Waddup? last time I checked in I wrote about losing my nerve. A quick catch up on that post is here if you aren’t up to SPEEEEED.
Yes it’s true, I turned into a yellow bellied gecko and got back in a cage for some years after leaving a motorcycle life behind in good ole rAdelaide, and moved to Melbourne.
It wasn’t long though, before I made new mates with motorcycling in their blood, and I found myself back on two wheels. But how did I forget that moment? Well I never did really I guess, it stuck with me and even getting back on two wheels again it was there in the back of mind, always.
It is called FEAR, and it has no place in motorcycling.
It crippled me for years that fear, and I hate it. I hate thinking I could be called a coward. I hate that word and don’t particularly like it being applied to me.
There is only one way to get over it, man up, move on and get your nerve back and it should come as no surprise.
Get. Back. On. Ride.
It’s that simple.
My journey was at least, the minute I got back on that GSX400FW that Wombat (yes, he’s short, fat n hairy, you can make up the rest) sourced me for a princely $900 back in early 2002 sometime.
Part of that fear kept me from jumping back on a big bike, and the commitment money wise seemed right at the time, little did I know how much of a headache a grey import with carby slides that continually fall off when you lean over say, 10 – 20%, would be.
Doing the daily grind had freed me again, I was in love with motorcycling and beating the shitty traffic and not being stuck in a cage etc etc.
But my heart longed for speed.
And carby slides that didn’t fall off every few kilometres.
I also needed a bike for the newly formed, upcoming, inaugural Australia Day Ride that Wombat and Murph were organising. I’d need a bike that could do 500kms a day without needing roadside repair.
That was when I fell in love with the Yamaha TRX 850.
A jap twin that had the cafe racer looks, reliability and didn’t require a whole bucket load of cash to aquire one.
I scored an absolute pearler of a bike, a one owner, garaged, low kms, like new, even had the original tyres still, for $4500. It was a few hundred kms away from home but worth it.
That first ADR, nine years ago almost to the day, I found my nerve again. Being out on the open road with a bunch of mates, hooking through the coastline we were headed to Bombala for our first nights accommodation. I had found my legs again.
The road up to Bombala (the Cann River Highway) is renown for two things; awesome sweepers and shit loads of coppers.
I didn’t know this and didn’t care, it was my first time and I was like The Flash on that thing, top gear, pinned to the tank, flying through those perfect camber corners I was hitting 180+ around 75km sweepers on that little trx and I knew, from that moment on, I was never giving up on two wheels again. The fear was gone, and I’m possessed again, it’s in my blood.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Until next time two wheelers, stay upright.
