Motorcycle Media Review: Itchy Boots Vlog and Social Media Supporting Professional Travel

I can't say I'm a big fan of the YOOTOOB.  I make a point of not reading the comments because they're some of the most asinine on the internet, but something caught me recently and now I"m a regular watcher.

Noraly Schoenmaker started a video blog called Itchy Boots in 2017 and has been a professional traveller ever since.  She has ridden tens of thousands of kilometres on a variety of bikes on many continents:

Noraly hits all the social media portals, so you can find her Instagram and elsewhere, but YouTube is where she video-blogs and what got me hooked was both her personality and her technical expertise.  I can't stand YouTube videos for all the preening and wasted time telling me shit I don't care about.  Trying to watch a how-to video on TOOB is infuriating and ends up with me giving up and trying to find the information elsewhere.

You don't need to worry about any of that with Noraly.  She edits tight and even her music and post-processing work has a professional sheen to it.  It plays at least as well as Long Way Up or another big budget stars-on-bikes production, but it's all just her.  The fact that she's festooned with GoPros and has her audio properly balanced while even throwing in drone footage has me loving the technical proficiency; this is travel video as it was meant to be done!  Even the music's good!

She was in South America when COVID kicked off and ended up getting repatriated to the Netherlands where she attempted to keep travel blogging from home, but you can imagine how that went.  If, like me, you pick this up with her deciding to press on regardless of COVID, you'll start season 5 with her getting herself sorted out and going to South Africa:

As a cure for the COVID travel blues, this is pure gold.  She finds herself a bike in Jo-Berg and before you know it you're with her on South African dirt roads seeing an amazing menagerie of spectacular wildlife in surreal scenery.  If you've missed travel, this'll immerse you in it again in an intimate way.

I had a moment last year in the first lockdown where I was in Google Earth in VR on the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa trying to remind myself that the rest of the world was still out there.  I had a jarring moment when the sign on Google Earth said that the park might be closed due to COVID.  Not only is the world out there, but it's covered in COVID.

Noraly might be taking a risk, but travelling around the world solo on a motorbike is risky and if we only let risk dictate our lives then what tedious and barren lives they'd be.  If you feel the pull of the nomad inside give Noraly's vlog a watch, I betcha you'll get hooked.