The NEWS con - Corporate mass-media and the anxiety induced consumption

I am now almost 3 month deep into my voyage and have never turned on a TV set once and never missed it. Many of you will be appalled by how much disconnected from “reality” I must be by now and maybe also by how as an active person I can live with such an abdication from one of our unchallenged prerogatives: the one to stay “informed”.

I have news for you my friends. Corporate mass-media are playing an enormous scam on most of us, our perceptions and our minds. They fooled us into an undiscerning bunch of idiots when it comes to the “News” concept. If when it comes to other TV programs we are allowed some level of diversity in choice, some preferring sports over soap operas and some the documentary over the fiction series or feature film, the “NEWS”(!) don’t allow any deviation from the hypnotic obedience the “X” o’clock title animation and grave-alert accompanying jingle generates. Dr. Pavlov would be thrilled and flattered by the scale of this mass experiment. They fallaciously have us believe that we actually “need” to know what they want to tell us in order to better function in the world we live in, small and large scale alike.

Having worked in brand and corporate communication industry for many years I studied and became aware of some of the psychological effects of information and the varied reactions different communication processes trigger. And slowly over time the picture got clear by closer investigation of the subsequent truth known in the business about media not primarily providing useful information to it’s recipients but delivering audiences to advertisers.

We live in a world of polymorphic international corporations that own the companies producing the goods filling our stores and supermarket shelves along with the ones responsible for pulling the strings on the puppets we see on our TV screens. And you have the innocence to believe they are not using their mass-media strength, the mightiest lever this side of tyranny, in determining people’s actions and choices, into making us frantically buy whatever products they churn out? If yes, think again.

I am not talking here about all kinds of overt or more subtle advertising like the already well known (but not less effective) product placement technique that makes any pimpled, teenage Tom Cruise wannabe go buy a Triumph SpeedTriple, even if he doesn't know how to ride a push bike, after seeing Mission Impossible, or a middle-aged accountant dreaming about stories of courage, intrigue and seduction, "empower" his wrist with the latest Omega watch or even indebt himself to the bone only to be able to feel like Bond... James Bond, behind the wheel of a DB something Aston Martin. No, I am talking about the much more perverse technique of scaring us away from each other and into buying (more and more) "things". The more they show us in their news(!) programs an unfriendly and perilous world “out there”, populated with natural or human generated disasters, with murderers and rapists, with gruesome accidents and the like, the more they turn us into a bunch of scared dummies, locked alone behind our doors, desperately munching on their pre-cooked, frozen food and guzzling on their carbonated chemical beverages, replacing any true and fulfilling experience and/or human contact with staring at their mass produced “safe” entertaining programs that do nothing else in reality but enslave us even more.

Divide et impera. Divide and conquer it is what they accomplished when they scared us into pathological levels of distrust towards our peers that we now come to perceive more as potential aggressors than potential allies, and into the consequently solitude, by feeding us their catastrophic “news” happening in our own neighborhood or on the other side of the planet alike. When the whole world seems nothing but a continuous menace, what can one desire more than the sweet comfort he/she might draw from the security of a new three-door-wattercooling-icecubepopping-digitaldisplay new refrigerator, wall size flat LCD-TV set, cold and “refreshing” Coca-Cola and pre-cooked Maggi dish or even worse, the ubiquitous “healthy” burger, pizza or spicy chicken wings?

I urge anyone to take a moment and ask themselves how much of what they see on TV news programs really and truly make them if not a better person then at least a more prepared one to face everyday life. Specialized professionals as airplane pilots or stock exchange brokers rely on specialized services for weather prediction or market analysis, they don’t get their vital information from TV! Emergency services, law enforcement agencies and finally coroners have direct means of dealing with accidents, catastrophes or crimes and never wait for the news programs to point out such unfortunate occurrences. So who really and positively needs the tide of catastrophic shit flowing out of the TV screens from the so called news channels directly into our subconsciousness? Well, the ones who want (and need) us scared and alone, protecting ourselves from a supposedly frightening world with whatever stuff they have to sell us, they need it!

