Jason Lewis's Blog, page 7
October 30, 2012
The Expedition Book 2 – The Wrath of the Coral Sea
July 19. Wind: SE 25 knots. Heading: 210M. Position: 09°18’33”S 159°14’50”E
Skirting the westernmost point of Guadalcanal, Coral Sea Corner as we later call it, the wind accelerates to thirty knots and all hell breaks loose. No longer protected by land, we are now exposed to the full force of the southeast trades sweeping unchallenged across the Pacific from South America. The seas around us become steep and confused, upshot of the confluence of winds, tides, and currents ricocheting between the islands. For every mile we pedal south, we’re losing six west.
Then it starts to rain. Heavily.
I awake at first light on the second day to a hollow clanking sound, like a cowbell. Our camp kettle is floating in six inches of water, bouncing between the plywood storage bins. A half-eaten bowl of waterlogged porridge is on the move along with my sandals. Outside, the wind shrieks. I look up. April has been pedalling since 3:00 am, steering in total darkness, wrestling the toggles back and forth to keep Moksha from broaching and capsizing. Sceptics denounced the idea of having a woman aboard without nautical experience as irresponsible and reckless. Yet here she is, powering away. Fortunately, she’s taken the trouble to get fit before coming out, an expedition first!
Her exuberance is gone, though. So, too, the carefree tone in her voice as she gives a rundown of the second graveyard shift. “Started to feel queasy about five o’clock.” She takes a swig of lurid green isotonic drink from her water bottle. “Also, I think I’ve worked what out my biggest fear is.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Not feeling a hundred per cent, and not being able to give a hundred per cent.”
I corral my sandals, and begin bailing with the stray porridge bowl. It’s hardly worth the effort. As fast as I fling it out, the water comes back in either as rain or crashing waves. It’s more for my sanity. I know from past voyages how the sound of water slopping in the bilges will grate on my nerves after a while.
Getting to Cairns was never going to be easy. The Coral Sea has a long-standing reputation for being one of the most violent, unpredictable bodies of water in the world. Even in the early planning stages, poring over pilot charts of the South Pacific, my attention was immediately drawn to the little wind rose icons. For July and August they displayed four, sometimes five flags set at four o’clock: force 4 to 5 from the southeast. In of itself this is no big deal. Moksha can handle much stronger winds, up to gale force 10. The problem is gaining 500 miles of southing to reach Cairns, the nearest port of entry on the Australian mainland.[1] Making headway against such winds will be a far greater challenge than I first imagined.
The alternative is to aim for the port of entry on Thursday Island in the Torres Straits, the narrow neck of water separating Cape York from Papua New Guinea. But with twelve-knot tidal streams and a minefield of reefs to negotiate, the risk of being blown off course and wrecked is too great.
So Cairns it is.
Nevertheless, watching the waves slam against Moksha’s port beam one after the other, sending torrents cascading through the hatch, a gnawing doubt takes shape in my mind.
What if we can’t make Cairns?
Everything seems to be against us. The wind is blowing us northwest. The waves are pushing us northwest. Most worrying of all, a one-and-a-half-knot current is taking us northwest, a force immune to Moksha’s streamlined shape above and below the water. The entire Pacific is in cahoots, bent on ejecting us out of its watery domain and onto the reef systems east of Papua New Guinea. Even if we manage to miss these, the serrated jaws of the world’s largest living structure, the Great Barrier Reef, stretching some 1,600 miles along the Queensland coast, lie in wait 500 miles further to the west.
To avert disaster, we need to pedal one mile south for every two we lose west, making it necessary to keep Moksha’s bow pointed firmly south—180 degrees magnetic. R&R is a luxury we can’t afford. Even spending time to enjoy a meal is out of the question. For every minute the cranks don’t turn, Moksha drifts fifty yards closer to the reefs. There is no margin for error. No cushion. Without a motor or a sail, there is only one option.
Keep pedalling.
[1] A prerequisite for entering any country with water as a border, proclaimed port of entries are equipped to clear foreign vessels through customs, quarantine, and immigration. In Australia, making landfall in an unauthorized port incurs thousands of dollars worth of penalties.
