1979: Mr. Whippy morphed into a Cycle Tourer

Part of the Back Story

20:20 Rear Vision in 2020
Our past shaped us to what we are now, so please bear with me while I use the next few journal pages to reflect briefly about past tours from past times.

I have a 40 year history of cycle touring. Over the decades I've tried long tours, short tours, solo tours and tours with friends and relatives. In my younger years, I helped set up and run large group cycle tours so young people could be introduced to cycle touring.

Since then, I've encouraged many others to take up cycle touring. So whatever the cycle touring equivalent of an ‘evangelist’ is, then that’s what I am. Sort of a Billy Graham for cycle touring. But without the Billy and without the religion. Just call me Graham a vintage cycle tourer.

Looking back 40 years with foggy 20:20 hindsight from now in 2020, there have been several standout years which were major turning points. Because those years and cycle tours have directly led to this forthcoming Against The Wind tour I'd like to mention them in this journal.

1979, 1989 and 2013 were turning point years. Those were the years when I arrived at a fork in the road of life, and chose one way or the other.

1979: Mr. Whippy and the cycle tour from England to Israel

I was a university student in Canberra in the late 1970's. Like most students, I had a few different jobs. Kitchen hand, gardener, house sitter, farm hand and bush fireman which helped with living costs. Then in 1978, friends offered me a really novel job. Mr. Whippy Ice-Cream truck driver. What an opportunity. While others in my year were preparing to become famous politicians, lawyers, inventors, scientists and entrepeneurs, I was lured to be a part-time mobile retailer of iced confectionery.

To my surprise, selling ice cream turned out to be good earner. The job was paid on a 50% cash commission basis. The more I worked, the more I earned. Firstly part-time, then for a few a solid months over the 1978-79 summer I worked flat chat and saved many thousands of dollars.

The owners of the business, Bob and Annie Charlton kindly offered me a share in the business. "No" I said seriously, "After the last four years of study and work, I'm going travelling."

So now you know the secret of my cycle touring beginning. Mr. Whippy set me up financially for my first international cycle tour in 1979.

You rode from Belgrade to London?!
It was friends of friends who first planted the idea of cycle touring in my curious head. I was introduced by a friend to Jocelyn Dexter (the daughter of an Australian diplomat) and her boyfriend. In 1978, Jocelyn and her fellow had just arrived home to Canberra after visiting their diplomat parents in (then) Yugoslavia. After visiting their parents, they cycled from Belgrade to London.

When I first heard about Jocelyn and Kevin's adventure ride I was at first incredulous, then I became besotted with the whole concept of cycle travel in foreign places. So much so, I started reading and researching and thinking about little else but cycle touring while I was driving the Mr. Whippy trucks and listening to the tinny sound of Greensleeves on the truck’s chimes. The classic, Richards Bicycle Book by Richard Ballantine was my main reference.

Off to Blighty
By March 1979 I had saved enough money and soaked up enough information to fly to London. I really had no idea what I was doing, so I was fortunate that a friend from uni, Kate Hope, was willing to meet me there and do some of the cycle touring as well.

We arrived in England at different times, but met in London to buy bikes, touring equipment and to catch up with other friends (fellow former university students) from Canberra who allowed us to couch surf at their Maida Vale apartment in London for a couple of weeks while we assembled the cycle touring kits.

In the English spring of 1979, I headed off on solo practice ride around England, while Kate traveled around Europe by bus. We then re-met in London, and spent a few weeks riding across France to the German border. From Strasbourg, Kate returned to Australia for work, and I continued to ride solo for several months to Israel via Germany, Italy and Greece.

By the time I arrived in Israel in high summer, I was short of money and in need of community. With the help of a couple of other Australian and English cycle tourers I met in Greece, I cycled to Kibbutz Yifat in northern Israel and applied to be a volunteer. Yifat was Israel's largest agricultural kibbutz. Soon I was thoroughly enjoying the farm work and social life as a volunteer horticulturist. The horticulture work included travelling around Israel in light trucks delivering and collecting plants. It seemed that I’d traded the ice-cream truck job for a plant truck job.

There was laughter, joy and sadness during the Kibbutz time. A friend was killed while cycling, there were air raids, tension during the Iran hostage crisis, meetings with Palestinians, seeing some of the handover of the Sinai to Egypt and my attempt to get a job as an extra the movie Masada. There were some very testing times including being first on the scene of an attempted suicide by a fellow volunteer, and being held up at gunpoint by an uzi wielding, crazy Israeli. Most of all, the Kibbutz Yifat experience was a time of friendships and learning with many other volunteers from all over the world.

