Valheru Rides!

For a guy who says he never does reviews this is somehow my second in only a very short period of time, so let’s see how this plays out. Thank you Sheepy, for the gift of this copy.

The stage is set.

As many of you might remember hearing about this in the motorcycle socials in late September this year, the short video (1 hour 30 minutes) documents the struggles of Ryan Edwin to beat the world record for circumnavigation of the globe. Crucially though, and this is a much under conveyed element, their time will essentially be a ‘true’ reflection of how long the journey takes Vs some of the previous record holders who had broken the legs down to individual stints of the journey.

Ryan & Edwin are then, are not only pushing themselves to the absolute limit, but so much of the journey is going to be beyond their control when you consider border crossings, flights, fueling, customs.

The journey begins.

I don’t want to charge into all the tiny details of the footage, because frankly I not only don’t want to spoil it for you, but also I want to first help you all understand what kind of film this is. It might sound stupid, but a lot of the social media footage we’re used to can often be very narrative, or we’re looking at stints and high quality brarping sounds between graceful pine forest bearing mountains. This isn’t either of those at all frankly, you’re not going to be ‘Itchyboots’ style breaking bread in a central Asian Yurt surrounded by steppe, you’re going to be full throttle on an Italian Stallion tearing through (among others) an Indian countryside dodging drivers/people/animals/natural phenomenon out to kill you.

I can already imagine the detractors writing their own pieces as we speak (no doubt for glossy magazines) on the lack of footage for certain countries, how we miss a fair amount of the behind the bars action. But like I said, it isn’t that kind of film, France passes completely at night due to the race to get to the Ducati dealer in Italy, Singapore is a blur and may as well not exist except to bring us down to earth briefly.

What it does phenomenally well.

The suspense is pretty much continuous, with the counter updates telling us as viewers for much of the journey they appear to be behind schedule, the levels of human endurance involved here are astronomical and we are sometimes almost dragged across countries in the rush to get to the next flight, the lack of sleep is starting to get to them, you slowly see bits and pieces beginning to break down and there’s a constant worry from us as viewers, that they might not make it despite already knowing how it ends. One of the things that really stuck with me was, I could not do this, knowing I don’t have it in me to be able to ride for this distance and duration somehow makes it all the more incredible.

Minor negatives.

It seems pretty petty to make any major negatives on what is an absolute beast of an endurance charge around the world, but I probably would have added a bit more footage to supplement the ride from Anchorage to Hope in Canada, like I said Singapore basically is a blur through which a call between Ryan and his daughters brings us back down to ground that this is still being done by very human riders and what’s really at stake here by riding for a full day only a few hours. Could the footage have been elongated and put into 2 episodes of an hour each? Maybe…

For 10 USD, which of writing is about £7 I’d be happy if there was more footage for a higher price, because it ultimately was worth it.

Ignoring the cynics.

Now I’m sure this will be ultimately spun by certain publications that this was deliberately done for a future book release, and frankly, so what? If the footage wasn’t usable, or the sound was low quality because of the weather (think of that high wind in Aus maybe?) then by all means put the stills in a book. If such a plan to publish exists, I’ll buy it.