All Rights Reserved – © 2012 Jason Lewis
October 23, 2012
The Expedition Book 2 – A Woman’s Best Friend
July 18, 2000. Wind: ESE 5 knots. Heading: 265M. Position: 09°11’78”S 159°40’14”E
We steer a course for the northern tip of Savo Island, its trademark splodge of cloud hovering overhead. “Don’t go south of it,” the police chief on Tulagi had warned. “Militias use Savo to run weapons and food to Guadalcanal.” Making a detour this early on in the voyage is somewhat inconvenient, especially with the trades gathering strength, but with Cairns over eleven hundred miles away, an extra ten won’t make much of a difference.
The wind is light. A gentle swell rolls in astern. The conditions are near perfect for April to start acclimatizing to life on the briny. For now, she looks happy and relaxed—perhaps a little too relaxed.
“It’s a lot easier than I thought it would be,” she laughs, pedalling with her hands behind her head. “If I had a pillow back here I could just drift off!”
As the afternoon heat index kicks in, we distract ourselves by telling jokes.
“An Australian and a New Zealander are driving down the road,” April begins. “The Aussie sees a sheep with its head stuck in the fence, so he stops the truck, walks over, and has his way with the sheep.”
I’ve heard his one many times, usually with an Englishman and a Welshman in place of the Aussie and Kiwi. Nevertheless, the hackneyed gag is transformed coming from the respectable Ms April, dutiful guardian of the young minds of tomorrow.
“When he gets back to the truck, he says to the Kiwi, ‘Wow, that was great, you should try it.’ So the Kiwi goes over and sticks his head in the fence…”
The lavatorial humour segues neatly into a topic weighing heavily on April’s mind, ever since I wrote her in an email: Be prepared for the geyser effect when you try to pee in rough conditions. In other words, seawater shooting up your backside…
At the next shift change, April reaches into the Rathole and fishes out a white plastic pouch covered in red letters. “I should probably give this thing a test run now,” she says reluctantly, breaking the seal. “Before the waves get any bigger.”
I stare in horror at the contents. “Jesus, what is that thing?”
She holds a pink funnel, out of which extends a transparent tube like a retractable dick. April smiles smugly, and announces, “I am about to pee off the side of the boat like a man!”
This is all Nancy Sanford’s idea, apparently. She’s used these contraptions for years on day trips around Tampa Bay in her Escapade pedal boat.
“Really?” I reply. “With that thing?”
She holds it up for me to inspect. “This nifty device reconfigures the female anatomy from being plumbed on the inside, to putting the plumbing on the outside.”
Explanation complete, April clambers over the side, perches on the emergency oar, and positions the plastic penis as per the instructions. “Guaranteed to make a guy jealous!” she boasts over her shoulder.
The way I see it, an enduring perk of being a man, one that sets us apart and makes us feel special and unique in an increasingly metrosexual world, is having a Johnson. Ease of deployment is the key. When you’re outdoors and busting for a whiz, whipping out the old trouser snake and letting rip is inestimably superior to scouring the Earth for a bush, and then wrestling with myriad layers of clothing. Allowing one of our last remaining birthrights to be commandeered by the female species strikes me as just plain wrong.
“You could avoid waiting in line for the ladies’ loo with that thing,” I remark with thinly veiled sarcasm. “Pee in the boy’s room, right?”
April nods eagerly. “I reckon. Stand there with the fellas. Talk about football, drinking beer—”
“And how you couldn’t get it up last night because your strap-on got jammed.”
“Well, maybe not…” April blushes and falls silent. Rocking to and fro in the swell, she holds onto the sliding hatch with one hand, and her gender bender gizmo with the other. A full minute goes by. Nothing happens.
“Taking your own sweet time aren’t you Ms A?”
“I can’t go here,” she wails. “There’s too much water. I can’t pee with this much water.”
“Of course there’s too much water. It’s the Pacific fucking Ocean!”
“No, I mean water sloshing up around my knees.”
Every time Moksha heels to starboard, seawater spills over the gunwales, soaking April to the waist.
“Stop procrastinating.”
