Taking chances, riding motorcycles: Moving abroad got me on two wheels and changed my life

I was in one of the greatest cities in the world, Seoul, South Korea, about to actually buy a motorcycle, a thought which, to me, seemed impossible, for as long as I could remember. All I had to do was pick up the bike and ride it through one of the biggest metropolises on earth, during rush hour, having never ridden a motorcycle on the road. What could go wrong?

I arrived at Samseong Station, in the heart of Gangnam, one of Seoul's bougiest and most bustling districts, just before 4 p.m. on a Wednesday in the spring of 2014. I lived just outside the city at the time, so I had been to Seoul before, but the sights, sounds, and smells still overwhelmed me, bombarding my senses as I exited the subway station. People flowed around me, like a river around a solitary boulder, the sounds of their footsteps echoing through the tiled subway staircase. On the street, buses and cars whizzed past, their exhaust fumes mixing with the smells of fish and rice cakes being sold outside the station's entrance. The sound and energy on the street was electric and overwhelming, and I absolutely loved it.

Moments later, James, the "large American" on a 300 cc SYM scooter, pulled up onto the sidewalk. We'd had a brief back and forth over the phone about the bike I'd be picking up — a 2007 Hyosung RX 125 SM — and, he assured me, the deal would go off without a hitch. He flashed a broad, friendly smile, and motioned for me to get on. My excitement was palpable; at last, a long-held dream of mine, one which I thought was firmly out of reach in my home country, Canada, was just a few moments away. Was this real? Was I finally about to actually buy my first bike? Without thinking twice, I hopped up onto the pillion seat and grabbed onto the back of his shirt, as we peeled away from the station.

Dreaming of motorcycles, learning reality

Like many millennial motorcyclists, I spent my teenage years (the early 2000s in Toronto, in my case) lusting after sport bikes. Despite having no close friends or relatives who rode, I became hooked when I was around 14. Speed Channel's "Two-Wheel Tuesday," the only real motorcycle-related programming on local television at the time, opened my eyes to a sport that was noticeably absent (at least to my youthful eyes) in Southern Ontario in the early aughts. Not long after tuning in for the first time, the brightly colored sport bikes of the late 1990s and early 2000s hit me hard and fast, and like with any good drug, I was hooked almost immediately.

My bedroom walls became plastered with pictures of everything and anything motorcycle-related. In particular, I fell hard and fast for road racing. A bright red Ducati 916 (cut hastily from one of the many motorcycle magazines I was beginning to collect) was sticky-tacked within kissing distance of my bed. Colin Edwards and Troy Bayliss battled one another at Laguna Seca above my door frame, Eric Bostrom's bright green Kawasaki ZX-7RR peered out at me from over my bookcase, and of course, Valentino Rossi's yellow Honda NSR500, the crown jewel of the whole collage, was located shrine-like, at the center of it all (not to mention the dozens of pictures of Power Ranger-like leathers, helmets and gloves which littered my bedroom walls). I began dreaming of a life on two wheels, and, after landing my first part-time job at a local grocery store a few years later, I slowly but surely saved my pay, dreaming of the bike I would eventually choose as my first.

"Hmm, the Honda RC-51 is a beast, and the Kawasaki ZX-7R is an absolute work of art," I thought to myself, "but the Suzuki DR650 really seems like a more practical bike, even though it's a little geeky looking. OK then, it's settled."

Wait… what's that you say? I need a credit card with a good credit score in order to buy one of these? And the insurance will be… well, this can't be right… $450 per month?!

After just over a year of saving my hard-earned supermarket money for a down payment, the naivete of youth (or at least my youth) had left me omitting some pretty important details in my bike-buying plans. I was crushed and, a year or so later, after another half-hearted attempt at buying a smaller bike, I left motorcycling, for the foreseeable future, where it belonged: in my teenage dreams.

Fast forward to just shy of a decade later, and in 2012, I was living out of my aunt's basement, in Cambridge, Ontario, about an hour and a half east of Toronto. I had recently gotten out of a toxic relationship and was still processing the death of my father, following a short and bitter battle with cancer. I was working temp jobs, mainly in factories in the winter, and landscaping during the warmer seasons, and was starting to wonder where it had all gone wrong. A large question mark loomed over my future, and while my interest in motorcycles had peaked and waned throughout my recently completed university career, I was still about as close to being able to afford one as I was when I was in high school. (In reality, much less so, thanks to several years of student loan debt.) Having completely given up on my dreams of riding, I had become numb to the sport entirely. I was a victim of some poor decision making, and a victim of a few things which I believed were beyond my control. Everyone has their problems, and in the early 2010s, these were mine.

It was around this time a friend of mine had taken notice of my slump and recommended I try teaching English as a second language in Asia. She had lived in South Korea for a little over two years, and while she admitted that the work was tough and the days were long, the experiences, she said, had changed her life.

"OK," I thought hesitantly, "I can… probably teach English to kids in Korea, right?"

After finding a recruiter, signing what felt like a thousand forms, and stumbling through a disturbingly short interview with the school I would be working at, I said goodbye to my family and friends and boarded a 14-hour flight for South Korea in the winter of 2013, hoping for a fresh start at the age of 28.

