The Himalayan 411 doesn’t chase adrenaline. It’s not fast enough. Doesn’t lurch forward when you twist the throttle. Doesn’t carve corners like it wants to prove something.

It does something quieter.

It lets you be.

I had ridden to a friend’s place in Maclean, a little town in northern New South Wales, 580 kilometres from home. I’d come up the hard way—freeways and fuel stops, eyes on the clock. A ride with no breath in it.

But leaving was different.

I gave myself time. Took the backroads. Wound my way toward Coffs Harbour with no real plan except to stay off the highway and see where the road went.

Maclean is a town of inland islands. Creeks and rivers thread through it like broken spiderwebs, weaving the land into pieces. I crossed a bridge just after dawn, the water glassy and wide beneath me, the sky still unsure of itself. The road hugged the river. Past canefields and old timber cowsheds with sagging roofs. The bitumen narrowed, softened, slowed.

I stopped when I felt like it. Took photos I’d probably never look at again. The bike beside the water. The bike in front of a grey church no one prayed in anymore.

And somewhere along that slow unravelling, something settled in my chest.

It was joy.

Not happiness. Not thrill. Nothing that demanded attention.

Just a quiet fullness. A rising.

Something that felt like it had always been there, waiting for me to notice.

Joy in the ride.

And I began to wonder: what is joy, really?

A guide to joy, of sorts.

I’ve felt it before.

In music, mostly. In those rare moments on stage when everything locks in. When the band breathes as one body, and the notes come not from thought, but from somewhere deeper. Your fingers move, but they’re not yours. You’re in it, and it’s in you.

Joy, when it comes, never asks your permission.

It bubbles up. Light. Sudden. Uninvited.

But what is that feeling?

It’s not happiness. Happiness is steadier, easier to explain. Joy is sharp. Fleeting. Unreasonable. It doesn’t always match your circumstances. It can arrive in the middle of discomfort, or solitude, or rain.

It has texture.

You feel it first in the chest. A tingle. A lift. A current running just under the skin, like you’ve touched something electric but didn’t flinch. It’s not pleasure. It’s not comfort. It’s something else.

C.S. Lewis called it “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” A glimpse of something just out of reach. A kind of longing. Maybe that’s what the open road does—shows you the horizon, but never lets you catch it.

Nietzsche came at it from the other side. For him, joy was a defiant yes to life, even in its sharpest edges. A grin with cracked lips. Joy in spite of things. Because of them.

But on the bike, it feels simpler than that. Less intellectual. More physical.

It’s what rises when the body disappears into the moment.

When breath syncs with throttle.

When the world and the self stop arguing.

Maybe joy is what bubbles to the surface when your soul finally fits the shape of the day.

Where it hides

I don’t know where joy lives.

Not really.

Sometimes I think I’ve felt it in a corner, or on a ridge with the wind pushing hard against my chest—but that’s just where I noticed it. That’s not the same as where it lives.

The truth is, joy sneaks up on you. You don’t summon it, and god help you if you try. It’s like a cat that only climbs into your lap when you’re not paying attention. The moment you look straight at it, it’s gone.

It’s not something I aim for on the bike. I don’t check the weather, pack the gear, fuel up and say, right then—time to find joy. Most of the time it’s just a ride. A good one, sure. But ordinary.

And then… sometimes… it happens.

No lightning. No trumpet blast. Just this quiet, rising sense that nothing else matters. That this, whatever it is—this stretch of road, this moment in time, this unassuming machine vibrating under me—is somehow perfect. Not in the Instagram sense. Not clean, not curated. Just right. Right in a way that doesn’t need explaining.

And I’ll feel it. Just there, under the ribs. Like a held breath that turns into a smile.

And I’ll think, oh. There you are.

But by the time I’ve thought it, it’s already gone. Or maybe it was never quite there. Maybe joy doesn’t live anywhere. Maybe it just passes through now and then, like sunlight through trees. And if you’re lucky, you notice.

Not because you were looking.

But because—for once—you weren’t.

The texture of joy

But even if I don’t know where joy lives, I know what it feels like when it brushes past. That’s the only real proof I’ve ever had of it—that feeling. The physical echo it leaves behind. The way it sticks to your skin, even after the ride’s done.

Joy has texture.

Not metaphorically. Physically. You can feel it.

It fizzes—not gently, like champagne, but rougher, more urgent. Like static under your skin. Like your ribs can’t quite hold it in.

It presses outward. It wants room.

It’s not warmth, not exactly. It’s heat with purpose. It hums through your chest, rises up your throat, curls into a smile you didn’t plan. You don’t think I’m joyful—you just notice your face has changed.

There’s a tautness to it, too. Not tension. Readiness. A kind of alertness in the body, like you’ve just stepped into something sacred and your cells know it before your mind does. Every nerve tuned. Every breath full.

Joy isn’t calm. It’s alive.

And it stays with you, just a little, even after it’s gone. Like the tingling of your fingers when the engine cuts. Like the pulse in your hands hours after the ride. Not memory. Residue.

It’s not about where you are. It’s not about the bike. It’s not even about the ride.

It’s about how you feel when joy touches you.

You feel it in the chest first. Then the throat. Then the fingertips.

And you don’t hold it.

You notice it.

Like texture.

Like the difference between looking at the world, and feeling it press back.

What I rode away with

And as soon as I noticed the joy on that ride from Maclean—as soon as I reached for it, turned to name it, maybe even tried to hold it—it slipped away.

That’s the way of it.

Joy doesn’t stay. It doesn’t settle in. It doesn’t move into the spare room and let you make coffee for it in the morning.

It brushes past. It burns for a second. Then it’s gone.

What it left behind was something quieter. Not disappointment. Not exactly sadness either. A kind of soft melancholy, maybe. A fullness that had already started fading. Like the way light lingers in the sky after the sun has dipped below the hills.

The ride went on. The road didn’t care. It just kept unspooling, same as ever.

But I rode differently after that. Not faster. Not slower. Just… more aware.

Not chasing anything.

Just trying to stay open enough to notice the next time joy decides to pass through.

Because it will.

Not when I expect it.

When I forget to look.