“But the boat’s rocking too wildly. I might drop it.”
We can only hope, I think to myself dryly. “For goodness sake!” I cry. “I’ve never seen such a bloody performance.”
“I’m trying.”
“If you spent this long pedalling we’d be in Cairns by now.”
“You try this then. You try it. You try to hang something off between your legs and pee!”
Bingo. “That’s what I do five times a day sweetheart.”
A freak wave suddenly appears, tipping Moksha to port and sending April sprawling into the cockpit. In the confusion, the funnel slips from her fingers, and disappears into the drink.
“What the hell are you doing, April?” The opportunity to poke fun is too good to pass up. “You’re supposed to be having a pee, not practicing for the summer Olympics.”
April is hanging monkey-like between the oars, groping for handholds. Incapacitated by giggles, she slumps into the bilges and babbles something unintelligible.
“What was that?” I ask.
“I just peed all over myself!”
“Oh dear. Are you sure you read the instructions properly?”
Reaching for the empty packet, April reads aloud: “Easy to use off sides of boats…”
* * *
All Rights Reserved – © 2012 Jason Lewis
>> More excerpts from The Seed Buried Deep, part two in The Expedition trilogy, will be posted in the coming weeks prior to US & Canadian publication.
October 20, 2012
THE EXPEDITION wins the 2012 Southern California Book Festival Award!
2012 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA BOOK FESTIVAL NAMES WINNERS
HOLLYWOOD, CA (October 17, 2012) The story of a man’s amazing journey trying to circle the world using just the power of the human body has been selected as the grand prize winner of the 2012 Southern California Book Festival, which honors the best books of the fall.
“The Expedition: The True Story of the First Human-Powered Circumnavigation of the Earth” is the first of an anticipated trilogy by Jason Lewis, the intrepid globe trotter. Lewis used his expedition to reach out to thousands of school children, calling attention to their shared responsibility for the earth.
But the book is also a tale of human triumph and foibles, and is laugh-out-loud funny at times, gripping adventure in others. The page-turning work is thoroughly entertaining.
Lewis and the competition’s other winners will be honored at a private ceremony on Monday, October 29 at the W Hotel in Hollywood.
Other winners in the competition:
GENERAL FICTION
WINNER: These Days Are Ours – Michelle Haimoff
RUNNER-UP: Kumpel – Bob Guess
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Pilgrimage – Christine Sunderland
The Death of Eve – Shaun Penney
William & Lucy – Michael Brown
Provocateur – Charles Martin
Winds of Redemption – Harvey Goodman
Anvil of Midnight – William Weyr
Lingering Tide and Other Stories – Latha Viswanathan
Flashblind – Paul Bernstein
China Rising – Alexander Scipio
Malinalli of the Fifth Susan – Helen Gordon
Murder in C-Minor – William J. Russell
Lady Justice and the Vigilante – Robert Thornhill
The Pass – Frank Wilem
Ride for Justice – John Harte
Haven: The Fate of the Four Races – Andrew Brown
The Linden Tree Legacy – Beverly F. Knudseon
A Time to Cast Away Stones – Elise Frances Miller
Atomic Summer – Elaine D. Walsh
Town Red – Jennifer Moss
Too Far – Rich Shapero
Songs for the New Depression – Kergan Edwards-Stout
Murder Under the Microscope – Jane Bennett Munro
Anomalous – Samuel Williams
Trinity: Moments Before the Dawn – Terrie Elleard
A Long Winter – Deckle McLean
GENERAL NON-FICTION
WINNER: The Expedition – Jason Lewis
RUNNER-UP: The Tribes of Burning Man – Steven T. Jones
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Houston Pretty Enough – Kim Halsey
John Brown’s Spy – Steven Lubet
The Amazing Adventures of a Nobody – Leon Logothetis
The Business of Pain – Araceli Martinez
Crochet Saved My Life – Kathryn Vercillo
Rules Get Broken – John Herbert
Inspired to Action – Rebecca Pratt
Life as a Mother-in-Law: – Olivia Slaughter/Jean Kubelun
