Years ago Michael and I were very keen motorcyclists. In our 20's and early 30's we enjoyed hundreds of bike rallies, camping weekends, foreign rallies and a lot of European touring. We both rode our own bikes and we were seasoned riders. But as time goes on circumstances change ie. children! our motorcycling days petered out to the back burner then merely a pilot light of happy memories.
After watching the Charley Boorman and Ewen McGreggor DVD, their epic trips around the world and through Africa, the pilot light lit the flame again and we both got the biking bug back.
So after a lot of browsing we bought an old but good condition Kawasaki 500.
Georgia was very excited about the purchase and she thinks its really cool to be picked up from school on it.
Well, we gave the bike a good long run out on Tuesday up to Rotorua via the back roads. The thing about roads in New Zealand are that the main roads are like UK back roads and NZ back roads are merely gravel tracks. The tarmac literally stops and then you spend the next 10kms or so getting bounced out the saddle and pinged by loose stones. The road we chose was obviously rarely used as even the cows and sheep stood up and stared at us with incredulous looks on their faces as we wobbled past.
It took about 2 hours to get to Rotorua where we had a coffee and did a little bit of Christmas shopping. We were also fortunate to be entertained by a really good army swing band in the town centre.
We took the more direct route home as we realised at 1.45 that we had to get back to our parental responsibilities and collect Georgia from school at 3pm.
