12-2-08 Motorcycle shopping
I had an interesting conversation with a roommate who is from Germany. He just came down from cannies and said he has been freezing all day. Well, it has been tee shirt weather here and he for sure was dressed for cold weather. It turns out that it has been 43C up there day and night. He said you just stood there and dripped sweat. He said that he worked down in the south west part of the country on a farm and it was hot but very low humidity there. He said that the manual labor industry in Australia is dependent on ‘backpackers’. I guess a lot of kids come down here to work the farms. They let 18-31 year olds come for up to a year to work. Kids from all over the world but he says that most of the travelers are like him, from Germany. He is a real interesting dude to talk with. He designs computer systems for small items but not sure exactly what as he was talking way over my head, not that I am that tall.
I have been on the computer yellow pages finding out the most likely places to find a motorcycle and how to get there by bus. The transportation system here is top notch for sure. There are these rail cars.
Then there is this elevated single-track or maybe called a mono rail train that snakes down through town on this high over head track.
There is a huge system of bus routes that seem to go about everywhere. Most of the motorcycle shops are out on the Great Western Highway. Evidently that is where most of the car dealerships are located as well. There are several cars, vans, and little jeep type vehicles on the bulletin board here and the prices seem cheap. Some of the little rigs are all set up for camping and even have tents, water jugs, petrol cans and such. I just gotta go look at bikes though…..
I took a city bus out maybe a mile to a shop that rents bikes.
That is a Post Office on the left with a pretty cool medical center next door. I liked his ‘Don’t tell me what is wrong with you, because I will find out and tell you”.
I went buy a little store that sold Gibson Guitars. This is the most expensive he had in the window. 50% off though so must have been a good deal eh?
When I got out to the motorcycle shop the woman that deals said that she had nothing at this time but if I wanted to buy a bike she would work it out that she would pay me half price of it IF it was returned in good condition after three months. Yikes! That seems like a pretty heavy hit so off I went down the road to another shop. That shop had nothing in dual sports type bikes, so off again down the bus line to the BMW and Harley shop. I bought a ‘day tripper’ pass so I could take any bus, train, or ferry for the day. I was focused on bike shops so with the help of the very friendly bus drivers and public I made it to Frasers Motorcycle shop. All they had there were those big 1200GS oil heads ($A30,000) and one of the new F800’s. I was really unimpressed with that thing but the salesman said that if I wanted to take off and just ride for a few months and came back, this would be the best bike to ride because it would be very saleable when I came back. Evidently they cant get anymore for several months. That bike would cost about A$19,000 plus fees and what ever. The main thing that didn’t make it even possible for me is that it didn’t have crash bars, bash plate or even panniers or pannier mounts. He did say that the rack mounts might be available in a couple of months. He said that he did have a guy that wanted to buy one of the 12GS’s and wanted to sell a R100GS/PD. Well that sounded pretty good after he said it only had about 10K klicks and was a ’93. It would be just like the yellow dog but different color. He tried to contact that guy but he was unavailable for an hour. We then got to talking about other brands to get and finally got to a friend of his that had a Suzuki DR650 for sale. Not many miles and set up for outback travel. Gotta look into that…
I took a train out to a distant place to see another motorcycle dealer that had a couple of dual sport bikes for sale.
When I got out there and found the two dealers I was looking for I was disappointed to find out that they had sold the Suzuki that they had on their website and the other place said it had sold out of dual sports a couple of weeks ago. One place did have a BMW F650 but with no racks or crash protection for ten grand. Right next to it was a Honda Trans Alp which is a nice bike but this one was just for city riding too with no racks or protection as well as being a really big heavy 650cc bike. I then noticed that my new camera was not working well at all. You might notice it too when you see the picture I took of that F650 and Trans Alp.
See what I mean? Yeah, it is get another camera time. Damn. Next day I went on down into the heart of this city and found a camera store with the help of directions from the desk clerk here at the hostel. I asked the kid who waited on me to put in the batteries, memory chip and set the clock for me. He took this picture of me to show me it was working. Handsome devil eh?
A little variety of building structures downtown.
Notice the ‘Happy Christmas’ banner but this time with a monkey (or something like that) hanging down. It is a way different type of Christmas marketing down here. I haven’t seen any snow men or slay rides or even jingle bells music.
Parking zone for motorcycles and scooters.
The closest thing I have seen to these are the Ibis that came into my farm in Nevada. They were enjoying poking around a little park I stopped to rest at.
I made connections with the guy that wants to sell the DR650 and will meet him tonight here at the hostel.