<strong>Introduction</strong>
<strong>The Road Ahead</strong>
<em>“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” </em> -- Marcus Aurelius
I was all at once five, ten, thirty, fifty years old -- every age I’d ever lived, suddenly present, layered and vivid. Each scraped knee, each burst of uncontrollable laughter. Failed attempts, late-night conversations that mattered, loving kisses, heartbeats, half-forgotten smiles of those I’ve loved and lost -- now lit me from within.
The world around me faded, yet my awareness had never felt sharper. Nothing else existed. No need to analyse, to perform, to explain. Just a quiet, steady sense of being -- undiluted, unfiltered, <em>enough.</em>
139 mph!
It was pure, existential bliss.
And that’s what bliss really is when you take away the marketing -- just the absolute clarity of not wanting to be anywhere else.
No words will ever quite reach it. Language, for all its cleverness, tends to trip over its own shoelaces when it tries to describe these moments. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe these moments exist outside the frame. They aren’t there to be captured. Only lived.
But how did I get here?
I’d only met the bike twenty-four hours earlier. A snow-white Hayabusa bought hastily in Salt Lake City. It was still a stranger to me, and yet somehow, in the hundred-mile stretch back through the Utah desert, we’d found each other. Not with spectacle but with quiet inevitability. I didn’t tame it. We simply came into step.
By the time I reached the flats, it didn’t feel like a new bike anymore. It felt like fate. The kind of fate you don’t discover until you’ve stopped resisting the journey and started listening to it.
I’d come a long way from the UK for this -- logistically, yes, but also emotionally. This wasn’t some performative stunt or a tidy box ticked off a bucket list.
This wasn’t about records. Or speed. Or glory. This was about something far deeper: the moment I stopped running from fear and chose to ride alongside it.
I was there to say, I’m alive. And this -- this full-body presence, this hum of courage -- is what that feels like.
The Bonneville Salt Flats, for the uninitiated, look like somewhere between the moon and an overexposed dream. Thirty thousand acres of shimmering white silence. The skeletal remains of an ancient lake, dried out over millennia and left behind like a secret. In the early 20th century, someone clever realised it was perfect for speed trials, and the legend of Bonneville was born. Since then, the area has become synonymous with records and extreme speeds, hosting legendary events like Speed Week, where drivers push their vehicles to the limit.
All the life-changing moments, the pain, the doubt, the chance meetings, all the people I’d met, all the twists and turns of my recent life -- had somehow conspired to place me right there, at that starting line. It was a certainty I felt in my very core. On the salt. Gloved hands. Full leathers. A bike I’d only met twenty-four hours earlier.
I would not let anything get in my way that day -- so woe betide anything that tried to stop me!
Eighteen months earlier, I was afraid to go over fifty miles per hour.
Not metaphorically. Literally. A twist of the throttle and my stomach would lurch. My brain would shout, <em>What the hell are you doing?</em>
I wasn’t born a rider. I didn’t come to it young and wild. I learned at seventeen for practical reasons -- just as a way to get to work. I passed my full test at twenty-four, then didn’t touch a bike again for over two decades.
But life, with its impeccable sense of timing, brought me back. At first tentatively. Then with increasing hunger. And eventually, with total surrender.
I recall the moment the Existential Biker was born. I remember the name coming to me in a dream. But when she became real? That was Bonneville.
The wait at the start line was both a moment and a lifetime. The horizon buzzed. The radio hissed. I knew -- as sure as I was breathing -- that I was at peace with my fate, and I accepted it. There were no words left, just the senses. The sun, the salt, the horizon all thundered through my veins.
And then -- nothing. The kind of silence that isn’t empty, but full. Not the absence of noise, but the absence of resistance. No inner chatter. No fear disguised as logic. Just presence.
I wasn’t there to cheat death. I was there to acknowledge it.
And in that quiet agreement -- me on the bike, death on the salt -- we nodded to one another. No rush. No retreat.
This run didn’t start at the salt -- it started with a friend whose flame lit the way. Just before the run, he’d told me about the fire I needed to feel -- that sense of unshakeable purpose, total commitment, and all-consuming focus on what lay ahead across those wet salt crystals. I’d heard his words at the time, but I didn’t fully grasp their weight until now.
