|
Pillion Playtime
Two-Up on Tour
I've always wondered about them: those people who go touring on a motorcycle with a pillion passenger
A pillion, says my trusty Chambers Concise is “a cushion behind a horseman for a second rider (usu. a woman)”, the suggestion being that a cushion is much cheaper than a second horse but the one horse needs to be strong. Of course any country ambo will tell you there’s nothing more dangerous than riding a horse. But we know what’s second on their list.
Thus I’ve always taken my motorcycling pleasures and risks solo. And after all, when you’re belting through the bends or pushing | | dawn-to-dark through a 1000-kilometre day it’s obvious a passenger would cramp your style.
But if you had one strong-engined motorcycle with a two-bum seat and could share the best motorcycling roads in the country, couldn’t you make the adjustment?
We’re talking here of Dungog to Bermagui and back. Two up. It was to be a sort of test run, but it proved a brave one. We took a circuit that avoided all the main highways, almost. Hence, lots of dirt roads, as we had a motorcycle that handled capably even when the bitumen ran out.
There were lazy starts in the mornings and retreats to havens well before the ’roos were out at dusk. And it was agreed there would be lots of tea drunk and a comprehensive analysis of vanilla slices en route, so there was plenty of alternative accommodation for the bums in the course of the travelling. No, we didn’t cross the continent in a day. | | | |  | | | | | | |  South African Motorcycle Adventures – visit www.samatours.co.za the home of the ultimate motorcycle experience. See sunny South Africa from the seat of a motorcycle. Experience the best the region has to offer View tours packages now>
| | | | | |
| | But there were problems. The pillion rider hadn’t been one for anything beyond an hour. Nor had I ever toured with a pillion. My humble little tourer didn’t exactly offer a Gold Wing armchair ride. And it happened to be the middle of winter. So how do you make sure an hour into the trip you are not being dug in the ribs with a plea to be delivered to the nearest railway station?
A pillion passenger must be granted a casting vote. That’s the paramount rule of two-up touring. If an experienced motorcyclist imagines going a few hours on a horse, that might be a fair approximation of the state of mind and body of someone perched on the back of a motorcycle. Add in a bit of inexperience and perhaps fear and there’s real travel-weariness by the end of the day. Put up the tent and roll out the sleeping mat? No, a nice pub with a hot shower and a wood fire was the minimum requirement there.
Besides you would just about need a trailer to cope with tents, mats, sleeping bags, pots, stove and a bottle of port. And getting a trailer through the ford on the Tuross River would have been out of the question.
But that’s later in the tale.
We found stuff sacks at the camping shop, small, medium and large, with sealed seams and clever roll-down tops that made them waterproof. They also had flat straps (Andy has them, too) so that a large and firmly packed stuff sack could go either side of the pillion, with the passenger comfortable on the straps over the seat. Another sack went on the handlebars without obstruction to headlight or instruments, tied in place with the black elastic cord they sell in hardware shops. All colour co-ordinated and at a squillionth the price of panniers and top-boxes. Add the existing tank-bag with a thermos strapped on the top like a 90mm cannon and we looked like we’d been doing it all our lives.
In the car and you take the kitchen sink. On two wheels we did just fine with very little. We had full leathers and top-to-toe waterproofs (you wouldn’t go touring without them would you?) so we gambled on arriving nowhere sodden. And we set the plan to spend more than one night at a couple of locations so we could wash and dry the smalls. It was bloody cold, so we wore nearly everything and carried one spare set of clothes and shoes: it doesn’t get littler than that. Add a couple of books, pen and paper, first-aid essentials, woolly beanies, maps, matches, LED headtorch, chain oil and basic tools, a compact camera and a tiny tripod and blow me down we were legs over and bumping down the dirt track to the front gate. What on earth do people put in those trailers?
The passenger wasn’t too cold, most of the time. That’s a critical start. So always start the ride on the most clement-weathered day of the trip? Ideal, but we did get better at coping with miserable weather, including a Braidwood gale, Cobargo rain and Crookwell snow. Deserving of a Victoria Cross, this pillion passenger? I’m checking on eBay. But we never rode more than an hour and a half without a good break. And we added over-mittens to the passenger kit at Cooma – but you would at Cooma in August, wouldn’t you.
The passenger wasn’t too scared. That’s critical, too. Going down the Putty Road as you have done dozens of times solo at full glorious tilt is not an option. Our pace is mellow, thinking – indeed stopping to ask, “Dear passenger, am I going too fast, too hard through the bends?” You’ve been looking forward to this trip for a long time and there’s the casting vote, remember. And frankly, it surprised me how much I enjoyed going slower. A pillion rider doesn’t necessarily see the bumps coming like the captain does, so it becomes a game to find the smoothest possible path. Gear changes, acceleration and braking need smoothness, too, or helmets bang together or the bum at the back is sliding on the seat. As smooth as a train ride: that’s the art to be learned and it’s actually quite a pleasurable way to ride.