The High Calling – Alessio C. Salsano
The One You Get – Jason Tougaw
2012-2021: The Dawn of the Sixth Sun – Sergio Magana
HOW-TO
WINNER: At Left Brain Turn Right – Anthony Meindl
RUNNER-UP: When Mars Women Date – Paulette K. Sherman
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
From PMS to PMA – Nola Anne Hennessey
The 4-1-1 on Step Parenting – Michele Sfakianos
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
WINNER: Have You Filled a Bucket Today? – Carol McCloud
RUNNER-UP: Eh, Spaghetti, You Say? – Karen Welsh
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Fiona Thorn and the Carapacem Spell – Jen Barton
Golda: A True Story for All Ages – Jeff Shelton
Sophia at the Royal Wedding – D.G. Flamand
The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont – Victoria Griffith
Curio A Shetland Sheepdog Meets the Crow – Jenette A. Griver/Phyllis Milway
No-No Nona and No-No Nita – Laura Ogle-Graham
Terror on Turtle Creek – Jean Freeman
Black Tortoise and the Dynasty Dragon – Eileen Wacker
Look at Me…A Veterinarian I Want to Be! – Karean L. Chapman
Waffles at Grandma’s – Holly J. Williams
Lousy Luck Lucy – Maria Clark
BIOGRAPHY/AUTOBIOGRAPHY
WINNER: Elizabeth Taylor: There is Nothing Like A Dame – Darwin Porter/Danforth Prince
RUNNER-UP: Casey Tibbs: Born to Ride – Rusty Richards
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
The Place Beyond the Dust Bowl – Ron Hughart
Out of the Fields – Ramon Resa
Geronimo – Robert M. Utley
Southern Vapors – Lynn Garson
Oh Brother! – Cliff Fazzolari
The Amazing Adventures of a Nobody – Leon Logothetis
Nothing But Respect – Julie-Anne
Down to the Sea – Arthur Webster
A Breath Away – Jeanne Selander Miller
Wheels on the Bus – Ken Bilderback
YOUNG ADULT
WINNER: Nightingale – David Wolverton
RUNNER-UP: Growing Up With a Bucketful of Happiness – Carol McCloud
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
The Fifth Kraut – Jeff Kohmstedt
The Business of Pain – Araceli Martinez
Light & Dark: The Awakening of the Mageknight – Daniel M. Fife
Prey of the Spirit Bear – William Hill
REGIONAL LIT
WINNER: Creek with No Name – Kenneth Bilderback
SPIRITUAL
WINNER: A Change of Habit – Patty Ptak Kogutek
RUNNER-UP: Hope’s Ante – Thom Vines
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
No Boxing Allowed – Nola Anne Hennessey
Monday Manna – Ami Rushes
Love & Impasse – Denise Richard
Negroes, Flies and Wet Toilet Paper – Debra Roberts Torres-Reyes
Encouragement for Life Storms – La Tasha Nichole Cornish
Carpet of the Sun – Mark Holman
BUSINESS:
WINNER: Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw – William Bouffard
RUNNER-UP: Big Wave Surfing – Kenneth Thurber
HONORABLE MENTION:
Do Not Invent Buggy Whips – Kenneth Thurber
WILD CARD
WINNER: EcoChi: Designing the Human Experience – Debra Duneier
RUNNER-UP: Memoirs of a Violent Sleeper – Matt Micheli
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Miracles in the Mountains – JC Rasoul
Follow the River: Lost in the Mountains of Mexico – Dahlia Arend
Will You Fill My Bucket? – Carol McCloud/Karen Wells
Strike at the Heart – The First Mission – LW Berrie
POETRY
WINNER: Chicken Rise: Nights in Poetry – Chris Wright
RUNNER-UP: Ditty-Ditty Doggerel: A Life from Bad to Verse – Gary Turchin
HONORABLE MENTION:
Life in the Pond – Joyce Burns
UNPUBLISHED
WINNER: Back to the Basic: Rediscovering – Milan M. Hollister
NATURE/ANIMALS
WINNER: Puppies for Sale: $25 – Rosalie Pope
COMPILATIONS/ANTHOLOGIES
WINNER: On the Edge of Twilight: 22 Tales to Follow You.. – Kristofer J. Stamp
RUNNER-UP: No Character Limit: Truth & Fiction from WriteGirl – edited by Keren Taylor
PHOTOGRAPHY/ART
WINNER: The Art Dockuments – Carlton Davis
RUNNER-UP: Robert Wilson’s Carousel Clover Ponies – Diane Myerson
HONORABLE MENTION:
Chris Dingwell – Inside Out – Chris Dingwell
October 16, 2012
The Expedition book 2 – The Pirate and The Cabbage
We slipped the lines at first light.