He called it <em>the flame</em> -- that force inside him that burned through fear and doubt, turning them into raw energy and unstoppable momentum. He’d passed it to me, and in that instant, I felt it -- a flicker deep in my gut, sparking to life. A fire that would consume the moment, reduce it to pure energy and action, and incinerate fear, doubt, and any idea of failure.
And then the flame rose. Small. Steady. Certain.
It said: <em>RIDE.</em>
That’s what Bonneville gave me. Not identity. Not adrenaline. But clarity.
The kind that only arrives when you surrender the illusion of control and choose to move forward anyway.
This book was born in that moment.
This isn’t a manual for riders. It’s not a book of philosophy lectures either. You don’t need to be a motorcyclist. You don’t need to know Epictetus from Elvis. You need to have known fear -- and wondered how to keep moving anyway.
Because life unfolds the same way the road does. Not in theory. Not in epiphanies. But mile by mile. Sometimes in beauty. Sometimes in chaos.
And now and then, if you’re paying attention, it offers a flash of clarity that rearranges everything.
I realise now how that moment changed me and what it taught me. Not to be fearless. Not to chase danger. But to live with eyes open, hands steady, and heart anchored in the present.
That’s the real teaching.
At its core, Stoicism asks one disarmingly simple question: <em>What’s in your control?</em>
Your answer to that question shapes your life more than almost anything else.
It shaped mine.
Out on the salt flats, I understood the risks. I’d done the sums. Heard the warnings. “That bike’s too powerful.” “You’re not ready.” “The salt’s unpredictable.” Fair points, all of them. But I’d already made peace with the only bit that mattered: my mindset, my presence, my willingness to meet the moment as it was -- not as I wished it to be.
It wasn’t recklessness. It was presence. The conscious choice to stop deferring life. To stop waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, <em>You’re allowed now.</em>
I’d waited long enough.
That’s what this book is really about.
Not about riding motorcycles, it’s about learning how to ride through life itself. With a bit more grace. A touch more grit. And a fair helping of curiosity. With enough awareness to know when to push, and enough trust to know when to let go.
It’s about building a quiet kind of resilience -- the kind that doesn’t shout. Just an honest reckoning with who you are, what you value, and how you show up when life starts to wobble.
<br />The journey unfolds in four parts, each a pillar of the R.I.D.E. roadmap:
PART ONE – RESILIENCE
How we meet obstacles and make sense of setbacks.
PART TWO – INTENTION
How to live with presence and purpose.
PART THREE – DIRECTION
Where we choose to go and how we stay aligned.
PART FOUR – EXPANSION
The lifelong practice of growth, reflection, and becoming.
This is a book for those who want to lean into life’s curves rather than brace against them. To trade survival for steady, joyful momentum. To ride, not just roam.
We begin with resilience -- how we meet obstacles and make sense of setbacks. Then we’ll talk about intention -- how to live with presence and purpose. From there, we explore direction -- where we choose to go and how we stay aligned. And finally, expansion -- how to cultivate the lifelong practice of growth, reflection, and becoming.
This isn’t about being perfect. Just progress. Not becoming someone else. Just becoming more fully <em>yourself.</em>
You might be wondering -- why motorcycles? Why not just write a book about Stoicism?
Because a bike strips things down. There’s nowhere to hide.
Every corner teaches you something about fear, control, or trust. Every mile demands attention. Every ride is a lesson in impermanence. In humility. In focus. In joy.
There’s something about that combination -- the vulnerability and the freedom -- that makes it the perfect companion to Stoic thought.
You don’t need to love bikes to understand that. You just need to have lived long enough to know that life isn’t simple. That it hurts sometimes. That beauty arrives in odd places. And that you want something solid to hold when things fall apart.
That’s what Stoicism offers. Not tricks. Not perfect answers. Just a way to stay upright when the wind picks up.
The road ahead isn’t straight. It isn’t smooth. But it is <em>yours.</em>
