ADV Rider #65 issue

Words: Heather Ellis Photos: Manish Bhaskar

For what it’s worth

Words and Image: Mark Bayley

Along time ago ….in a universe far, far away, a young boy looked out the window of the family car at this motorcycle at the traffic lights … bang, bang, bang …..what a sound…it was a Ducati.

A spark set a slow burn.

Some years later a lap around the neighbourhood on his father’s friends 750 Honda ensured the flame was well alight …. the noise, the wind, smells …immersed in the world.

The opportunity to buy that first road bike came through a new girlfriend.

The bike had been won in a game of cards by her brother, all he had to do was pay said brother the princely sum of $500 (brother didn’t want the bike!) and it was his.

At 18 he was now the proud owner of a WLA Harley, chrome forks, purple with flowers painted on the tank and that crazy suicide shift.

Off to the nearest disposal store to kit up and on to the highway….. greenhorn is the word.

While days can be long, the years can be short. In what seems to be the blink of an eye thousands of km have been travelled,

many on that SS Ducati. A 750 SF Laverda two up from Sydney to Perth and back and an 850 Le Mans from Sydney to Darwin in the pursuit of a dream and lover and those new horizons among numerous other trips.

In that world of motorcycling and on the road, there’s been grief with the death of friends while he survived, laughter, tall stories and true shared, friendships, loves come and go and so much more which brings that young lad to a point in life closer to 70.

That passion still burns bright. Life is to be lived with motorcycling a truly immersive experience that brings you closer to what it is to live, to be alive.

Another horizon, another sunrise, another chapter. What is over that hill?

The 1050 speed triple is the current ride of choice to find out….and in itself another story.

There is no time like now to chase that dream.

It may be a fleeting moment so in the words of others, embrace the day because I figure, it’s better to: Live on your feet than to die on your knees.