The LUCK OF THE IRISH …is contagious

The ferry that takes you from Wales to Ireland is kind of like a giant cafeteria bedeck with flatscreens and lower decks. All my preconceived ideas about the ferocioty of the Fastnet killing Irish sea, were laid to waste as the 3 hour crossing could have been across a lake. Such is timing, and sea crossings.

Ferries now crisscross Europe and the UK full of campervans and semitrailers, by the dozen. Back in the 70′s the hovercraft across the English Channel expensive and, in my experience at least, deaf defying….falling in 12 m drops, throwing the contents of my kombi around the walls and ceilings, and making all but the hardcore few immune from joining the gastric gas ambience of a cabin full of vomit.  I thought Cesna’s in a storm were bad, till I tried the Hovercraft in a Force 400.  God knows how they weren’t banned earlier. The trip I took was once of the last for the hovercraft….good for hovering over a lake, but not the English Channel. So  the cafeteria crossing watching Sky news was droll.  Murdoch’s Sky was leading in the  manipulated media’s, cyclical demolition of the British government, currently led  by morose Prime Minister, Gordon Browns. The Rothchild’s simply discard on mob, in readiness to bring in the next Blair, this time a Tory, but in reality, just like the swap of Bush to Obama, there is no real change, as all funding dependant leaders are adherents to those, who behind the scenes, pay the bills behind the bills. Put any politician on a high wire, with 48% of the votes against him on one balancing pole, and 52% on the other, and its arguably dead easy to nudge the highwire  anyway you like, left or right, given black hand in media, or bureaucracy, or corporatocracy. When all black hands come from the one source, both Tory, Labour, Democrat or Republican leaders, they are all puppets on the highwire of a successfully divided and conquered system. Round of applause please, for the Black Hand. True professionals.

Onboard the ferry, truckies snooze, or fiddle with their phones, seeking payment via SMS arrival notices , asking to get paid in Euros either in Ireland or from Europe, from whence they come, being that Ireland and Europe are all one, in terms of currency (and most of their law), if you can believe that Irish buckled to Brussels,  after years of fighting England.  Go figure?

Landing in Dublin, it was nice to see that there is an unwritten law allowing motorbikes to park for free, on discreet pavement choices of their choosing. I choose just outside the front window of a hostel called Avalon, and moved in, along with panniers and tent. I don’t travel light, its neither safe nor hygienic, as one round the world yachty once put it.  It’s was Friday afternoon, in the season of the 11pm twiglight, and every street table and chair in Dublin was alive with chatter, every pub was  abuzz, along with every cafe and street corner.
I had never been to Ireland, but I had be warned to expect unexpected friendliness. As the coffee clouds in my first Guinness did their inversion lava lamp display, a quick look around the pub revealed an immediate characteristic of the Irish. They were listening, not just talking. They were engaging each other, not just on terms of being in the same social strata, or for sex, or for work, but just for the sake of humanity. Old gentlemen, chatting to younger women. Eccentric nutters chatting to suits.

The raven hair and blues eyes of the local lasses, sprinkled with a few freckles, sent mating tones through my Celtic DNA. What a lovely scene Dublin made.

With the same communicative openness of the New York, Ireland added a dash of compassion to all its gestures.

What a change from England. Whilst England has never looked more shinny and prosperous, its social connectivity was in tatters, with the press obsessed with moralistic trivia, and some 300 surveillance cameras prying into each person’s life, each day. Bobbies who once were armed with batons, now carried submachine guns. The enemy of Britain was not the Nazi, it was now the resident. The local was the suspect. Despite the outrageously clear evidence linking MI5 with the tube bombings, having set up the

‘terrorists’ in what was meant to be an exercise,  an exercise that went bang instead of futt. The next day, on the BBC,  the truthful but bungling statement by M15′s PR managers was ripped off stage with a shepherd’s hook before the second round of questions had been thrown. It was, apparently, just pure coincidence that M15 had a full blown bomb simulation exercise running at the exact time and place where the actual bomb went off. Yeah, right. NORAD 2.