Congregating people are less an easy to manipulate bunch, they don’t replace human contact with merchandise, they debate opinions, question what they are presented with as being the “truth” and ultimately forge up a live conscience hence a strength which is not to the liking of the mass merchants, the slaves of the spread-sheet reports and the mongers of the profit margin pie-chart.

We need to repel the attack of push media, we need to go back to reading (be it the printed word or the internet) and make our own choices about what we want to know. We shouldn’t accept brain-washed or cynical editors push their more than questionable choice of events in our ears, eyes and ultimately brains and souls because there is no single true benefit for us in this. We should be more open to other people even when not personally knowing them, gather and talk more, challenge the status-quo of how mass media presents the world, and maybe we’ll come to a point when we’ll need less “stuff” to shelteringly come between us and a world we might stop seeing as a constant threat. And maybe foremost we need to take the time to travel more as there is no better way of severing the ties that keep us pinned to our prejudices, our mental inertia and ultimately to our artificially induced feeling of insecurity. Abandon the "club-med"s, the sanitized impersonal resorts and make the true experience of the world as it is lived by the natives of the places we visit, and we’ll exhilaratingly discover that there are many more yet undiscovered friends out there waiting for us, than we have ever imagined.

No, not lazy writing, just happy living every day of my trip...

Yesterday have been 3 weeks since I left Bucharest and I’m on my last day (out of 3) in Warsaw heading tomorrow for Gdansk and the polish lakes district on my way to Vilnius. I wish I would have written more, made more pictures but the time seems so very short and the things to do, see, feel, think about, almost infinite. There are places where I would have just sat and contemplated the view for days and people I’ve met I would have spent so much more time with, but I’m on a journey and leaving a place for another is how it’s done, and I still haven’t acquired the art of ancient oriental masters who had space and time in their grasp and could be in more places at the same time...

Is there yet a first important idea, lesson or conclusion that these first 3 weeks offered me? Yes, I have learned that nature in itself is beautiful and impressive absolutely everywhere, majestic mountains, rolling hills or ever-stretching plains. Beside this, what people inhabiting it have been and continue doing in and with it carries exceptional influence on how one relates to and remembers a place or another. In other words the nature of this world is wonderful but it is in conjunction with the particular cultures of every region that it gives us the entire magnificent gift of living in it and having the unique chance to discover it.

The Hungarian, Czech or Polish flatlands that I have crossed might not be as impressive as the breathtaking Alps but their rich and almost endless green, undulating hills and sense of tranquility stir no less a lasting emotion in the traveler. The major differences in perceiving and relating to a place are determined by the contacts with it’s inhabitants and the way they exist in their own environment. The aspect of villages, the cultural heritage of the cities (large or small), the attitude and expression on people’s faces make the difference in the way we ultimately perceive places. Here we can also discern a very fine balanced mix between the cultural heritage of a place, usually to be discovered in stone and metal, i.e. in it’s monuments and buildings, and it’s living spirit that comes out by the more or less silent concert of it’s people. The way they dress, walk, look around and at others around them, greet strangers or their neighbors, deal with side effects of every community (poverty, trash, the public/private space dialog), what they dress, eat and what (and how much) they drink, are just some things building up to one’s personal experience of a place.

On these grounds and despite the mythology about people of the two countries not being to friendly to each other (well, at least in Romania it is believed that Hungarians are not friendly to us...) I was most impressed in such a good way by Hungary among the former East European countries I have been through by now (Czech Rep. and Poland). The Czechs might be more “joyful” and the Poles more ... well, I don’t precisely know how they are yet as I have some conflicting impressions, but the Hungarians are the more “stylish”, more elitist and somehow more fancy of them. I also don’t by what determination, collective effort or general behavior they manage too keep a country more clean than you might ever expect in Eastern Europe. I haven’t seen for tens if not hundreds of miles a plastic bottle or any other kind of trash on the side of a city or country road. It really doesn’t feel like the East as in Czechia or Poland, where although both very nice and burdened with history, the “clean” aspect does not seem to be of prime importance or of much interest to their people. Not that they are filthy in any way, but the places just don’t have the "shine" they have in Hungary. What to mention about my home country in this respect? Any comparison with any of them would put us to very much shame...

