizza, watching as catholic priests made their way around Vatican city like stockbrokers taking a quick lunch. The bike got parked in the usual audacious spots, for some iconic papal biker photos. I made my way up stair sets, thinking I was on the Spanish steps, but them remembering where the real ones where, and had to walk two sets.

I got stuck in Rome 34 year ago, awaiting, as travellers did back thenm telegraphic money transfers, vai American express, and for a week or two, myself and my girlfriend bused into Rome from our kombi campsite, to line up at Amx, to be told to come back tomorrow, and in the process, we sat on the Spanish steps quite a lot. We threw two coins in a dozen fountains, and I shopped for killer shoes, on sale of course, and eyed some suits, which  when, finally purchased, back in 1974, ( via a sale in Napoli) saw me promoted to director of a million dollar an hour company before I turned 30. It’s amazing what looking the part can do.

But lunch in Rome, a quick hello to the Pope, the Colosseum, and a few chic shops, and I was outta there. Naples and Sorrento was ahead, and a nice ride in the cool of the evening seemed a hip idea. So I high tailed it south, via a method I normally ban, namely, pay to ride motorways, and after a congested start, as we wove our way around a tangle of bent cars, and a biker lying on the road with his ankle at the wrong angle, it was time to sit in a crowd of vehicles doing ridiculous speeds, eating up the miles to Napoli in minutes. I tailgated a car through the ‘tele’ pay line, apprehensively, with a ‘send me the bill’ attitude, knowing, or hoping at least, the UK registered address of my GB plates would not lead back to home.

Naples was a mess. As always. But I was not going to miss it , as Naples is also dripping in character. The first time I drove through Naples, with a steaming hangover, our Kombi with bikes on the roof rack, had been mistaken for a Tour de Italia support crew, and we were given the aid of about 1000 Caribineri, who waved us through one intersection after another, as though we were Caesar’s security car. On my return, I was not so lucky. It’s a 30k speed limit down the main feeder road to Sorrento. But you are lucky if you make a speed of over 10k per hour. No one in Naples has the seeming authority to wheel in the chaos, and for example, ban cars parking on the tiny streets that constitute Naples’ cholesterol lined main artery. It’s as though the fast, modern, and now rich Italian governors, have given up on Naples generations ago, with a view that its’ not worth repairing, as Mt Vesuvius will blow sooner or later, turning Naples into Pompeii in an instant. It took couple of hours to knock off 250k from Rome to Naples, but seemingly longer to make 20k’s progress in Naples. Its obligatory to eat Napoloi pizza, which costs little,,and tastes large. With yet another out of character, short, sharp, shot of caffeine, Sorrento beckoned. My family is married into a Sorrento family, and back 34 years ago, we Davis’s all did an enthusiastic Italian Job on ourselves, to integrate our Celtic blooded Australian BBQ ways, into the more stylish and certainly more tasty ways of Italy, which back then, was the world’s style capital, before the EU and globalisation sold out Italian style, to Chinese imports.

34 year back , I had camped in a terraced olive grove, on the cliffs overlooking the bay of Naples and the Isle of Capri. More songs, poems and romantic tales, are told of Capri, than just about any other island on earth. Despite the fact that I was really struggling to figure out which part of Sorrento was what, I managed to find my old campsite, where the Kombi and Greek girlfriend Athena Vasilou and I,  had luxuriated. In 2009, the campsite was packed with mindless motor homes, but the front row terrace was gratefully reserved for solo tents, so there overlooking the cute harbour below, I pitched tent, to the hourly sound of church bells. The continual wild swinging of the bells in the tower, is an undertaking of either Sorrento tourism, or some crazed priest, or both. Its punctuated with the odd evening rocket,  exploding with such gusto, that it would send the average Lebanesse diving for cover.

Sorrento is fabulous, and it seemingly invented tourism well before the idea had even been thought of. Sorrento should be heritage listed as the grandfather of Mediterranean tourism. I shopped for yet more tuna pasta ingredients, and stroled the streets and waterfront for a day, trying to rejuvenate my memories, as nearby campers made their tent. Gone were the days were you could sit around in idle bliss, consuming your way through meal after veal of wine and pasta, as the Euro, and its inwards focus, has made the cost of indulgence in Italy well out of the affordable range for non Europeans. It seems in the process of equalizing currency between firm Francs, a zillion Lira, and an array of worthless Eastern bloc toilet paper, Europe lost the plot when it comes to the valuation of its currency. Europe has become so expensive, but it doesn’t even see it.  Nonetheless, it’s nothing for Greeks to make 600-900Euros a month, and millions across Europe still must live of what amounts to $US10-$15 hour, yet still, the cost of everything is stifling…hence, more DIY tuna pasta shopping for Rod. In the high season, the prime campsites want $AUS40 just to pitch a tent, charging to simply park the motorbike. Its a rippoff, and Europe is headed for a big fall, when China and India flexes its potential. There are roughly 500million living in the EU, and that is but a fraction of the billions in China and India alone. Change is coming, fast.

