Over the stream into woods,
Over the hill into the village,
I travelled yesterday and I will today also;
My road is forever new.
Yoon Dongju (윤동주)
Hello, I’m Warren, writer and photographer of Motorcycle Paradise, a totally free and independent website about motorcycle travel. There is no sponsored content here. I’m not selling anything. I finance all my rides and gear myself.
I am not skilled as a writer so all I can offer you is honest accounts of my real experiences. My posts may contain questionable grammar or be misinterpreted by some visitors – sorry I am not a wordsmith. However my writing will be totally free of sales spin or requests to ‘like and subscribe’ which is rare in a world of marketing disguised as content from YouTubers desperate to appease a algorithm.
I started Motorcycle Paradise blog in 2006, however it’s roots go back to around 1995. It was originally a “home page” (as personal web sites were once called) when I first started using the internet. It never grew much until I rebooted it on Google’s Blogger platform ten years later. Now it’s a WordPress site with 45GB of motorcycle travel.
The name of the blog comes from the region I used to ride most Sundays; Northern Rivers, Australia. This area was once described as a ‘paradise for motorcycles’ by one of Australia’s leading motorcycle writers (The Bear) and that description stuck in my head.
The blog expanded considerably when I quit my career in 2013 to try ride my bucket list. After years of dreaming and weighing everything up I decided I needed to measure success in life by my values, not the opinions of others or community norms that people should seek possessions and display wealth. What was considered the dumbest thing I could do by many turned out to be the best decision ever. 2022 I was diagnosed with cancer. You never know how long you might have left to do what you dream about.
The good news is I had successful surgery and so far am in remission. After a break I have resumed riding motorcycles and have more or less completed my bucket list which is an incredible personal achievement. But I am not done yet and want to always be dreaming up a new ride.
I’m aware that most people are too lazy these days to read and prefer YouTube. I used to shoot video in the 90’s but realised I was producing things to entertain other people and never looked at the videos again myself. Most of the travel I did then is lost to me now.
That’s why I started this, to have a journal and record my rides and I find photos and the written word are what works best for this. i.e. blogging. It also gives me full control of my content and security of my data unlike free platforms where loss of data and hacking of accounts happens far more regularly than you imagine.
So while blogging might be out of vogue I quite enjoy doing my own little thing here.
Motorcycle Paradise is designed to be viewed on a PC. I try to deliver a reasonable mobile device version but it is a photographic web site, so is always going to be optimised for and look better on a PC.
Thanks for visiting.