I recently watched the movie of Bruce Springsteen’s concert and album “Western Stars”. What he said caught my attention, including these words:

“It's easy to lose yourself...or never find yourself. The older you get, the heavier that baggage becomes that you haven't sorted through. So you pay the price. And the older you get, the higher that price is. But in the past, putting yourself on the line, putting your heart on the line, has bred nothing but pain and failure, so you run. I've done a lot of that kind of running. You lose control of your desires, your appetites, your temper, and you reap what you sow. You run until you've left everything that you've loved and loves you behind.”

In 1979 I did that kind of running by riding, but fortunately I didn’t leave everything behind. I could well have done so, but by the early 1980, I had returned to Australia, pulled myself together and began what grew into a long, enjoyable career in education, science and public sector management. This work journey has involved many different enjoyable jobs and working with numerous wonderful people and several outstanding organisations over 33 years. It is the people who made these decades so memorable and enjoyable.

Looking back, I realise just how fortunate I have been to work with so many kind, warm hearted and caring people. Without their support and understanding, I doubt if I’d have had any sort of career. Without compassion and collegiality, work is meaningless.

The England-Israel ride was a formative, or perhaps re-formative experience. It was my first time away from Australia and the year I learned that it is possible, but not really desirable, to travel very long distances solo and live very cheaply on a bicycle tour if part of the reason for riding is to run away from yourself. Some people have astutely commented that the 1979 ride was a Forest Gump type journey.

The tours I have done since with relatives and friends have been more comfortable, far less frugal and not trying to escape myself. This was especially true of a ride with my (now) wife Jane in 1989 from Turkey to England. That story will be on the next journal page.
1989 was the year of the best ever cycle tour.

A few pics of the 1979 formative year

Yay! Mr Whippy. Selling iced confectionery to the sound “Greensleeves”. This job provided enough savings to fly to London, buy a cycle touring bicycle and touring gear, and then to cycle tour across Europe. Note that being a shirtless Mr Whippy was only when cleaning, packing the trucks and fora Cycle Blaze journal 45 years later. I was properly attired in my best T-shirt when in public.

The family farewell gathering at Sydney Airport. Heading to London on a long-haul flight. Little did I realise how homesick I would be about 1 year after this photo was taken.

I soon discovered that England has some steep hills. The bicycle was a Ernie Clements Falcon Olympic. Cost £124 from FW Evans in London. Karrimor handlebar bag and panniers.

It was a wet start to cycle touring. It was quick lesson that English weather is very different to Australia.

Cycle touring in France was delight. One was never more than a few kilometres from fresh bread, excellent cheese, beer and croissants. In France there was also the incident of accidentally riding in a Stage Start of the 1979 Tour d France. That's too long a story for here.

A rest stop while riding solo in Southern Germany. Bavaria. Hanging on tightly to the pouch with precious the passport, cash and travellers cheques. No credit card or EFTPOS in 1979.

A near death experience in Bavaria. Spilled diesel fuel on a road felled me and sent me sliding through a couple of lanes of traffic. Unscathed but stinking of diesel. This road crew arrived to clean up this spill after my accident. The fuel was from an earlier car accident.

Across the alps and into Italy and starting to feel and show the strain. I only took about a week to ride the length of Italy's east coast south of Venice. Sleeping arrangements were a bit rough. Beaches and abandoned farm sheds mainly.

Departing Greece by ferry for Haifa in the company of other cyclists I'd met in Athens.

Riding from Haifa into northern Israel. Interesting but hazardous. I arrived by ferry in Haifa in the late evening, so with a small group of other cycle tourers we found a beach to sleep on rather than ride at night. About 2am we awoke with a jeep mounted spotlight and machine gun pointed at us. Welcome to Israel. Anyone on a beach that hour was considered a potential terrorist.

Israel Brown, a venerable horticulturist on Kibbutz Yifat. He was a renowned orchid breeder.

Kibbutz Yifat volunteer gathering. Note the shared hut accommodation in the background. Basic but very satisfactory after months of hard, frugal solo cycle touring across Europe.

The movie set of "Masada" near the Dead Sea. My attempt to work here as a movie extra was short lived. They wanted swarthy types with black hair and beards to act as Jewish slaves. I passed that test, but even acting the slave work was far too hot for me in the Israeli summer. I headed back north to continue work on the Kibbutz until winter set in.

The Sinai during the handback to Egypt. 1979.

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	8
Comment on this entry	Comment	0