zzHome 2014

The President Writes

From the Square Office at the Cream House

Friday, January 3rd 2014 10:30 PM Posted by Geoff

My very Best Wishes to all our Members for the coming year.

Two thousand and fourteen is shaping up to be an important year for our Club.

The new Royal Enfield Continental GTs will start arriving in late January/early February and with some 60 on order from dealers across Australia, according to importer Graham Nelson, there is the possibility of a real boost to our membership.

I am also hoping that more younger riders will see the merits of what Royal Enfield motorcycles have to offer and this may lead to a surge in sales of C, B and G5 models on the back of the Continental GT models.

In Grant Roff’s article published in out November Newsletter and December Motorcycle Trader magazine, he suggests a turning away of buyers from the increasingly complicated and overly technical whizz bang head splittingly fast bikes from Japan and Europe to motorcycles a little less complicated and a little cheaper and easier to work on and repair.

Technology can be wonderful but sometimes you just want to escape from it and go back to a simpler life. I hope Grant Roff is right.

Do people really need road bikes capable of 300+kph when the highest speed limit on any road in Australia is 130kph?

If a person owns a bike capable of those dizzying speeds then it is inevitable that at some stage they will think,”Let’s see what I can get her up to.”

It’s not guaranteed that you will have an accident and hurt or kill yourself, but you are shifting probabilities towards an accident every time you do it.

Having fun on a motorcycle is not just about the terminal velocity of the bikes.

It brings to mind the rides at Disneyland in Los Angeles.

Some of the rides are teeth clenching, white knuckle events like Space Mountain or Indiana Jones, (and roller coaster rides in most other parks) whereas other Disneyland rides transport you to other worlds, like Pirates of the Carribean, It’s a Small World and so on.

It’s really the difference between riding a 300kph sportsbike and riding a Royal Enfield.

Just as exciting and thrilling but far fewer OS Moments on your RE.

I think that’s a message we should be trying to get out there.

Bruce Walker.