SOME HOLIDAYS ARE ABOUT taking one's ease. Some holidays aren't, and I have just had one of the latter. To go and see the 2025 Women's Ashes I decided to travel the hard way to the MCG from Sydney, all in all 2,495km in a scenic loop, on a motorbike a bit too small for touring. Why? Why not?

One way to describe it is the legs: Sydney to Gundagai, an unpleasant struggle in the heat down the Hume Highway, then Gundagai to Cooma over the mountains via the Snowy Mountains Highway. A completely spectacular ride and a (doubly-significant) high point of the trip, though one that tested the engine of my motorbike, struggling for air in the altitude. Cooma overnight and into Victoria to Cann River, through forests, and the long road west into Melbourne, squinting into the late evening sun, finishing the day exhausted, with city roadworks, and an enforced hook turn. An easy afternoon of Melbourne to stay at Echuca. Echuca through the Riverina, flat wheat fields and isolation, emus and whirlwinds, Narrandera and the central west, the plane museum at Temora, and a final night in Cooma. From Cooma, through Bathurst where the endurance race was on, and the motorway back to Sydney.

Another way to describe it would be the physical experience. Yamaha's SR400 is nobody's idea of a touring motorbike (though some make even worse choices than me). It's a very light, upright-stance, single-cylinder bike ideal for city riding, but that struggles up to 100km/h and will do 110km/h only with a bit of encouragement. I had a backpack full of water, warm clothes, and spent a lot of time hunched like a jockey. The very best riding was in isolation, in the rural roads of the Central West and the Snowy Mountains, where I could choose my speed and pick my line through curves, the worst was the Hume Highway where mere violence rules and the law is a figleaf over vehicle mass. 10 litres of fuel tank (with another 2 reserve) and a range of ~200km means a lot of mental arithmetic, careful route planning, and a lot of stopping for fuel.

Or yet another, way, in terms of consequences. I didn't expect the trip to be painless. Still, in Adaminaby I stopped by the side of the road to adjust my bag, hit a piece of gravel, and went down at walking speed. A truck driver who was stopped helped me up, checked me over, and bade me on my way towards Cooma, where I discovered I couldn't weight bear on my leg; so a trip to the Cooma Hospital emergency to be x-rayed, and an unplanned overnight stay above a pub in town. I have no broken bones but a gigantic bruise, and a lump the size and colour of an avocado.

And finally another way, in terms of metaphysics. Don't read Robert Pirsig: Zen is not the kind of book that has dated well outside the 1970s, and it was culty back then, but do consider longish, demanding, focus-requiring tasks to have some value in their own right. To go riding is to reduce the number of things you can actively think about to a very very few, largely what is in front of you, or immediately behind. It was a much needed few days of focus.

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