Back roads are great for pillion passengers, compared with highways with cars packed like sewer rats. Free of traffic stress, we have that nice safe feeling of owning the road and all the scenery that goes with it: stray cows, farmers on tractors, dead wombats. And on the back road to Kurrajong, just past a string of those new houses big enough to be orphanages there was The Last Farm, the one at the edge of The Great Lava Flow of Suburbia. Outside was propped a sheet of corrugated iron with SHEEP SKINS written rudely upon it. We stopped. We met Alan AsOldAsTheHills, and Jake the Kelpie who was much better with sheep than customers. Alan invited us inside. We met Mavis. We talked for far longer than intended and left with a skin shaped by Mavis’s fair and wrinkled hand, to travel comfortably thereafter. May Jake savage the developer who darkens their door.
We took three relaxed days to arrive safely on the south coast on a bike suitably covered in muck from a rainy journey on the dirt through Abercrombie National Park and the ride on still-wet gravel through Deua National Park – OK roads and exceptional vistas. Mostly we stopped by the roadside for a cuppa and whatever goodies we’d bought at the last cake shop. It beats looking at a wall or a main street. And then we took it easy at the home of friends before heading up the Wadbilliga. Two-up up the Wadbilliga.
Now doubtless there’ll be a letter to the editor saying “Dear Bear, when I was a lad I rode from Cobargo to Cooma on a BSA Bantam with the wife, two kids and the budgie…” but our reckoning, after we’d survived the Wadbilliga wilderness and dragged the bike out of the Tuross River crossing, was that it might have been back before any war of your choosing that two people went through there on one motorcycle.
It is outrageously magnificent country. Especially, of course, the bit that’s just a dotted line on the NRMA map and required an Executive Decision before it was allowed there at all. Yes, it’s rough. Yes it’s steep enough to feel the front wheel is barely in enough contact to steer. No we didn’t see anyone else all day. Yes, it did take all day but shout us a schooner of light we did get through, two up, no tumbles, and smiling. Laughing, actually, once that wet engine fired. And the river… the Wadbilliga River I mean… in the Wadbilliga National Park… is just idyllic. Sometimes you’re beside it, once you have to cross it, and sometimes it’s way below you, stony-bottomed, crystal-clear and lined with river-oaks.
Along the way you meander through rocky ironbark forest caught in a rain shadow, until you climb into what might be blackbutt, with steep drops either side of the spur, to the watershed and scribbly gums on the edge of the high plains. Amazing. Then there are gates to open and close as you cross the Tuross grasslands to the Tuross River. It’s handy having someone on the back, with the gates and pushing out of a river…
We could argue for hours about the best bike for such a trip and no-one would suggest a 19-year-old XBR500 Honda. But the bottom line is the bottom line. How does it feel for the pillion rider? Whatever you ride and wherever you ride and never mind the weather, when you wake the next morning you have to want to get back on again. Both of you. There’s horses for courses and Phar Lap wasn’t built for droving.
Pulling in to the shed at home after 2000 kilometres of bumps and bends, frost and snow and gale and goat-track, the last day’s drizzle dripping off you, there’s a mighty sense of achievement. And relief. You wonder if you are mad or just wildly adventurous. Turns out the latter wins.
Could have been 2-1, I guess. On the casting vote.
|
|
|
| | At the News Stand
Current Issue
TOURING YEARBOOK - Riding Tassy, Touring Bhutan, Outback Special, plus NEW Superbike Comparo & bikes, bikes, bikes!
Next Issue
TOURING ANNUAL - Ride the ACT, Victoria's Grampians, Monument Valley USA, Taiwan plus Executive Motorcycling & loads of bikes |
| | |
| | The Original Buff
The versatile Buff® can be worn as a neck gaiter, scarf, face mask, helmet liner, head cooler, beanie… The unique micro-fibre fabric fights heat, cold, wind, sun, dust and it feels great.
See More |
| | |
| | Motorcycle Shipping and Tour Operator
Let motorcycle enthusiasts with over 50 years combined experience take care of your tour or bike shipping. Friendly & professional operators.
See More |
| | |
| | Blackmax
Motorwear
presents a range of Motorwear proudly made in Australia us ing the only the finest materials. Designed by bikers for bikers.
See More
|
| | |
|
|
