How an Idea is Started
Added on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 by Carole Nash Editor
How an Idea is Started
How do you start writing about a journey like ‘Parallel World’ or any journey for that matter? How do you start thinking about it?
For months you prepare to leave, getting ready for the start but it’s much longer that that, maybe years, that the idea of the journey forms and builds in your head.
Years ago I remember suddenly coming up with the idea of motorbiking around the world, very fast, perhaps journey 18,000 miles plus in about a month. For a while I’d considered doing it on an Enfield - 1000 miles a day - quite knows why, except that in 1992 I’d just biked 38 000 miles around the world in 7 months on a 500cc Indian ‘Bullet’. Fritz Egli, the renowned Swiss motorcycle engineer was then an Enfield dealer and perhaps the most famous of all the machines produced by Fritz Egli is the Egli Vincent, of which around 100 were produced between 1967 and 1972. I called in on him during my first circumnavigation, and even then I was planning to ride extreme distances each day, naively on a bike not considered capable of such a feat. Yet it was his huge experience that persuaded me that the Enfield could do it!
It was however a poor choice for a journey that no one thought possible. Riding any bike around the world in a month had never been discussed in the adventure world. When I first brought it to everyone’s attention - long before I was riding an R1 - Mobil, Triumph and IBM jumped on the opportunity to sponsor me, but the idea had actually been in my head for 5 years.