A few months later, with the chill of my first Korean winter under my belt, I couldn't help but notice something rather odd, and a little exciting, about my new surroundings. Unlike North America, Asia seemed to possess a disproportionately large number of small-displacement motorcycles. For those unfamiliar with the mountainous peninsula's motorcycle culture, a large part of it boils down to one, hyphenated word: take-out. While bigger displacement bikes hold their own niche in the market, bikes and scooters under 300 cc dominate the roads. Their main focus: getting you your food, fast.

It was now the spring of 2014, and after my first months of working at an English cram school just outside of Seoul, I began looking at these little bikes with a renewed kind of curiosity. A quick search on the local marketplaces turned up a plethora of small, cheap bikes which I could purchase after just a paycheck or two. Hesitantly, I checked registration and insurance costs. The equivalent of $350 CDN… per year. A few more searches, and a quick phone call later, and I was in business for what would be the purchase of my first motorcycle, albeit, from a manufacturer I had never heard of before.

Concluding the deal for my first motorcycle

The time had finally arrived, and excitement and anxiety were coming to a head. Were the long-lost dreams of a Canadian high schooler finally about to come to fruition?

James and I arrived at the small SYM Motors shop he was operating out of and exchanged the usual questions foreigners in a foreign country often ask each other. Then I was told that the bike, which until that point I (a shrewd shopper, through and through) had only seen in a few blurry screenshots, was coming all the way from Daegu, a large city about three hours away, and wouldn't arrive for a few hours. While this news came as a bit of a surprise, I was actually kind of relieved. The thought of riding through Seoul during rush hour to Gwacheon, the small suburb about 30 minutes south where I had moved to, had me a little anxious.

"OK," I thought, breathing a sigh of relief. "I'll probably be more comfortable riding on the road if there aren't that many cars around, right?"

The bike arrived just before 10 p.m. A 2007 Hyosung RX-125 SM, which, if you squint, looks a bit like a Suzuki DR125, but with street tires. (I later learned that Hyosung shared a number of patents with Suzuki, so my little RX essentially was a DR125.) This one, covered from fender to fender in Red Bull vinyl wrap, was unloaded off the back of a small pickup. The bright red, blue, white, and gold graphics on the little sumo were like a teenage boy's fever dream. It was beautiful, and it was mine.

Cash traded hands (around $1,600 CDN), handshakes were had by all, and there I was, alone in the now mostly deserted streets of central Seoul, finally with a bike of my own. The night air was warm, the roads were quiet, and with the first thumbing of the electric starter, the little single-cylinder engine purred to life, beckoning me with its pleasant thump-thump-thump.

I swung my leg over the tall seat and gripped the handlebar, letting my feet settle onto the ground. My fingers pressed and depressed the clutch and brake levers, the pleasant red glow from the brake lights throbbing all around me. I revved the engine, feeling for the first time the thrum of mechanical life between my legs. I twisted the throttle, released the clutch, and after a wobble or two, was headed out onto the vibrant streets of Seoul, my front wheel pointed towards endless possibilities. After over a decade of waiting, I felt alive, and at last, I was truly living.

Here I was, on the other side of the world, accomplishing a dream which I thought had died along with the Discman. More importantly, I was beginning to realize something about myself that I also thought had died long ago. Namely, the wild idea that I was actually worthy of being happy, and that I could potentially pursue my dream of riding, albeit far away from the places I was most comfortable.

I was trying something totally outside of my comfort zone in one of the most incredible cities in the world, working hard (and partying even harder) amongst a community of expats who had welcomed me in a way that left me feeling taken aback. People I had never met were showing me new possibilities and showing me kindness along the way.

Moving to a foreign country to teach English isn't a new story, and I'm not claiming my experience to be particularly special, or unique. In fact, part of my success in those early years boiled down to dumb luck and good timing. But maybe that's the whole point here. Despite my meager living and working situation back in Canada, I was beginning to see that some of the old cliches about having the courage to "take risks" and "rise to the occasion" might actually have some weight behind them. Who knew?

10 years later

It's been 10 years this May since that warm spring evening in Seoul which helped to change the trajectory of my life. Since then, I've been fortunate enough to meet some incredible people, and gain some amazing experiences, many of which have been on the back of a motorcycle. I've explored some truly amazing and remote parts of the country, (having ridden around it twice, so far) and have had the pleasure of owning a few bikes that wouldn't have been available to me had I continued living in Canada: a beautiful, if temperamental, 1998 Honda CB400SF VTEC, being one of them. I've even been lucky enough to pursue a professional career in education, find a wonderful partner, and will soon be starting a whole new chapter of my life as a father.

It might be a bit of a stretch to give all the credit to that little Hyosung I rode through Seoul in the spring of 2014, but, I think it's important to at least acknowledge the role it played in me finding my place in the world.

From time to time, (usually after a beer or two) I wonder how my life would have turned out had I not taken a chance and moved to the other side of the planet, started a new life for myself, and discovered the joy it is to ride motorcycles. The journey from looking dreamily at MotoGP posters in my childhood bedroom to exploring a new land on the back of a bike was never part of my plan, but looking back, I wouldn't change a single thing.