Shorter pieces, filed from the road.
Reflections, gear tests, things I notice when the bike is parked. Five to fifteen minutes each, usually. Each one is the written companion to a video on the channel — the long way of saying what the camera couldn’t.
Ten films for the long evening.
Ten films for adventure motorcyclists, arranged by what they teach rather than by quality. From The Motorcycle Diaries to Lawrence of Arabia.
Ten books for the tank bag.
A reading list for adventure motorcyclists, in roughly the order I would press them on someone new to the seat. Ted Simon to Marcus Aurelius.
Brave New World, and the small protest.
Huxley's 1932 novel, read on the bike. The soma economy, the Savage, and why a long ride alone is a small protest against the engineering of a soft life.
Why We Sleep, and what it has to do with the bike.
Matthew Walker on the science of sleep, and what eight hours has to do with not putting the bike down at the end of a long day.
Amor fati, at two-fifty.
Day eleven of the fast. Two hundred and fifty kilometres of freezing rain and hail from Oberon to Tumut on a route the AI chose. Five days to the ferry.
On not eating, while riding.
Sydney to Geelong, ferry across the Bass Strait, into Tasmania. Days one to nine of a thirty-day fast. The reasons, the risks, and the line.
Wisdom requires scars.
Mountain Lagoon and the Colo River, two hours northwest of Sydney. Trail braking, lion-tamers next paddock over, and a campfire on enlightenment versus ignorance.
Indoor cats, and the savage.
Christmas alone in a Yarramalong rainforest. ABS off, elephant turns badly, and the soma of comfort versus the meaning of suffering.
A safe place to get lost.
Watagans National Park, Darkinjung country, an hour and a half north of Sydney. A no-through-road, a wrong turn, and a country that forgives both.
What the course teaches and what it doesn’t.
An honest review of a non-sponsored Stay Upright adventure-bike day. Body position, picking up a dropped bike, and the limits of a one-day class.
Ten thousand dollars later.
Every modification on Hunter, what each one earned, and the rally brake hose I had to source from the UK.
Three thousand kilometres on a Himalayan 450.
Three months in. What works, what slips in the mud, and the gear-five-to-six transition that won’t stop annoying me.
The patience of gold.
How to pan, slowly. The Turon at eight degrees, the Chinese diggers, and why the first pan almost never comes up empty if you know where to look.
Pleasure, and the other thing.
A campfire reflection on the difference between pleasure and the quieter, internal version of happy. Hill End, twenty-eight pubs, the Bridle Track.
Spring equinox as actual new year.
Persian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian — a long history of treating this date as the reset. A short argument that we should too.
Sofala, and the river that gives.
Razorback Ridge, a sketchy crossing of the Turon, and a first pan that did not come up empty.
On starting.
The first video. A near-drop in a Newtown car park trying to decide whether to hug another rider, and a lesson in how anything begins.