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 currently has seven posts. They cover topics including: 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, a Canadian riding adventure that surprised even the rider, and a post about 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.
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