The garage

Four bikes,
twenty years.

One commuter, one that started everything, one I can't bring myself to sell, and one that stopped distance being a problem. In order.

4Bikes owned
132,500Kilometres, all in
2Still in the garage
2006–2026Span
The black TVS Apache 150 on its side stand on grass, red-rimmed wheels, nine years of city commuting on it

2006 — 2015

TVS Apache 150

The commuter

9,000km on the clock

The first bike I paid for myself.

A budding engineer on a first salary buys what he can afford, and what I could afford was an Apache. That was the whole calculation.

It was a commuter, and it never pretended otherwise — office in the morning, city in the evening, nine years of that. What it gave me wasn't adventure. It was the plain fact of being able to go somewhere without asking anyone first. A couple of times I took it past the city limits and came back a little surprised at myself. Mostly it just did the job, without complaint, for nine years.

Nine thousand kilometres in nine years tells you exactly what kind of riding this was.

Sold 2015
The green Kawasaki Ninja 300 parked on a wet hill road, monsoon greenery and low cloud behind it

2015 — 2016

Kawasaki Ninja 300

The one that started it

6,500km on the clock

My first superbike, and the shortest ownership of the four. It didn't need longer.

I knew almost nothing about riding when I bought it. What I knew was that I was excited in a way I hadn't been about a machine before, and that weekends had suddenly stopped being about staying home.

The Ninja found me roads I'd never taken and people I'd never otherwise have met. That turned out to be the actual point — though I didn't know it at the time. I was just enjoying it while I had it.

Six and a half thousand kilometres in a single year, after nine years and nine thousand on the Apache. The arithmetic tells the story better than I can.

Sold 2016
The black and red Kawasaki Z900 against a stone fort wall, a Venom-graphic helmet resting on the tail

Jan 2019 — now

Kawasaki Z900

"Z"

The one I can't sell

63,500km on the clock

A much-needed step up in capacity and technology — and the bike that turned a hobby into how I spend my life.

Three years after the Ninja, the upgrade I'd been waiting for. More capacity, better electronics, and the same raw appetite for riding underneath it all.

The Z is where exploring stopped being accidental. Routes planned rather than stumbled into. Touring taken seriously. It also gave me the people — riding groups to join, and eventually one to build: B.O.S.S., the Brotherhood Of Superbiking Souls.

Sixty-three thousand kilometres, and I took it everywhere I could reach. It's semi-retired from long distance now, doing the daily commute and the short sprints instead. I've never had the heart to sell it, and I don't expect that to change.

In the garage
The red and white Ducati Multistrada V4 standing in tall golden grass under a hard blue sky

Oct 2022 — now

Ducati Multistrada V4

"Yakira"

The one that removed the excuses

53,500km on the clock

The Z could cover distance. It just made you feel every kilometre of it.

After a few long tours I noticed I'd started planning around what my body could take rather than what I wanted to see. That felt like the wrong way round.

Yakira fixed it. Distance stopped being the thing I budgeted for. A thousand kilometres in a day became a decision rather than an ordeal — and that quietly changes what you're willing to attempt in the first place.

The four corners of India. Umling La, the highest motorable road on earth at 19,024 feet, where the engine breathes harder than you do. Bhutan, and the first time one of my bikes left the country. None of those were on any list until the bike made them look reasonable.

Fifty-three thousand kilometres in three years, most of them a long way from home. It's fun, it adapts to whatever the road turns into, and it has never once been the reason I turned back. I've stopped asking whether the bike can do it. The only question left is whether I can get the time off.

In the garage

Every ride in the journal was taken on one of these.

The journal lets you filter by machine. See it broken down by bike.