Journey Home, Jim Willis (2000)
The interior monologue of a Church minister on a ride from Florida to Massachusetts that starts promisingly but is waylaid by a more personal psycho-drama
Haley’s 1 884540 43 0 Paperback 150pp $14.95
Setting out on this journey with Willis, the idea for his book seemed brilliant.
Although it is structured around an actual tour, the familiar traveller’s narrative of sights and experiences is nowhere to be found. Instead, he concentrates on the inner life of the long-distance cyclist. This is an attempt to set down the conversation one has with oneself during a long, solo road journey.
On the pleasures of conceiving and planning a tour, he has interesting things to say. Likewise how our differing senses of time and its importance effect out understanding of distance, and the unique routines of a long-distance tour. Unsurprisingly, religion plays a role in his conversations, although there is no proseltising in the book, and Willis clearly accepts that his own church is by no means the only route to spiritual nourishment.
Occasionally his introspection produces homilies that could have sprung from a self-improvement manual. “Some days are better than others, and I’ve learned that when the tough ones come, there’s nothing to do but ride within that day’s abilities and ignore both the clock and the odometer. When my inner coach tries to raise his voice, I just tell him I’m doing the best I can. That usually shuts him up.”
Sadly, however, the further the book progresses, the less important the cycling becomes in his journey to self-knowledge – not least because in injured ankle in Savannah, Georgia forces him to abandon his tour.
This does not arrest his philosophical pilgrimage, and provides space for some lengthy narrative detours – the pleasures of hunting, the life and death of this first wife and, his enthusiasm for marathon running – for example. And, at journey’s end he has achieved a measure of resolution – a house move and a change of career. Uncoupled from the cycle journey that had brought me to him, however, I finished the book feeling that Willis had rather oversold the two wheeled element of his odyssey.
PS Oct 09