Bradshaws in Oz

01 December 2015

Barb the Bikie Part 2

For those of you who might not know, Barb now has her RE class motorcycle licence. She can now ride by herself without me "supervising" her. Most times when she is working daylight hours, she rides to work. Because we got her bike used, there wasn't any choice on colours and white was never her first love. Last week we changed that. It is now green. Tree Frog Green as Barb calls it. It is the same green as the Mazda 2 hatchbacks. We painted the helmet and the top box to match. The top box I also wired for signal, tail and brake lights.

Eleven months ago Barb wasn't even sure she wanted to ride on the back of my bike and now she has a custom painted scooter!!!

In other news, we now own an air compressor and a spray gun. Once we move, we are planning on painting my bike and the car.

23 September 2015

Barb the Bikie

Back in February I finally convinced Barb to go biking with me. She was pretty nervous to start off with. (So was I nervous too, I've never driven with a passenger). She even started to enjoy it and eventually bought her own helmet, jacket and gloves.

Then back in July we saw were looking around online and saw the Piaggio scooters with three wheels. She thought she would be comfortable riding a three wheeler. So about this time Barb headed over to the Queensland Transport website, took an online test and got her motorcycle learners license. Unfortunately the Piaggios are almost $10,000. We also looked at the CanAm Spyders but they were even more expensive. Did a bit more digging around and found that Yamaha also makes a little three-wheel 125cc scooter called the Tricity. We found a used one at dealership on the Sunshine Coast. On 1 August Barb became a motorcyclist.

Picking it up at the dealership.

Barb's first ever ride.

So far we've done a bit of riding around Bundaberg, Barb with her yellow 'L' on the back and me riding behind "supervising". We've gone to the Hill of Promise winery in Childers where we discover that the under-seat storage and hold 5 bottles of wine. We went to Hervey Bay one weekend. Rode down Saturday morning, whale watched Saturday afternoon, camped overnight and rode back Sunday.

Camping in Hervey Bay

Just this last weekend we did a Sunday afternoon drive through Bargara, Gin Gin and Childers. We kept to the back-roads as much as possible because they are much more pleasant way to travel and you see interesting stuff. On the way to Gin Gin we stopped at the Mystery Craters. They are just a bit bizarre.