A Playground Called Earth
Eddie on rediscovering your inner child through the open road
Interviewed on the 24.04.2025
Leaving, Eddie told us, is always the hardest part of any journey. He hit the road at thirty-one, after what he called his mid-life crisis: burned out by city madness, shaken by a breakup, and weighed down by a version of adulthood that felt repetitive and heavy. He wanted to redefine the pillars of his existence.
“I realised life wasn’t going to wait, so I decided to focus all my efforts on chasing only that, which I really wanted. I knew my career didn’t define me either. If money weren’t a concern, I wouldn’t be spending my time staring at a computer screen, I’d be outside having fun. So I asked myself a simple question: “If money didn’t matter, what would I be doing?” The answer was: travel.”
Once the decision was made, he needed a way to move through the world. He considered everything, even the idea of traveling on a skateboard, but the real answer was already in his garage. His motorcycle offered speed, mobility, and pure joy. But Eddie didn’t just want to ride it. He wanted to transform it. To know every weakness and every strength. So he tore it apart, rebuilt it, and crashed it twice along the way. Each failure toughened him, and reminded him of something he believes deeply.
For Eddie, the lesson came from childhood. Children never pretend to be experts. They are curious, unguarded, endlessly questioning. They learn by trying, failing, trying again. During our interview he said:
“As a kid, ‘go play outside’ was the gateway to freedom. No walls. No supervision. You would disappear for hours, invent rules, break them, come back dirty, bruised, smiling. It was fun and a little dangerous. That was the point.”
In many ways, Eddie has simply brought that spirit into adulthood. Rebuilding his motorcycle became play. Getting his hands dirty, crashing, understanding the machine from the inside out. He did it because he wanted the journey to feel joyful. He wanted to redefine what a motorcycle adventure could be. Not on a conventional adventure bike, but on an individualistic machine, he built piece by piece. Less safe? Definitely. Often impractical? Absolutely. He doesn’t even have a speedometer. But practicality was never the goal. He wanted something that made him feel like a kid with a shiny red bicycle. Something that made him smile every single day.
This mindset opened a life that may be less comfortable and less safe, but infinitely more alive. Because if you want to “play outside” as an adult, you have to accept the mess. Eddie believes modern life subtly steers us away from that. We’re trained to follow a clean sequence of milestones, and between them we outsource comfort and pleasure to things marketed to us as “solutions.” Safety becomes a perfectly furnished apartment. Entertainment becomes a streaming algorithm. Even nourishment arrives pre-packaged at your door. There’s nothing wrong with comfort, he told us, everyone loves clean sheets and a hot shower. But this lifestyle rarely pushes you beyond your comfort zone or reconnects you to your inner child.
For Eddie, the deeper danger is what this does to time. When life is routine, days blur. Months disappear. Memories lose color. You struggle to remember what you truly lived. Now picture placing yourself somewhere unfamiliar: geographically, emotionally and mentally. “You need to get lost in places where you’re not in control” he said. Because in the end, memories are what remain. You want them vivid. Sharp. Alive. Travel, for him, isn’t just an experience, it resets the internal clock. It forces you to look again, to listen, to stay humble, to keep learning. That, he says, is the real point of stepping outside.
“So go. Get lost. Get confused. Be humbled. The world’s still out there, wild, messy, addictive. And if you’re lucky, it will slap the adult out of you.”
Connect with Eddie here.
© 2025 Grit & Dust (A Playground Called Earth). Photos © 2025 Grit & Dust on behalf of Eddie. All rights reserved. No part of this article or images may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without prior written permission.