Grace (BikeHedonia)

Absolutely! I also love riding around Laos on my 690 with random guys on the back of my bike, holding the shopping... the surprised looks from local teenage girls and old ladies are priceless.

Not strange at all! No lack of talent and ability in the pool. Laia and Maria are absolutely shit-hot riders who've been ripping it up their whole lives and, obviously, their skills absolutely rock. My observations were more focused on possible opportunity/confidence barriers that could be subtly deterring larger numbers of women from getting into motorcycling for pleasure, especially when we're coming to it as adults rather than being lucky enough to have early opportunities to give it a go. There's Laia and Maria and then there's us normal people ?

I think riding a motorbike for pleasure is a different skill set than getting around town on a scooter - certainly here in south east asia, every woman can ride a scooter (usually also off road to the village, loaded with a couple of children, her neighbour, 3 chickens and one pig). When you go to transfer to an actual motorbike, they have fantastic roadcraft when in dense traffic but the skills required for managing a taller, heavier motorbike at higher speeds, with bigger wheels, different steering geometry, different centrifugal dynamics, a clutch and proper gearing - these are quite different skills that need to be learnt. And I find that most ladies here, who have been riding scooters since they were children, still find that switch very intimidating. Is it because it's just new? Is it because all the men in their lives have told them that girls can't ride big motorbikes? I dunno. But I find that confidence and risk appetite are really influential factors when it comes to learning to ride a big bike and, more importantly, whether you enjoy doing it. Whereas I LOVE watching little girls fanging around on pee wee 50s like they're indestructible. They're so small that they don't even know that apparently girls can't ride motorbikes. They're just little wild animals, having fun, learning about physics in the dirt, and I absolutely love it. I reckon, teach your daughter to ride dirt bikes with the boys and even if she never grows up to be a rider, she'll never be intimidated...

Sure is.

What is the most off-the-hook modification you've ever made to a motorcycle? And DID IT WORK? I have been reflecting on this since I saw my friend's lockdown project. Business has been dead under covid19, so he's been using the spare time to solve the main problem he was having with his scooter - lack of power. First he put in a carb jet from a TZR, but something more was needed. A supercharger, perhaps? Um yes, that's a supercharger off a Subaru. See the red steel pipe? Well at first he used radiator hose but the suction created by the supercharger was so great that the radiator hose collapsed in on itself. No problem - just use steel. Nobody was harmed in the modification of this scooter (yet). Coming soon to a drag race on a Chiang Mai superhighway near you...

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to harangue all your small-daughter-having friends into getting their little girls motorbikes and encouraging them give it a red hot go!

I remember someone asking him, "was racing Dakar hard?" and he laughed and said no - because all he had to do was ride. In fact, it was the only race event where he actually put ON weight (from all the Argentine barbecues he would stop at between the end of the stage and the bivouac point). The thing that made it easy was having a support team to do the maintenance and logistics. "No, Dakar wasn't hard," he said. "Not compared to all those years racing small enduro eventus in New Zealand every weekend - you'd drive down on Friday night, race Saturday and Sunday, work on the bikes on Saturday night, and drive back on Sunday night, and then get up on Monday morning and go and do your real job. That was hard." So, kudos to him for having put in the hard yards to get to a place where he gets to ride motorbikes for a living, and for being a nice bloke too.

Oh that makes more sense now - you're not exactly a guest. Legit ?

Unfair advantage ?

Until my luck runs out or I find another way to live. I'm keeping an open mind.

Nah I think they were mostly just curious. Lone white girl repairing spotlight wiring on 690 Enduro at 2.30am on a dock in Larantuka... seat off, tools out. The police chief showed up with his homies, toting semi automatic weapons, asked some fierce questions.... and then asked for a selfie. Still, when you're female and on your own in the middle of the night, you don't want too much attention from 5 armed men who are used to getting their own way. So I said thanks and legged it. My experience of tipping in Indonesia seems to have been a little different. In nearly a year in Indonesia, I never paid a "tip" or a bribe to any police officer or official, and none ever insinuated that I should. The sole exception were the port police (I'm not sure if they're actually real police even, they have a different uniform etc). Two of them asked me if I had "permission" for my bike and I just smiled and said yes of course I do, all my paper's legit. ? And off I went. But in general, Indonesian police have turned out to be friends and generous hosts - people who bought me lunch, went dirtbiking with me, invited me for karaoke, offered me free accommodation. They'd have been offended if I'd tried to give them money, as I think would the kepala desa of the various villages where I spent time. To be honest, I think people mostly felt sorry for me because I was alone and didn't have a husband to look after me. Of course it's different in the more touristy areas - especially Bali, where everyone's out for a commission - but I stayed away from those areas as much as possible.

For bamboo, coconuts and uninvited visitors.

Those conditions are magnificent - truly picturesque. But you must be tougher than me. I nearly keeled over from hypothermia in a typhoon in southern Thailand... what's your secret for staying warm?

Roadside vulcanisation?? Sweet as! Hey Indo is the land of scooters, you were doing it right. I learnt early on, never try to follow a local on a scooter. They will go places KTMs fear to tread.

You are also fortunate, though, to have something to stay home for - to have something to lose. ? However if I makes you feel any better, here's a photo of me trying to sleep under my motorbike in a hotel carpark because I couldn't afford the hotel and it was the only safe, well lit place I could in a dodgy eastern Indonesia port town after my ferry docked at 2.30am and the police took a bit too much interest ? I don't think I'm really going to be much of a lifestyle influencer at this rate haha

Thanks guys! Nice to meet you all, always happy to talk motorbikes. I have a KTM 690 Enduro R which I've been riding around the world for the last three years - although to be fair, I've only gotten from Sydney to south east Asia so far. What can I say, there are a lot roads to explore between Sydney and the subcontinent. So anyway, I'm basically a homeless person with a motorcycle and machete these days, and that suits me fine. Obviously covid19 has made my rootless existence a little difficult at the moment, with all the borders throughout south-east Asia having pretty much slammed shut overnight. So for the moment I've gone to ground in Thailand (roof over my head, food in my belly) and reverted to cockroach mode while I wait for the borders to reopen and life to resume. Nothing else to do now but keep sharing all the ridiculous stuff that I didn't write about before because I was too busy riding my motorbike. You can google BikeHedonia if you're in lockdown and bored out of your tree. There are some good stories, like the one about the crazy guy with the machete in the middle of the night in East Timor (good times) or that time I broke down in the Gulf of Carpentaria (a region of crocodiles, barramundi, and Darwinism, for the non-Australians). And more to come. Cheers, Grace

Haha nah mate my skill to stubbornness ration is heavily weighted on the stubbornness side! ?

In the mountains of central Sulawesi, Indonesia, before I got serious about offroad and added full knobbies + machete. But not a bad spot, eh? People call the village Ollon, because someone once said it looks a bit like Switzerland.

Haha I was expecting the "and this is a week later!" photo to be nice and dry, not wetter. Well done.