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Croatia. That was the whole plan.

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Eighteen years with a license, five weeks on an R 1250 R, nine days - and one word as a travel plan.

There was exactly one condition, and it was one word: Croatia.

No return date other than the number of days. No bookings. No route.

What there also wasn’t: experience.

I’d had my license for eighteen years. It says what you’re allowed to ride, and on mine that included the big bikes. So for eighteen years I carried it around in my wallet. I never rode a thing.

Ahead of the thunderstorm over the Grossglockner

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I was up at seven. I’d already checked on the thunderstorm the evening before and talked it over with other bikers at the hotel, and in the morning it was confirmed once more: a thunderstorm front was moving in, over the Alps by the afternoon, and we wanted to stay ahead of it.

So off we went. A little after nine we were on the bike, and it was the best decision of the day. Right at the start there was a reservoir along the way, murky, but somehow pretty.

The wind that makes you lean to go straight

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On the third day I left the most beautiful road in the region behind me and rode to the sea. We set off a little after ten from the hotel near Nova Gorica, a short stretch of Slovenian freeway, then Rijeka, then nothing but coast road via Crikvenica and Senj. The coast was the road.

No regrets. Croatia is coast. Coast is views, a feast for the eyes, a coast road wrapping itself around the rock formations.

The coffee, the bakery and a very spontaneous ferry

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The next morning at seven I was standing in a kitchen that wasn’t mine, experiencing a collapse of basic services.

No coffee.

I don’t want to downplay this. The apartment had everything: stove, refrigerator, dishes, pots, an electric kettle. What it didn’t have was anything you could make coffee from. No machine, no pot, no instant, no pods, nothing.

I opened the cabinets one after another and looked behind the pots. Lisa was still in bed and commented on the situation from the next room. She whined and cursed, and she was right. I’m not quoting her.

A room in an hour

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

You don’t get off the ferry in Ancona. It spits you out.

Six in the morning, engine noise, an announcement in two languages, neon light on the car deck telling you how you look. A few hours of sleep, the rest half awake between the ship’s diesel and a child who at some point had something important to announce. Unshowered for twenty-four hours. Salt on my face, salt in my hair, probably salt in my jacket too.

Everyone knows the Stelvio Pass. But do you know the south side of the Vršič?

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Some passes people talk about. Others, you talk about afterward.

The Stelvio is the first kind. 48 hairpins on the Prato side, every one of them numbered, with signs that count you down like a NASA launch. Everybody’s seen the photo: switchbacks draped down the mountainside like an extension cord somebody tossed aside. Everybody’s been there or wants to go. On a Saturday there are more GSs at the top than on a dealer’s lot. I know. I was one of them.

A table without a host

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Farther north, then west. The morning was a reminder of why you should avoid coast roads in August.

Rimini.

I had set Rimini as the goal. Then came the crowds of tourists, and I felt like gagging.

I want to be fair. People live there who can’t help it. But Rimini in high summer, on a motorcycle with no fairing, with a passenger and luggage, is a string of traffic lights, hotel driveways, pedestrians with air mattresses, scooters with no discernible rule book and a flow of traffic that doesn’t deserve the name. It’s hot, it’s standing still, and a boxer cylinder sitting right next to your shin in stop-and-go traffic at 35 degrees Celsius quickly becomes a personal matter.

A friend and a camera

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Down to the coast at Viareggio, to a friend.

The seventh day had a destination, and it was neither a pass nor an attraction. It was a person I hadn’t seen in a long time: the friend in Italy who had already figured into the plans back on Pag. Croatia was checked off, the condition met. Everything that came now was a bonus, and a bonus gets to visit a friend.

42 degrees Celsius in Lombardy

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

From the sea, north. Lisa and I left Viareggio a little before eleven. The day began at the sea and ended 357 kilometers later in Trentino. First to Carrara, then through the Lunigiana, then onto the freeway and over the Apennines to Parma. Beyond Parma the plain began.

Lombardy in August is an oven. The bike’s display showed 42 degrees Celsius, plus haze, no wind, freeway and expressway, and the air that hits you is warmer than your skin. On a naked bike there’s no defense against it. That isn’t a headwind. That’s a hair dryer aimed at your whole body for three hours. Every forty minutes we stopped, drank, poured water over our summer base layers so something would cool, and rode on. That was almost worse than Morocco.

The final boss and 707 kilometers home

Wed, 28 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Five weeks on my own bike. Before that, eighteen years of not a single meter. A naked bike. Lisa on the back. Luggage. Late summer.

And I rode up to the Stelvio Pass.

It was Sunday. Around ten we left Comano Terme, heading north, and at midday we took a break of a good hour in the Val Venosta. At Prato allo Stelvio the Prato side of the pass begins.