Yesterday I introduced you to the bag of Mixed Nuts that went for a ride together on Sunday 10th July 2011 in what was called the “Sidecar Circus”.  We got as far as the Morning Tea break, where we pick up the story today:

A very important group of people assisting us on these rides are the “Marshalls”: a group of men and women set out before the ride begins to wait on the corners to direct all the riders which way to go.

After a most welcome Morning Tea had been well and truly consumed, we travelled via Mount Glorious Road to Samford, then by Samford Road to Bygotts Road where we turned left up a first-gear hill and then followed Mailmans Track to Bunya Road and then to Eaton’s Crossing Rod. There we all had to smile for the camera again.

From Eatons Hill Road we turned Left onto Clear Mountain Road from which we gained stunning views over Lake Samsonvale, and then turned right onto Winns Road.
From there it was back to the Petrie Markets via Forgan Road, Protheroe Road and Young’s Crossing. After a while chinwagging back at the markets we all left to find our own ways home.

I am not sure how to link to a specific post in Facebook, so I have copied here a post from Claude at Freedom Sidecars and am using this quote to then share some thoughts of my own:

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MIXED NUTS…

Did anyone ever notice how ones who ride different machines seem to
fit into a stereotype? Years ago someone wrote an article on this and
I felt it was quite amusing but it did hold a lot of truth.

Think of it…Harley riders with many dollars worth of leather on and a
thirty dollar helmet. They seem to wear the leather on and off the
bike too. Then there are the sport bike (crotch rocket) types who ride
with shorts, tank tops , sneakers and a four hundred dollar helmet. At
a rally you may see the BMW types who come in an Aerostitich suit or
the Ducati riders who will show up in full leathers dyed red. The
Goldwingers are known for wearing matching jackets and helmets with
the ever present headset mike projecting in front of their mouth…they
talk softly when on the bike if you speak to them so as not to blat
the ears off their color coordinated passenger. There are others for
sure if we dwell on this but that is not my point to make.

Sidecarists are, for sure, a mixed breed. Years back at the Cook
Forest USCA National (’93 I think) I was really taken off guard by the
comment of my solo bike friend who came along. He was totally amazed
that so many variations of rider `types’ would be at this rally. He
was more amazed that sidecarists tend to talk more about their
sidecars than the power unit that they are pulling them with. Kind of
neat situation isn’t it?

At one time I had a great love for mixed nuts. In the containers that
the mixed nuts came in it was always a real treat to pick out the
cashews. These were the cream of the crop in my book. The other nuts
were okay but for me the goal was to pick out as many cashews as
possible….yumm. A cashew man I was….if it wasn’t a cashew it was
second rate.

One day while in a store I was walking toward ‘nut section’ when in
the distance I noticed something that was unfamiliar to me. As I drew
closer this site began to come into focus clearer and clearer……
could it be…..is this for real? This site could not be taken
lightly. I stood in awe as my mind raced with wild anticipation. The
beating of my heart threatened to explode though my chest as I ever so
slowly reached forth a shaking hand toward the object. I knew it was
neither a mirage nor a dream as my hand touched the cool glass
container that was plainly labeled CASHEWS ! Yes…oh YES!! Cashews
and only cashews….No more mixed nuts….No more picking though the
walnuts and peanuts and Brazil nuts and all of the other stuff . This
was it…an honest to goodness jar of just cashews…..Life was indeed
good….the days of mixed nuts were over. Today was the beginning of a
new life for me. Me and my cashews…alone at last. No more mixed nuts
!!

Upon returning home with my newly found treasure I flopped on the
couch. I felt as though nothing in this world could ever take the
present satisfaction from me. Pure ambrosia..pure delight…it was
only my cashews and me..alone at last.

After a couple of hours of sleep that night I awoke with a bad case of
heartburn. The symptoms could not be ignored as the discomfort deep in
my chest worse and worse. Minutes became hours. The battle within me
raged on and on with no relief in sight as I drifted in and out of
consciousness. My body cried for sleep but it was not being realized
due to the discomfort within. Finally in my state of delirium sleep
mercifully overpowered me.

The light of the sun was breaking through the eastern sky as I slowly awoke.

It was a new day half opened eyes slowly adjusted to the light within
my darken room. The worst was over although as I saw the three empty
cans of cashews flashbacks of the night before attempted to take
control of my senses. I looked away from them quickly and these
feeling seemed to subside. Yes…It was a new day. Thoughts of the
night before were not clear but in a strange way were also so very
real. The experience was a only a haze but still was attempting to
control me.

