In the 1990s I drove motorcycles across Bali, Java, Sumatra, Malaysia, Thailand, and India.
In 1990 I straddled a 250 ATX Honda on a dirt road north of Chiang Mai. A dirt road led west into the maze of dragon-backed ridges to Mae Dai Salong, the capitol of the opium trade in Lanna Thai. Somewhere to the west lay Tibet. The gas tank was full. I fantasized about a week of travel there through BUrma to India to China and Tibet. It was a complete fantasy. Entering the outlaw lands of Golden Triangle was dangerous for anyone not attached to the druglords, especially sole male farangs, who the locals consider either drug addicts or the DEA. After a night in Mae Dai Salong I turned around disappointed I had failed to accept the challenge.
To this day I remain haunted by that vista.
Back in New York Dmitri Turin of the East Sixth Street Bikers and I sat outside his English bike shop and drank beer in New York, fantasizing a circumnavigation of the globe on Triumph dirt bikes. The talk never got further than talk or past midnight high speed rides on the FDR Drive.
At 70 I'm going nowhere, until I recover from my transplant surgery.
Back in 1972 I was an economic student at Boston College. I had seen EASY RIDER. I had only ridden a Vespa. Once. I hitchhiked from coast-to-coast. I stayed with bikers in Pomona, Ca. They lent me a Harley Tricycle. They took it back after three days with the leader saying, "We're scared of you getting killed."
The road belonged to them and a French adventuresse of the last century, Anne-France Dautheville.
In 1972 the journalist quit her copyrighting job in Paris and set off to Afghanistan on a Kawasaki 125cc. The following year Mlle. Dautheville soloed around the world in 1973.
Three continents; Europe, Asia, America.
Articles and novels about her epic journeys created a mythic status as a style icon. From a 2016 article from NY Times writer Alexander Fury.
“Even on a trip for 12,000 miles, I remain a Parisienne.” Her staples on the open road included leather trousers or dungarees paired with a printed scoop-neck t-shirts, and she always wore a scarf and biker boots, unless she went out to dinner. "My life started at 27. It was as if the thousands of kilometres around the world were concentrated in a few perfect seconds." My idée… was to see the world. It was to see when it is different, and fascinating. “From now on, life would be mine, my way. I would feel the wind on my skin, the world as my home.”
Most recently, she was the inspiration behind fashion brand's Chloe's Autumn-winter 2016 collection.
And still gives inspiration to a generation trapped in the metaverse by cellphones.
"Be brave and do the impossible. No one from France really went to that part of the world then; they might go as far as Turkey or Morocco, but not Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran.” In many of the countries she traveled, “They didn’t see too many girls alone on a motorcycle. I was colour TV for them.” Her parents were mortified by her trip – she could have been a copywriter and had a nice life but she chose to go on an adventure.
"Being an artist is about sharing. The story of my life is sharing. When I write, I give the best and the deepest of me to people I wouldn’t have dinner with. This is the artistic dimension. When I traveled, it was, ‘What can we share?’ Maybe it’s a bit utopic. I don’t care. It’s what I felt, and what I did.”
Fame is overrated. She never chased fame and still doesn’t.
“I’m not fascinated by myself,” she says. “By my life, maybe, but not by me. My bellybutton is not the center of my world.”
"Tailor your career to your life, not the other way around. A freelance journalist, Dautheville both documented and paid for her travels by writing articles, which were subsequently spun into books. Many revolved around the novelty of her gender, such as “Girl on a Motorcycle” (1973) and “And I Followed the Wind” (1975).
When “deadly broke”, she would house-sit for friends in return for a place to stay.
Anne-France Dautheville was twenty-eight in 1972, astride a Moto Guzzi 750 motorcycle on the way to Tehran, traveling alone cross-continent. She’s flagged down by a car, and three children get out to ask Dautheville about herself, her life and her eye makeup. (“I always made up my eyes,” she recalls.) “Then they start driving faster than me. Ten kilometers later, they stop on the side of the road, and they stop me again. I ask, ‘Is there something you forgot?’ And they say, ‘Well, we were wondering, are you a girl or are you a boy?’ ” Dautheville throws back her head and roars with laughter.
I was twenty in 1972 and hitchhiked cross-country with my college friend, Peter Gorr. No motorcycles. They lay years away in the 1980s until now, but I still worship the road.
