Moto Love: How We Survived Each Other

Motorcycling Around the World

The grueling satisfaction of long days, side by side on motorcycles, can make or break a relationship. Life together on bikes is an extraordinary adventure, packed with more highs than lows. Every time I ride with my partner, Jason, I love him more—even on the days I loathe him. He and I are five years into a two-wheeled story that’s still unfolding.

“Hi, I’m Jason,” said the man with a defined body. When I met him on a scuba excursion in Egypt in 2000, I was 19 years old. He was 31, and I did everything I could to impress him. It wasn’t until the last day of our trip—when he hit me with his four-wheeler in the Hurghada Desert, breaking three of my ribs and puncturing a lung—that he gave me the attention I’d wanted. Getting run over by a guy is the greatest reason to stay in touch.

We never defined success by our income or ZIP code, and neither of us seemed cut out for domesticity, so we decided to live on the road. We didn’t have children and weren’t married, so why not take an 18-month, 80,000-mile trip through 21 countries in the Americas? I bought Pearl—a factory-lowered ‘01 BMW F 650 GS—because I liked the color. It matched my helmet, much to Jason’s exasperation. Amusingly, Jason used my bike as our pack mule and saved his ’08 BMW F 800 GS for “tech”—a camera, its lenses, and a drone. “If I want to be better wife material, this is how I do it,” I thought as we rode onto the container ship destined for Uruguay.