From Boardroom to the Sahara: A Late-Life Reset Through Motorcycle Travel
Adventure Rider Radio – Motorcycle Podcast
Adventure Rider Radio | Adventure Motorcycling
4.9 • 960 Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A Solo Motorcycle Journey Across Morocco, Europe, and the Sahara Desert in Search of Freedom, Simplicity, and a Slower Way of Living
What happens when someone who’s spent a lifetime chasing schedules, productivity, and control suddenly trades it all for the uncertainty of the open road on a motorcycle? After retiring from finance, Rob Bridges set off alone across Morocco, Europe, and the Sahara Desert on a six-month motorcycle journey—only to discover that the hardest part of the adventure wasn’t the riding, but learning how to slow down.
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About the Podcast
Since 2014, Adventure Rider Radio has shared adventure motorcycle travel stories, Rider Skills, Deep Trouble episodes, tech and gear features, and conversations with riders from around the world. New episodes of ARR are released every Thursday, with new episodes of RAW released monthly on the 21st.
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| 0:00.0 | There's a strange thing that happens when you leave home on a motorcycle. At home, most of us feel like we're in some kind of control. We know where things are. We know where we're going. We know what time we're supposed to get there at. The fuel station is where it was yesterday, the grocery store, where it was last week, and your bed is waiting for you at the end of the day. And because all of this feels familiar, |
| 0:23.6 | we believe we're in some kind of control. But maybe what we really have is routine. Maybe what we |
| 0:31.2 | really have is a set of handrails around us. Familiar roads, familiar language, familiar people, |
| 0:37.3 | familiar systems. |
| 0:38.5 | And when you ride away from that, when the map sends you to the wrong place, when the phone |
| 0:43.5 | dies in the rain, when the hotel isn't where it's supposed to be, and you're tired and you're |
| 0:48.6 | hot and you still got another hour to ride, those handrails start to disappear. |
| 0:56.8 | Rob Bridges spent years in the boardroom side of life, finance, responsibility, pressure, planning, and decisions that had to be made very, |
| 1:02.5 | very carefully. Then, he retired early and set out on a six-month motorcycle journey that would |
| 1:08.3 | take him south into Morocco and to the edge of the Sahara. |
| 1:12.0 | On paper, it sounds like freedom. But the thing about freedom is that it's not always easy |
| 1:18.3 | to experience when you've spent years being rewarded for control, when your life has been |
| 1:23.5 | built on control, the same habits that help you build a career, support your family, |
| 1:29.1 | and keep everything moving the way it should can also follow you onto the road. In fact, |
| 1:34.8 | they're difficult to shake. The planning, the urgency, the need to stay on task, the feeling |
| 1:40.1 | that sitting somewhere is a waste of time. And some people will tell you that if you really want |
| 1:46.6 | to experience travel, not just cover distance, but actually be changed by the places you go |
| 1:52.9 | and the people you meet, at some point, you've got to loosen your grip. I'm Jim Martin. This is |
| 2:00.4 | Adventure Rider Radio. Stay with us. We got a good one for you. Hi, this is Charlie Borman. Norley-Schoolmarker. Simon Mannikam. Justin Venn. Frank Johnson. Jocelyn Snow. Ted Simmel. Simon Pady. Jimmy Lewis. Jimon Lewis. Timmy Coates. Chris Birch. |
| 2:18.3 | Simon Thomas. |
| 2:19.3 | Lisa Jarvis. |
| 2:20.3 | Quentin Smout and you're listening to Adventure Rider Radio. |
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