HOW IT GOT STARTED

Ever since I was a little kid I have always loved to travel! During each summer vacation my parents carried me over thousands of miles in their car on the Central and Eastern European roads, from the Lower Danube and the Black Sea all the way to the land of Thuringia and the shores of the Baltic Sea – these were the limits of that time, imposed by the dreaded Iron Curtain. I remember that every evening, whether in a roadside camping or a city hotel, I was enthralled following the upcoming route on the map, only to recognize it live the next day by reading the road signs and the nameplates of the places we were passing by. I’ve been so positively affected by this thing that more than twenty years later, while riding or driving on some of the very same roads, I discovered in surprise that I could still recognize landscapes, curves or villages as if I saw them only one day before.

That’s how the passion was born!

Once I grew up, I continued that travelling tradition on my own while also being able to enlarge the map. From the Bosphorus to Castile and the Peloponnese to Scandinavia I crisscrossed the European continent both on motorways and narrow rural roads, seeking less the mainstream tourist attractions rather than trying to capture unspoiled nature and regular people. I totalled this way hundreds of thousands of miles driving a lot of cars, starting with a tiny and vetust cheap one up to comfortable premium makes, until one day when, being inspired by a two-wheels adventure tale, I suddenly felt I was still missing the very profound and authentic core of travel.

That’s how the motorcycle got into my life!

Today I love the sensations of freedom and independence I feel on a given morning finding myself somewhere on a deserted road, heading to unknown places and unforeseen events, not knowing what is expecting me after the next curve or where I’m going to sleep tonight. These are the moments when I have the entire day and the whole map in front of me, calling me to discover new landmarks and encounter problems I’ll have to solve relying solely on my wits and skills, without any help from a travel mate or a benevolent stranger. I mostly travel alone, disconnected from the past, the future and the rest of the world, living intensely each moment and mile of the road, blending the images that are rolling in front of me with the feelings I get from my other senses: here is sunshine and I’m melting in the heat, further along it’s raining and the wind is blowing hard, somewhere I breathe deeply the scent of flowers or the sea, elsewhere it smells like shit and so on.

That’s how I ride!

During each travel I’m pushing my limits riding as many hours and miles as I’m able to, always looking forward to the next day and its awaiting events, always craving to go farther into the horizon. And while I’m not on the road I’m often spending my time seeking information about places I haven’t been yet to, conceiving new route options or calculating miles and riding hours for my future travels; other times I’m just watching the map reliving my past adventures in order to find the right words to tell their tales, which I gathered here under probably the most appropriate title of what I’m actually doing:

“Chasing the Horizon”!