“Goodbye everybody,” I said, shoving Moksha away from the dock with my foot.
A handful of early shift workers from the fish depot had gathered to gawp. “Goot-bigh,” muttered one in disbelief, his eyes popping out at what he was seeing. No motor? No sail? All the way to Australia? “Dispela boi bagarapim het,” he whispered to his friends. This bloke must be buggered in the head.
April and I had spent the week since her arrival readying for the final push to Australia, scrubbing corrosion from metal fittings, and lubricating moving parts. A few modifications to the boat were needed, like using a spatula to position a magnifying lens in front of the compass, allowing April to read the degree markers. And in the event I disappeared overboard, she received a crash course in navigation, and proper use of a lifejacket, flares, and one of the RAF rescue mirrors to signal aircraft.
By the eighth morning, it was time to get going before either the southeast trades blew any stronger, or the local security situation deteriorated. April steered out from behind the Arctic Wolf, a hulking factory ship loaded with frozen tuna, and aimed for the mist-drenched shores of Nggela Sule. Before us, the tranquil water mirrored the swollen pinks of yet another tropical dawn.
“Hang oot there fer a minute will yer?” barked Kenny’s voice over the radio. “I’ll jis’ get ay few still shots.”
A minute later, he had what he wanted, and we were free to get on with the voyage.
“So where are we headed again?” April asked, peering through the forward window.
“Australia,” I replied.
She rolled her eyes. “I know that!”
“Turn to starboard. Then head due south.”
This would take us across Iron Bottom Sound, the deep-water channel between Guadalcanal and the Florida Islands. It had rained during the night, leaving traces of damp, empty silence, a sober contrast to the bedlam that raged for two days in November 1942. By the end of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, more than forty Allied and Japanese warships littered the deep, also known The Slot.
Wearing a black sports top, khaki shorts and sandals, April looked primed for adventure. I had a fair idea of what was going through her head. She was already out there on the high seas, her skin flecked with salt and the wind whipping her hair, living the maverick life of her pirate heroine, Anne Bonny.
She giggled, holding up her wrists to show off a pair of blue canvas straps. “I’ve got my seasickness bands on, so I’m set!”[1]
I smiled. “And for the next month you can eat whatever you like, as much as you like, twenty-four hours a day.”
“And not get fat?”
“And not get fat.”
She chuckled some more and hunched her shoulders at the thought. “Moksha, the ultimate in weight loss programmes. I love this!”
Skirting the southern edge of Tulagi, a white speedboat flying the red flag of the Malaita Eagle Force hove into view. According to the lettering on the bow this was Gary’s Pride, manned by two scruffy-looking men in army fatigues standing behind a tinted windscreen. A third, his forest green tee shirt crossed with ammunition belts, lounged carelessly on the foredeck. He held his semi-automatic Rambo-style, propped on his hip at a forty-five degree angle.
I was on the satellite phone to Chris Court, our old friend with the UK Press Association. “Chris, I’ll have to call you back.” I ducked inside the cabin. “We’ve got company.”
While April pedalled, I stashed the cameras, sat phone, and laptop out of sight. On Tulagi, we’d heard stories of yachts and powerboats being stripped of their electronics by roving bands of militia, in some cases the vessels commandeered outright. Gary’s Pride was clearly a case in point. The likelihood of any of these characters either having the name Gary or possessing a certificate of ownership struck me as remote. The craft had almost certainly been taken from one of the marinas in Honiara.