Days passed and the memory of that fateful night ever so slowly faded
into a surreal memory.

It was a long time before I journeyed back to the store where the
cashews and mixed nuts were waiting to be purchased. Bit I did return
and, again, in the same isle I noticed them. There they were the
familiar ‘mixed nuts’ and right beside them the notorious cashews.
This time I reached up onto the shelf and confidently grabbed three
jars of ‘mixed nuts’.

Later that evening as I opened one of the jars and began to eat I
found that the nuts that I had typically rejects in days gone by were
much more appealing to me. Yes…I did still eat the cashews but no
longer ignored the other nuts in the jar. Everything, cashews and
mixed nuts seemed to taste better than ever….wow…life was now
better than ever even with all of the nuts.

In my world, and in yours, we may tend to look at the cashews as
something special. Some of us are cashews and some of us are various
other mixed nuts but we need to learn that if we were all cashews life
would probably give us a lot of heartburn. It is people, the mixed
nuts that they are that we can learn so much from. It is people, the
mixed nuts that they are, in which we can learn to enjoy life to it’s
fullest. Sidecar people indeed cover the spectrum of what may be
described as ‘mixed nuts’. The old saying that says ‘it takes all
kinds’ is many times thought of in a negative way but it does ‘take
all kinds ‘ to make life what it is. If we want to rise to the
potential that we have it is a good policy to make it a goal to enjoy
the mixed nuts…after all folks …we is one.

Claude

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Claude’s post on Facebook caused me to start thinking about the “Mixed Nuts” that come riding with us every July on the “Sidecar Circus” which is organised by the HMCCQ.

Every year the Sidecar Circus has been organised by Don Nicol, but Don having passed away after a fight with cancer just last month, it will now have to be organised by other club members.

The sidecar Circus is open to all riders with sidecars, whether they are historic bikes or not, so we get a few modern bikes along as well.

Now for a few photos with comments (quite a bit of this content is stolen from http://www.disciplescmc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4701 where I wrote about a Sidecar Circus four years ago):

On Sunday 10th July 2011 we took part in the second annual “Sidecar Circus” organised by the Pine Rivers Area of the Historical Motor Cycle Club of Queensland (HMCCQ).

This was the weekend following the 100th official meeting of the local HMCCQ branch so was a special ride for the solo bikes as well. We had 11 sidecar outfits and 18 historical solo bikes along to act as marshalls and photographers, etc.

I got up early and checked all the oils, tyres, etc., and set off at about 07:00 on a sunny winter’s morning. The temperature just before I left home was about 8 degrees so I was rugged up like the Michelin Man!

At Young’s Crossing, a causeway across the North Pine River, I hit a huge pothole and heard and felt spokes breaking in my back wheel. As it was only about 500 metres to the gathering point, I kept riding, although the rear end had developed its own erratic wandering feeling – sort of like having two-wheel steering.

I arrived at our gathering point at the Petrie Markets and proceeded to put my spare wheel on the sidecar, my sidecar wheel on the rear, and my damaged rear wheel on the spare wheel mounting on the boot lid of the sidecar.

By the time I had done the three wheel swaps it was time to leave on the “Circus”.
We went straight out Dayboro Road to Dayboro where Gaven Dall’Osto took many excellent photos

From Dayboro, we turned left onto Mount Sampson Road and then right onto Laidlaw Street. From there we were guided up through some glorious mountain scenery over some truly excellent back roads. It was a pity we couldn’t stop anywhere to take photos.

Giving hand signals instead of flashing turn indicators means that the indicator doesn’t get left on after completing the turn.  Or else your arm gets very tired!

For a while we again followed the Mount Samson Road, but turned right onto Gibbons Road and travelled via the back roads to Undambi where we had our Morning Tea break. Our hot tea or coffee was accompanied by yummy snack and even hot cheerios sausages.

During Morning Tea, I took some photos of my own instead of relying on Gaven’s.

Enough photos for today, we shall continue tomorrow!

We truly were a bag of mixed nuts all rolled in together on that circus. Older bikes, newer bikes; bearded, clean-shaven; old farts, young blokes; full-face helmets, jet helmets, pudding-basin helmets (definitely a mixed bag of helmets!); full mittens, leather gloves, cotton gloves, no gloves; leather jackets, fabric jackets, kevlar jackets, all sorts of nondescript jackets; some very talkative fellows, some silent types: really a bag of “Mixed Nuts”!

Steven Green Why don’t you open it all the way?
Glad to hear you’re ok.

