Ted Simon – twice around the globe on his bike.

A 78,000mile journey across five continents – Ted Simon is a British journalist who wrote for the English newspapers Daily Mail, The Observer and The Times. In late 1973, Simon began traveling around the world on a Triumph Tiger 500cc motorcycle. For four years he travelled over 78,000 miles through forty-five countries. Most accounts from his trip are detailed in his book, Jupiter's Travels.
In 2001 Simon started a new journey that roughly followed the same route as his 1973 trip, this time riding a BMW. He was around 70 years old at that time and completed the journey in 3 years. His new book is called: Dreaming of Jupiter.

Ted was in Barga this weekend for a presentation of the book at the Liberia Barga Vecchia. (other presentations this year in the bookshop are here;Dizionario Garfagnino  Andrea Giannasi Simone Togneri )

The interesting thing about this presentation was not just the fact that Ted Simon had gone round the world on his motorbike, but had managed to do it again 24 years later giving him an unrivalled world view with all the changes in the interveaning years showing up sharply in focus. He summarised increasing problems on a global scale into three main categories.

1. population explosion – the world's population had reached over 6.7 billion – thirty years ago it was only 4.2 billion

2. the fact that people are now more informed and actually know that they are poor and disadvantaged – with a consequent rise in resentment  

3. the damage to the environment  

"Thousands of years ago it was written in the Baghavad Gita that without memory we are like monkeys, we are doomed to chaos and foolishness. Memory is, in my view, the most important single aspect of humanity. Because without it we have nothing to compare anything with: we can't make stories, we can't develop our imagination, everything depends on our ability to remember things. We all know: people who don't remember are doomed to repeat their mistakes." – Ted Simon

Ted Simon's site is here