First Pub on the Right
David Irish Anderson
Pure Ink Press (2025)
ISBN: 979-8987586631
Reviewed by Paul Knobloch for Reader Views (10/2025)
One night in a little pub located in Minturn, Colorado, David “Irish” Anderson, adventure guide, educator, and author lays forth a plan for a motorcycle trip that will take him and his cohorts all the way from Cork, Ireland to the very tip of South Africa. That itinerary makes Paris-Dakkar seem like a weekend stroll, so I was eager to see what ensued in First Pub on the Right.
It’s obviously no spoiler for me to tell you that his marriage was one of the casualties of this epic experience, but the book is about much more than his relationship with his wife, important as that is. It will end up taking six years for Anderson to deal with all the lodging, camping arrangements, tools, currency, bureaucratic red tape, and other hassles, but the author and his wife Sarah, are finally able to set off in Spring of 2013, as Anderson recounts in the diary entry from May 18, which he lists as “Day 5.”
The author and his wife ride through the lush green countryside of the UK, occasionally treating themselves to a B&B, and finally end up in London, where it dawns on Anderson that he won’t be seeing any of his family or friends for quite some time. But that does not deter him. I was impressed when the author, making his way through the Netherlands and Belgium, tells the reader that he had decided to eschew any and all GPS, realizing that getting lost can sometimes lead one to the most rewarding places.
I was expecting the chapter called “Zeb and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” I have never known any serious biker who has not been in a major spill. After this nod to Pirsig’s famous tome on Zen and motorcycle repair, we witness our first accident as Sarah hits the asphalt. It’s then that we meet Zeb, skydiver, mountaineer, and typical of the sort of Bohemian one encounters on a road trip. After a bit of extemporaneous philosophizing from Zeb, who puts the crash into perspective and encourages Anderson to forget about the repairs and instead focus on the present and his beautiful wife, he takes the advice to heart: he and Sarah spend half of their day at a local sex museum.
Anderson does a great job describing the beauty of Kastraki, in central Greece, with its cliffs and stunning landscapes, but the break-up is right around the corner, and by the time we get to Israel, infidelity rears its ugly head, altering the course of the author’s marriage permanently. Crushed by what has happened, he nevertheless soldiers on alone.
Some of the experiences recounted in the following chapters are exhilarating, especially the story of how he ran out of fuel in Aksum and a young boy helped him out of his predicament. The boy tells Anderson he’d never experienced anything like the thrill of the speed he felt when riding on the motorcycle. So, the author puts him back on the bike and rips through the desert at 180 kmph! Safe? Maybe not, but it’s the kind of thing every kid dreams about.
My favorite passage in the book comes when the author is finally approaching Cape Town near the end of his journey. A young girl catches his eye from within a ramshackle dwelling, and, as Anderson puts it, peers into the “depths of his being.” What followed was an empathetic and thoughtful consideration of the plight of people in the third world, and how westerners, flush with obscene amounts of wealth and every frivolous commodity one can imagine, have no business spouting such simplistic notions as, “Pick yourself up by your own bootstraps.” I believe that many Americans have yet to develop compassion like this, which is essential as this country’s behavior is often the root cause of others’ misery. Anderson is to be commended.
More than a travelog, First Pub on the Right takes us past the tourist attractions and amazing sights. Like the work of Donald Richie and other great travel writers, Anderson does more than give us a report. He uses this experience as a conduit for growth, reflection, and transformation, making each kilometer of his odyssey worth every penny, pound, and kwacha.