I was desperate for something ‘light’ and this paperback was on top of one of our reading piles in the spare room.<\/p>\n
And it’s about a motorbike (sort of), so it was a natural pick-up.<\/p>\n
Lois On The Loose<\/em> is the true tale of our eponymous heroine and how she left her desk job to do something more… challenging.<\/p>\n She motorbiked from Anchorage, Alaska to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in Argentina, then north to Buenos Aires.<\/p>\n Twenty thousand miles!<\/p>\n On a Yamaha XT225 Serow (trail bike).<\/p>\n Lois completed the journey in just under nine months.<\/p>\n Along the way she encountered fierce weather of unbeleivable extremes; locals of varying degrees of indifference\/excitement; countryside of almost unimaginable quality and the company and generosity of many strangers.<\/p>\n Lois On The Loose<\/em> is an entertaining account of the journey from A to B.<\/p>\n And there’s the rub.<\/p>\n The story is about the journey as a means to an end.<\/p>\n Sadly, it isn’t\u00a0about the journey as an end\u00a0in itself<\/em>.<\/p>\n We are given snippets about the people and the places and scraps of near-nothingness about the culture and the histories.<\/p>\n We are treated to hundreds of words about one of her temporary travelling companion and the almost karmic-circle that bites her in the end.<\/p>\n But we get fewer words about the indigenous people of any<\/em> Latin American country that she spent weeks or months in.<\/p>\n Not really balanced, you see?<\/p>\n Yes, it’s interesting to hear about the extremes of weather.<\/p>\n Yes, it’s fascinating to learn of the characteristics (good, bad or indifferent) of her travelling companions.<\/p>\n Yes, it’s captivating to hear about her unplanned ‘meets’ with fellow bikers.<\/p>\n But what about the countries that she travelled through?<\/p>\n What about the locals, the indigenous peoples?<\/p>\n What about their cultures?<\/p>\n But don’t get me wrong.<\/p>\n Lois On The Loose<\/em> is an interesting book full of lively tales and well-related anecdotes.<\/p>\n I just wish that – having spent almost nine months on the road – Lois\u00a0had given me something\u00a0of\u00a0substance\u00a0about the places she visited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was desperate for something ‘light’ and this paperback was on top of one of our reading piles in the spare room. And it’s about<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}