Odd the way witnesses said the floor of the train had been pealed upwards from an under carriage explosion, considering the supposed bomb was in a backpack. Kinda like a jet fuel fire, maxed out at 1200 C, melting twin tower steel, that only melts at double that temperature. England, base station Iluminati, had fallen well into their myriad of ongoing, “Dead Babies R US’ plans. The people had been so poisoned and anesthetised that Prozac was now in the eco cycle of the meadows and brooks of rural Britain. Cardiovascular disease was at record and growing records, and every second bloke could expect to contract cancer. Apart from that Britain was in great shape.

Ireland, bless it, did not show billboard road signs, with an insignia of a surveillance camera at every second main road. The Irish weren’t exactly healthy lot, but at least they were not as sickly as the Brits, off to Tesco’s preserved food aisles, in their battery powered wheelchairs.

Ireland is beautiful, I soon discovered, when my oversize gloves made a mistake on GPS, consigning me on my first day’s ride to tiny mountain back roads, across moors, and down through winding forests and farms into valleys full of picture postcard cottages. Cork was a bottler. Wicklow’s way was a winding wonder. And then at the very tip of the windswept farmlands of southern Ireland, in the Ring of Beara, high on cliff overlooking the incoming Gulf Stream,(long may it hopefully circulate, eeek) was a Buddhist retreat and cheap hostel, built in the original farmers cottage, surrounded by fuchsias and organic veges.  Sogyal Rinopoche, spiritual director of Rigpa, and author of the palliative care text, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,  a text sold by the millions, had set up this retreat for funky backpackers, nearly dead, and deep retreat hardcore, all in their comfy space, spread around the headland. Meditation space, for the big chill of the morning sessions, was perched in a carpeted glass house, looking miles out to sea, across a roaring coastline of breathtaking, or maybe, breath conscious views.

If I were to pick a religion to adopt, I would adopt Buddhism. But then having seen what thieving and superstitious acts that some  traditional Buddhist monks indulge in, I might please elect to admire the core teachings, but not engage in the religious adherence. The practise of stilling the mad mind of man, is a practice well worthy of pursuit. Buddha was a hit more than 2000 years ago, and since then, the evolution of consciousness has shifted up several gears, and is heading to either a global car crash, or higher game, depending on whether the human heart, or the Lords of Form, win the next set. Apparently, the big game has a grand final real soon. So whilst the Buddhist teachings make grand foundations, there is now a higher structure we are working on. Precariously.

Winding through the back bays and green lane ways of southern Ireland, with the boxer engine of the BMW humming away like a wing full of Lancaster engines, it was a gentle thrill that no car ride can duplicate. 70kg of kit, in panniers bolted to bomb racks seemed to inspire, rather the dampen the ride, albeit in car parks and tight turns, the height and weight of the overland frame was a right regular pain in the arse, falling over at least once a week, and to my horror, denting my otherwise shiny and perfect, red and white fuel tank. But shit happens, and I refuse to minimise my camping, library, and weird food stocks, simply to emulate an Easy Rider with fat credit card. As for the dented tanks, hey, I just say I had them personally shaped to fit the panniers.

And shit happens when you least expect it. When an engine starts a dead spot splutter, my mind goes first to water in the fuel. But modern fucking German engineers are too smart by halves, putting sensors in German bikes, where even anal proctologists would fear to go. So on the morning after the day I had given the BM a nice scrub, and with a feeling of confidence in BMW engineering, the engine began to die. It took its time, fading in and out over 20k’s, until finally expiring with just enough momentum, to roll right to the front door of the nearest business. By chance, a BMW outlet.  It was as if the bike wanted to return to its makers. They didn’t do bikes, but they did know who did, so a day spent waiting around a small Irish hamlet, was rewarded with a GS expert, driving away with the dead bike on a trailer, suffering a terminal ‘hall ‘switch fault, that had the right of life and death over the engines pulse, and in this reality, I was left twiddling tralee, trala, in town called Tralee. So much for Galway and a visit to Roisin in Belfast. Me in a tent, under a big oak, in campsite, listening to the rain drum the outer lining.