But after the rather long time since I last posted and the countries I have been through already I am tempted to write too much so I’ll stop here, as abrupt as it is, and come back later with more crystallized thoughts and impressions, but not before making a short note of praise to my beemer: Almost 9.000km on the clock and not even a single glitch! I love this bike.

We’re on! Me and my beemer, that is...

So yes, daaa, da, daa, dadaaam! From now on this has all the reasons to turn from the rather stale, new post once in a blue moon blog, into a true lively motorcycle travel journal. We’ll see how well I’ll be doing with it over the following weeks... While on the blog written in Romanian I will try to put into words more personal and general in nature thoughts spurred by this trip, in this one I will have more of a factual approach, consistent with the more pragmatic Anglo-Saxon reader...

I left Bucharest on the 15th of May heading towards what should be an inspiring European tour. But if you read the previous posts you probably know by now the initial “blueprint” of this journey.

As a short introduction, here are some of the bike preps I made before departure:
- BMW GS Vario top-case and side panniers. Too early to comment on strength or reliability but unexpectedly crap key barrels. For what the GS12 stands for and for how much the bike itself and everything for it costs, BMW should show more German interest for quality, because if a part, no matter how small can ruin a trip by braking, deserves as much attention as the frame or the engine. So, for now I hope a bit of light lubricant will do the trick...
- Touratech windshield extension – worth every penny. The x-tra 7-8 cm in height work wonders in reducing wind noise and turbulence, at least for my height and riding position.
- Cylinder heads aluminum protections – good investment at least for the cosmetic damage it prevents from minor mishaps like the one I had by now: dropping the bike on stand still because forgetting to lower the side stand before leaning the bike over on it (silly, I know...)
- Although not a bike accessory, I want to make a LOUD note on how bad a 550Euro (800USD) Schuberth C2 helmet can be. How can one still trust the otherwise sound principle that the price of a (technological) object reflects the manufacturer’s effort and investments in research and development, investments translated in the end quality of the product? How can one explain the air current that blows into a C2 through the seal of the visor hard enough to make you risk safety and ride with one hand over the leaky area in order to avoid serous facial paralysis? I had a few years ago a 100Euro Airoh enduro-type full face helmet that had the same unacceptable flaw... but I had it for about 150USD so I did not suffer to much on separation... But 5 times the price on a Schuberth makes you expect if not 5 times more quality, at least the absence of major flaws. Well, in what the C2 is concerned, these expectations are in vain! And to think that BMW branded helmets are made also by Shuberth is also a tell tale sign that probably Germans are not that concerned with the quality of their products any more... shame.

And now to the epic.

I left in good spirits and touched by the surprise made by the presence of a few friends that I found standing next to my bike when I came out of the house totally unaware that someone would come to see me off. Cheers guys.