There’s quite a story to that too.

Originally there were two holes drilled in the bottom of the roller door equidistant from the centrepoint and a loop of very thin rope ran between those two holes so that if the door went all the way up you could use the rope to pull it down again.

That rope used to break time and time again and we replaced it time and time again. To reach the door if the rope had broken twice, thus leaving no rope to grab, involved getting the stepladder and carrying it down 38 steps to the garage, as the door was far too high for anyone in our family to grab.

If the door is rolled up more than two bricks above the bottom of the window, it goes upwards to the very top of its own accord. This happens because the heavy locking mechanism has passed the centre of the roller towards the inside of the garage and its weight, being greater than the weight of the remaining part of the roller door hanging on the outside of the spindle, is enough to cause the roller to continue to rotate, dragging the rest of the door all the way up to the very top.

So there is about half a brick (they are courses of something like “Besser” bricks, so taller than house bricks) of difference between the door going up of its own accord and Ben or I banging our heads on the door. So there is about four inches of range in which the door will stay put and no heads can bang on it.

After having replaced the skinny little ropes over and over again, and after having to bring the stepladder down 38 steps to replace the rope and then carrying it back up 38 steps again after the rope was replaced, we decided as a family not to continue replacing ropes, but rather to open the door until the bottom was just two bricks above the bottom of the garage windows so that the door would remain where it was rather than rolling all the way up out of reach.

Our landlord will not allow us to fit any other mechanism, electric or otherwise, even at our own expense, to overcome the garage door’s anti-social personality, so we are stuck with a system of having to be very precise about exactly where we leave the garage door when we open it.

Now, before I hit the Enter key, I shall copy this reply and save it for possible use in the blog.

Today I bumped my head on the garage door.

More than ten years ago, when we were moving into this place, I measured how high the roller door of the garage had to be put up so that I wouldn’t bump my head on it.

It was easy to find the answer: I discovered that if the bottom of the door was one and a half bricks higher than the bottom of the garage windows, then there was one centimetre of clearance above the top of my head so that I could walk under the door without having to duck my head.  It is important to me to figure out in advance how much clearance there is around my body, since I have almost zero awareness of how far any part of my body extends in any given direction.

Apparently this is one of the facets of my autism: lack of spatial awareness.  For most of my life I was not aware that I was autistic.  However, for all of my life I have known that I have to set up my surroundings so that I will not accidentally bump into things as I go past them, around them, over them, under them.  If ever I forget to do this, I end up kicking something with my foot when I am expecting to walk past it or, as happened this afternoon, bumping my head when I expect to pass underneath something.

So, as I said earlier, I ascertained that one and a half bricks higher than the bottom of the windows will always let me pass safely under the garage door.  If I am wearing my hat, my hat will hit the door, but to me that is of little concern.

I have been telling my family until I am sure that they are all sick of hearing it, that the garage door should always be raised to that exact level.  And every time I raise the door it is placed very precisely at that level.

But today someone got lazy and left the door about an inch lower than it should have been.

So I was walking out to get into the car and banged my head on the door.  Wendy and Rosie were waiting in the car for me to join them.  The neighbour was walking along the common driveway. The reaction was instantaneous.  Wendy was very worried that I would have concussion; she was sure I went unconscious for a second.  I am equally sure I didn’t go unconscious at all.

As I analyse it, I was walking rapidly out towards the car when my head was unexpectedly stopped.  My body had momentum and continued moving forward while my head stopped still.  This meant that my body was out of balance and began to fall over backwards.  As I do not particularly like falling, I leaned against the other car (the one parked in the garage) to prevent myself from falling any further.  To me that was all that happened.  Although it gave me a momentary fright, I was over it in a second or two and ready to go out and get in the car.

It was not to be.  Because they all saw it happen, everyone’s reaction was almost frightening.  The neighbour wanted to know if she should call an ambulance to take me to hospital.  Wendy was terribly worried that I had concussion, therefore I must go inside and sit down; I could not go to the meeting I had been intending to go to in the car.  Rosie was all worried that I had hurt my head.

So, I cancelled my attendance at the meeting, went inside, sat down and ate two bananas to make me feel better!

Now here’s the funny thing: over the past ten years I have bumped my head on that door several times before when nobody else was around.  One time, I even fell over onto the floor as there was no car to lean on.  On every one of those occasions, I just shrugged my shoulders, muttered under my breath that some silly bugger ought to learn how to raise the door to the correct height, and continued on with going wherever I had planned to go next.  A couple of times I might have had a slight headache, but I soon forgot about that as I continued on with whatever I had planned to do.