Back in Dublin, I had stumbled into a street protest that never seemed to have an end…the crowd ran for over a kilometre, with thousands out to protest the workings of the evil Irish Roman Catholic church, and its co-conspirator, the State, after report after report had lifted the veils on what amounted to systematic abuse, and in some case torture, of 160,000 institutionalized kids, under some 216 catholic institutions, since the 50′s. After all the paedophilia, the abuse of children, by the dark, unquestioned ways of the all powerful catholic church, comes as one of the obvious nails in the coffin of an institution who will never be resurrected. Just as predicted, and infact prophesised. Thousands raised little shoes in the air, in silent protest. Police guarded the gates of the Parliament, where the thousands marched, and the church did its best to ignore the clamour, in the crumbling ruins of what was once the unquestioned dominance of the church, state and constabulary. Their use by date is approaching.

The pain of the now grown faces of the once abused kids was palpable. Catholic institutions can be bad…but Irish Catholic ones can be terrifying.

Riding around the freshly glaciated bays and valleys of southern Ireland, in and out of the coves and harbours, made even the beauty of even Devon and Cornwall compete. The green lined roads are beyond beautiful, but are a risky ride, with nowhere to run, when a bus or a van one comes around a narrow corner on the squeeze.

It’s not dark till after 10 pm on approach to the summer solstice, here in Ireland, so when to start dinner is a very confusing concept. Who needs daylight saving when day its never dark. I would not want to be here for the winter solstice.

I have a great fondness for camping. I actually like a fairly flat micro mattress, and having spent up big, on an all down sleeping bag, I prefer a cosy tent, even under heavy rain, than a sterilised hotel room. There is something beyond cosy, tucked up in a hikers tent, when it’s hammering down outside. Other hiking/biking campers, stick their noses out of their tents after the morning showers clear, like snails rolling their eyes out of their shell. I admire the touring push bike crew, for their ability to travel light, a skill i refuse to practise.  A spirited retiree has bought an new version of the classic Triumph Bonneville, parked in the camp site alongside me, and he’s doing what he always wanted to do from when he was 20 something, with a pregnant girlfriend. England is awash with retirees on the road.

They specialise here in building cute-sy fibreglass motor homes that are the equivalent of a thatched cottage on wheels. But unlike the thatched cottage, and more like the medical condition of the inhabitants, the white motor homes are connected to tubes are more reminiscent of colostomy bags, and pacemakers. Inside the heated vans, lined up like housing estates in bland van parks, the retirees watch Sky on through their dishes and flatsceens, whilst frying up their food, and boiling the buggery out of their veges, popping NHS pills by the handful, and wondering why all their mates are going down like flies. Some of the really adventurous ones bring their electric shopping mobiles for the odd trip to the shower block, albeit most vans now have bogs and showers. With every second person now contracting cancer, the retirees, who long since abandoned their personal responsibility for their health to the advice of their doctors, the marketing of the processed food companies, and the veiled push of the drug companies, it was interesting to catch a BBC doco drama about the pressure being applied to supply life extending drugs to terminally ill cancer patients, where the drug is that useful, that after toxing you, you still end up dead, but at a cost of $100,000 per script, per year. In dollar for dollar comparison, the retirees who never even tried to look after their now decrepit bodies, are being allocated funds at 140% higher dollar per life saved, than younger members of society with terminal issues.  Palliative care, as say the Buddhists promote, looks more at the quality of how you die, rather than just when you die, and funds to the struggling social workers who try to get support for the terminally ill, in their homes, with their families, have seen all their funds vaporised by government spending on drug companies, who profiteer off keeping neo corpses in suspended mortality. Dont kid yourself, cancer is big business, and my earlier story of the murder of 9 out of 10 UCLA breakthrough researchers, with a credible cancer cure,  still does not see the film and book of their incredible tale even get a peak.

Enough of the nearly dead. Let’s get newly wed. I surprise myself with my lack or recall of just how many friends I have secreted away in my mind, as lost in Europe somewhere. There is always someone who has a contact or email link somewhere. So I finally mastered Skype, Vodaphone deals and with some detective work, I located more old mates and girlfriends. But as this is a story in the now, not the future, I’m not there yet. But if the damn part arrives, I will be on a ferry and back in England in a flash.

Friends in Dubai tempted me to ride through the middle east, and come visit….a totally insane idea I am considering with dutiful spinning of the Google Earth roulette wheel.