After a relaxed 100km from Bucharest to Pitesti when I first probed and nested my butt in the thicker cushion of a Baeher front saddle lent by a friend who decided for a second after-market model (thanks again Stefan), riding the new ring section of the highway around the later city, Romania appeared to me for a brief moment like a semi-decent place. Needles to say, the impression didn’t last long. Piles of filth on the side of the roads, horrific traffic control, oh no, sorry, the total absence of any traffic control whatsoever specially in the areas afflicted by the so called “works” and the ubiquitous moronic drivers, all brought me back to the usual routine of annoyment sprinkled here and there with disgust that I go through when riding in my home country.
But, with a few heavy showers on the way (if you ride a vehicle in Romania on tarmac roads in the rain it will end up looking like you crawled out of a pile of mud, yes, although you never left the asphalt) that tested the grip of the “Anaqees”, I managed to pass Deva and enter the magnificent landscape of Transylvania. The places here are so exquisitely beautiful that one almost forgets the litter on the roadside and the rather precarious state of the road surface. How on earth they manage to blow away this incredible natural potential by simultaneously failing to capitalize on it’s significant touristy potential and systematically destroying it in the meanwhile by suffocating it in filth or savagely chopping it down for lumber, will always stun me. But, by the admirable resilience of nature, the places, as I have said, still remain awesomely beautiful.

After paying way too much for what it was worth for a night’s sleep in a shabby roadside inn, where the woman in charge had the annoyed expression like she was making me a favor by accepting my money, the next day I left as early as I could for the Hungarian border. Not that I didn’t longed for a good refreshing shower, but the water (warm or cold) was barely dripping. That’s how things tend to be when accommodation alternatives are scarce...

After about another hour on a twisty and picturesque piece of road, penalized only by the poor surface quality on some bits, I was through customs and into Hungary in a blink and a few lighthearted jokes with the Hungarian customs officer.

It was already hot and the exercise of pulling documents out of the “safe” crevasse of the luggage made me even hotter and sweaty. And here I will give for the ones that might be tempted to do the same thing a strong piece of advice: DON’T VENTILATE THROUGH YOUR SLEEVES BY NOT CLOSING THE FASTENING ZIPPER OR VELCRO BANDS AT THEIR END. The funnel effect that leaving them open provokes might very well be an effective way of cooling down but also a major risk. I might well have the habit of getting accidents in pairs, as that time when riding off road with a friend in the mountains when I got both tires flat simultaneously, but this time what happened was a bit more “stingy”. As I left the zippers at the end of my jacket’s sleeves open to enjoy the breeze that was rushing in, in a matter of no more than a few minutes of riding I felt a rather sharp sting in my right forearm and then in a matter of seconds one almost as intense one in the left one. I kept on riding for another few minutes almost in disbelief. I thought I might be imagining things or that they might be a new kind of cramp, but when the burning sensation became obviously suspicious I stopped fearing the worst. And yes, my fears proved right. By taking my jacket off and turning it’s sleeves inside out I could see that my cooling system had funneled in beside the air in both of my sleeves 2 large bees that doing what every one of us in such a circumstance would have done, stung the shit out of each of my forearm. I felt sorry for the little critters as they agonizingly crawled out the sweaty sleeves leaving their needles in me. After pulling the stingy little spears out of my skin I instinctively licked the injured spots but then I had also the decency to rub them with an antiseptic wipe. None the less, at the time I write this, about 36 hours form then, the large aching lumps have shrunk leaving in their place two palm size itchy red blotches. But I don’t complain because if I would have been allergic to bee stings I could have very well gone into shock and swollen to death on the side of a Hungarian road. So, a lesson well learned: When too hot or sweaty, stop, take equipment off, relax, dry and cool off and then gear up PROPERLY and continue riding.

My first destination was Gyomaenröd where I had in plan to visit a motorcycle museum I have read about on the net. Halas, when I got to the tourist information office in the above mentioned city, I have been told that that museum closed about 2 years ago. I could not refrain asking why in such a long time no one had the common sense decency to update the internet information (it was found on an official Hungarian tourist site) as not to let silly buggers like me come all the way for a thing it’s no longer there. Fortunately the kindness of the lady at the tourist information office and the genuine charm of the place made up for the loss and I decided to stay for the rest of the day there for a good relaxing swim in the large outside pool, a good walk around the very peaceful and welcoming surroundings and few rehydrating Czech light beers... Good choice!