This one time when I happened to have an audience to appreciate my performance does demonstrate something very important to me though.

My family loves me and cares for me.

Wendy loves me and cares for me.

Rosie loves me and cares for me.

Even my neighbour loves me and cares for me.  (And the awful thing is, I do not even know her name!)

Most of all, God loves me and cares for me. (Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will.  But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. – Matthew 10: 29-30 NKJV) And I am worth more than a sparrow!

The divisions of historic motorbikes into classes by date of manufacture actually varies slightly from one geographic location to another. For the purposes of today’s post I am defining each of the classes in accordance with the rules of the Historical Motor Cycle Club of Queensland (HMCCQ).

Veteran

A veteran motorbike is one constructed up to and including 31st December 1918.

Vintage

A vintage motorbike is one constructed between and including 1^st January, 1919 and 31^st December 1930.

Post-Vintage

A post-vintage motorbike is one constructed between and including 1^st January, 1931 and 31^st December 1945.

Post-War

A post-war motorbike is one constructed between and including 1^st January, 1946 and 31^st December 1960.

Historic

An historic motorbike is one constructed between and including 1^st January 1961 and  31^st December of the year 30 years prior to the current year.
Historic motorbikes are further divided into 3 groups:

• HISTORIC 60s – constructed between 1^st January 1961 and 31^st December 1969.

  

• HISTORIC 70s – constructed between 1^st January 1970 and 31^st December 1979.

  

• HISTORIC 80s – constructed between 1^st January 1980 and 31^st December 1984 (as at 2015).

  

This is the set of definitions used by HMCCQ and I do realise that other states and other countries have definitions that are in variance with these.

Some more photos taken on Australia Day 2015:

In tomorrow’s post I shall explain the meanings of the different “classes” of historic motorbikes.

Every year at the Samford Historical Museum there is a special Australia Day celebration.

One of the many features is a display of motorbikes by members of the Historical Motor Cycle Club of Queensland.

The day was fine and sunny which makes the taking of photographs more difficult because of the contrast between areas of light and shade.

About forty bikes were on display although only a few will be shown here.

I shall add some more photos from this event tomorrow.

An Alpine Rally experience from long ago.

To explain the title, when I was a boy, the blackfellers (our term then for Australian Aborigines) who lived in the country all around us used to sleep with their dogs to keep them warm at night. If it was a cold night they would refer to it as a “Two Dog Night” because a man needed two dogs to keep him really warm. Occasionally there would come a night that was absolutely freezing; they would call that a “Three Dog Night.”

From the late sixties, I used to go every year on my motorbike to camp at the Alpine Motorcycle Rallies. These were held during the June long weekend at two different locations in alternate years: one year the rally would be at a creek off a bush track in the Brindabella Ranges not far south of Canberra; the next year it would be held at Yarrangobilly where there was a campground near a bridge across the Yarrangobilly River a short distance past Rules Point. This location is very roughly halfway between Kiandra and Talbingo or halfway between Adaminaby and Tumut or halfway between Cooma and Gundagai on the Snowy Mountains Highway. While I understand the Snowy Mountains Highway is now a sealed road, in those days it was all gravel.

I am not sure which year it was now, but the rally was at Yarrangobilly and I rode my bright Boeing-red Yamaha trail bike fitted with a Tilbrook Tom Thumb sidecar. It was whichever year was the coldest ever at Yarrangobilly.

The little Tilbrook was fully loaded with a four-man tent complete with all necessary poles and pegs, a tarpaulin, extra tent poles and pegs and plenty of extra guy ropes, a sledge hammer, a shovel and assorted tools, an “Antarctic” down sleeping bag, an air matress, some space blankets, some additional blankets, a few changes of clothes, a gas cooker, a billy, assorted cooking pans, plates and cutlery, and enough tinned food to last for ages. In short, we carried everything we needed to make a home away from home. My mate Graeme, from Paynesville, had his BMW piled high with a similar load of camping gear.

We left Bairnsdale early in the morning and headed East on the Princes Highway. At Cann River we filled up and turned North on the Cann Valley Highway. After the 57 miles (92 km) of gravel highway it was good to be on bitumen again as we headed into Bombala. We warmed up for a while in front of the fire at the pub before continuing through Nimmitabel to Cooma where we swung left onto the Snowy Mountains Highway to Adaminaby where we bought persishable supplies including our milk which was in cardboard one-litre cartons. From there it was a short run through Kiandra and Rules Point to Yarrangobilly.