I fancy some escape from the ridiculous prices of Ireland and the UK…where a pint  costs $8, and a load of DYI washing and drying costed $17, and head for the old and authentic eastern block Europe, and with it Greece and Croatia for some sunshine, so I can afford to socialise. I have some appointments in London Paris and Amsterdam first, but then they are sort of on the way anyway.

The EU countries, UK included, were wide mouthed succours for the shove-it-down-ya throat debt on offer from the banking cartels, fattening us geese in readiness to squeeze our liver.

Well its liver squeezing time, and the unemployment, bankruptcy and ‘where’s my fat cheque’ depression has set in with earnest. With every punter once getting a loan approval bigger than Ben Hur, they all turned up at the  Saturday morning auctions to throw debt swathes at property sales, with all the abandon of an approving funder, and in so doing, bid each other up to the point where the same miserable, post war housing, sold for 3 or 4 times its real worth in wage affordability terms, and no one batted an eyelid. Dinner party talk was al about how much stuff we had stuffed into. The impact was that rents skyrocketed, the banks quadrupled their gross, and a simple sandwich for a traveller like me, given the rental overhead, costs $8 here in Ireland. The Irish were late starters, but pig at the trough first timers. With every would-be professional deciding to become a property developer, builders became swamped with work, and they too tripled their prices. I was privy to the gorging myself, managing the construction of two big projects, where at the start of the boom some 5000m of housing was built for a third of the price of similar housing across the road in 2006. During the boom, the builders all arrived in shiny new, fully optioned up, four wheel drive vehicles, and refused to do tough work, and charged triple for the privilege of turning up occasionally. Lawyers gorged on the conveyancing. Architects, (40% now unemployed here in Ireland) where working around the clock. Councils could not get planners as they had been ripped off by developers. 1 in 30 of us, a four fold increase, became ‘financial services’ managers, plundering the system by devising derivatives so complex that the holders could not figure out if they were infact a debt or an asset, but what the hell anyway, they made the loans based on 40 dollars lent, with only one dollar in the bank. And Greenspan, and the Illuminati Banks of England and Bank of America all fuelled the deregulatory fire, so that when they suddenly pulled the cash flow choker chain, they could get what they want, namely, a series of governments willing to do whatever the banks wanted, ‘it’s unprecedented’, including facilitating the formation a world banking governance, years premature of a world government, and as the matriacal Rothchild’s once quipped, who needs control over a country’s government, if you control its money anyway.

But all this seeming doom and gloom conceals the real benefits of the recession. Hey guys, loads of ‘stuff’ does not make you happy for long. Infact it’s often, or more like, eventual, that it makes you miserable. Looking back on my life, and I have owned the odd waterfront, and few dozen homes, its painfully obvious that the most shinny enjoyable times I have had, were at my most broke, and my most miserable and stressed times, where when I was up to my neck in my stuff. It took me a sound and thumping fall, to finally help me figure out, that if ya don’t stress in pursuit of  more wealth, you actually end up doing really well, in real wellness terms, by not giving a shit. My financial collapse would sell a million $2 novels, what with all its off-the-wall , off-shoot, stories of mafia bankers, crazed millionaires and bleeding edge entrepreneurial madness. And after going broke, the tale of going from private sector to public official would sell another million comedic paperbacks. I better not start the recollection, or this motorcycle diary will loose another wheel.

Let me throw something in…’happiness’ is a passing myth…. it’s as fleeting as a fart…what is real, however, is enjoyment, or IN JOY THE MOMENT.

The difference being with enjoyment,  is that the real yououts in the sparkle, from inner to out, where as with happiness, you are looking for some external boost to support you.

You can get enjoyment out of doing the washing up, with a laugh and some enthusiasm…. but those looking for happiness rarely include washing up on their list happiness’s pursuit, and counter to advertised beliefs, they sadly miss some of the best parts.

The Irish, much as they were quick to fall for the money trap, are better placed than most, to return to matter of enjoyment, and the heart, as  seemingly they are better connected than most. Besides, they’re good fun.