There are some very old, and now rather rare crafts coming from Naples and Sorrento, that the Chinese cant replicate. If it weren’t for the fact that some old timers still keep at their old craft out of habit, I am sure this part of special culture would die. I refer to the very special timber inlaying work endemic to Sorrento, and with it, the fine floral china that is made, in Naples. The detail and super fine realism of the china bouquets, despite carrying the name china, is something the Chinese cannot do. How on earth these  bsuper skilled crafts still make it to the shops in times when a campsite costs $40, is beyond me.

By the way, if you are thinking of touring Europe by van, as some 300,000 Australians did at any one time during the ‘70’s, you can forget the ‘Europe on $10 Day’ concept, as its well over $100 night simply to park a van in a high season campsite these days. My advice to my kids, to take on Europe, would be to buy a super small delivery van, based on a Barina sized base, and pretend not to be a tourist, parking in back streets or beachfronts to sleep. Leave any previous signage on the van, as a disguise. Gone are the days when you could pull up your Kombi anywhere, and crash. The discovery that you could turn a home into a motorhome, has fucked the life by van, well and truly.  It was once nothing to find 60 vans camped smack in the middle of London outside Australia House. In 2009, the idea of even parking outside Australia House for more than 5 minutes would need an MI5 clearance.

But back to Sorrento and the Amalfi and Positano coast. What a motor bike riders joy. You sure don’t need 1200cc of motorbike power for the winding clifftop road to Amalfi and Positano, and I noticed some ancient, double over head cam, 50cc, Honda race bikes on display in Sorrento, as 50cc is all you need here, given its all about handing and brakes on the serpentine, and death defying roads, where one slip, and its over ya go.

Positano is still the lace and grace capital of the med, if you can geta park within 3 k. But goen are the fishing teams hauling in the nets and beaching the old double eneded fishing boats. Today, its all about marinas and recreational boating, and its both sad and graceful, to watch the 60 and 70 year old Sorrento oldies, taking a ritualistic morning dip, in the small spaces   between the extended restaurants and hire boat wharfing. Its sad seeing the old family first, que sera lifestyle of the real Europe vaporize into the mindless world or perma wanting, where its not about saving for that distinctive Ducati, when today, there are dozens of Ducatis, millions of choices, too much credit, and too little satifaction . Materialism has replaced maternalism. Oldies are abandoned to retirement homes. Processed foods, pharmaceuticals, perma-wanting and no time, have all combined to ruin the real Europe, as it has the world over.

I was soon going to jump that ferry to Greece, and the cheapest choice, at E60 was via the very bottom heal of Italy at Brindisi, where I had recalled a nightmare trip in 1974, by train to Bari, which was dutifully replaced by a scorching trip by bike to Brindisi, where despite the speed, the heat was like an oven, convincing me to drop any plans to drive across Saudi arabi to Dubia. The ferrys’E60 billet blew my E50 per day budget, so I decided to abandon camping, and do like i did in 1974, and sleep on deck of an overnight ferry to to Greece. Having since spent many months sailing at night, where being on deck requires more of you than just sleeping, the crossing where some other crew did the work whilst I slept, seemed a great idea, and indeed, it was a great night, along with hundreds of other under 30 ‘deckies’. I slept with a heavenly blessing, under the stars, behind the main wheel house, where regrettably, all the plastic bottles and cigarette butts had wind migrated overnight, they too knowing the best sheltered vortex in which to avoid being blown into the Adriatic.  I arrived expecting 6 pm departure, to be told it was at 9, so I spent few fun hours in Brindisi, reheating some tuna pasta outside a cafe, overlooking the waterfront, after paying for a single iced coffee as my entry card. Using the local drinking bubbler to wash up with, had its handicaps.

