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Ted Simon (born 1931) is British travel writer noted for circumnavigating the world twice by motorcycle. [1] He was raised in London by a German mother and a Romanian father.
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Ted Simon (born 1931) is British travel writer noted for circumnavigating the world twice by motorcycle. [1] He was raised in London by a German mother and a Romanian father.
After studying chemical engineering at Imperial College he began his newspaper career in Paris with the Continental Daily Mail. Back in England, whilst undertaking National Service with the RAF he founded Scramble, a magazine for recruits, which caught the attention of Arthur Christiansen, redoubtable editor of the Daily Express, and worked in Fleet Street for ten years. He eventually became Features Editor of the Daily Sketch, and shortly before that paper was amalgamated with the Daily Mail in 1964 he left to found and edit a man's magazine, King, which survived for three years. He moved to France and contributed to various English newspapers and magazines, including The Observer and Nova . His first book, The Chequered Year, or "Grand Prix Year" (U.S. 1972), was an account of the 1970 Formula One season.
In late 1973, sponsored by The Sunday Times , Simon began travelling around the world on a 500 cc Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle. For four years he travelled over 64,000 miles (103,000 km) through 45 countries. Most accounts from his trip are detailed in his book, Jupiter's Travels , [2] while some of the book's gaps are filled in its follow-up, Riding High . [3]
His books and long distance riding inspired the actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman in their 2004 journey from London to New York on motorcycles ( Long Way Round ), during which they arranged to meet Simon in Mongolia.[ citation needed ]
In 1980, married with one son, he moved to Northern California, became active in organic farming and consumer supported agriculture, and wrote the book The River Stops Here: Saving Round Valley, A Pivotal Chapter in California's Water Wars. He went on to write The Gypsy in Me , [4] which details his search for his mother's and, particularly, his father's roots in Eastern Europe. This time he mainly walked and caught public transport between Kaliningrad and Romania. This was not long after the Communist regimes in Russia, Poland, Ukraine and Romania had fallen.
In 2001, Simon started a new motorcycle journey, this time on a modified BMW R80GS, [5] that roughly followed the same route as his 1973 trip. He was around 70 years old at that time and completed the journey in three years. His new book, Dreaming of Jupiter, detailing this journey, was released in March 2007. [6]
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The Motorcycle Diaries is a posthumously published memoir of the Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara. It traces his early travels, as a 23-year-old medical student, with his friend Alberto Granado, a 29-year-old biochemist. Leaving Buenos Aires, Argentina, in January 1952 on the back of a sputtering single cylinder 1939 Norton 500cc dubbed La Poderosa, they desired to explore the South America they only knew from books. During the formative odyssey Guevara is transformed by witnessing the social injustices of exploited mine workers, persecuted communists, ostracized lepers, and the tattered descendants of a once-great Inca civilization. By journey's end, they had travelled for a "symbolic nine months" by motorcycle, steamship, raft, horse, bus, and hitchhiking, covering more than 8,000 kilometres (5,000 mi) across places such as the Andes, the Atacama Desert, and the Amazon River Basin.
Long Way Round (LWR) is a British television series and book documenting the 19,000-mile (31,000 km) journey of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman from London to New York City on motorcycles. They travelled eastwards through Europe and Asia, flew to Alaska, and continued by road to New York. The series aired on Sky One from 18 October 2004 – 1 February 2005 and was repeated on BBC Two in 2008. The series was added to Apple TV+ on 18 September 2020, along with sequels Long Way Down (2007) and Long Way Up (2020).
Ted Conover is an American author and journalist who has been called a "master of immersion" and "master of experience-based narrative nonfiction." A graduate of Amherst College and a former Marshall Scholar, he is also a professor and past director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University. He teaches graduate courses in the New York University Literary Reportage concentration, as well as undergraduate courses on the "journalism of empathy" and undercover reporting.
Charley Boorman is a British television presenter, travel writer and actor. A motorbike enthusiast, Boorman has made three long-distance motorcycle rides with his friend Ewan McGregor, documented in Long Way Round (2004), Long Way Down (2007), and Long Way Up (2020).
The BMW GS series of dual-sport BMW motorcycles have been produced from 1980, when the R80G/S was launched, to the present day. The GS refers to either Gelände/Straße or Gelände Sport. GS motorcycles can be distinguished from other BMW models by their longer travel suspension, an upright riding position, and larger front wheels – typically 19 to 21 inch. In May 2009, the 500,000th GS was produced, an R1200GS model.
Long-distance riding is the activity of riding motorcycles over long distances, both competitively and as a pastime. A goal of long-distance riding is to explore one's endurance while riding a motorcycle, sometimes across several countries.
Edward L. Bishop is a Canadian writer and academic. A professor of English literature and film studies at the University of Alberta, his first non-academic publication was Riding with Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books, a travel memoir which was a Canadian bestseller in 2005 and a finalist for the 2005 Governor General's Award for English non-fiction, and won the MAX Award for best Motorcycle Book and Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction.
Motorcycle touring is a format of tourism that involves a motorcycle. It has been a subject of note since at least 1915.
Feasting on Asphalt is a television series starring Alton Brown of the Food Network programs Good Eats and Iron Chef America.
Woodrow Landfair is an American novelist, entrepreneur, motorcycle adventurer, surfer, actor, and NCAA Champion athlete. He is the owner of El Porto Surf Shop in El Porto, California and the Adventure Correspondent for HighTides Journal.
Jupiter's Travels is a book by Ted Simon which narrates his four-year journey through 126,000 km across 45 countries on a Triumph Tiger 100 500 cc motorcycle from 1973 to 1977. His book was first published in English in 1979.
Holiday was an American travel magazine published from 1946 to 1977, whose circulation grew to more than one million subscribers at its height. The magazine employed writers such as Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Lawrence Durell, James Michener, and E. B. White.
The following outline is provided as an overview of motorcycles and motorcycling:
Geoff Hill is an author, journalist and long-distance motorcycle rider living in Belfast. He is a critically acclaimed author and award-winning feature and travel writer.
Sjaak Lucassen is a Dutch long-distance motorcycle rider.
Carl Stearns Clancy was an American long-distance motorcycle rider, film director and producer. He is credited with being the first person to circumnavigate the world on a motorcycle.
Allan Karl is an American author, adventurer and speaker. He is most known for travelling around the world on his motorcycle and subsequently writing the book, Forks: A Quest for Culture, Cuisine and Connection.
Carol and Ken Duval are Australian long-distance motorcyclists. They started long-distance riding outside of Oceania in March 1997, completing a circumnavigation of the Earth in June 2001, having touched 57 countries and covered 200,000 kilometers. In 2007 Ken Duval retired, the couple sold their belongings in Brisbane, Australia to raise $500,000 for traveling, and they started on a new journey. By 2017, after eight years on the road, they had finished a second circumnavigation and had racked up nearly one million kilometers; both trips were on the same motorcycle, a 1981 BMW R80G/S.
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