James from work said he was sick of riding on the train and he was looking for a cheap bike. I told him Ben\u2019s SV650 was for sale. \u201cSweet\u201d, he said. \u201cI\u2019ve got an SV650 back in Perth. They\u2019re good bikes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about 300km west of here at the end of 20km of dirt road\u201d, I told him. \u201cBut if you want an adventure as well as a bike, I can dink you up there and you can buy me lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDeal\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n
So he bought a helmet and a permit to ride an unregistered bike for a day, and I picked him up at North Sydney station on Saturday, and dinked him up to Raglan, which is almost exactly 200 kilometres from North Sydney station. We stopped for fuel. \u201cWhat a great road!\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s right, you come from Perth\u201d, I replied. \u201cIt is a flat place.\u201d<\/p>\n
We got to Ben\u2019s place an hour or so later. He chatted to Ben, and inspected the bike, and kicked the tyres as is customary. He took it on a short test ride, and handed over the money in cash. \u201cWell done\u201d, I told him. \u201cNow I will show you where the Gold and Fleece Hotel is, and you can buy me beer and a tasty lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n
We rode to Windeyer. He bought me a beer. I told him how they always ask your name when they take your lunch order so they can call you when it’s ready, and last time I said I was Mike Hunt. We ordered some steaks. I said my name was Barry McCauckner.<\/p>\n
The SV front tyre was bald on the right hand side, so I said we should take the Queens Pinch road to the Castlereagh highway and minimise our time on the dirt. I took a wrong turn and we ended up doing about forty kilometres of gnarly dirt and coming out at Aarons Pass. I stopped before a real gnarly bit and apologised and asked James if he wanted to go back to where I took the wrong turn.<\/p>\n
“No\u201d, he said. \u201cThis is great.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did fine coming back on the Bells Line of Road until we were coming down Bellbird Hill at Kurrajong. He target fixated while halfway through a right hander trying not to lean too far on the bald tyre, ran off the road and just missed a rock wall before stopping.We kept going through Windsor, and it started to rain. I turned off into the car park of a large pub and told him it was very dangerous riding in the rain on a bald front tyre and we should drink beer until the rain stopped.<\/p>\n
We did.<\/p>\n
I called him up after I got home and said thanks for lunch.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t pay,\u201d he said. I thought you did.\u201d<\/p>\n
I called up the pub and gave them my credit card number.<\/p>\n
He got the bike serviced and put two new tyres on it and got his jacket sent over from Perth. He started riding it to the office. I showed him the twisty way. I told him I would take him on a day ride.<\/p>\n
I took him over the Bells Line of Road to Lithgow, out of town via Magpie Hollow Drive, past Tarana to the O\u2019Connell road, down to O\u2019Connell and left back to Tarana. It\u2019s scenic, and the road winds over hills and along the Fish River and crosses the railway line a few times. We rode briskly. He stayed off the sand on the road and didn\u2019t hit the dead wombat. We stopped at the Tarana Hotel. \u201cThat\u2019s the best ride I\u2019ve ever had!\u201d he said when we stopped.<\/p>\n
He bought me lunch properly this time. And beer.<\/p>\n
I told him next week I would take him on a long ride. \u201cWe will leave at eight, not nine\u201d, I said. \u201cI will show you the Bylong Valley Way. If ridden properly, it is insanely fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plan lasted until Tuesday night, when he texted me that he probably would have to cancel the ride because some guy cleaned him up on the way home. I replied that his texting finger seemed to work, and he messaged back that he had damaged his knee a bit and his motorcycle more than a bit.<\/p>\n
He came in to the office two days later. He wasn\u2019t even limping. He said the other guy changed lanes into him. I said he should have expected him to. I made sure to mock him for breaking Rule One. \u201cI can\u2019t believe you\u201d, the product strategy manager said to me. \u201cYou infect him with this motorcycling thing of yours, sell him a motorcycle, and when the inevitable happens you don\u2019t even show him any sympathy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course I won\u2019t be showing him any sympathy, John\u201d, I replied. \u201cIf I did, he might start thinking that what he did was acceptable behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bike repairer James took the SV to said it looked like it was going to be a write-off. James looked pleased. He said that taking into account the purchase price, the tyres, the service and the registration, he calculated he would come out ahead on the deal if the other guy\u2019s insurance company ponied up the amount he thought they would. It is people like James who made capitalism run the civilized world.<\/p>\n
He told me the amount. He said he was going to be working out of the Perth office for six months and he would sell his other SV while he was over there and buy another bike when he came back to Sydney.<\/p>\n
I did some mental arithmetic. \u201cI reckon you could get a good used Honda VFR800 for that\u201d, I told him. \u201cThey\u2019re nice to ride, and practically indestructible. I\u2019ve had two of them. You should try to get a test ride of one.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Sweet\u201d, he said. \u201cI could do with a bit more power.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
James from work said he was sick of riding on the train and he was looking for a cheap bike<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1465097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[221],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465067"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1465067"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1465148,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465067\/revisions\/1465148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1465097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1465067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1465067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1465067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}