The Adventure Guide
Female Biker’s Guide to the Galaxy of Adventure
How to Survive Beginner Bloopers, Mountain Passes, Sketchy Hostels, Questionable Boyfriends,
and Loose Gravel
New to adventure riding? Curious about dirt bikes, long-distance travel, or your first cross – country trip solo?
Have questions about skills, experience, gear, rookie mistakes, and how to survive your first big
adventure?
Whether it’s learning to ride, taking the leap of faith to go on a big motorcycle adventure, completing your first tour, or setting off into the sunset to ride around the world (or, heck, around the corner), the Female Biker’s Guide to the Galaxy of Adventure is THE book for you.
Balancing between useful, brutally honest, and thoroughly hilarious, this book is for women riders who need three things: helpful resources, a no-nonsense approach to motorcycle travel prep, and a dose of real-life experiences and examples on how to survive beginner bloopers, mountain passes, sketchy hostels, questionable boyfriends, and loose gravel. And, perhaps, a daiquiri.
A mix of a travelogue with workable tips and advice, the Female Biker’s Guide to the Galaxy of Adventure is coming out in January 2025 – and you can pre-order your copy right now!
Curious to have a quick look-see? Here’s an excerpt from the book:
Strapping my two tatty backpacks on the tail of a Zongshen 150 – a small Chinese motorcycle I’d just purchased for a whopping $1,200 in a washing machine shop in Nazca, Peru – I felt two things.
First: unbridled excitement. I’d just learned to ride a motorcycle precisely a day ago, and by “learned to ride”, I mean I got a basic two-hour lesson from a kind (and cute) Californian boy whom I met at a hostel, and I was about to embark on a Motorcycle Journey, even though I didn’t quite know where. I felt like a seriously stoked puppy who’d seen fresh grass for the first time and wanted to roll about and frolick, grinning from ear to ear.
Two: an octane mix of fear and adrenaline. I’d just learned to ride a motorcycle precisely a day ago, I was about to embark on a Motorcycle Journey, and I didn’t quite know where. I felt terrified and overwhelmed, and my inner critic was yelling all sorts of obscenities at me, such as “who the hell do you think you are to be doing this, you scruffy moron”.
I can’t remember if my hands shook a little when I swung my leg over the saddle and started up the engine; they probably did, which would explain why I proceeded to stall, then start again, the bike jerking forward in an ungainly manner and nearly tipping over.
And I hadn’t even left the hostel parking lot yet.
Still, I managed to steer my magnificent navy-blue 150cc beast into a busy street bustling with bikes, cars, trucks, tuktuks, and pedestrians, promptly crash at a dizzying speed of 5mph, survive a few corners and a roundabout from hell, find my way out of Nazca, and set my skinny tires on the Pan American highway, its cracked, grey concrete uncoiling into the desert horizon.
Three months later, I found myself on the Bolivian border.
Five months in, I crossed into Argentina, then Chile, back up to Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, North America, Europe and, eleven years later, I’m still as obsessed with motorcycle travel as I was that day in Nazca.
I didn’t know anything about bikes back then: my 150cc motorcycle seemed like a mighty machine, my luggage consisted of two lumpy backpacks strapped down by a piece of string, my destination was…well, vaguely South, and I couldn’t tell you what a carburetor was or how would you go about locating it. It didn’t occur to me that I needed a navigation device (roads mostly had signs, most of the time), I wore construction boots and a crappy Taiwanese-made helmet that didn’t quite fit, I genuinely thought that riders I met along the way wore suits made by NASA and were surely professionals and, for some inexplicable reason, I did not envy their humongous BMWs or their Africa Twins – instead, I lusted after their…tankbags, so much so that at some point, I strapped my sleeping bag on my tank so it would look a bit like a Touratech situation, and felt very smug about it because I thought that made me a Real Rider.
And, in many ways, my ignorance was bliss: I didn’t worry about long distances or where I’d sleep that night or the next, or how I’d change a flat tire or adjust my chain or negotiate with cranky border officials, or avoid unsafe scenarios, or deal with rugged terrain and the fact that Southern Bolivia essentially has very few paved roads and it’s hella cold in Tierra del Fuego in September, and there are pickpockets in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and landslides in the Andes, and other riders can sometimes make you feel small and ridiculous – because I simply didn’t know those things were a factor in the first place.
But in many ways, I often wished I had a little adventure book – my own moto Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, if you will – to consult on matters of mountain passes, tire treads, loose gravel, sketchy hostels, selfish boys, riding gear, making money while traveling, and trusting my instincts, as well as keep me company when the going got tough, lonely, or straight up weird.
This is that book.
If you’re about to get your motorcycle license or go on a round-the-world bike trip solo, or do your first long ride, or perhaps set out across country with your partner or go someplace wild or join a motorcycle tour, and you need an adventure companion and a friendly guide – useful, hilarious, at times absurd, but always brutally honest – then this one’s for you.
PRE-ORDER NOW:
