Free ride : heartbreak, courage, and the 20,000-mile motorcycle journey that changed my life
Edition
First Atria Books hardcover edition.
Languages
In English, translated from the Dutch.
Publication Information
New York, NY : Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC, 2025.
Physical Description
xiv, 269 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : map, color photographs ; 24 cm
Uniform Title
Summary
"By the YouTube sensation with more than two million followers, the inspiring account of a woman in her thirties who, in a moment of personal crisis, embarked on an epic, transcontinental motorcycle ride-and along the way found a new sense of purpose. Noraly Schoenmaker was a thirty-something geologist living in the Netherlands when she learned that her live-in partner had been having a long-term affair. Suddenly without a place to stay, she decided to quit her job and jet off to India in search of a new beginning. Her plans were dashed when she fell quickly and helplessly in love: with a motorcycle. Behind the handlebars, she felt alive and free-nimble enough to trace the narrowest paths, powerful enough to travel the longest of roads. She first rode toward the Pacific, through the jungles of Myanmar and Thailand, then into Malaysia. Rather than satisfy her appetite for the open road, this ride only piqued it. She shipped her bike to Oman, at the base of the Arabian Peninsula, and embarked on a journey through Iran, across Turkmenistan along its border with Afghanistan, over the snowy peaks of Central Asia, and into Europe, all the way back home to the Netherlands. She covered remote and utterly unfamiliar territory; broke down on impossibly steep mountains; and pushed too many miles along empty roads, farther and farther from civilization. But through her travels, she discovered the true beauty of the world-the kindness of its people, the simplicity of its open spaces, as well as her own inner strength"--
Notes
Translation of: Keerpunt.
Contents
- Prologue: A wreck of broken dreams
- The wedding
- Baptism by fire
- A ridiculous plan
- Spread your wings and fly
- Not one of the desert folk
- To the lions
- Secret service
- Pink slippers
- The Wakhan valley
- One with the pavement
- No-man's-land
- Silent loneliness
- Three loop-de-loops.