Rating: 
Summary: And there's a beer in Australia for you too mate
Review: a DAMNED good read. I agree with the last reviewer totally. I was sick and confined to bed at the girlfirends house when I read this book and it was a blessing, a darned good read. So if you are ever in Australia, I'll cool a tinny for you too,,,,
Rating: 
Summary: A Classic Adventure.
Review: A great adventure from one of the first motorcycle adventurers. His tales are genuine and his connections with the people in the countries he visits are real. What I find refreshing is he is a sincere person with real anxieties and doubts. He doesn't hide his fears and lays it on the line. To comment on previous reviews. I did not find his observations that he was God or Jupiter bothersome. He was only commenting in the context of his long period on the road and did not detract from the book.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic Adventure.
Review: A great adventure from one of the first motorcycle adventurers. His tales are genuine and his connections with the people in the countries he visits are real. What I find refreshing is he is a sincere person with real anxieties and doubts. He doesn't hide his fears and lays it on the line. To comment on previous reviews. I did not find his observations that he was God or Jupiter bothersome. He was only commenting in the context of his long period on the road and did not detract from the book.
Rating:
Summary: A book to be stranded on a desert island with. Superb
Review: As an ex biker who never got further than the Lake district as far as Bike rides go this book took me to the world. It inspired me to adventure and look beyond Britain and its limitations. I took a year off and travelled (not on a bike) but this book was the start of my life. Ted Simon is hero in my eyes, I now live in the USA and was unable to find a copy until I found this in amazons search engine. Ted....if you read this there will always be a cold beer for you in Nevada.
Rating:
Summary: The Trip of a Lifetime
Review: As someone who managed to put 36000 miles on his BMW motorcycle in two years I was interested in the story of a man who took it beyond the "next level". I enjoyed the book, but thought that Ted did not always get to the point and got sidetracked in his thinking process. Ultimately it boils down to his style of writing and a matter of personal taste... I recommend the book, but keep in mind that there will be pages one has to just chew through...
Rating: 
Summary: Jupiter's Travels interesting, but not always to the point
Review: As someone who managed to put 36000 miles on his BMW motorcycle in two years I was interested in the story of a man who took it beyond the "next level". I enjoyed the book, but thought that Ted did not always get to the point and got sidetracked in his thinking process. Ultimately it boils down to his style of writing and a matter of personal taste... I recommend the book, but keep in mind that there will be pages one has to just chew through...
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good read
Review: Good book with lots of adventures and mishaps including being in a couple of jails through no fault of his own. Found myself looking forward to getting home so I could read it. Pretty courageous guy.
Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: Hard to determine how to rate this book. I just finished the last page... I have to admit that it's truly a travel book. ZMM by Pirsig is much more of a philosophy than a book about travel. Simon instead takes you through Africa and the Atbara desert, roads that had channels cut through them deep enough that he had to keep his legs up near the handle bars, various bribes at numerous country borders, and tea stops along the way for rest. He also intrigues you with a prison escapade in Brasil and a fever in India as well as waiting for rivers to drop in Austrailia while drinking stubbies and eating steaks with truckies at a local outback cafe. My negative comments are relatively simple: 1) No hard description of what he's up to in the beginning, just jumps right in, and all of a sudden you're in Africa. 2) A great lack of description of most of the mileage (runs from place to place sometimes). Perhaps this is a given for such a long trip. [Please don't be deterred by this... he's very descriptive for most of the journey.] 3) Lack of a map showing the whole trip. [Small maps are given in each "Chapter"- if the chapters could be called that.] Writing style compared to Pirsig is very different and much less refined, but in a way this also allows us to go along with Simon on his great adventure. The writing and the road-miles seem to roll together. And in this way I think it's true to form. I have to admit that it was a great book even with the minor faults above. And as far as the god-talk previously mentioned, it's easy to forgive someone who can recall his experiences, in most of the major countries on the globe, first hand a slight misplaced grandiosity. :^) Especially with how much he's been through by the end. From one rider to the other, my hat's off to Simon.
Rating:
Summary: Four years on two wheels condensed into 447 pages.
Review: Hard to determine how to rate this book. I just finished the last page... I have to admit that it's truly a travel book. ZMM by Pirsig is much more of a philosophy than a book about travel. Simon instead takes you through Africa and the Atbara desert, roads that had channels cut through them deep enough that he had to keep his legs up near the handle bars, various bribes at numerous country borders, and tea stops along the way for rest. He also intrigues you with a prison escapade in Brasil and a fever in India as well as waiting for rivers to drop in Austrailia while drinking stubbies and eating steaks with truckies at a local outback cafe. My negative comments are relatively simple: 1) No hard description of what he's up to in the beginning, just jumps right in, and all of a sudden you're in Africa. 2) A great lack of description of most of the mileage (runs from place to place sometimes). Perhaps this is a given for such a long trip. [Please don't be deterred by this... he's very descriptive for most of the journey.] 3) Lack of a map showing the whole trip. [Small maps are given in each "Chapter"- if the chapters could be called that.] Writing style compared to Pirsig is very different and much less refined, but in a way this also allows us to go along with Simon on his great adventure. The writing and the road-miles seem to roll together. And in this way I think it's true to form. I have to admit that it was a great book even with the minor faults above. And as far as the god-talk previously mentioned, it's easy to forgive someone who can recall his experiences, in most of the major countries on the globe, first hand a slight misplaced grandiosity. :^) Especially with how much he's been through by the end. From one rider to the other, my hat's off to Simon.
Rating:
Summary: man avoids responsibilities for four years
Review: How many times do you have to rebuild a Triumph before it will make it around the world? Read this book and find out. Ted Simon has a good time for about the first six months then seems to find something crappy about allmost every civilization he encounters. His journey ends with a retreat from India in a mad rush to get home. Only to find out he learned nothing at all exept that bloated corpses float.
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