What defines a hardcore moto-traveller?

In keeping with fellow riders Matthew and Megan’s comical post on what they believe makes you a proper ‘adventure-rider’, as full-time riders, we’ve also been inspired to contribute (tongue-in-cheek). Please feel free to add to the melting pot!

You’re a serious moto-traveller if:

• When you’ve ran out of toilet roll, it’s goodbye socks.

• Your reaction to cold showers is “Oooh, the water pressure’s good!”

• You’re always on the scrounge for plastic bags and get excited about those ones with strong handles. And Zip-lock bags are the future; they rock your world. (A wild criterion, we know!)

• Sourcing a truck for your broken bike when marooned on the roadside just becomes a routine formality.

• Getting blown off the road in gusting winds, missing a wild animal racing across your path by a hair’s breadth at 50mph and negotiating 75 gravel hairpin bends in the space of eight hours, is just a normal day.

• Starting your day in sub-zero icy conditions at 4,500 metres, wiping a smattering of snow off your visor to ending up on sand in temperatures over 35 while enduring your own personal summer inside the suit is all in a good day’s ride; what you’d call biking bliss!

• You’ve experienced enough coffee, milk and boxed wine explosions inside your pannier so you’ll ride no distance without brown parcel tape or an equivalent.

• You’ve been towed bike-to-bike at least once.

• There’s no length to which you won’t go in order to smuggle your ‘five a day’ fruity lovelies across a country’s border.
• You’ve mastered the ‘Survival’ level in a foreign language; precisely enough to ask for what you need but not enough to understand the response.

• Having total disregard for road rules when: undertaking, overtaking in the face of oncoming traffic or on blind bends is simply no biggy when the road users of vastly varying speeds on single carriage ways demand it.

• Riding in the hard shoulder’s dirt is your preference over the highway, particularly to steer clear of the drunk, drugged or non-licensed ‘loon bags’ in some foreign countries.

• Keeping schtum, playing dumb or even ‘not quite there’ in front of a fake cop has become the norm to prevent these time-stealers hindering your riding day.

• Like in the film Avatar, you fuse naturally with your motorcycle like a mythical Greek creature; half man, half moto.
• When you’ve accidentally ridden more miles over days or weeks at a time than your derrière or woo woo can handle.

• You love your wheels like a person, sometimes more than your peachy partner.

• When your ‘marvellous other’ informs you that your moto-trousers reek of ‘crotch’, you casually dismiss it but wonder why that just doesn’t bother you.

• Rocking up to a civilised establishment like a cafe, with a face smeared in dirt doesn’t compel you to seek soap and water first. You place your food order with the ‘afternoon shadow’ and then locate the toilets.
• You develop a knack for seeking out the nearest aluminium welder.

• You consider home as anywhere you kick the side-stand down.

• You are convinced that you’re the cat with 99 lives having been saved from yourself by your moto-angel more times that you’ve had hot dinners.

• When your instinctive reaction to crashing is, ‘Jeez, I hope my bike’s okay and still rideable’ before checking for personal injuries.

• Outrageous flirting has become a highly entertaining and necessary pastime, even if it means you’re only saving a resultant $3 USD off your room.

• You’re (as a woman) prepared to display all levels of feminine charms—like wildly waving your hair around and over-the-top giggling—knowing they’ll often work wonders as distraction techniques with male traffic police insistent on seeing your full complement of papers.

• You can summon real tears in erupting a mini thunder storm on your face so as to rapidly retrieve your parcel of moto-parts from the clerk in foreign customs.
• You hear excitement in your tone when talking to others about bead breakers, the Motion Pro tool and tyres. (Yes, although you’re out there, you should really get out more!)

• You deliberately source a ‘Love hotel’; incredible bang for your buck because rooms to rent all night are cheap and they usually offer great bike security!

• You’d rather sleep rough next to your motorcycle than take a comfy bed and leave your wheels unsupervised on the street.

• Better still, you’d rather park your wheels in your room for the night.

• Flashing your blindingly bare backside while crouched near a busy motorway is something you’ve become increasingly comfortable with when nature calls.
• When hungry enough, chicken’s feet and knuckles—bobbing around in your bowl of watery soup—make quite the satisfying appetizer!
• You’ve dined on pasta with jam or rice coated in mustard at least twice.
• The thought crosses your mind that it might be time to travel a little farther afield in sourcing some actual nutrition when you haven’t been for a poo for two weeks.