The ferry was packed, and I scraped in the low season price by a few hours, despite the fact that the ferry was packed, as the holiday season was in full flight. This may be the worst recession in 70 years, but it sure is no Great Depression. With the ability to now drive from one end of Europe to another in a day, towing van, of a speedboat, why not go to Greece for the summer holidays? But going to Greece for a summer holiday, is but the start of a European migration that has hit Greece, and every developer and his dog has got busy turning the Ionian coastline in a maze of new tourist towns and condos. The coast remains stunning, and has still enough thinness of population to allow for sneaky campsites, private beaches, and space between humans.

I love Greece. After months in Mexico, Peru and Panama, is was great to be out of the perfection and into the chaos once again. The drive south had taken me the full length of the Amalfi coast, which whilst absolutely stunning darlings, leaves nota square inch unused, and not paying obsene rent.  Greece was not like this. I tooke yet another chunk out of my tent,  sweeping the Amalfi bends, tent strapped alongside the panniers, where my sperting sense of cornering  saw the tent grazing along the stone walls. The poor tent, opened up on the M1, grazed on the walls of the Amalfii bends, and the over enthusiastic corner of the Cornwall lanes. Some bikies like throwing sparks from the pegs and the exhaust pipes, I like wearing down my tent.

I was detrmined, when I arrived in Greece, to not take part in the crass tourism that was the new Greece, but stick to where it was real, and I had pre-defined a vision of a campsite on a beach, under a tree, where the price war cool, and the place real. I was off the ferry just behind the horny Italian couple on their race bike, with the cute babe forced to perch on the pedestal rear seat, strapped to a giant back pack, but hey, they were so hot for it, who cared, and besides, it allowed the girlfriend to hang onto the boyfriend in places where joys sticks are sure to be found. The Ionian coast road was just as sensational as the Amalfi coast of the day before, and I was becoming quite addicted to the advantages of the bigger experience that a bike gives travellers. It was full summer now, and T shirts replaced armoured coats.

If a destination cracks a mention in Lonely Planet’s condensed and compacted guide to Europe, its generally worth a visit. But the sand spit connected island of Lefkada was an exception. My fucking GPS took me on 30k, inescapable freeway diversion, on a freeway so new, it wasn’t on the maps, so after telling the GPS what a genital organ it was, I resumed the ride to Lefkada via goat tracks that would confuse even the most experienced goat. In Greece, it only takes one goat. Lefkada was a development mess of big marina, hardware yards, tile sale specials, and new money gaudiness everywhere, where, for only $40, I could get a cramped campsite on a main road, 5k out of town. Fuck that. So off I rode,  determined to camp in that vision I had seen. And sure enough, by simply hugging the coast to where the developers had not reached, I found the archetypical, Greek , white washed village, where I instantly bought a beer, and said to myself, as I popped the top, fuck the rules…..I’m camping anywhere, gimmee another beer.

And sure enough, with and instant evening beer buzz, and a bit or experimentation with what 1100cc can do when opened up, a  long beach arrived, where a mad greek Mike had set up food van he had just bought in Amsterdam,  and he was selling beer and coffee, and behind him, were a handful of tents, at E5, not E20, and everyone was having fun. So I pitched the tent under the tree in my vision, had a swim, and went back to town, to a waterside, real deal Greek restaurant, designed then ordered my meal, and slipped into the heaven image i had designed the day before.

Sunday at the beach behind Mike E14,000 food truck called Visandel, about a kilometre south of a town called Mitikas, according to my GPS, and I decided to do nothing all day. Excluding writing. I may even try and flesh out some ideas for the book that is brewing away.  My spiritual comedy thing.

I have a deck chair here under the tree alongside the tent. The beach goers parade their flesh and toys along the still dirt esplanade infront. Mike’s toilet isn’t yet working, but hey, its a big paddock here. There is a water tanks on scaffold, and around eat times, the locals crowd under the shade cloth and trees, to eat souvlaki, as did I, proving I ain’t no vegetarian,  but maybe, just, like the myth of Lesbos,  maybe I’m  just a regular  vagitarian. I just paid for lunch, iced coffee and rent, and still I have E10 change from what the campsite next door wanted per night. Itsa busy life, riding around the planet, so its kinda nice to take a Sunday off, and do what they do on holidays around here. Nothing.

There is a big difference, I have found, between being a holiday maker, and being a traveller. Budget disciple is one big difference. Overall discipline is needed as a traveller. You don’t just see an ice-cream and lick it, when you are a traveller. I keep reminding myself of the character i met in Peru, who, at 70, had just spent 25 years sailing the world, working only 5 of those 25 years, and who for retirement, was riding a small Honda from Argentina to Alaska, before retiring to a European barge, to keep moving, but just more slowly. And his trick? Simplicity and discipline. In world where there a thousand ‘thingos’ to make you camp, boat of bike more comfortable or functional, the trick is to ignore them all. Just use the bare minimal selection of stuff.

