ABOUT ME
Ever since I was little I liked adventure and action. My name is Nicolás Zenón, born in Madrid and living on the wonderful island of Mallorca. I’m now 32 years old and the older I get, the more ambitious my expeditions become. Always looking for new challenges, I decided to go around the world in the best way possible: on my motorcycle.
People who don’t move, don’t go forward. I am a restless and curious person, that’s why I get bored easily and I always try to move. I’m the type of person who thinks that life is too short to waste days. I love motorcycles, adventure sports, the sea, the singularity, my people and changes.
I admire those who live without fear, and I am increasingly certain that living comfortably doesn’t mean living happily. I enjoy nature, the analog, the outdoors, and constantly discovering new things.
Many of the fun things in life are risky. I have a certain ability to get into trouble, so I’ve been learning to get out of them …
I believe that travelling is a healthy form of personal enrichment. Travelling gives you the opportunity to constantly contrast differences and similarities. You are always in contact with people from all social classes, religions and cultures, and different points of view that are equally as valid and respectable. You end up questioning some of the things that you took for granted and, furthermore, you understand how privileged we are, those of us who were born in rich countries (rich in money).
I’ve spent most of my life in Madrid. Halfway through university, I decided to take a break and move to Edinburgh. I went on the little motorcycle I had at that time, a 250cc Kawasaki ZZR. I used the trip as an excuse to visit many countries in Europe, this was my first great little adventure. Today, a trip like that is no longer a big deal, but at that time everything was further away, I was 19 years old, there was no Internet on phones and social media was not around.
Plus, at that time it wasn’t cool to visit so many countries… that trend just came out in recent years. It was just my motorcycle, a long road ahead, and me. During this journey, I realized how passionate I was about the intense sensations that travelling on a motorcycle with a tent gives you. It was the point of origin for me.
A year after arriving in Scotland, I decided to return to Spain to continue university. For two years I studied Mechanics, mainly because I liked it, and then I studied business management for another couple of years. After four years without an adventure, I couldn’t help but prepare for the next one. I chose Malaysia as a starting point, managed to save a little money, bought a small motorcycle, and toured much of Southeast Asia.
About a hundred days later, having travelled just over 20,000 km and with less than €1 in my account, I returned to Spain. The experience was incredible, very intense, and enriching. Here I discovered, among other things, that travelling in your own vehicle gives you the chance to enter certain places that would be impossible to know otherwise. I continued to learn to travel and to get myself deep into one of the things that I like the most when I am in another country: interacting with local people, trying to see the “traditional” culture of each region, the places that are not contaminated by tourism yet. It’s getting more and more difficult to achieve this in the interconnected world we live in, but my intention is to continue looking for these small little places of purity that still escape the shadow of tourism and the almighty globalization.
At home, I decided to go to university. I believe that you should get things done when you feel it. The day I did it I bought a nice clay piggy bank (the prettier they are, the harder it is to break them). I began to save up slowly and envision what would be my next trip. Little by little, it started to take shape and ended up becoming the greatest trip of them all, around the world travelling the five continents, of course, on my motorcycle.
As soon as I finished my studies, I went to live in Barcelona. I had always been curious about this cosmopolitan city. A little bit later, my motorcycle (Honda CBR 600F) and I got on a boat to Mallorca.
I sold my CBR and bought a second-hand (more like third or fourth to be honest) Honda Transalp 650. I had already spent some time on the island and I loved it. Mainly for its beaches and landscapes, for its blue waters, for the rhythm of life, for the possibilities of spending the days outdoors and for the people I had met.
I quickly found work in what I loved, so I slowly started to settle down. Now, once again, I will have to find the courage to leave my comfort zone and pursue my dreams. I named this trip “Ride Me Five”.
