Trail Bike Adventure Magazine

A bunny at Easter. April 5

Saturday, 03 April 2010 08:13

I wonder if I'm going to be roused at for putting my blogs up early. Probably not. There's not much hope of my keeping it up.

In any case, it's Saturday morning. I spent a few days in Melbourne and Sydney with a couple of the other guys doing ad visits, and that all went pretty well, really. As I said last week, they're easy because everywhere we visit is full of good people.

It's funny, because I often joke about my age. In the dirt bike world, 30 is pretty old, and it's a long time since I was 30. But it really drives home my time in the industry when we go to these places and the other guys don't remember when Yamaha Motor opened at Wetherill Park, or when Kawasaki had the race team in a factory bay directly opposite the warehouse, or especially when we're off to visit a business and I say, "Unreal! I haven't seen such-and-such for years!" The guys look at me and say, "Who?", and I say, "The guy who owns and started the frigging business!" When we get there we find the man concerned has sold the business 15 years ago and retired to the West Indies or something.

There are still plenty of old stagers around, though, and it's a real pleasure to sit with Pat and Bernie at C&R Imports, bump into Murray Sayle at Kawasaki, chat over Four Day strategies with Jarrod Runcimon at Monza, or catch up with any one of a stack other people who've been around at least as long as me (often longer).

We dropped in to Ballard's to say hi, and I thought for the first time ever I was going to get away without buying something. Then I saw the blinkers I needed to replace the smashed ones on Jay Foreman's DR. So once again I slapped the plastic down. I was luckier at Teknik. Since the XR was stolen I haven't had Nick do any work. I bet he's feeling the loss of business.

I was able to build a pyramid of cushions on the hotel beds, by the way, so I didn't end up sleeping in the hire car, so there are no pics for your amusement. The only good thing to come out of the injuries so far was the guys at Draggin' Jeans being fairly rapt I had no abrasions on the bottom half from either accident. I was wearing Draggin' Jeans both times of course. I'm a big fan.

Still, I rather not be busted up.

The pic shows I had a good close look at the Super Tenere, thanks to Sean at Yamaha. It's not as physically big as I thought it'd be. This one has crash bars, panniers and spotties and so forth which make it seem a little bigger than it really is, and it's still not over large. I begged for a spot on the model release ride, and Sean has held a place for me. I'm extremely grateful for that. Even though TBAM is probably more interested in this bike than any other Aussie mag, we're still small fry. That Yamaha has invited me is humbling. I'll try not to drop this Tenere, and especially try not to break anything.

Issue #33 is done at last. It'll be on sale on the scheduled date, but it was a battle. There are a few new bits and pieces in there, and it'll be interesting to see the reactions.

So now it's on to issue #34.

First up is a trip to Cairns and Cape York Motorcycle Adventures. Roy Kunda has narrowed his list of hopeful sweeps down to five, and he's putting them to the final test. I'll be there photographing - and hopefully videoing - all the action. After that is a tech piece which will be hard work, but genuinely interesting (everyone seemed to like the neck brace and EPIRB Vs SPOT pieces, so I'll keep them going). Then the Super Tenere. That's the next fortnight or so. After that I'll catch my breath and see where the hell I'm up to and what needs doing.

But for today, it's Easter. I haven't had a phone call or e-mail for 24 hours or more, and that suits me fine. I fell in a bit of a heap last night and slept like a spare-parts guy with stuff on back order, and I still feel as though I have some catch-up sleeping to do.

Chocky egg day tomorrow! Hoo-aah!

TF