Paying the Price: a review of Free Ride by Noraly Schoenmaker

July 22, 2026July 22, 2026 / 650thumper / Leave a comment

If you are into adventure motorcycling, you’ve heard of Itchy Boots. Even if you aren’t into adventure motorcycling but ride a motorcycle, you’ve probably heard of Itchy Boots. In fact, if you aren’t a motorcyclist, will never be a motorcyclist, and aren’t into motorcycling at all (adventure or otherwise), there’s a good chance that you’ve heard of Itchy Boots. Her YouTube Channel to date has 3.36 million subscribers. In other words, more people subscribe to her channel than cable television. More people watch her videos than those who watched Supergirl. I suspect more people follow her on social media than the Kardashians. I might be a little off on these estimates but she’s popular! Which begs the question, Why?

I must admit, I missed her first season as she travelled through the Middle East, the subject that largely occupies Free Ride. But I watched avidly her journey up through South America, Central America, and North America to Alaska on a Honda CRF 300 Rally. She’s a new rider, so I don’t find any technical instruction from her videos, but I admire her courage and determination to travel as a solo female rider through some very punishing and dangerous geography. She’s inspiring. If you find yourself sitting at your desk (or armchair with your tablet or phone) and dreaming of doing adventures to far-off exotic lands, her videos are excellent fodder for those dreams and might even provide for you the gumption to get up out of your armchair and realize them. If this blond, blue-eyed woman of 5’6” can travel solo through drug cartel Mexico, maybe I can get out there and have my own adventure. With that in mind, I’ve recently bought a Honda 300 Rally.

And if you aren’t interested in travelling except vicariously, her videos help restore your faith in the common goodness of most people around the world. They are the antidote to depressing legacy news and our cynical social media feeds.

It is therefore all the more ironic that Noraly’s life-defining moment was an act of betrayal. (Spoiler alert.) She discovers that her husband has been having an affair with a colleague and in the fallout she loses her marriage, her house, and her job. Stripped of these three pillars of identity, she sets off to Delhi in search of a way forward. What results is, as the subtitle indicates, a 20,000-mile journey that changed her life.

The book opens with her stuck in the snow-covered Alborz Mountains of northern Iran. She’s out of her depth and has already dropped the bike several times. She’s not prepared for the cold and is freezing. No one is around and she’s in trouble.

There I was, all alone, halfway up a mountain, with a motorcycle that was stuck like a stubborn goat, refusing to take another step. I feverishly tried to remember when I’d last passed a village. Or a house. A person. Hadn’t I seen a house just before turning onto this hellish road, on the other side of a field? But the memory turned increasingly murky and disjointed with every attempt to bring it into focus. Eventually, I gave up and faced my only option. All I could do was walk up the mountain and find help, any kind of help. It was the best plan I had. (6)

She does find help, or help finds her. She comes across two shepherds, and although she doesn’t know any Farsi, she manages to explain her predicament. They walk with her back to the bike and one hops on and manages to get it moving again with the help of Noraly and the other shepherd. They not only get her out of that pickle but also provide her with warmth, food, and shelter for the night.

This is a refrain throughout the book. She gets into trouble, and the good-will of strangers gets her out. In this way, she restores her faith in others. In literally putting her life in their hands, she rebuilds the trust she lost in the betrayal of her husband and his lover.

There are other therapeutic aspects of her journey. Her description of the squalor of India’s slums is so vivid that it must have put her own plight into perspective.

The first few miles I rode that day were through the ugliest part of India that I’d ever seen. Small trash fires burned everywhere you looked on the side of the road. The smell of burning plastic was even worse than that of the smog, and every time I passed a fire I involuntarily held my breath. I passed landfills with gaunt, sick cows eating trash, and little kids poking around in it. The houses were patchworks of plastic, cloth, and pieces of wood, and even from the road I could see that most of them were on the verge of collapse. Young women—barely more than children themselves—walked to and fro with bags of construction debris balanced on their heads, dressed in gorgeous, colorful saris. Their elaborate, graceful garments contrasted sharply with their dull, tired eyes. (46)

She stays in some pretty rough “accommodations” and endures a lot of physical hardship, from extreme heat to frigid cold, dust, rain, bugs, air pollution, etc. . . . you name it. Adventure motorcycling is not for the faint of heart. This reader wonders if there was, in these self-imposed hardships, a sense of expiating guilt for her own decisions in the past, and perhaps for some denial when she sensed that something was wrong in her marriage. A woman always knows.

