When the second sentence of a book contains the words ‘laying in bed’, you can’t help but wonder what sort of writer and proof reader produced it. Mike Carter’s Uneasy Rider continues in the same casual language for 352 pages.
However, the writer changes. He starts his narrative the morning after the Observer newspaper Christmas party when he is newly divorced, smarting and consciously fending off a mid-life crisis, at the age of 42. He learns that, in his cups the night before, he has made the rash promise that he will take off on a large motorcycle. He has never ridden one in his life but the kudos his declaration is earning makes it difficult to back out.
We follow him through northern Europe and Scandinavia, to Finland and Latvia, Poland, Turkey, even Albania and we share his sexual adventures – or failures. Invariably, he is warned that the next country is dangerous or unwelcoming. And, sometimes, it is! He travels almost 20,000 miles through 27 countries and makes friends and enemies along the road. We get an inside view of the motorcycling fraternity.
At first, the protagonist seems brash, angry and not very fond of himself but, by the end of his narrative, he has found his equanimity and we learn to like him. This is not only a travel story; it is also a record of personal growth and victory over a man’s mid-life crisis.