My mind is sorting these things through, as there is a lot to be said for the life of travel, and little to be said for a death by suburban banality. I keep exploring and re-exploring the idea of disappearing off the map above PNG, or the Philippines, or Indo islands, using either a local fishing canoe/trimaran, or an aluminium equivalent. To go,  where the ‘perma-wanting’ is at its lowest, aided by the simple lack of stuff for sale. Could I do it? How tough, and how relaxed am I?

The life by bike, under the constraints of European expense, is good training. And if here I am, in the world’s most advanced civilisation, trying to find spots away from the monoculture of developed society, to find places where nature is natural, and humanity is human, surely there is a message to myself in my pursuits?. Maybe, I suspect, this ‘real’ life I seek, is to be found in places where it’s more tribal than Walmart? Besides, according to the clock, a series of alarms all get to ring at the same time in 2012, if you are to believe the projections from the past,  projections that todate have been running to schedule. What’s the point in not soaking it all up now,  and simply surf the apocalypse,  as the ‘set’, as surfers call it, is emerging over the back of the breakers.

I’ve now sailed more of the Med by bike than yacht, as car ferry passenger, mit mota.

The ferry to  Mykonos brought back memories of doing, rolling around in a deck full of sea sick passengers, 34 years ago. These days, it on monter ferries that despite 35 knots of wind, barely move. I rode the freeways into Rafina, had lunch and was in Mykonos, before midnight. Oh shit, what a fucking mess they made of Mykonos, once a spot for the bohemian cool, now juat another over developed disaster. The bus on the dock said, ‘camping?…follow me!” the back of the bus said, ‘FOLLOW ME TO PARADISE”…as paradise is the southern, funky beach, where 34 years ago, it was only accessed by boat, was mainly nude, stoned and bohemian. The back of the bus may better have read, “follow me to paradise lost’. The carnage was all around. The fist roundabout saw the first accident, where cute, tanned female legs, were all bloody, after one of the millions of holiday scooter disaster prangs, that is teh over packed Mykonos of 2009. They fucked Bali, and it seems Mykonos. I camped at paradise, and made the huge mistake of camping near the carpark of a 1000 head, international doof, where right through to dawn, 50cc scoters, like a plague of mosquitoes, made even me, the hardiest of sleepers, ever awake.

The next day, the new Mykonos was revealed…gone where any traces of Greek fishing, in were new marinas, and where once there were donkey paddocks, were thousands of new developments, roundabouts, etc etc.

But by late afternoon, when the beach side house DJ’s had kicked in, and whole new, fun Mykonos was being revealed unto me. It was still for sure, a fun place.

Turkey, via Samos is next…then it;s back north via the old eastern block countries…. this. Ladies and gentlemen, was Western Europe, 2009.

Mykonos is a sensation, of the world wide kinda. Its where the fresh honey suntans, meet the funky fashion, in the evening display of everybody, to all the other bodies.

It should really have been the island that was called Eros, not Mykonos. Sure, they call it a gay mecca, but you wouldn’t notice, as the sexiness of the young, hip and hetero swamp the gay scene. The gays, without kids, over the laste few years, have become so professional, so weathy, so , almost right wing, its an odd phenomena. There is still the odd outrageous. Mad, life of the party gay guy floating around, but the gay scene sure has lost a lot of its pizzazz, now that its part of the main stream.

The sexuality business sure has changed over the years. Mykonos is a good place to make the observations. When I was 20, the local greek fishermen, used their boats to ferry beach goes to the back beaches of Mykonos, Paradise and super Paradise Beach, where then, clothing optional. In other words, nude beaches. This was all a bit of a novelty for my girlfriend and I, but not as much a novelty, as seeing the odd couple roll onto each other, and do it.  We made a shy attempt at getting into the swing of things, but pink arses, where once there was light ban, is not always a good look. Nor is it fun to sit on. But nonetheless, this was Mykonos in the 70’s. Back then,  watching what was going down, all I could assume, was that by 2000, the whole beach scene everywhere was going to get nek’ed. I was wrong.  Despite the overt sexiness of the Mykonos beach scene, its barely even topless.