Indeed, as the book and the journey near their end, she concludes:

My broken heart and the pain that had plagued me from the start of my adventure began to disappear into the background, and the bad memories with it. Finally, I could see that I hadn’t only lost, I had also gained. Every lie he had told hadn’t just been a lie, and every act of betrayal not just a betrayal. I had been right every single time, because I had sensed all the untruths from the start. I hadn’t been crazy or paranoid. I could trust my gut feeling. It was the only thing that hadn’t let me down. I welcomed my intuition with open arms, like an old friend. (196)

Free Ride documents Noraly’s personal journey through grief and healing as it describes her physical journey through South, Central, and Western Asia. The two narratives intertwine but unfortunately are not balanced. As a piece of personal creative non-fiction, Free Ride is relatively void of emotional content. Her attention is largely focused on describing to us the physical details of the ride and the people she meets, and the personal insights are few and far between. For example, her account of finding out about her husband’s affair gets less than two pages, and while she returns to it periodically throughout the book, she never really gets down in the dirt and the mud and weeds of this journey as she does with the one on her bike. This is a shame because the verbal arts lend themselves best to describing emotional life and thoughts. (Think of the difference between a book and the movie version of a book. We don’t get the interior life of a character in the movie as readily as in the novel.) And I have to say, at one point in reading Free Ride, I wondered what I was getting from it that I couldn’t get from watching her video series of the same content.

There were also a few small technical issues with the narrative. At one point, I couldn’t remember how she ended up with Basanti, her trusty Royal Enfield Himalayan. That is to say, I couldn’t remember her making the major decision to buy it and went searching back through the pages to find that major event. I’ve looked and looked, and all I can find is when she’s handed the keys: “It wasn’t until after the wedding, when I was standing in Delhi and Irfan handed me the keys to Basanti, that I realized that what I had bought from him was freedom” (43). Perhaps I’m missing something and a reader can point me to the page(s).

Part of that confusion might be because the narrative through the first 50 pages or so is quite fragmented as it jumps back and forth in time and setting between the events of the end of her marriage, the end of her job, discussion with family and friends about her decisions, and even her past as a student of Geology and her program work. These are real structural challenges that required deft editing.

Speaking of editing, there were times also when I found the English a bit . . . pedestrian. I know the version I read is a translation, but if I’m being picky—and I am—I’d say some sentences don’t quite work. There is a tendency to lead with a long adjectival phrase and have the verb come very late.

After finishing up a plate of laghman for the umpteenth time on this trip and lingering to stay in the cozy heat of the restaurant a little longer, I got ready to leave Murghab. Even though there was a hotel down here, and earlier in the day I had considered staying around for a night, I wanted nothing more than to leave. My desire to escape the bleakness of Murghab, suddenly longing for sunshine, won out.

See what I mean? This is not Noraly’s fault but her editor’s, and my sense is that the book was rushed to press a little fast. I hear she is completing her second book as I write this and I hope the language gets a little more attention in it.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how I came by Free Ride. A good friend of my wife was living in London last year and, knowing I was an avid motorcyclist, went in search through a few bookstores for a signed copy for me. Thank you Christa! I don’t mean to sound critical of the book but honest and fair. I did enjoy it overall, especially as I read it in snatches as I completed my end-of-term marking and could dream of the summer and retirement, the purchase of the Honda 300 Rally, and my own touring plans.

Noraly reminds us that you don’t have to be an expert rider to be an adventure rider. You don’t have to have a $30,000 motorcycle with 120+ HP. You don’t even have to have a YouTube channel with 3M subscribers. You just have to have a big heart and a burning desire to explore the world. There is nothing holding us back but fear.

Hello Honda

April 2, 2026 / 650thumper / 1 Comment

I add a Honda CRF 300L Rally to the stable.

The first and only time I’ve ridden a little dirt bike was at SMART Riding Adventures back in 2017. I did a day class there and they start you in the morning on a Yamaha 230. It was so much fun that I later wrote to a riding friend that it was better than sex. She said I must be doing something wrong, but I stand by my initial impression. On a little bike with knobby tires, you can do stuff that you’d never attempt on a bigger bike, like muddy ruts, deep water crossings, and hopping logs. You can just enjoy the ride without all the performance anxiety. Like I said, better than sex.

It’s taken me almost a decade, but I finally have a trail bike in my stable. It’s my retirement gift to myself. A budget bike isn’t much of a reward for 30 years of teaching in public education, but I’m not complaining one bit. It’s going to be a really fun season. My purchase last week was the culmination of about a year of research and rumination, including a lot of YouTube reviews, discussions with fellow riders, and some demo rides. The light ADV market is the hottest segment at the moment and there are several excellent bikes to choose from. Below is my rationale for how I landed on the Honda Rally. If you are in the market for a light ADV bike, some of this research might be helpful to you.

