Blog: June 15. Glad to be home.

Hi everyone. I’m back from Perth – via Geraldton, Wiluna, Laverton, Warburton, Alice Springs, Mt Dare, Dalhousie Springs, Oodnadatta, William Creek, Maree, Lyndhurst, Cameron Corner, Bourke, home, Cape Byron and home again.

It wasn’t a great ride for me, despite work’s Triumph 800XCx being superb and some of the scenery being truly heartbreaking. The West Australian sunsets are especially awe-inspiring.

I know there will be those of you drooling at the thought of a trip like that one, but it was work for me, and some aspects of having to get the job done made things difficult. I had to take the bike out on to Lancelin Dunes – WA’s equivalent of Stockton Beach – and I hate riding the sand at any time.

On a bike as heavily loaded as the Tiger, it was crap. I did some clutch damage while I was trying to get pics, and I had to nurse the bike with a slipping clutch for the next four days and 2500km until I could get new plates at Alice Springs. While that was going on, I lost my Triumph wingman when, I think, he hit a sand wallow about 150km east of Wiluna. I don’t know what happened. I just found him on the road. He said he couldn’t move, and for a while he was having a lot of trouble breathing. We’d been warned at scrutineering that we might wait for two days for a sweep vehicle. I didn’t think my offsider had two days to spare, so after about five hours I flagged down a road train and the driver – one of the world’s dead-set champions – didn’t hesitate for a second. He agreed we had to get the bike on one of the trailers somehow, and get Ralph – the injured rider – to help. Fast.

‘Muzza’ – the driver – improvised a ramp to get the 240kg bike onto the trailer while I convinced Ralph he had to get himself into the truck cab. The ramp was a work of genius, but we both still nearly pooed ourselves getting the bike up there.

With the bike and rider on board, we set off for Leonora, the next town liable to have some kind of medical station. It was off the course and about 250km away. I shot ahead to see what medical and accommodation I could organise, and it was while I was on the mercy mission I centrepunched a kangaroo.

Some of you will know this isn’t a new experience for me, but this time I was unhurt. The ‘roo was a dead’n and the bike was a mess. And I was still about 200km from Leonora.

Of course I was alone, and by this stage it was about 9.00pm.

I had no lights or screen or anything else left on the front of the bike, so I camped where I was and managed to get going the next day. I spent the rest of the week nursing the bike and riding alone. I didn’t know for several days whether Ralph had made it or not, how the truckie had coped with the getting the bike down, and whether both were rating me as scum for bolting and leaving them to it.

I managed to limp in to Alice Springs a few days later, after a couple of punctures and a destroyed rear tyre, and Triumph took charge, stripping a new bike on the showroom floor at Desert Edge Motorcycles to get me going again.

Enough of my boring grumbling.

In Alice I met up with a batch of blokes from Newcastle who were there to check out Finke, and were happy for me to tag along. They weren’t on the ADVX event, but were coincidentally following the same course to Maree.

From the time I joined up with the Newcastle crew everything seemed to come good. They were great guys, well-prepared and competent. They were so good that, when it was time for me to leave them at Maree and follow the ADVX course to Mallanganee and across to Birdsville, I decided I’d rather stick with the crew I knew than carry on alone again. Once we arrived at Cameron Corner there was nothing going to stop me. I thought the risk of running alone when I knew the route and risks so well was acceptable. I hit the Longest Day trail and bolted for home. I see Marty HC and Dave Ramdog were watching the Flytrace and correctly summed up the situation.

It was a tough ride for me for the first week, but a run from the west coast to the east must be high on every adventure rider’s list, and I’m glad to be able to include it in rides I’ve done.

Now the tricky bit: frank and robust discussions with Triumph about the state of the bike.

Whatever Triumph says, I’ll never forget, or be able to repay, their support. Every time the next thing went wrong, the call from Triumph was always the same: “If it’s not safe, leave the bike in the next town and get on a plane,” and when I wanted to continue: “Fine. Just get the bike to Alice and leave everything to us.”

They delivered as big as it could possibly be done. The mechanics even insisted on getting the blinkers going. They didn’t hold back on a single thing.

Okay. So here I am back in the real world and keen to do some low-stress, good-fun riding again. The Dominator has cobwebs on it.

You guys tell me. What’s happening?

TF