But its great to see people waking up to the fact that the best thing to hang onto in life, is not stuff, but relationships. When your feel rich, you become an island, capable of calling in anyone you need, by phone and credit card. In our former society, we had to enlist the help of our village community, to gather the harvest, or to build the newly wed’s home-sweet-hut. This made us intertwined. So destruction of the man-as-an-island financial lie, is a lie well worth disembowelling. Quantum physicists and mathematicians have long known that all things, us included, are intrinsically connected: all the mystics, indigenous and enlightened mob know we are one, but given $400K spare equity in ya home, and a credit card waiting to be plundered, we all completely abandoned the ‘we’ for the ‘me’. But times, painfully for many, are changing. And for those addicted to the wealth before life game,  there may be more pain is ahead.

The recession is a win for the heart, at the expense of the head. And all the ‘evil’ players who orchestrated this giant fuck up, need an appreciative round of applause, as without their dark agenda, we would never be given a chance to see it, and reject it. You rarely learn to change a car battery, unless one have had one go flat on you first.

The wait for the bike’s new crank shaft sensor, down in southern Ireland came to a sudden halt on a balmy solstice twilight, after 3 days in Tralee, when a GS angel Liam rolled into my campsite, declaring my Beemer working. Liam had sourced a second hand crank sensor, retrieving the bike after borrowing mates bike trailer, dismantling a good chunk of the engine, all done at night, like flight engineers in the Battle of Britain, Liam drove me back to the bike, charges only 80 euros for his time, and after giving me some inside tips on GS maintenance, waved me on my way. If corporate BMW had done the same service, it would have taken longer and cost 4 times more. Poor BMW…its been so fattened in the boom, its about to get an ugly dose of the mirror, showing what rip-off twats they really are, serving to either status challenged wankers, appreciators of good engineering, or, who, like me in the 80′s, suspected part of their life can be defined by their car. With  heavy days riding agenda ahead, with a plan to cross Ireland, the Irish sea, and half of England, the camp was stripped to fast exit status for  an early get away. The bike as usual was loaded like a camel.

Knocking off Ireland was done by lunch, aboard a high speed cat, full of semitrailers…and with my destination deep in England, still ahead, it was just as well I was well motivated, as it was a solid night and day, thundering ride. My destination was the meeting point of where 500 other around the world type bikers, had gathered for what is the worlds largest gathering of   motorised adventure travellers, and their Mongolian worn kit. Much of the kit was German, mixed in with a range of heavy dirt bikes, the odd Harley and some storage enhanced trail bikes. Whilst the pay-to-play riders on the brand new 1200cc GS tourers had the flashest kit, it was the old beaten up BMW bikes that was clearly the coolest, or at least, most character packed gear.

I could has won the world award, for the most shit ever bolted or strapped to an old beemer…albeit I had steep competition. Some bikes were that travelled, they made around the world yachties look lazy. One unique specimen had welded a massive,  pizza delivery style pannier set, into and around the tight frame of track racing  superbike, and he had it in all parts of the world…including muddy Congo river crossings, all with clip-on racing bars, and full sports seating stance.

The touring crew is mainly all over 40 these days, as the image of bikers as the young Marlin Brando, or the stoned Fonda fade away, replaced by the middle age, who now rule the touring teams. And in fact it was the 60 and 70 year old world tourers who had the most sensational recent stories, and with it, the philosophies and books they have written. I liked the perspectives of one old codger, who looked fondly on the time his old beemer fell for the fourth time that day, breaking his leg, but with shock, not hurting at all, as, or so he argued, the experience of recovering in some remote Kenyan village was well worth the eventual pain and delay. Life is about what happens with other people along the way…its not about the destination. In the case of the broken leg tale, the rider/author also argued that its important to select a bike that is not too reliable, as it’s what happened when you break down that is the real chance of experiencing life,  atop which, one should never make plans when riding abroad, as it will deny you of the delights of living now, and not for tomorrow.

Accordingly, the best kit to my mind was the older, beaten up BMW, without all the electronic sensors that will leave you completely fucked in the middle of the Sahara, with no Ewan McGregor film crew and chopper, to fly in the factory computer whiz, to reset the chips. The older the BM, the less the electronic bullshit and the tougher the engineering.