It was mid-afternoon when we rode down the hill into Yarrangobilly and the welcome signals of campfire smoke from the rallyists who had arrived before us filled the valley. We selected a nice flat patch of grass quite close to the river, set up camp and cooked dinner. As we cooked, we were visited by a steady stream of other rally goers who shared the normal chinwagging about their rides in from all points of the compass. Dinner dispensed with and dishes washed, it was time to start the steady stroll from one bonfire to another at each of which we alternately warmed our buttocks and our fronts as tall tales and true were swapped between riders of their exploits over the years. It was probably quite possible to estimate the amount of Stones Green Ginger Wine that had been consumed around each fire by listening to just how tall those tall tales had become.

Now the campfire stories normally continued until well after midnight, but this year it became too perishing cold to stay out of the tents any longer. No matter how big and roaring the fire, and how interesting the yarns, it was just impossible to stay warm. The only clothing I removed was my Belstaffs and my boots. As I crawled into my Antarctic sleeping bag, I was wearing: cotton athletic singlet, cotton Briefs, cotton thermal top, cotton long johns, cotton skivvy, cotton (denim) Motorbike Scrambler jeans, cotton fleecy-lined WindCheater, a thick hand-knitted woollen jumper, and about three pairs of socks: cotton socks, then woollen socks, then Holeproof Explorers. I was not in bed long before I found myself far too hot, so I shed a few layers of clothes and didn’t feel comfortable until I was down to my long johns. As the air was bitterly cold on my face, I tightened the sleeping bag hood so there was only a tiny hole remaining for my breath to enter and escape.

I woke at first light after a splendid night’s sleep and began to unzip my sleeping bag. Then it was a mad scramble to put on all of my clothes as quickly as possible and then crawl back into the sleeping bag to warm up again. After I was suitably warmed, I exited the tent to find Graeme already up and with a fire lit. I grabbed the billy and headed for the river which sounded strange: it was almost silent and the sound of flowing water sounded strangely muffled and distant. The reason for this was soon apparent, the river was covered by a thick skin of ice. I hit the ice a few times with the billy but only seemed in danger of wrecking the billy; I was making no difference to the ice.

I went back to my sidecar and grabbed my largest hammer and went back down to the river. After a couple of smashes I had made a hole in the ice through which I filled the billy. I hurried back to the fire and observed that a disc of ice had already formed on the water in the billy. The fire soon boiled the water and we made our tea. As we both took milk I reached in to get one of the cartons of milk. It was a solid brick. Hard as granite. To get at it, we had to peel off the cardboard carton and place the milk on the breadboard where we used the bread knife to slice off thin tiles of milk to put into our tea. Everyone else around was faced with the same problem, so we just kept slicing at the milk with our bread knife until all the riders around had a tile to put in their tea or coffee.

One of the guys in a neighbouring tent was an amateur meteorologist and had mounted on his tent pole a Maximum-Minimum Thermometer. According to this instrument, the temperature during the night had fallen to eleven degrees Fahrenheit (almost -12ºC) and had only risen by half a degree. When I heard this, I commented, “That was really a fair dinkum Three Dog Night!” and promptly had to explain for the younger townies just what that saying meant.

Someone decided to try to ride his BMW straight across the river on the ice, but the ice broke and the bike fell in, so several guys had to fish it out of the river.

While talking about BMWs, none of them could be started so everybody was borrowing gas cooking stoves to heat up the bottoms of their motors so the bikes could be started. Meanwhile, my bike was a single cylinder two stroke with no oil in its engine apart from that in the petrol, so it started on the first kick.

During the day a trip was made towards Tumut to inspect part of the Smowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme and about thirty or more riders fell off their bikes on a very slippery icy patch of road. I had already seen the hydro power stations before, so I didn’t bother going on the ride and kept the fires burning at the camp and collected more firewood ready for the night. It was only when all the bikes came back with makeshift clutch levers or sticks for footpegs that I learned how many riders had gone down on the road in the icy conditions. Although the outfit would have taken the ice in its stride, I was kind of glad I had stayed back in camp for the day, as collision with a sliding bike might well have been a possibility.

Sunday night didn’t get nearly so cold and the river did not freeze over again.

But that Three Dog Night was definitely one to remember.

Further to yesterday’s post, and just to backtrack a little, I need to mention the history of that six-passenger chair. It was only fitted to the Triumph for a little more than a week, or certainly less than a fortnight. It was removed from the Dusting chassis the same afternoon that we had gotten rid of the queen sized bed.

