With a BMW, Olympus and an infectious personality, it’s about connections

Hope to Morocco to London: Eliza Massey continues her worldwide circumnavigation

‘I like touching the world’
Tue, 09/23/2014 - 11:00am

    HOPE — Eliza Massey breaks down barriers. With a grin and a hug, she draws friends and strangers into the circle — any circle — the dance floor, a public bench in a small park, a small village in remote Africa, and the next thing you know, the center of the universe is right there, and valuable connections are being made. It is good for the soul, and it is good for the world.

    You can see this in her photos, which are rich with faces and gestures. She does not stand at a distance and shoot clouds over mountains, or canyon walls and dusty deserts. She takes her Olympus OMD1 into the thick of human life.

    Part artist, part anthropologist and fulltime motorcycle enthusiast, Massey is documenting life in the first part of the 21st-Century while she systematically circumnavigates the globe.

    Packing clothes into metal saddlebags, an assortment of gloves, computer, phone, credit cards and passport, she climbs onto her red BWM G650 GS, and periodically heads out from Hope, Maine, to see what is going on in the world.

    Her bike is not big, but it is well-engineered. The leather seat is comfortable and she can easily maneuver the motorcycle into tight spots. She once lent it a policeman in Swaziland. He had stopped her in the road, asking for paperwork. While he was talking to her, a car sped past at a high speed.

    “Hey cowboy, get on my bike,” she told the cop. “Here’s the helmet.”

    He climbed on, started the engine and took off. A while later, he returned, smiling, the driver apprehended.

    On Oct. 1, she is putting her motorcycle in the belly of an airplane in Montreal, and flying to Lisbon. 

    “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said.

    But of course, she does. This 57-year-old photographer, former Camden Hills Regional High School soccer mom and now grandmother, will be back on the road for the next eight months. 

    She may not know what she is doing with her day-to-day itinerary, but that’s the difference between traveling and being a tourist. The smaller details, such as where she might spend the night, will be left up to circumstance, or if need be, in consultation with the Lonely Planet guidebook, Trip Advisor and Air B&B.

    “The only time I book a room is when I fly into a place or fly out,” she said.

    She has joined the very slim ranks of women who travel alone by motorcycle around the world. Massey is also one of Jupiter’s Traveller’s, a select group of motorcyclists and kayakers — 88 Jupiter’s Companions — who are recognized by the Ted Simon Foundation.

    Jupiter's Travellers are people who seek to understand the beauties, mysteries and tragedies of our world, and their place in it, through personal adventure,” the nonprofit’s website said. “They are inspired and motivated to develop their observations and insights into something of value for the rest of the world to share, whatever their medium of expression might be.” 

    In other words, travel with a purpose. The foundation attracts like-minded travelers, and they share stories and resources.

    The Ted Simon Foundation encourages adventure travellers to go the extra mile and be reporters of truth in the world,” the organization said. “Our ultimate aim is to promote understanding, reduce tension and to favour the chances of peace between our many cultures.”

    That is Eliza Massey in a nutshell. On her most recent trip, in 2013, she spent a week in an impoverished Indian village, living with a family of Untouchables to chronicle their story. She also spent time in villages in Tanzania, Kenya, Cambodia and Vietnam.

    That’s far different than taking a cruise down the Danube with every meal and cultural event planned.

    Scared?

    “I don’t get scared,” she said.

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    Massey has been on the road — off and on — on a motorcycle since 2006, when, after sending three children to college, her husband said, “let’s get some motorcycles.”

    They spent five years taking weekend trips around the U.S. and Canada.

    The, Massey took off by herself on her first BMW, a F650, to Labrador.

    “I’d never camped by myself,” she said. “I had no mechanical abilities.”

    She loved it, and that was followed by a five-month tour Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos on a Honda 110 cc that she bought there for $400.

    In 2012, she set off alone through Mexico, Central America, South America, to Africa and nine countries on that continent, and then to India. She stopped last spring in Mumbai and came back to Maine. For just a spell.

    On Oct. 1, she will begin exploring southern Europe — Portugal and Spain — and then take a ferry to Morocco, where she will spend three months touring and writing about her travels.

    Later, she will head to Greece, Turkey, Eastern Europe and then on to London.

    In all, she expects to be gone for seven months. It is to be a trip of exploration, as well as building relationships between cultures.

    She may encounter harsh circumstances, places where women are worked to the bone, and live with standards hard to comprehend. Massey will encourage them in whatever fundamental way she can.

    “Stay strong,” she will tell them, in words or with gestures and smiles.

    Massey laughs at herself, the image of an American woman riding on a motorcycle into villages that have rarely, or even ever, seen a Westerner.

    “I am all dirty,” she said. “I look like the Wicked Witch of the West. The sight of me scares children and dogs.”

    But she also realizes that her motorcycle is big, and to men across the globe, it represents money.

    “I look powerful,” she said, laughing at incongruity of the statement, but how true it is in some parts of the world.

    She is also a mother and grandmother, which earns her a position of respect.

    An excerpt from Tim Simon's Jupiter's Travels, Riding High and Dreaming of Jupiter:

    "People who thought of my journey as a physical ordeal or an act of courage... missed the point. Courage and physical endurance were no more than useful items of equipment for me, like facility with languages or immunity to hepatitis. The goal was comprehension, and the only way to comprehend the world was by making myself vulnerable to it so that it could change me. The challenge was to lay myself open to everybody and everything that came my way. The prize was to change and grow big enough to feel one with the whole world.”

    But she is also recognized for traveling so far by people living in those villages. 

    “They are honored that somebody from the U.S. is coming to their home and wants to show it to the world,” she said. “And I look at the fields, their homes and gardens. I am honored.”

    She brings out her camera as a starting point for conversation. Later, in countries like Cambodia or Vietnam, she may share a glass of raw, burning alcohol.

    “It’s all about living in the now,” she said. “Everything is in the present. It is about saying hello, and showing we are all one. Politics and governments don’t get along but people do.”

    Humans have the same goals across the world, she said.

    “They want their kids to be healthy and happy. That they have food, shelter and an education.”

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    The finances of traveling can be daunting, but Massey rents her Hope home for the winter, and exchanges the overhead of utilities and expenses for travel expenses, which can cheap in many parts of the world.

    She is also a frugal traveler, choosing hostels or private homes over hotels. She gets cash from ATMs at the borders, and endures her crossings as the cultures dictate.

    But she is also spending her retirement, and is cognizant that she will need to come home and work. To that thought, she shrugs her shoulders: “These are the years I can do this. I am healthy.”

    When she returns in April, she plans to work, and replenish the bank accounts.

    Then, down the road, it might be Mongolia and China.

    “China would be fascinating,” she said. “I’d like to finish going around the world. I like touching the world.”

    See more photos taken by Eliza Massey, at ElizaMassey.com


    Editorial Director Lynda Clancy can be reached at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657