Tribute to Harley

Now, many of you doubted that the Vespa was a good choice to travel across to Perth. I know it is a LONG WAY across. BUT, the Vespa, Ninja, Sandra and Marica ALL made it!!! We are proud of our achievement, and it is a major one, but Marica thought that she needed to give you a better idea of just the scope of achievement it was for the Vespa to cross the island....

The Vespa is more economical on good roads with minimal crosswinds and less tail-turbulence from passing road trains, and the roads on this trip had that and more and while loaded up with 'stuff', and  the Vespa does not have the 'get up and go' that the Ninja has, but she overtook road trains!!! and lots of them. How many of you out there (if there is anyone out there) can say you have done that?

The Vespa, which we have re-named "Harley", because he is a big powerful motorbike wannabe... was not an issue on the trip. The only issue was with the rider. Now after all of these years you would think that Marica would know her ability and know her limitation (she is, after all a city rider!), and a she would not be overly cautious, other than that the issues with her were;

The Vespa could have done longer days, Marica couldn't

The Vespa could have travelled faster - if Marica let her, but we were doing around the speed limit.

After almost 8 years on the Vespa, you would have thought that Marica would have learnt to ride on slippery sand, gravel and potted surfaces better, and learnt to check that just because the ground looks like grass, it may be only a thin covering for loose sand.... but no!, but she has learnt a lot on this trip

But saying all that, we just covered over 4500 km so far!!! on bikes!!! The Vespa made it this far without skipping a beat

Look, even when Marica and the Vespa parted company on a quiet stretch of road doing 110km/hr taking a corner before Ceduna, the Vespa took it in his stride and kept going. The incident was solely  due to a momentary lack of concentration on Marica's part and a patch of gravel, but the bike still kept going for the remaining 3500km.... at this point we started re-considering the Vespa's name and Harley seemed to be the logical choice....

And now Marica can say that she has done something that Sandra hasn't.

Now a bit about the Ninja....

That is an amazing machine that just goes no matter the load on it

And her rider? That woman just goes and copes and picks up any slack and does not complain and is amazing

Marica could not have contemplated this trip without Sunny, but Sunny could have done it all on her own, in faster time and with fewer issues.