The helmsman cut the engine and they rocked towards us in the swell. “Holim!” one of them shouted. “Stap!”
April quit pedalling as I stood up in the hatch and gave a friendly wave. All I had on was a yellow lava-lava with green palm trees and The Republic of Kiribati printed in big red letters. Seconds passed. Nobody spoke. The gun-toting Rambo on the foredeck sized us up while I continued to grin like an idiot. In contrast to our low-tech crossing of the Atlantic, Moksha now bristled with antennas: VHF radio whip; mushroom-shaped transceivers for the satellite phone, Inmarsat-C, and Collision Avoidance Radar Detector; Ocean Sentry stick and Varigas reflector ball.
Strangely, none of these seemed to hold Rambo’s interest. His roving gaze came to rest on the cabbage lashed to the cabin roof. At twenty inches in diametre, the vegetable was so enormous it wouldn’t fit through the stern bulkhead.
Rambo stabbed a grubby finger. “Mi laikim dispela kumu!” I want this!
I breathed a sigh of relief. Losing our primary source of vitamin-C was unfortunate, but less disastrous than, say, having to do without a radio, or the satellite phone. “April, did you hear that?” I bent down so she could hear. “Matey boy says he wants your cabbage. Best hand it over, eh?”
My new pedalling partner, however, saw the situation rather differently. April adored cabbage, especially raw cabbage. Learning of her obsession on Tulagi, Kenny had tracked down the biggest one in the central market, an elephantine specimen worth a whopping $120 Solomon Islands dollars, equivalent to $16 US. The prize legume would last almost the entire voyage, a leaf a day enough to keep scurvy at bay.
Until now, April had kept herself hidden. Muttering something about her dead body, she thrust her head clear of the hatch and wagged an admonishing finger at Rambo. “Hey!” she hollered, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t you even think about it buddy.”
The gunman did a double take. Attractive blondes materializing out of thin air wasn’t an everyday occurrence in the Solomon Islands. He obviously thought he’d died and gone to Baywatch heaven.[2]
“Git on widya now, ya hear?” April shooed the air like she was waving errant fifth graders back to their classroom. “And keep ya goddamn hands off my cabbage!”
Grinning sheepishly, Rambo turned to his friends and shrugged. None of them looked scary anymore. They were just three naughty schoolboys being reprimanded for getting carried away playing at Soldiers.
“Plees, missus.” Rambo held up his hands in mock surrender. “Mitripela nogat laikim bigpela hevi, ookay?” We don’t want any problems, okay?
With a sputter of engines, the militiamen bid farewell and took off, their teeth gleaming. I was back on the satellite phone a few seconds later: “Chris, we’ve got a great story for you to go out the evening wire…”
* * *
[1] These act on a pressure point in the wrist.
[2] The television programme Baywatch enjoys cult status in the South Pacific.
All Rights Reserved – © 2012 Jason Lewis
>> More excerpts from The Seed Buried Deep, part two in The Expedition trilogy, will be posted in the coming weeks prior to US & Canadian publication.
October 8, 2012
October 7, 2012
The Expedition book 2 – Coral Sea Voyage
July 3, 2000. Coral Sea departure
“So, what dae ye think life aboard Moksha’ll be like?” said Kenny, perched behind his camera.
April considered this for a moment, letting her gaze drop to the heavy torpor of the harbour water. It was a stock question for a documentary filmmaker to ask, one that allowed the editor to juxtapose preconceived notions with the actual reality of an undertaking. And for April, a middle-aged mother and schoolteacher from Colorado, it was particularly poignant. She’d never been in a boat before, let alone to sea. She couldn’t swim too well, either.
“I think life on the boat will be interesting.” April was perched on a fractured slab of concrete, part of the old wharf at the National Fisheries Development Company on Tulagi. “All of a sudden my world is going to rock. The cooking is going to be a bit different. Washing clothes. Going to the bathroom. Washing my hair. And it’s all with saltwater. So, I kinda wonder if I’m going to feel like a pickled herring by the time these next four weeks are over.”
