Marcel Winatschek

Motorcycle on Water

I’ve been thinking I need a better way to travel between tropical places. Forget planes and boats. Just motorcycle across the water. It’s obvious in retrospect.

Robbie Maddison actually pulled this off. Modified motorcycle, real stunt, no effects—just him riding across the ocean off Tahiti with palm trees in the distance and people on the beach watching something that shouldn’t exist. But did.

There’s something about that image that grabs you. The confidence in it. The fact that he actually went and did it. You know it would kill you the second you tried, but you want to try anyway.

I think of myself as maybe the laziest person alive, genuinely incapable of sustaining effort at anything. But watching him tear across that water—something clicks. Makes you want to be stupid too. Would drown immediately, obviously. Would do it anyway.