She’s motorcycled 17,500 miles across the world on her Honda CBR600RR ride, revving her way through hazy Arizona sand dunes, sun-dappled Spanish towns and the palm tree-lined dirt tracks of Costa Rica.
But 30-year-old Nikki Misurelli – aka @AlaskaMotoGirl on Instagram – would not have had the slightest taste of her incredible global adventure, had she heeded the patronising advice of her now ex boyfriend.
“He said he wanted to motorcycle all the way from Alaska down to Argentina,” Misurelli tells The Independent. “I asked him if I could go with him but he said no, that it was a ‘guys only’ trip. ‘It’s too dangerous and intense,’ he said. ‘You probably couldn’t handle it’.
Spurred on by the sting of rejection (there’s nothing quite like someone saying you can’t do something to prove a point, after all), Misurelli has since clocked up thousands of miles travelling from Alaska to Panama, drinking in the spectacular landscapes of the US West Coast and Central America along the way.
She’s also headed across the pond to bike her way through Europe, sweeping across the highways of Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and more. In Spain, she even took time out to hop across the Strait of Gibraltar and visit Morocco.
Misurelli documents her adventures on Instagram, and her account is testimony to the kind of free-wheeling, exuberant lifestyle many of us dream of having – but few actually follow through.
Misurelli travels with just a tent, a hammock and a few pieces of clothing. She works a variety of part-time jobs such as waitressing and construction in-between each road trip, to fund her never-ending appetite for wanderlust.
Misurelli embarked on her epic journey last October, and shows no signs of slowing up yet.
For now, she’s planning to pick up temp work in Australia or America to earn cash for her next outing. She has her sights set on biking around either the Middle East or North Africa.