twowheelwarrior

08/09/2026

THE PART YOU DON'T SEE.

Six days ago I wrote something that has stayed with me:

People see the moment.
They don't always see the price.

This is what I meant.
You might see someone go out for a few hours.
Ride a motorcycle.
Walk around the shops.
Have lunch with family.
Work on something they enjoy.
Laugh.
Smile for a photograph.
And think:
"They look alright."
Maybe they are alright.
For that moment.

What you don't see is what it took to get there.
Or what happens when they get home.
You don't see the calculations beforehand.

How far will I have to walk?
How long will I have to stand?
Where can I sit down?
How much energy have I got?
What else do I need to do today?
What might this cost me tomorrow?

When you live with persistent pain, being able to do something and being able to sustain it are two very different things.

I can still do things I love.
Sometimes.

And I need those moments.
But there can be a price.
More pain.
More fatigue.
A day spent recovering.
Plans cancelled afterwards.
Or simply having nothing left for anything else.

That's the bit a photograph doesn't show.
And it can make chronic illness difficult for other people to understand.

They see us doing something on Monday and understandably wonder why we can't do something else on Tuesday.

But our bodies don't work to a simple on/off switch.

Some days we have more to spend.
Some days we have very little.
And sometimes we deliberately spend more than we've got because, every now and again, living matters too.

That doesn't mean the pain disappeared.
It doesn't mean we're suddenly better.
It means we decided that particular moment was worth the price.

So during Pain Awareness Month, perhaps one of the most useful things we can understand is this:

Don't judge someone's whole condition by the moment you happened to see.
There may be an entirely different part of the story happening when nobody is watching.

Steve

TwoWheelWarrior

08/09/2026

06/09/2026

SIX YEARS LATER.

Facebook reminded me this morning that on this day in 2020, I rode to two old petrol stations in Wiltshire and took photographs of my bike beside their surviving pumps.

I was supposed to rest today.
Instead, that memory made me get up, get the bike out and ride back to both places.

Six years apart.
Same locations.
Same petrol pumps.
A very different motorcycle.

Back then it was my yellow 600cc Honda Hornet.
Today it was my 2300cc Triumph Rocket III.

That's the obvious change.

The other changes don't show in the photographs.

The pumps have aged a little.
So have I.
Their paint has faded. Metal has rusted. Time has left its marks on them.
Time has left its marks on me too.

Standing there today, I realised something.

Despite everything that has happened between those two photographs, those old pumps are still there.
Weathered, altered, carrying the evidence of another six years.
But still standing.

And, in that respect, so am I.

A great deal has changed since 2020.
A great deal has been lost.
My health changed.
My life changed.

The person riding that yellow Honda couldn't have known what was coming.
And the man riding the Triumph today isn't the same man who stood there six years ago.

But perhaps that's the wrong way of looking at it.

Because beneath everything that has changed, something hasn't.
The pumps are still the pumps.
And I am still me.
A little older.
A lot more weathered.
Carrying considerably more history.
But still here.

Sometimes you don't notice how far time has carried you until you deliberately return to somewhere you once stood.
Six years later.

Still standing against time.

— Steve
TwoWheelWarrior

01/09/2026

SEPTEMBER IS PAIN AWARENESS MONTH.

But some people don't need a month to be aware of pain.

They wake up with it.

They shower with it.
Get dressed with it.
Work with it.
Parent with it.
Walk with it.
Drive with it.
Smile with it.
Try to sleep with it.

And very often, they hide it.

Chronic pain isn't simply "being in pain for a long time."

It can change how far you walk.
How long you can stand.
Whether you go out.
Whether you make plans.
How much energy you have left for the people you love.

It can change your work, your relationships, your independence and eventually the way you see yourself.

And because much of that happens behind closed doors, the outside world often sees only the bit you managed to do.

Not what it cost you.

That's something I understand differently now.

There are days when doing almost nothing still hurts.

Days when getting somewhere is the achievement.

Days when I can do something I love and look perfectly capable while doing it — then pay for it afterwards when nobody is watching.

That's one of the problems with invisible illness.

People see the moment.

They don't always see the price.

So throughout September, TwoWheelWarrior is going to talk about pain.

Not with inspirational slogans.

Not by telling people to "stay positive."

And not by pretending there's a simple answer.

We're going to talk about what living with persistent pain can actually look like.

The frustration.
The exhaustion.
The things you stop doing.
The things you fight to keep doing.
The effect on identity.
And the enormous amount of effort that can sit behind a completely ordinary day.

Because awareness shouldn't just mean knowing chronic pain exists.

It should mean understanding a little more about the person living inside it.

Steve
TwoWheelWarrior

16/07/2026

These two books did not begin as a business plan.

They began as things I needed to put somewhere.

The Rider Returns came from trying to understand what happens when illness changes the man who once relied on work, movement and the road.

The Bowl came from noticing what people carry, what they hide, and the quiet ways we help one another keep going.

I published them because the moments that feel most personal are often the moments somebody else recognises.

They are not instruction manuals.
They do not tell anyone how to live.
They are simply observations.
These were the first two.
There will be more.

15/07/2026

I’ve noticed something about the way I have behaved in the past.

When things became difficult, I often became very quiet.

Not because nothing was wrong.
Usually, quite the opposite.
I think there had been times when I had tried to explain what was happening inside me, but felt dismissed, misunderstood or as though I was making too much of it.

Eventually, saying nothing felt safer than trying again.

From the outside, that silence may have looked like stubbornness, distance or a refusal to communicate.

Inside, I was still thinking.
Still feeling.
Still carrying everything I had stopped trying to explain.

I don’t know whether this is true for everybody. I only know that I recognise it in myself.

Sometimes the quietest person in the room is not the one with nothing to say.
They may simply have stopped believing that saying it will make any difference.

I wonder how many of us have done that without even realising it.

Have you ever gone quiet because trying to explain had become harder than carrying it alone?

— Steve