Assessing my Needs

Of course, the first thing you have to decide in the purchase of a new bike is what you will be using it for. In fact, maybe that’s the most important part. I wanted a light trail bike to ride on the network of dirt roads and ATV trails here in Quebec and neighbouring Ontario and New Brunswick. I’d been trying to do this with a midsize bike since I began riding and it wasn’t going great. As Chris Birch says to people who show up at his clinics on a heavy bike, “You didn’t buy the wrong bike. You bought the wrong first bike.” There’s a reason Clinton Smout and his instructors at SMART put you on a little dirt bike to start: it’s a lot easier to learn off-road skills on a 300-lb bike than a 500-lb bike, and I would add, a lot safer too.

But I was also looking for a light ADV bike too, one that I could take on my solo adventures and not have to worry about getting stuck somewhere or being unable to lift on my own. A lighter bike is going to gain you access to more remote and technical riding than a big bike, and some of my retirement plans included that type of adventure. In sum, I was looking for a trail bike that could also cover long distances and do long days comfortably. I was essentially looking for a rally bike.

With that in mind, here were the contenders.

Kove 450 Rally

I got really excited when I heard you can get a competition rally bike for around $10G ($13G if you live in Canada). In the specs, it looked like the perfect bike. 449cc DOHC single with dual radiators, oil cooler, fuel injected, with a Bosch ECU controlling everything. The engine puts out 51 hp at 9500 rpm and 29.5 ft-lb at 7000 rpm.. It’s got a whopping 12″ suspension travel (high-seat model) and a whopping 8 Gallon fuel capacity over no less than 3 tanks (two up front, one in the rear) for a range of over 300 miles (500 kilometres), more than enough for even the most remote riding, all with a dry weight of just 320 lbs.! It seemed too good to be true and had many in the industry scratching their heads. I didn’t have any qualms about it being manufactured in China; Kove is not alone in that respect, and their performance in the Dakar Rally indicated good reliability. I sat on a Kove 450 at the Montreal Moto Show and it felt really good, exactly what I was looking for.

But this is one where the specs don’t tell the full story. I test rode one at La Classique Moto Fest last year. My first impression: it was loud! And for someone with only one good ear, the thought of riding this all day with the stock muffler was a deal-breaker. I could have perhaps got a baffle, but the other impression I had is that the experience of riding this bike is very raw. It’s vibey, and had head-shake at speed. Air management wasn’t great (more noise). In short, it felt like a race bike, which it is. I could have a ton of fun on this bike for day rides, but I think it would be very fatiguing on a long-distance tour, especially with the stock seat. As I write this, Craig Luke of I Think We Missed a Turn is preparing to ride the entire TCAT this summer on his Kove 450, and it will be interesting to hear how he gets on. No doubt he’s got the bike to get through whatever the TCAT throws at him, but I decided it was too much bike for me.

CF Moto Ibex 450

The bike everyone was talking about at La Classique was the CF Moto Ibex 450. It has everything hard core ADV riders have been asking for but no manufacturer was willing to make at the risk of cutting into the market share of one of their other bikes. It took a renegade manufacturer like CF Moto without a horse yet in the race to make the proverbial “unicorn bike.” It’s got a sweet sounding and smooth 449 parallel twin engine with a 270 degree offset crank for low-end grunt and a throaty exhaust note, fully adjustable suspension front and back, 18/21 tubeless spoked wheels, a slipper clutch, both ABS and CBS (combined braking system), a TFT display, rider modes, app connectivity . . . like I said, everything we’ve been asking for and for under $8000. Canadian!

The fly in the ointment? There really isn’t one, except maybe no cruise control, which is odd because it has ride-by-wire. That can easily be remedied by a throttle lock. It’s Chinese made, but I’m not calling that a fly. CF Moto has been making engines for KTM for a while now and we all know how reliable they are. [Pause for comic effect.] Okay, maybe that’s a bit of fly. Honestly, Honda’s reliability was a factor in my decision, but the real reason I didn’t go with the Ibex was that, at 420 lbs, it’s getting pretty close to the middle-weight bike I already have. (The Tiger stock 474 lb.) Like the Kove, the Ibex was a close second. I test rode one at La Classique and it’s a very impressive package. If I didn’t already have a bike and was aiming for another one-bike set-up, it would be hard to beat the Ibex 450.

Royal Enfield Himalayan 450

Gone are the days of RE’s reliability issues. When Fort Nine did a comparison of the top motorcycle manufacturers’ plants for cleanliness by analyzing oil samples taken from new models, he surprisingly found that Royal Enfield came out on top, even beating out BMW, who came up with the standards. So they seem to have turned their manufacturing around. And under maverick CEO Siddhartha Lal, the company’s fortunes seem to have also turned around. The third corner of this triangle is design and engineering, and I can’t speak to that directly but can say that everyone who rides the 450 Himalayan is surprised by just how capable it is, despite its spec sheet. Itchy Boots was one of its first converts when she rode a pre-production model into the Himalayan Mountains, and Adam Reimann took it through the Nepal and could often be heard praising “Sir Enfield” for “getting it done.” In other light ADV “shootouts,” the Himalayan holds its own. In particular, reviews seems to praise the characteristics of the engine, and while the suspension is not adjustable, the stock set-up seems to work surprisingly well.