I was told my older mota was a rare anniversary edition at the top of its tougher genera, a restoring thought, given my earlier grumpiness at the bike’s 3 day breakdown. But had it not broken down, I would have missed meeting a play full of great  Irish characters, not the least of whom was Nolan the nurseryman, who takes the odd annual walking tour through a park in the middle of Tralee, where we were introduced to a range of ancient and beautiful trees, many of whom had grown up along with Mr Nolan, as he had lived alongside the park all his life, and would no doubt have 60 bark rings on display if he were to loose a limb. There is a marvellous simple nature, in being a giant oak, a silent demonstration of how to live aligned with life, with no need, unlike us, of needing to know our name, let alone our place.

Be a tree. That’s all a tree does.

Be a human, is more than humanity can do.

A must see on any world trio is a tour of the, Micka and Jackie’s Gardiner’s Kingdom of Safron Waldron, the realm of prince Conor.  The rural setting alongside Cambridge, just outside of London, is a lovely place to make family. Stumbling around Cambridge with Micka in the perma twilight of the summer solstice, more by ‘trolley’ than by good sense, saw a fitting end to a tour of England, before hammering off to eternal Amsterdamnation.

Cambridge, complete with all its demonic decoration,  is the final nod and the wink, in the closed package known by some as establishment rule, but which behind the scenes is a bit more centralised that a mere establishment. All the established myths around medicine, archaeology and silo’d science remain unchallenged, and are now arguably fading vestiges of total cover up and bullshit,  and with the aid of the Oxford, Cambridge and Ivy League professorial decrees,  the core educational doctrines remain stinking bullshit. Before WW2, Iluminati through their lower team leaders, in the form of the Fabian Society, insured that the  prestige university scholarships, then professorial appointments, went only to those who sought never to challenge the established lies, where for example, medicine denies the energetic influences manifested in say acupuncture, archaeology denies the advanced understandings of  say Mayan and Egyptian history, by perpetrating the simplistic myths that say pyramids are mere tombs, and which in science, continues to deny the implications of the multidimensional universe, and the fact that there is only energy, not matter. But such weighty matters were not the focus of the few lagers downed canal side in Cambridge when Mike Gabour rang for our monthly radio interview, with us on the piss, and home sweet Port Douglas doing breakfast.

The interview made some amusement of previous day’s, highway camping escapade, when my pop up, 3 man tent, ‘inflated’ on the M1 at 120k/h, with the same effect as a  dragster’s parachute, unannounced. To complete the move, the parachute tent,  then ejected itself under full reverse thrust, and proceeded, at 120k/h, to do a full pop up, and erect itself in lane 3 of the 4 lane M1, coming to a quaint and cost campsite stop, in front of a stampede of white knuckled truckers,  trying to decelerate 40 tonnes, without causing a 20 car pileup in the process.

As for me, I was running back down the motorway, in the lee of the tent, with a look on my face that said, if you run over my tent, you will have to run over me too. That’s my home there…. and sure, it may not be the quietest place to set up a tent, but, but….

After Dell’s world wide guarantee fell into corporate tatters, with their repair codes needing 40 minutes of pass-the-buck international call centre denials, I gave up on the Dell arseholes ( we hate you Dell and Vodaphone) and I just ordered a new laptop charger, cursing Dell, and waited till the postie wheeled in with the part,  the next day, before heading for Ramsgate, like a bull at a gate. All was going to be a breezy ride south to the lunchtime ferry to Belgium, until I realised, in our sideways state the night before, I had left my GPS in Micka’s car, and Micka had gone to work. The sideways memory engaged to add more chaos, as we hadn’t actually taken Micka’s car, and the GPS, a tool to find things, was infact sitting in the driveway, in the other car. If only GPS units had a function to find GPS units. I would kill for an invention to locate car keys, reading glasses and missing socks. At least these days, you can walk around underground car parks, pressing the remote door locks, until you see a flashing car somewhere, often your own.  Finally, we figured that the GPS was not lost at all, it was right under our nose. But by this stage the ride to Ramsgate had become a compulsory 120k/h running of the bull, and so greasing aboard an old rusty ferry manned by Romanians @ only 36 quid, was a peaceful departure to the Brave New World, of Orwellian styled UK. ‘God save the Queen, its a fascist regime…” Thanks goodness for the Irish, that they are now more a part of the EU, than the socially sick UK.

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