An old buddy, who has lived between Goa, Mykonos and Bali for over 40 years, Luka, has settled back into his lifetime travel and sarong selling career in Mykonos, and we got chatting, as we have done for many years, albeit it’s been more than 10 years , maybe 15, since we last chatted. With some, people, time elapses between conversations are neither here nor there. We agreed, that the new prudishness of the  younger generation is all part of the electro separation, that takes the touch out of day to day life, and replaces it like this, reading it online. We also agreed, that is seemed a lot more fun, being young 30 years ago, especially mixing and travelling in the international bohemian, kinda hiipy scene. What ever became of the hippy scene eh? Burnt out, as pot changed to uppers, and uppers changed to ice? The LSD explorations, and almost shamanistic adventures of the 70’s, grew barbed wire teeth when up went speedy, not insightful, with the introduction of cheaper, dirtier drugs.

The days when Bali consisted of 4 of 5 cafes at Legion seem almost a millennia ago. The once cool Goa, is a scene of fat, packaged tourism.  The bourgeois replaced the hippy surfers of Byron. You get jailed for smoking a joint in Indo China, where once, everyone sat smoking at sunset. Mykonos at least maintained the white wash, and stone wall town planning ethos, and unlike Bali, refused the gross, mega resort hotel concept, much to the benefit of the locals over the corporates.

The party scene at Mykonos, has obviously been fed a diet of steroids, and more big name international DJ’s pump out tunes, in one of the mega scenes here, than, well, I have ever seen, or is that, scene. I’m sure Ibiza competes. The après beach scene, is like a night club in bikinis. It’s pumping. You could, given the ability to fins a dark spot to crawl away between 9 am and 3pm, dance non-stop, around the altered clock, here in Mykonos. How the 20 somethings can afford the $40 cover charges, and $15 drink prices, is beyond my budgetary imagination. Maybe on strict, no drink, no drug, all shine approach, you could do it not going broke. But i think the young just go broke, abandoning the older ways of beinga traveller, and giving in to being a holiday maker. There is a big difference. ne splurges, and is forced back into the urban grind. The other skimps, and is travelling for years. I subscribe still, to the skrimp and stay plan, But these days, with airfares the best deal in an otherwise rip-off European society, there is not the necessity to treat international air tickets with any degree of budgetary reverence.

At Super Paradise, where once there were hippies platting the frayed end of sarongs they bought in Asia, sitting at the water’s edge, is now a wall to wall real estate franchise on umbrellas and deck chairs…. like all of Europe. If you want to see one good argument in favour of radical depopulation, just check out any European beach in August. Mind you, the poor Europe and are so sun staved, in the majority of their 500,000,000 homes, I suppose you can understand their obsession to get some sun, when it actually shines. It’s brilliant sunshine here, a clarity of light, truly Greek. It’s also blowing gale,  a gale that would blow any yacht to oblivion. It’s enough to make riding even the heaviest of bikes, a bit nerve racking, literally smacking your head sideways, as gusts hit you.  Add to this, thousands of idiot scooter and quad riders, in bare feet, with no helmet, racing around roads so tight, it would throw a go cart, and after dark, it becomes positively dangerous on the roads, especially adding a lack of cops with breathalysers. Luka tells me the hospitals are overflowing with holiday scooter victims, and I had been on the road here all of 10 minutes , before i heard my first bam, and saw the blood oozing from the tanned,  sexy legs of yet another girl who is learning the hard way.  It was once worse in Bali, but they did something about it there. Here, blood on the road is seemingly profit centre for someone. But Super Paradise is indeed a part phenomenon, and last night, the beat never stopped till 9 am, hammering at DB levels that would be illegal anywhere else, even with a sound meter 1000m away. It seems here on Mykonos, where there are seemingly no drugged hippies, no rued bits on display at the beach, that beneath the sheets, and behind the scenes, its as out of it, and as laid, as ever.

Somewhere in all this sunshine and madness, I’m deep in research about this ying/ yang, DNA/ reptilian, good vers evil planet of duality we live in, to try, at 54, to make some sense of the world at its deepest level, and I have a library of all the latest philosophies on the subject, and I’m deep in contemplation, and at time, totally out of any mind state whatsoever, just intuitively trying to figure it. I’m close, but not there. The tough bit, if you understand the history and background to the planet, beyond the shit they teach at school and uni, is reconciling why the dark and evil, is equally behind the light and loving, in the swim of the two snakes that are the ying and yang tadpoles of life on earth. When I’ve got it figures, I’ll write you. I’m close.

I better go upload this stuff, as it seems months since I last sent a postcard, and is anyone ever reads thus far, it would be a miracle.

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