These Are the Days that Must Happen to You by Dan Walsh
These Are the Days that Must Happen to You by Dan Walsh
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EAN: 9781846053108
Format: Hardback
Published: 3 Jul 2008

Synopsis

'Riding a bike removes the need for clutter, toys, rubbish that other men have to take on holiday. If I want adrenaline, I’ll rush a giddy overtake, not rent a jet ski.'

The world through the eyes of Dan Walsh is never less than Technicolor, and always uninhibited, rebellious and on the edge. Not since the days of Jupiter's Travels has one man embarked on such an angry, narcotic-fuelled bike trek around the world.

'For me, Chile will always be South America’s supermodel sister – very beautiful but too long, too skinny, and too expensive to ride, and despite the groovy exterior, unpleasantly right-wing underneath.'

Dan has travelled the length and breadth of the world; in Africa, on his XT Desert Rat; across the American continent, on a BMW F650 GS Dakar. Along the way he's visited Buenos Aires, where ‘revolutionary’ means the angry poor invading the presidential palace, not a really small phone that’s also a camera. He's crossed the dry sub-Saharan savannah, which is like riding across a piece of toast with a mouthful of crackers. He's been mistaken for a bum in New York, bashed by deadly tequila in Mexico, contracted typhoid in a dilapidated Bolivian hotel, visited The Most Beautiful Road in the World in Peru, been kidnapped in Kenya and finds that downtown Soweto is about as threatening as Stockport.

'I get my bum pinched by a tranny, my pocket picked by a grifter and get a gun pulled on me by a one-eyed, one-armed midget who’s upset cause I winked at him. These are the days that must happen to you.'

Soaked in adrenaline and coruscatingly funny, Dan Walsh is the rightful heir to Ted Simon as the pre-eminent biker-rebel of our generation.

What the critics say

[Dan Walsh is] a fantastically vivid writer
- Ride

Walsh writes tellingly of the loneliness and energy-sapping stress of life on the road
- Press Association

Walsh’s writing is raw and impressionistic, vibrant and unrestrained, baggy like a burst mattress. He is an engaging raconteur, searingly honest about his shortcomings, but remains defiant to the end.
- The Independent

Undoubtedly the best biker writer alive
- Loaded

…(Walsh) embarks on epic, swashbuckling journeys through Africa and South America, traveloguing with an energy and abandonment that slays many a cynical stereotype. He likes narcotics, high speeds and visceral experiences – an appetite he perfectly captures here with wit and vigour.
- Shortlist

The Author

Dan Walsh

Dan Walsh

In 2005 bike journalist Dan Walsh departed London on an XT Desert Rat headed for Africa, travelling from Dakar to Ghana to South Africa, then on to North and South America. Chancer, grifter, poet, biking drifter, he's the modern heir to Ted Simon. His Bike magazine columns about his travel experiences – lyrical, edgy, fraught with danger, despair and surreal highs and lows – have earned him a vast cult following and he has been labelled as “the saviour of motorcycle writing”. Dan still contributes to Bike magazine and is still out on the road. This is his first book.