Foolishness or: What to do when you’ve bought a motorbike 400km away and have heard bad things about every motorcycle transport company in the country
Four days ago, on Saturday 17 September 2011, I bought my 3rd bike. Not one of those silly stick-thin ones that actually require muscle, sweat and plenty of effort (and even then will only get to 50kph going downhill) a.k.a a bicycle – no, this one’s a real kickass looking beast that’ll throw you right off the back if you twist your right wrist a little too sharply.
Ok so that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m pretty sure if you tried hard enough – revved it to 20(!) in first gear and let go of the clutch, you’d have quite a job trying to stay on. Needless to say, I haven’t tried that.
Yet.
Anyway, its a 1990 250cc Suzuki Bandit. And here it is:
(Ok so this one’s not really mine, but it looks pretty much the same. I haven’t taken any pics of mine, so don’t have any to put up yet.)
Now for a little bit of history –
My first bike was also a Suzuki – an almost impressively gutless GN125. 
(Also not mine, but for some reason I don’t seem to have any photos of it)
It didn’t take long for me to feel the need for more power, so I bought this Honda GL400: 
(This one’s not mine either, but it’s about the most similar looking pic I could find. I evidently have a poor record of motorbike photo taking.)
I bought this one from a guy in Queenstown, a city about 280km away. My ex girlfriend gave me a ride there and I rode back, crashing just once on the way. Only broke an indicator lens and a rear view mirror. Cut my hands up as I’d taken my gloves off about 5 minutes beforehand and not put them back on, but my pride was hurt more than anything else. Not bad for my first time riding anything other than the GN though, I reckon.
I sold this bike to a friend of mine in 2008, and haven’t ridden anything since.
Until now. A couple of weeks ago I started to get the urge to ride again, and just couldn’t ignore it. I decided I wanted a 250cc, and started looking around. The bandit caught my eye, but it cost considerably more than I wanted to spend. I liked the look of it though, did some research and a lot of the specs appealed to me (6 gears, 45hp!).
The other problem was that it was in Christchurch (360km away. According to Google maps, this would take you 3 days 1 hour to walk [one way], presumably without stopping to eat or sleep.)
Now since I don’t think I would survive such a journey, let alone the additional trip back, nor did I have a consecutive 3 days 1 hour to spare, I decided I’d have to make some sort of plan.
The obvious option was to somehow transport myself there (preferably by plane, car or bus) and ride the bike back. I asked the guy selling it whether he reckoned the bike would be ok to ride that kind of distance, but he didn’t give me a straight answer.
So I looked into getting a transport company to deliver it, either to my door or the depot, I didn’t really care, as long as it got to Dunedin without any damage. So I checked out the various companies offering motorcycle transportation services and finally chose one which offered a professional service at a reasonable price.
Then I did a couple of searches on the company, and discovered that someone had said something about them being quite sub-par when it came to motorbikes. The comment was made a few years ago, but I didn’t want to risk it. I soon discovered that at every company had at least one person complaining about them.
One common suggestion on the forums I visited was to simply ride the bike wherever you wanted it to go instead of getting a company to handle transportation, as that way you could be sure the only damage done to it would be your own fault. It seemed that this was considered an acceptable, and indeed preferable option in the situation. Only problem was, I hadn’t ridden a bike in about 2 and a half years, and even then my skills weren’t that great. I’d never really cruised at 100/110kph before. (I spent most of the earlier mentioned ride from Queenstown to Dunedin going at about 80kph. Before that, you see, I’d only really ridden at 50/60kph max, as the GN just wasn’t really capable of much more than that. So 100kph was just too fast and freaky for me at the time, and I only rode the GL around town after that, max speed ~60kph. Plus the GL didn’t really seem to enjoy going faster than 80 [despite the fact that it was a touring style bike] and I was quite happy to comply.)
Yeah so I figured it was something of a risk for me to just hop on a relatively small bike I’d never inspected, or even seen before, and immediately ride it the 360km journey home. (And what if the weather rained or became particularly windy?)
But I decided it’d be an adventure, and after a few google searches querying whether such a ride was doable on a 250cc (not preferable, it seemed, but plenty of people had done longer journeys on smaller bikes), I made up my mind to do it. I then spent a nervous week with the impending motorbike trip weighing on my mind all the time. I had trouble thinking about anything else, and concentrating at work was very difficult. I looked up motorcycle tips for long journeys, bad weather, unexpected events, everything I could think of really, to try to fill my head with motorbike riding knowledge and thereby make up for my lack of daily riding experience. What a joke.
So, on Saturday I caught the bus to Christchurch at 8am and arrived there at about 2.15pm or so. The weather was nice and warm, looking good except for the ominous dark clouds in the distance. I walked to the bike’s owner’s place and got there at about 3pm. He showed me a few things, gave me a few tips, and sent me on my way.
I then proceeded to ride back to Dunedin. The ride took me about 5 hours. And to be honest, that’s about all there is to say about that. One of the handlebar ends fell off when I stopped in Rakaia, so I borrowed a screwdriver from a nearby gas station and put it back on.
The temperature became progressively colder as I traveled further south, and it rained for about half an hour after I passed through Oamaru, about 110km north of Dunedin. Between Oamaru and Dunedin I was incredibly cold, despite the fact that I was wearing 2 leather jackets, gloves and 2 pairs of pants! I felt like hypothermia could be a possibility, and even though I arrived in Dunedin and immediately had a hot shower at about 8pm, actually didn’t stop feeling the chill until the next morning.
But I made it, the bike is still running fine, and I’m very pleased that I didn’t chicken out of the ride. I doubt I’ll ride that distance again any time soon though.
