Because adventure doesn’t end with the kickstand down. Gear, guts, growing old disgracefully — and one very opinionated cat.
Biker Banter is the personal writing side of MotoMoku — where the rides become essays and the kilometres become something worth reading. These aren't ride reports or route guides. They're the thoughts that show up when you're two hours into a desert highway with nothing but road noise and your own head for company.
The writer is Asad Mir, a 55-year-old GenX expat based in Dubai. He's been riding motorcycles in the UAE since 2004, currently on a BMW R1250 GS Adventure called Manchalee. His writing tends to use motorcycles as a lens for other things: ageing with some dignity, raising children who are now leaving home, the strange freedom of being middle-aged in a city that never really slows down, and the quiet philosophy available at 5:00 AM on an empty desert road.
Some posts are funny. The one about getting emotionally invested in a karak chai at 1 AM somewhere in Deira after a solo night ride — that one lands well. Some are heavier. The piece about riding the morning his daughter left for university in Canada, using the open road the way some people use the gym or a whisky — that's a different kind of writing. And some posts fall somewhere in between: honest, specific, a bit odd.
The Biker Banter archive keeps growing, and the cards below are the whole run, newest first. The topics wander: what it means to be middle-aged in the Middle East, the oil change that became a life metaphor, why UAE bikers voluntarily set their alarms for 4:30 AM, getting a licence at 55 with knees that objected, the true cost of two years of ownership once every receipt went into one spreadsheet, the ninety kilos of motorcycle I did not invite, and a woman named Ate Laura who held a household together for eighteen years and then left with the cat.
You can read any post directly from the cards below — they open in a side panel. No new page load, no losing your scroll position. Search by keyword or filter by year if you're looking for something specific. New posts go up when the rides produce something worth writing down.
Everybody asks what the bike cost, and I always had that number ready. The gear and the licence I planned too. There was one number I did not plan, and for two years I have been telling people it was twenty-five thousand dirhams. Then I put every receipt into one spreadsheet. It was fifty-five. And the servicing — the expense every rider warned me about — has cost me nothing at all.
I am afraid off-road, and it is not the sand's fault. My bike weighs 268 kg. There is a new one that weighs 178. That is ninety kilos of difference, about twelve of which is petrol I chose to carry. I thought this was my private confession — then I read BMW's own press release and found they had already given it a name.
I first sat on a motorcycle more than 45 years ago, in Pakistan, on my cousin's Yamaha 100. My licence is 2 years old. What the research actually says about riders who come back at 55 — we crash less, and we break easier — and the three words my old boss from bomb disposal used to explain what to do about that.
If your group only rides every two weeks, your bike is parked thirteen days out of fourteen — that is storage, whether you call it that or not. What UAE summer quietly does to a parked motorcycle, the real cost of every storage option in dirhams, and what eighteen months in a 5,200 AED inflatable bubble actually taught me.
Before I rode a motorcycle, I could not see them — especially the single headlight at night. Three confessions from my years as a car driver, the numbers behind Abu Dhabi's new delivery-bike rules, and four things every one of us can do for the riders who bring our dinner in 45 degrees.
August in the UAE: 38°C at 3:30am, a bike seat like a frying pan, and a full safety jacket that turns you into slow-cooked kebab. Why the off-roaders' armour-vest trick is only half a solution on asphalt, my compromise with physics, and the only two riding windows that exist.
A Dubai rider was caught at 290 km/h doing wheelies in a t-shirt — his bike now costs Dh50,000 to release. Before laughing too hard, I have my own yellow-line confession to make, a phone call about followers, and a simple lesson: before any panga, remember who is waiting for you at home.
Every weekend, UAE bikers willingly set alarms for 4:30 AM. It sounds insane until you experience empty roads, cooler desert air, sunrise light, karak chai, and the strange brotherhood that exists before the rest of Dubai wakes up.
Ate Laura came into our lives in 2007 and stayed long enough to become family. When she finally returned to the Philippines in 2025, she didn't go alone — she took Moku and two rescued strays with her. A story about loyalty, love, and the people who quietly hold our homes together.
A Dubai-based Gen X biker rides Canada for the first time — renting a BMW GS, cruising Ontario backroads, and discovering that the biker spirit is universal, whether you're dodging camels or riding past cornfields.
My youngest daughter is packing for university. As she turns her page, I realize I'm turning mine too. Empty nesting hits differently when you're a middle-aged rider in Dubai — but the throttle still asks the same question: what next?
My BMW Manchalee was overdue for an oil change. As the dark, sluggish oil poured out, I had a sudden realization — I'd been treating myself the same way. At 55, neglect is the enemy. Not age.
At 55, living in Dubai means riding a high-tech German machine on perfect roads while nursing aching knees and a growing collection of reading glasses. Being middle-aged in the Middle East is a paradox — and somehow, a strange kind of freedom.
There's something about late-night karak chai in Dubai that feels like therapy. As a Gen X rider trying to undo decades of walk-it-off conditioning, I've learned that a paper cup of sweet chai at 1AM holds more power than a dozen TED Talks.