I鈥檓 pretty sure I鈥檝e mentioned it in the past but I work as a postie. This literally makes me a professional motorcycle rider because I get paid to ride a 125cc motorcycle all day. Well, not so much now because I鈥檓 the supervisor for the whole Taranaki province so I don鈥檛 get to ride the postie bikes as much.
Riding is a passion of mine and it is the place where I am the happiest. There鈥檚 nothing more mentally stimulating than putting yourself in a dangerous situation and just concentrating on everything around you. It makes your problems go away and frees your mind to be in the moment.
Last Saturday I asked my father-in-law to come with me to look at a couple of bikes. Both were Royal Enfield Himalayans but I had one I was eyeing in particular. It was in Dannevirke which is on the other side of the North Island to where I live. We stopped off to have a look at the more expensive of the two and found it to be a good bike. Its only issue for me was a lack of panniers.
So we carried on to Dannevirke to look at the one I was eyeing up. It had full panniers plus it had side Jerry cans for fuel. This setup makes it perfect for my desire to take the roads less travelled and explore New Zealand.
The downside is that it had been sitting for a couple of years and my father-in-law said it was most likely to have a rusted tank and knackered carburettor. This ended up to be true so I didn鈥檛 get the bike.
The guy just wanted rid of it so said he鈥檇 go as low as $1500 so FiL said he鈥檇 have a think and get back to him.
So went went to a cafe because we hadn鈥檛 eaten all day and while doing that he called mother-in-law and told her about it. She said he should just buy it. So he did.
On the way back we stopped back at Palmerston North and I bought the first Himalayan. $5000 for a bike with 5000kms on the clock was a great deal.
So we got home and I bought the panniers - minus the Jerry cans - and fitted them to my Himalayan.
Now I have a great bike for adventuring. I鈥檓 going to need to find some dirt roads now to practice on.
Having ridden it for a couple of days I feel like I'm getting used to it now. There is a weird wobble around the 120k/h mark but I just move my body and boot it again and it comes right. I don't want to push too hard in case it sends me down the road but I also think it might be because the rear wheel is a little low. I've got a new one on order.
The compass has been configured wrong and so I need to reset it. It can be triggered with a powerful magnet but I just need the opportunity to go out on the bike, find a carpark with no poles and do some figure 8s.
I'm hoping to get out this weekend but the weather is going to be bollocks. Luckily I'm an all weather rider so that doesn't bother me. In fact, if I want to get into adventure riding then I can't be afraid of a little rain because if I do it right I'm going to get wet anyway. 馃槀
I've got a tank bag on the way but I am wanting to get a set of those jerry cans so I can just load up with fuel and get lost. I also want to get a rear case so that I can load up a small tent and just go for a weekend or so.
Once I've got the bike dialled in I think my happy place will grow exponentially.