A fortnight earlier, I had happened on an advertisement in a newspaper which read in part: “Double Adult sidecar for sale; seldom used. . .” I rang the number and got the address and set a date and time to go and inspect it. The advertiser warned me that it was big and heavy: he had built it with a double purpose: it was to be a camper that he could sleep in and also that he could carry two very large mates in. He warned me that the sidecar was very long, since he had designed it to give plenty of legroom to men who were both 2 metres (6 foot 7 inches) tall. We agreed on a price and I rode my triumph outfit there with the Dusting sidecar body already removed and with just a few tools in a backpack ockie-strapped to the sidecar chassis.

It was long after dark and already bitterly cold when I arrived at the address in Glenroy.

We went out behind his shed and he lifted the tarpaulin off an enormous red construction of wood and seaply. The body was well over a metre (3 foot 4 inch) wide and probably over three metres (ten feet) long. The front was semicircular and raked back to give it some sort of ability to cut through the air. In the dark, I could see that seats were fitted, but couldn’t really see what they were made of. While it was even larger than it had seemed over the phone, I decided that for the price, it had possibilities, so I handed over the cash.

We used four coach bolts to fasten the body to my chassis working by torchlight.

I rode back to Morwell noticing that, despite the lower sidecar gearing of the bike, I had to keep changing back through the gears for every hill. Every time I opened the throttle, the outfit would lurch to the left; every time I shut the throttle or braked, the outfit would try to swerve to the right. It was a long, slow ride home under the frosty light from a full moon. Long after midnight I turned it into our driveway, parked on the front lawn, and quietly snuck in the back door and went to bed.

In the morning light I went outside to see what I had bought.

The backboard of the front seat was removable and had padded foam-filled upholstery glued to its front side. The front seat itself was very wide and very long and might quite possibly have originally come from a bus or some other form of public transport. It was so wide that we soon ascertained that two of my siblings could easily sit side-by-side on it. The rear seat, way down there at the back, was the same width, but the seat cushion was much shorter. It was fixed to the floor and the backrest was permanently fitted to the rear of the bodywork. It was my brother who first realised that the front seat could be slid backwards and, if only slid partway and the backboard was re-inserted on top of it, could be used to provide short seats facing both ways. A quick gluing of cloth-covered, foam-filled, cushioning material to the rear of the front seat backboard ensured comfort for any passengers who might be seated facing backwards in the rear compartment.

Our intention at first was to ride around town with three of my brothers in the sidecar. Mick stuck his head in the front door and yelled, “Who wants to go for a test ride in Phil’s new sidecar?”

The entire family came trooping out (I have eight siblings), and started getting into the chair which had been set up with the front backboard dividing the front seat in two. In a few moments there were six young Smiths seated in the chair. I kick started the bike and mounted the pilot’s seat. My sister Karen said, “Hey, wait for me!” as she climbed on the pillion seat. So there we were: six in the sidecar and two on the bike.

I clicked it into gear and tried to let the clutch out. My Dad started pushing on the back of the sidecar while my Mum pushed the luggage rack on the back of the bike. The smell from the burning clutch was pretty severe, but we were soon rolling! We drove up to the main street and did a couple of laps of town: Commercial Road, over the railway, High Street, over the railway, and around again. We coasted in to the parking lot near the railway station (universally known to the town’s young hoons as “Drag Square”) where there was a good slope down for us to get started again, and switched off.

Two carloads of police arrived, piled out of their cars and surrounded our outfit. They looked at how everyone was seated and that the seats fulfilled all legal requirements, and agreed that it was roadworthy and legal. “But I bet the clutch of your Trumpy is burned out within a week,” said the Senior Constable. “Now let’s see how she goes!”

I kick started the Trumpy and several of the police officers helped with a push as I let out the clutch. We did one more complete lap of town, waving cheerily to the police who were still in the parking lot, and then headed home.

The following morning I rode the outfit to the school where I was then the Headmaster, Dumbalk North Primary School. I cannot remember now whether I took any kids for a ride, but I do remember that the exceptionally heavy sidecar was a real handful on the steep hills of South Gippsland.

The following weekend, we used it to dispose of the unwanted queen-sized bed and then lifted the body off the chassis. We could almost hear that Triumph heaving a great sigh of relief!

A week later, we observed another ad in the paper: “Wanted: large double-adult sidecar body to fit Dusting chassis on Indian motorcycle . . .” and I was able to sell it for the same price I had paid for it only a fortnight earlier!