There is a saying that goes that Romanian people are ingenious. Well, as much as I don’t feel comfortable being part of that bunch I had a pretty good idea the other day. I pushed a bit o string inside the rubber seal of the helmet around the area where the visor rests when closed and by doing this I managed to almost stop the air flow that was leaking in and that I told you about before. Once again shame that expensive, top of the range brands like Shuberth can’t be bothered to put more effort and care in the quality of their products. That reminds me of a friend (the same who lent me the comfy saddle) that had a System 5 Shuberth/BMW helmet that he painted black because he did not like it the original white and white was the only color available at the local dealer (I remind you he is in Romania...). Not long after that he gave it away for nothing because air was blowing in when the visor was closed and he blamed himself for damaging the rubber seals by using an improper paint that might have affected the seal. Don’t worry Stefan, you did nothing wrong, Shuberth helmets suck ass and blow air (in your face) as they come from the manufacturer. The only mistake you made was paying top price for one of their products. At least you should have ridden with it before painting it as you could have spared the extra expense for the paint job and the later guilt of ruining a presumed good piece of kit. I really hope that western equipment dealers or representatives of higher profile/cost brands offer test rides for helmets as well as at least what I am concerned I will never give my money on a piece of equipment I can’t try before. And bugger to all who said on forums that Schuberth’s are good. Don’t believe what this or that tosser is saying. Trust your own judgment and ask for a test ride!

The First Beem Of A New Dawn

What a more appropriate moment to join the ranks of world traveling beemsters than the one you realize sheer speed is not all there is to motorcycle riding?
I haven't always thought that but my early days on a motorbike did not had the support of the technology to tackle the realm of speed, at least as it is today perceived by Japanese or Italian supersport or superbike motorcycles owners. Let me give you a clue: after numerous bicycles and a moped, my first two wheeled vehicle with an engine, clutch and proper gear box, was a locally produced, two strokes, 49ccm, contraption called Mobra (from “mo”-torcycles and “bra”-sov, the city where the factory was). The first winter we had together was spent in the house, in my room at the first floor of my grandparents house, where I hauled it with the help of a mate almost as intoxicated with motorbikes as I was… well, you have to keep in mind I was only 17 so give me a break. The Mobra with it’s minuscule bore had to slug around about 80!, yes, 80kg (about 175lbs) of it’s own weight plus the 55-60kg teenager I was, and could still do, in almost ideal conditions I have to admit, up to 70km/h (43mph), which please believe me, is not much on a straight line but when you take it to the bends with rubbers having the fiction index of a wet weasel, can be quite a challenge. For the rest of the time spent riding it, one could just enjoy the scenery at a very safe pace. After it, more 2 strokes, bigger bores (250ccm the most) eastern block (czech and east german) motorcycles followed but none took me to warp speeds the modern big bore bikes did in the last years. But enough with the paleontology of my motorcycling days. I will put this link though if someone is curious to see how the dear old Mobra looked like (not mine unfortunately as I was less keen on keeping visual records at that time): Mobra

So yes, on the 28th August 2007, I got hold of my first ever BMW motorcycle. It's a yellow 1200GS that I simply have fallen in love with at a test drive two weeks before that date... I had to have this bike! It looks big and sluggish but once in motion it feels incredible nimble and willing to follow your every whim... well, except maybe the one of going fast, but this is or should be no surprise from a BMW boxer engine, enduro-touring motorcycle. And you also have to consider that my last set of 2 wheels was an R1 Yamaha than really could fly. I felt in awe about how the beemer handled but was totally unimpressed when I twisted the gas open... it felt like I forgot to turn the engine on. So I very fast organized a joint ride with a mate who got hold of his, exact same model, few days before, in order to switch bikes and see if there was something wrong with this actual piece or this is just how these things work. It was a great relief to notice that his bike – it was in the break-in period, mind you – was even more sluggish than mine who had 2000km (1250ml) on the clock. So that it was: I knew the bike does not go fast... but it didn’t matter, I was hooked.