Earlier in the day, She and Kenny had made it to Honiara on the first flight from Port Moresby in over a month. A lull in fighting had allowed the Air Nuigini plane to stay on the ground long enough to discharge its human cargo, and pick up a fresh load before taking off again. Just in time, it turned out. As the pair boarded a ferry to the relative safety of Nggela-Sula, word had come through of a hostile force advancing on the airport, spearheaded by a homemade tank. Someone with creative flair and a socket set had bolted half-inch steel plate to the sides of a D8 bulldozer, and a .50 caliber Browning machine gun disinterred from a WWII ammunition dump to the cab roof.
“Are ye afraid ay anythin’?”
April smiled. “I’m pretty much open to it all. I don’t know what to fear, so I don’t fear anything at this point.”
* * *
>> More excerpts from The Seed Buried Deep, part two in The Expedition trilogy, will be posted in the coming weeks prior to US & Canadian publication November 1st.
All Rights Reserved – © 2012 Jason Lewis
October 3, 2012
The Expedition Film chosen for Documentary Film Festival
The Expedition film has been chosen for Arclight’s Documentary Festival competition. Please vote for the film with a LIKE on YouTube and we’ll get this thing on the big screen. Many thanks!
September 7, 2012
August 25, 2012
Greenwich Meridian Departure – The #Expedition #adventure #travel book excerpt 12
July 12, 1994. The Royal Observatory.Greenwich
White expedition tee shirts fluttering in the breeze, Steve and I stood straddling our bicycles, front tires resting on a two-inch strip of brass embedded in the ancient cobblestones. Above us, fixed atop a spike like a giant cocktail cherry, a large crimson ball would drop at precisely 13:00 hours, as it first had in 1883 for ships on the River Thames to set their chronometers by. Our great journey was about to begin.
My heart drummed faster and faster as the seconds counted down. It was a tremendous moment, made even more so by the history surrounding us.
As the centre of all time and space, calibrating every clock and watch on the planet, the prime meridian of longitude held the keys to the nation’s maritime past, and to our own futures. It was central to Britain establishing her superiority over the world’s oceans at the peak of Empire. And, after travelling three hundred and sixty lines of longitude westwards, using the same navigational increments of degrees, minutes, and seconds that once steered our explorer ancestors to the farthest flung corners of the globe and back, we could also hope to return to the same point from which we started.
The noonday sun shone at its zenith above assembled family and friends. My sisters, Julia and Vicky, stood smiling supportively, holding the hands of my nephews Edward, George, and Freddie, still too young to really understand what their deranged uncle was up to now. Earlier, dear Vicky had pressed two Cadbury’s chocolate bars into my hand. “For extra energy,” she’d whispered encouragingly.
It would be a long time before I saw any of them again. Just how long, I had no way of knowing…
The world would have moved on unimaginably in thirteen years. My old Motorola “brick” cellular phone, so heavy I had to keep it in a bucket hooked to one end of a broom handle at the top of my window cleaning ladder, counter-balanced with half a bucket of water at the other end, would transform into a device no bigger than a credit card. The Internet and climate change would be regular street talk, not just whispered conspiracy amongst geeks and tree huggers. Tony Blair would have come and gone. The franc, lira, and peseta replaced by the euro. Osama bin Laden and reality TV stars would be household names.
I glanced at Steve. His knuckles were chalk white from throttling the handlebars of his bike. His face was drawn with exhaustion. None of us had slept the past two days. At five am that morning, Kenny, Martin, and I were still vacating the squat, literally shovelling clothes and equipment into black rubbish sacks and tossing them into the back of the DHL van. I’d then pedalled hell for leather across London for a seven am interview at the Sky News studios in Isleworth, before backtracking via Hammersmith to close my account with Barclays. I’d walked out with £319.20 in my pocket, the sum total of my savings to circumnavigate the world.
“It should have dropped by now,” Steve said, looking over his shoulder at the crimson ball. I checked my watch. It was four minutes past the hour. Was it stuck? Of all the days for Grandfather Time’s one remaining ball not to drop…
“Sod it,” I muttered. “Let’s get on with it.”
