MOTORCYCLE ADVENTURER

“Around the world on a motorcycle?” “Impossible,” says one. “Insane idea,” says another. “You’ll have to wait till the Atlantic freezes over,” exclaims a third—but my partner and I, well, we hold different views. It all depends upon your point of view. Old Mother Earth has been circled by almost everything at one time or another. Sailing craft, steamships, railway trains, bicycles, pedestrians and motorcars have all had their turn. Nothing remains but the airship, the submarine and the motorcycle—and now we are going to give the motorcycle a chance. Clancy later recounted an adventure in Spain: I set out at 5:30 that afternoon over the unknown road to Barcelona, and the fact that I covered 60 miles before the new moon went down at 9 o’clock, is little short of a miracle. The wretched roads shook me to pulp, and the fact that I could not see the holes and stones added to my misery. When I passed through Gerona with its miles of narrow, crooked streets at seven o’clock, I stopped to buy a huge roll of bread to pack my churned insides so they would not rattle quite so loud. From there on I did not see a single living person or pass a house for 20 miles. Wow! How lonely it was—and I had left my Savage automatic in Barcelona! Getting caught in a rut, a nasty fall smashed my lamp, and a little further on another almost broke my leg, but the fords were my worst trouble! Being the watershed for the whole range of mountains to the north, these plains were furrowed with countless streams and a number of respectable rivers, even in this dry season. Only one river on the whole route boasted a bridge, and after a hard rain the road would have been absolutely impossible. What shook my nerve was to have the shadow at the bottom of a sharp descent suddenly turn into a 40-foot river of hidden depth. Usually I was able to stop on the brink, and then walking on an occasional flagstone, laboriously push the machine through the muddy streams, none of which proved over two feet in depth. After a while I got so I didn’t care—philosophically reflecting that one must die sometime and to die with one’s boots on is very noble; so I rushed all the fords that came later, and surprised myself each time by reaching the other side alive. My dear old Henderson even seemed to enjoy the excitement. Clancy wrote of a dangerous meeting with Arabs on a mountain pass in Africa: It was on this rapid decline, with my clutch off and my engine throttled down, that I slid suddenly around a sharp curve onto the strangest group of Arab horsemen I have ever seen. Well dressed and well mounted, what could they be doing here, ten miles from even the merest hamlet, on this wretched, viewless day? Were they highwaymen, brigands, or what? As it happened, they were as much surprised at our sudden meeting as was I, and their horses were even more so, becoming so excited that one narrowly escaped backing into me as I dodged past, while another was prevented from throwing his rider over the precipice by the merest chance. In fact, their horses kept the hands of these mysterious men so full that I was able to get away around a turn before they could take any offensive action. What my fate would have been had I been going up the hill instead of down, wouldn’t be hard to imagine—with a thousand-foot cliff so conveniently by. From the jungles of Ceylon Clancy related: Learning of my intention to reach Sigiri that night, my guide and the rest house keeper loudly clamoured against this “folly,” stating that the wild animals came out into the road after sundown and that it would be exceedingly dangerous to enter the jungle before morning. They even added that I could not hire a dozen coolies to make the trip in a body—while I was alone. “What is the danger?” I asked. “Rogue elephants (those that have been wounded by man), cheetahs (panthers), bears, wild buffalo, etc., etc.,” they replied. “All big game,” I thought to myself. “Well, I’ll chance it; I hate to give up what I’ve started out to do.” Digging my “Savage automatic” out of my hip pocket I primed it carefully and slipped it into the right outside pocket of my koveralls. Then, after seeing that my lamp was O. K. (I had purchased a new one at Colombo—my fifth), I started off amid a chorus of protests, shouting “Sigiri or bust!” For the first five miles the jungle road was good, the light fair, and the only animal to show up was a jackal. Then my way branched sharply to the right—evidently a new road, little used, narrow, winding, grass grown and deep in sand; not a track conducive to speeding even in daylight. But I dashed on, and then the darkness fell suddenly. I did not want to stop to light my lamp, fearing that the light might attract the fool animals, nor did I want to spend the time. But what was that bulky mass in the road ahead? A rogue elephant surely, I thought, “the only kind that will attack a man.” What should I do? I couldn’t turn around now, and I might be almost there. No, I will rush him and try to scare him first; let him charge me if he will. All these thoughts flashed through my mind in an instant, and then—Oh, how I wished for a muffler cutout, the first time I had ever wanted one! I would have swapped my birthright for it. I didn’t even know whether wild animals were accustomed to turning out to the left or to the right. Blowing my horn like mad and opening wide my throttle, I charged the monster with wild yells, and succeeded, as I had hoped, in sending him off snorting and crashing into the thicket. Coming abreast of him I was a little disappointed but not much relieved to find that he was a wild buffalo—not an elephant—for the former is almost as wicked. A longer five miles I’ve never known and never hope to see, than that black, sandy path winding and winding through the jungle. “What would happen,” I thought, “if I had a puncture?” After entering Montana from Idaho Clancy wrote: While it had taken us four hours to climb up that mountainous ridge, it took us six hours to get down the other side. We had expected to enter Montana by the back door, but hadn’t planned to go down the chimney. The ascending trail in Idaho had been unspeakable, but the descending track, our first impression of Montana’s roads, was barely passable for two tough mules and a light buggy. Crowded with sharply-edged rocks a foot or more in height, and so steep I had to put on my Weed chains to hold my locked rear wheel from dragging down too fast, scattered with misstrewn corduroy logs, and overflown with soft-bottomed pools of water throughout its six-mile slope, each and all the cause of numerous painful falls (17 upon my part that afternoon, and as many agonizing 375-pound lifts again, as well as several punctures). The great wonder of it is that we ever got down alive at all, and with whole machines. The deep dents in the rims of our wheels, their broken spokes, and the bruised handlebars remained the only proof of the war we had been through—the only wounds of the cruel, jagged rocks we had pounded over, and the wretched holes we had fallen into. When night fell... I could find no match to light my lamp. Floundering on in the darkness, another nasty fall bent my handle bars so badly I could barely balance the machine after I had used up my last ounce of strength in setting it up. So weak was I with the 10-hour lunchless strain that the next deep pool bowled me over again, and this time I had to sit down in the bushes and wait several minutes to gain strength to even drag my steed from the water, which its hot cylinders was fast turning to steam. But on level ground again the trail improved, and eventually, at 8:45, I came upon Bob waiting at the door of a crude prospector’s shack, and learned the blessed news that here we could have shelter for the night. Bob picked up and cared for my faithful Henderson, which had fallen again from my nerveless grasp,