I haven’t test ridden a Himalayan, but it was never on my short list because of the 432-lb curb weight. That’s about 100 lbs more than what I was looking for as a fun trail bike. The Himalayan is listed as a light ADV, but like George Orwell, who self-identified as “lower upper-middle-class,” the Himalayan is an upper light-middle-weight bike. It also doesn’t have a lot of ground clearance, which is important when you’re riding trails. My sense is that trying to take the Himalayan 450 on trails would be like when I tried taking my 650 GS on them, and that didn’t go well.

KTM 390 Adventure R

Honestly, probably the best off-road bike for the money in this segment is the KTM 390 Adventure R. It’s got 45 hp, WP suspension, floating axial brakes, cornering ABS and traction control, rider modes, 10.7″ ground clearance, and a 5″ TFT display with connectivity to your phone, all for a very competitive price. At 388 lbs, it’s not as light at the Kove, but significantly lighter than the Ibex and Himalayan. Certainly, when you look at all that, it seems a no-brainer to go for the KTM.

But here’s the thing, and I’m not even going to mention the chocolate camshafts. Even before KTM had its meltdown, I was never a KTM guy. Why? Partly because I swim against the crowd, but mostly because I’m more of an explorer than a racer. These engines have their specific characteristics, and the KTM is a high-strung, high-octane, high-compression, high-revving engine that likes to go fast and be aggressive. At 62, my fast days are over and I was never aggressive. Or maybe I was never fast and my aggressive days are over. Either way, that bike just doesn’t suit my personality, and I think that’s an important but indefinable quality in a bike. Do you see yourself in a bike, or put another way, does the bike reflect something of you? Maybe this is what others call brand loyalty, but I call it Narcissism. And while this all feels very new and unfamiliar, I think I’m a Honda guy.

Honda CRF 300L Rally

I was initially tipped off about the Honda 300L by my buddy Riley from The Awesome Players. I think it was St. Patrick’s Day 2025, so about a year ago, and we were sitting on my porch having a Guinness and talking—what else—bikes. He’d just participated in Traction eRag’s 5-day training course out in BC. They run a fleet of Honda 250s and report no burnt clutches and very few mechanical issues. When I started watching the reviews, I kept hearing about “Honda reliability.” I’ve always fixed my own bikes, more out of necessity than good sense, and the idea of owning one that doesn’t require constant maintenance sounded appealing.

Aside from its reliability, there are a couple of characteristics of the Honda that I kept hearing in reviews. One is that, unlike the KTM, the Honda gets its power low in the rev range. This is really helpful if you don’t want to go fast but need torque down low to get up hills and over obstacles. The other is that the bike is very confidence-inspiring. That has something to do with the power delivery but also how the bike seems to carry its weight low. And at only 335 lbs, it’s one of the lightest bikes in the segment.

It’s only got 27 hp, so many owners immediately start trying to boost that with modifications to the airbox, ECU remapping, aftermarket exhaust, etc. even a complete new big bore kit if you want to have KTM-like power out of Honda. But I think those people are missing the point. Doing those mods will change the reliability and characteristics of the engine. Remember kids: it’s the tortoise who wins the race, not the hare. The only mods I might do to the engine would be to remove some of the Euro restrictions that are choking it.

Reviews also point out that the suspension is soft. Yeah, Itchy Boots rode one through South America, America, and most of Canada before finding out in Prince George, I think it was, that her static sag fully loaded was about 50%. When I decided to get the Honda, my initial plan was to buy used and put the difference in money into a suspension upgrade. Maybe an upgrade is somewhere in the new bike’s future, but there was only about $1000 difference between used 2021-24 models with 8,000K on them and a new 2025 model with improved suspension. At all of 150 lbs, I’m hoping the stock suspension on the 2025 model will be sufficient, at least for a while.

Other pros? The engine is supposedly surprisingly smooth for a single, and Honda have put a 6th gear in that serves as an overdrive. It will do 70 mph (120 kph), depending on wind direction, which is enough to get you to the dirt. The windscreen works quite well, and the headlight, although goofy-looking (some might say ugly), reportedly works very well, which is important on an ADV bike. Last but not least, I think the bike looks great. I like that Honda have gone back to the blue saddle on the 2025 model. You can see the rally heritage in its design.

Reviewers consistently call the Honda CRF 300 Rally either a “beginner bike” or an “old man bike.” As an older man who still considers himself a beginner off road, I think it will be a good fit.

Which bike would you choose and why? Is there another I should have considered? Do you have a new bike this season? Drop a comment below. I always like to hear from my readers.