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Instructions: Take one crazy American guy with one-arm, add one cute Japanese girl with a temper, shake well in a beach-buggy across Africa and what do you get?
- A Recipe for Disaster!
Or… a great new documentary film about love, life, and a complete lack of reason. Action, adventure, romance, and the meaning of life, all come together in this highly entertaining and politically incorrect documentary.
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Welcome to redbuggy.com. Here you can follow the adventures of our movie makers as they pilot their tiny beach-buggy 30,000 miles overland from Sweden to South Africa and beyond! Yoshiko and Tom weather the elements and meet the people. They experience everything from close encounters with big-game to a death-defying illegal entry into Sudan. And the only thing more challenging than keeping the car together turns out to be keeping its occupants together...
There is no additional camera crew, no follow vehicles, and no support team of any kind! From soldiers with AK-47's to irate elephants - our intrepid travelers go it alone. Through the tears and the mind-boggling physical challenges, Yoshiko and Tom keep their camera rolling.
Keep updated by joining our mailing list now. The film will be out in 2010, so stay tuned!
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Marika & I at the Grand Canyon
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Date: Sunday, November 15th, 2009
Time: 3:30 PM (15:30)
Place: Tijuana, Mexico
Weather: Hot and Dry
Temperature: 34° Celsius, 93° F
Enviroment: Urban Dessert
Buggy Condition: Happily in Use
Tom's Condition: Nostalgic
Yoshiko's Condition: In Love... Again
Equipment Condition: Honorably Discharged
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If my father had indulged my passion for motorcycles as a kid I probably could have competed professionally as an adult. I started much too late however and just dabbled with racing before my aspirations were distracted by real life. But I had a natural talent for bikes and I miss them.
I once aspired to a career in acting as well. In my late teens I moved to Los Angeles to become a stunt man but people told me that I had a 'young Steve McQueen' quality and that I should go for real roles. One of my few paying gigs was as an extra in a made-for-TV movie called 'Return of the Rebels' starring Barbra Eden (I Dream of Genie) on her way down, and Patrick Swayze on his way up. Barbra played the proprietor of a dessert resort - Patrick played the leader of a local hoodlum biker gang harassing her; I was one of his hoodlums.
At the end of the first day on location in the Mojave everyone piled on a studio bus to the nearest Holiday Inn an hour away. Patrick Swayze and I were the only two 'bikers' on set that had actually arrived on motorcycles.
- Looks like it's just you and me riding back. My name's Patrick, but my friends call me Buddy. I ride real fast kid, so try to keep up. I don't want to have to worry if you're splattered behind me on the pavement somewhere OK?
I just smiled...
- My name's Tom... and I'll try to keep up.
I was waiting patiently about 20 miles down the road when he pulled up ecstatically beside me;
- Tom, can you teach ME to ride like that!?!
- Sure Buddy, but it'll cost you a beer.
Patrick (Buddy) Swayze and I were inseparable for two weeks. With his professional-dancer coordination he quickly learned to ride fast, and he really appreciated my tips. He tried to get me a SAG card and a bigger role in return. We acted, drank beer, and drove our motorcycles way too fast. Then he went on to fame and fortune and I rode another one of my bikes around the world. Years later when I was a big-shot radio station owner in Sweden he came through Stockholm on a film promotion tour but I never called him; I don't know why.
Patrick Swayze's death on September 14th made me think about my own life. As a young teen a lot of people bet I wouldn't survive to my 18th birthday. Then at 18 they bet that I wouldn't make it to 21. At 21 my boss loaned me the cash to buy a brand new GS 1100 - the fastest production motorcycle ever built - on condition that he was sole beneficiary on a life insurance policy that he took out on me...
When I think about how many drugs I've done, how much beer I've ingested, how many motorcycles and cars I've crashed, how many fights I've been in, how many dodgy borders I've crossed, and how many times I've been shot at, threatened, operated on, and just plain written off... it really is a wonder that I made it this far.
Since my last update I've been in Africa, Asia, and South America. I just drove across North America in the Buggy again; this time with my daughter Marika - one of the best travel companions I've ever had. And the road winds on... but I'm tired. I need a place to hang my hat. I need a regular lover. And I need a source of income. I like exotic beaches and exotic women, but exotic countries rarely have real jobs... so I've decided to move back to LA; not very exotic but it does have beaches. I left the film industry and Hollywood as a young man on a motorcycle - I'm returning twenty five years later in a Beach Buggy with a completed movie in hand.
Perhaps it was my destiny all along?
And I'll import my own exotic beauty by the name of Yoshiko.
Earlier this year with a heavy heart I gave up on converting my tribal princess Mercy into anything resembling a Westerner. Coincidently - after a long silence - Yoshiko began writing to me again. It seemed like a sign so I spent the summer in Japan starting a book while she taught English to beginning Japanese students. We have a rocky history to be sure, but we have also seen the worst sides of one another and weathered things that most people can't imagine. We'll get a modest apartment in LA where we'll take whatever jobs we can get, keep trying to distribute the film, and play house.
So like a cat with nine lives, thus begins a new chapter for me that the odds were stacked against long ago.
Fame put only a mild dampener on Patrick Swayze and I remember how he used to try to keep up with me on his motorcycle at dangerously high speeds. He lived a proud life and he died around people who cared about him and that is as good an ending as I hope for. Ernest Hemingway and Hunter Thompson both blew their heads off in their mid 60s and I understand them. When they could no longer out drink, out drive, out fuck, and out fight most men it just wasn't worth getting up in the morning.
I've walked this earth my whole life with my pride and when that's gone you can have the rest. I figure I've got another twenty good years in me - but maybe Yoshiko will stretch that. And now another birthday has come and gone, another year; and the person most people suspected wouldn't make it to 21 is still here, respectfully reminiscing the many friends that have passed before him...
Rest in peace Buddy.
Pictures:
1) Patrick Swayze in 'Return of the Rebels'
2) I set one of my exotic beauties free this year.
3) Then unexpectedly regained a former.
4) And while we can never be sure of seeing tomorrow....
5) We can live our lives to the fullest today!
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