Review (PDF) Is That Thing Diesel?: One Man, One Bike And The First Lap Around Australia On Used Cooking Oil
In the spirit of Ewan and Charlie's Long Way Round, another hilarious, high-octane, seat-of-the-pants adventure from the slightly crazy Paul Carter circumnavigating Australia on a biodiesel motorcycle At 40 years old, a successful writer, husband, and father, no longer toiling on offshore drilling rigs, was Paul Carter happily nestled in the cotton wool of suburban life enjoying the fruits of his labor? Not likely. With his manic life left far behind and the perfect opportunity to take it easy stretched before him what else would a middle-aged, bike-obsessed, man want? Yes, that's right, he'd want to be the first guy to ride around Australia on an underpowered experimental motorcycle that runs on used cooking oil, wouldn't he? He embarks on a rollicking, often unhinged, and downright dangerous quest that starts on an environmentally friendly motorcycle built on a shoestring budget by students, and ends with a plan to break the motorcycle land speed record for biofuel. Lovely irony—the ride is sponsored by oil companies. Carter is back to his old balls-to-the-wall style of writing, so readers should prepare to laugh out loud.
File Size: 13677 KB
Print Length: 286 pages
Publisher: Allen & Unwin (September 1, 2011)
Publication Date: September 1, 2011
Language: English
ASIN: B005IQFORA
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray: Not Enabled
Word Wise: Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Best Sellers Rank: #626,239 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store) #77 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Travel > Australia & South Pacific > Australia #148 in Books > Travel > Australia & South Pacific > Australia > General #156 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Engineering & Transportation > Automotive > Motorcycles
Excellent, keeps you going back for more.Interesting read where do you get such a loving and caring wife to let you try and kill yourself.Opps got one of them. shows the old addage dont judge a book by its cover, Read it you wont put it down very easily.
The description of his adventurous ride is so real. I have ridden much of the territory Paul describes but 40 years ago when the roads were more indifferent. His bike so unique and an adventure in itself. My advantage has been that he made me relive my adventures from those bigone days, including being joined by a dozen so called bikeys who turned out to be just ordinary folk. Any one considering purchasine this work might be well advised to get the audio version read by Paul himself
The book is written in true easy flowing Paul Carter style but like his journey started out strong with good detail, yarns about characters along the way, meeting old friends etc. But the last third went way too quickly possibly a reflection that it was a real struggle to finish the trip and that the stuffing had (literally) been knocked out of him. Having said that I still enjoyed his book as I have enjoyed his others but couldnt help but wondering if a little more could have been written on the Darwin to Adelaide run.
Paul has settled down with a wife and a baby daughter, no more life risking adventures on remote oil rigs for him that readers of Don't Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs: She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse and his sequel This Is Not a Drill: Just another glorious day in the oilfields will be familiar with. Is Paul content? No! Growing more and more restless, Paul decides he has to do something. He decides he'll ride a motorbike around Australia. However this is done by plenty of people and isn't really a big enough challenge or justification to leave his wife and kid for the time it takes. So Paul sets off on a motorbike that runs on used cooking oil designed by the University of Adelaide on a circular journey around Australia. Betty (the bike) isn't too powerful and can reach a maximum speed of around 80km on the flat roads and less on hills and mountains. It's no smooth ride and other road users aren't too happy to be stuck behind him and aren't averged to abusing or throwing things at him. Of course it wouldn't be a Paul Carter tale, if plenty of stuff didn't go wrong along the way.Two thirds of this book covers the trip, the first few chapters have a few other stories such as a drunk fan at a book signing for his previous books, turning up to the airport for an important must catch flight without a valid driver's licence, the birth of Lola his daughter, living with an eccentric cat and having a cockroach crawl into his ear canal.
I thought it was more like someone's personal dairy, interspersed with lots of expletives. I have read a few motorcycle travel books, and this was by far the worst.I would not read another of his books.
I preferred the earlier autobiographical stuff. Just as many close passes by the grim reaper but it felt very thin and uninteresting all the same.
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