We grasped each other’s forearms, nodded, and leaned into the first of some half billion pedal rotations. Waving to the cheering crowd, we swept out of the courtyard and entered an avenue of graceful sweet chestnuts, their verdant limbs bowing overhead in farewell bidding.
* * *
Dark Waters, True Story of the First Human-Powered Circumnavigation of the Earth, is now available in:
PRINT
US & Canada: Amazon, B&N, Chapters (Canada)
EBOOK
US & Canada: Kindle, Nook, iTunes, Google Play, Kobo
Greenwich Timeball
August 19, 2012
Eve of Departure – The #Expedition #adventure #travel book excerpt 11
A departure date of July 12 was set in stone. Kenny still didn’t have his own camera, though. Repeated requests to the BBC and other UK broadcasters for even a loaner had drawn a blank, and we certainly couldn’t afford one. What was the use in having a cinematographer along if he didn’t have a camera? Out of options, Fingers from the squat staged an insurance job: renting a camera from a hire centre in Milton Keynes, having one of his cronies slip off the train with it en route back to Euston, then reporting it stolen.
The Guildford Street Gang threw a squat party to raise money for the cost of transporting Moksha to Portugal. Martin had volunteered to drive a van loaned by the international courier company DHL, towing a trailer borrowed from the metropolitan police Heavy Boats Section – the upshot of a serendipitous referral from the now friendly booking sergeant at Plaistow Police Station.
Plates of homemade vegetarian curry and rice were priced at four pounds, and wholesale beer and wine flogged at retail prices. Kenny rigged up a bungee jump in the back garden – a pound a pop – using shock cord cannibalized from an abdominal muscle builder, and bed-sheets tied together. A couple of old mattresses tossed underneath offered a cursory nod to health and safety.
Aside from Catriona’s friend breaking his arm, the night was a raging success. Nearly two hundred people turned up and cut loose. By the end of the night we’d raised over £1,500.
After just an hour of sleep, I tottered down to the kitchen to grab some breakfast. I had a meeting with a journalist from Lonely Planet at the Royal Geographic Society in half an hour.
The kitchen was a bombsite from the night before. Beer cans, wine bottles, and plastic cups filled with stale beer and cigarette butts strewn everywhere. The cupboards were empty of food. My eyes came to rest instead on a plastic container with the words SHIPS BISCUITS printed in black marker. Terry, a partygoer from Manchester, had taken the trouble to bake us some brownies for the Atlantic crossing.
What a nice guy, I thought, stuffing one in my mouth, another in my pocket. No one will notice a couple missing, surely…
I stepped over a pair of snoring bodies, grabbed one of the newly sponsored Madison Ridgeback mountain bikes, and tiptoed out the front door, closing it gently behind me.
Outside, it was a gloriously sunny July morning, and being a Sunday, the streets were virtually empty. Riding down Oxford Street I felt buoyant, euphoric even. I rode straight through a red light at Oxford Circus, swerving easily through traffic that seemed to move in slow motion. By the time I reached Marble Arch, my bicycle felt like a winged horse soaring above the clouds, the streets of London tapering to an elaborate tapestry of intricately woven threads below.
Bloody hell! Those Ships Biscuits are good shit!
I never made it to the interview. Somewhere between Marble Arch and Queensway I became distracted, dismounted Pegasus, and struck off into the wilderness of Hyde Park. Everything had become exuberant and scintillating, the viridescent leaves radiating a surreal, incandescent glow as they danced in the sunlight. Overhead the clouds had turned into freshly baked meringues. I was a panther now, crawling through the undergrowth, stalking lovers entwined on park benches, scaring the crap out of them as I leapt up from behind.
In the back of my mind, a voice was nagging: You’re leaving in less than 48 hours you dickhead, and there’re still a gazillion things to do…
The call to reason was lost, however, drowned by the roaring wind and crashing waves. A passer-by could have been forgiven for thinking they’d seen a drunk swaying in the branches of an elm tree that morning. What they really saw was a buccaneer swinging in the rigging of a brig somewhere off the Spanish Main, cutlass between his teeth, wrestling desperately with a topsail as the deck plunged in the swell.
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All Rights Reserved – © 2012 Jason Lewis
