Quotes from Ted Simon

To be worth making at all, a journey has to be made in the mind as much as in the world of objects and dimensions.

I am learning, as I make my way through my first continent, that it is remarkably easy to do things, and much more frightening to contemplate them.

Maybe you know how it is when you have decided to do something really enormous with your life, something that stretches your resources to the limit. You can get the feeling that you are engaged in a trial of strength with the universe.

What happened on the way, who I met, all that was incidental. I had not quite realized that the interruptions were the journey.

But it was nothing, a paper seal slipped in assembly, easily put right. You could stop the oil if you took the trouble. That was what British bikes liked, a bit of trouble. They thrived on attention, like certain people, and repaid you for it. Not a bad relationship to have.

If the Japanese ever got a foothold, British bikes would quickly become only a nostalgic memory.

If Thoreau were alive today he would have full confirmation of his fears. Instant information is instantly obsolete. Only the most banal ideas can successfully cross great distances at the speed of light. And anything that travels very far very fast is scarcely worth transporting, especially the tourist.

That particular passion which caused me to pursue for years on end a journey that others would scarcely contemplate, that many regarded as an act of folly or arrogance, arose out of my own peculiarity. I saw that it would make me a difficult person to live with, just as I knew that without it I could hardly live with myself.

Everything in this picture I took with me, except the tires. They were sent on. And the umbrella? That was the photographer's, but eventually I did get one of my own, and it was remarkably useful. I strapped it alongside, under the saddle and over a box on my right. On the left side I carried a sword, but that's another story...

So our journey became for me also an inquiry into my own psyche, which is what all the best journeys become.

Instant information is instantly obsolete. Only the most banal ideas can successfully cross great distances at the speed of light. And anything that travels very far very fast is scarcely worth transporting, especially the tourist.

I had to come here to realise the full stature of men: here outside a grass hut, on a rough wooden bench, with no noise, no crowds, no appointments, no axe to grind, no secret to conceal, all the space and time in the world, and my heart as translucent as the glass of tea in my hand. The sense of affinity with these men is so strong that I would tear down every building in the West if I thought it would bring us together like this.

Generally when a man in uniform has something unusual brought to his attention, his instinct is to stop it.

There's a lot of water everywhere. The roads near the sea front are under two feet of it. Do they mention this in the brochures? I see a package of Nordic tourists washed up in a hotel lobby. The hotel looks as though it has absorbed its own weight of water.

It's amazing how two simple objects can make your day.