Interview

David: How many miles did you cover in a day?

Chinese Cycle Club

Edmund: I could cover seventy-five — eighty miles a day easily, and I’ve done as

high as a hundred and ten when it’s necessary. Then I stayed for a month in New Orleans to live the life and see what it was like there. I had a nice little apartment in the French quarter. I had money from selling my business, and that was financing this next step. Then I bicycled down in through Mexico to Vera Cruz, and I took a boat from Vera Cruz to Yucatan. It’s just a couple of days trip.

David: You took your bike with you?

Edmund: Sure, on the boat. That’s your baggage. Then I bicycled all over Yucatan. I went to Chichenitza, Uxmal. I did sketches and drawings of those ancient buildings, and I got satiated with that. Then I rented a little Mayan beach house, and lived in it for about three or four weeks on the beach outside of Progresso, which is the port-of-entry for Yucatan by boat. Then I made my way back up to Mexico City, with long bicycle hauls every day.

David: How long has it been since you’d left New York?

Edmund: Several months. It took me less than a month to get to New Orleans. Then I took a plane from Mexico City to Los Angeles. I was running low on dough, and didn’t want to go over that long desert. It’s a tremendous amount of desert stretch, and I actually had to replenish my funds. I got a job at Universal Studios as a designer, and I don’t remember where I lived, but I got a place to stay. I used to bicycle to work over Mulholland Drive into Universal Studios. After I got some money saved up, I quit that job. They didn’t like me, and I didn’t like it.

David: You were doing costume design?

Edmund: Yes. I worked on about three pictures while I was there.

David: What were the pictures?

Edmund: Oh, they were terrible monstrosities. (Laughter). It’s embarrassing to even discuss them. But that’s how I began to find out what studio life was all about.

David: How long were you there for?

Edmund: I don’t remember exactly. It seemed about six months to me. I was probably doing other things at the same time. I’ve always liked freelance work, and that was nine to five. So I didn’t like that about it. But then I had enough money so I bicycled from L.A. up to San Francisco. I came up the coast through Big Sur, and when I got to San Francisco I bought passage on a freighter going to the Philippines.

I had about two weeks left before I sailed, so I bicycled all the way up to Jenner, through the Northern section of California. I went to see all the great redwood forests, and the whole coastline. I came back to San Francisco and shipped out on this freighter. I was twenty-one days at sea. I shared my room with a Japanese businessman, and the only other passengers on the boat were a missionary, his wife, and one child. I was reading Emanuel Sweedenborg, and the Church of the New Jerusalem, and his writings about angels. He was a Swedish philosopher.

David: What was your motivation for going to the Philippines?

Edmund: That’s where the boat was going. I mean, I was on a trip. There was no motivation. There was just – I’m on a trip. I’m going to circumvent this globe, and use my bike as much as I can, and just any way I can. I don’t know where I’m going. I was reading a lot of Oriental philosophy and things about India at the time. And I knew I preferred the experience of India, and the Far East, over Europe. But anyway, I was headed for the Philippines. I didn’t want to go to Hawaii. I had no goal. I read the boat shipping lists, and here was a boat going to the Philippines, and I said, ” That’s it.” I could get a passage on it, and I could afford it, so I did it.

Hong Kong Harbor

I took my bike, and we left. The boat stopped in Manila first, and we stayed there for a week. I bicycled around Manila, and up into the mountains to a resort area called Bagio, and then I came back down. Then we went to the island of Sebu, and then to the island of Mindinaou, spending a couple of days in each place. So the boat was your hotel. Then it was going to Hong Kong.

So I went to Hong Kong, and I checked into a Russian hotel in Kawloon, which is across the bay from Hong Kong proper, and it’s teeming with population. Somehow or other, word got around that I was taking a world tour with my bicycle. There was a little article in the paper. One of the sailors on the boat must have talked to some news person in a bar, and before you know it, there was this little announcement, and shortly thereafter came a knock on my door. There stood a very handsome boy in a white linen suit, with a very chic tie. He introduced himself and said he was John Yon. He was president of the Boy’s Bicycle Club of South China, and he said that they were very intrigued with what I was doing, and would I please come to a banquet with them.

And they arranged this banquet for me. They had a big banner up that said, “Welcome Edmund E. Kara – World Cycling Tourist!” (Laughter). And there were thirty boys that were all bicycle enthusiasts there. We took a ninety-mile bike trip together, thirty guys and myself, through the “New Territories,” as it was called. It was a wonderful day. They all made speeches at this banquet, and they all did these incredible stunts with their bicycles. They piled their bicycles up in pyramids – they had benches made into pyramids with their bicycles on it. They did all kinds of head-stands, hand-stands, toushy-stands, (Laughter), anything you could think of on these bikes. We all had to make little speeches. I have photographs of it.