Two Wheels Better

Moderator

Number of posts : 4790
I'm now about 800 kms from home, of a total of 3900 kms all up so far, and stopped in a motel in quaint and dusty Gunnedah, NSW for the night.
The Ulysses AGM was, well.....spaciously large, heaps to do and see, and very well organised. Too much in fact. There were about four thousand over-fifties and their spouses (some middle-aged ladies do like to wear their jeans a bit tight) and hangers-on attending in beaut little Mildura, Victoria. Somehow I managed to sell the notoriously thrifty buggers about $4000 worth of old stock BMW T-shirts in four days.
I have heard that they're the sort to come to town for a week with a $50 note in their pocket and a single shirt and they don't change either all week long....joking, some of their 'rigs' would put a B-Double to shame. I saw three wheelers (Can-Am Spyders) towing two-wheeled trailers, two wheelers towing one-wheeled trailers, two wheelers with training wheels and some form of landing gear out the sides, and two wheelers with three actual wheels - and all manner of overloaded motorbikes. Oh, and remember BMW's ill-fated R1200C cruiser? The James Bond jumps buildings somewhere in Asia-version...I saw more of them there than I have anywhere in the past ten years.
But I had fun and got to know some interesting new people, ride a whole heap of great roads in Victoria and New South Wales, eat some delish food every night and drink some very good Sunraysia region red wine, and hang out with the BMW Australia crew from Melbourne doing the hourly test rides (they had an example of every bike they sell Down Under). When we rocked up of a morning there would be thirty or so people waiting in the queue already for a chance at the K1600GT/GTL and the others. I noted that Honda, Victory, Triumph and the like had no interested test ride participants there before eight-thirty AM. That's the Beemer lovin' crowd for you! We used to joke at Daytona Bikeweek in Florida years ago that there were two alarm clocks per day: the three AM alarm was the sound of the Harleys coming back to the camping ground after the bars all closed, and the other was at six AM when the Beemer riders got up to go for a ride.
Today I got to test my mettle against the hot sun, the driving rain, and the blasting wind - all within the space of an hour.
I also met our very own 'The Mule' from Coffs Harbour, NSW who is not an terribly active user (last on back in June) but we had a good chin wag and he returned as promised wearing a very cool K100RT T-shirt which he made himself. It has a detailed screen-printed image of his bike overlaid on a BMW roundel. I took a photo of it and will post that one too.
The internet connection I'm on is crap, so I'll post some more piccies when I arrive home manana (tomorrow).
Cheers.
__________________________________________________
1970 R60/5, '77 R75/7-R100, '85 K100, '87 K75C, '87 K100RS, '93 K11-K12 Big Block, '93 K1100RS, '95 R100-Mystic, '96 K1100RS, '98 K1200RS, '00 K1200RS, '02 K1200RS, '03 K1200GT, '04 R1150R, '04 R1150RT, '05 K1200S, #1 '06 K1200R, #2 '06 K1200R, '07 K1200R, '09 K1300GT, '13 R1200RT-P & 2022 S1000XR
"When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am older, I admire kind people." ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, rabbi & professor (11 Jan 1907 - 1972)