ISLAND EVOLUTION

Australian Motorcyclist Issue #23

• MOTOmania GET AN EXPERT
• BEAR FACED
• ISLAND EVOLUTION
• NEW BIKE PRICES HOW MUCH IS IT
• WHAT SAY YOU? HAVE YOUR SAY. IT’S FREE
• THE GREAT DAYS OF MOTORCYCLING CLASSIC MORRIS
• A JACKET THAT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE NORM’S
• TELEGRAPH TO THE CAPE
• READERS’ TRAVEL WHAT DID EMERSON SAY AGAIN?
• LONG TERMERS WHAT HAVE WE DONE NOW?
• BIKE LAUNCH YAMAHA TRICITY
• PUBS OF THE MONTH
• I BUNGLED BIG TIME
• TRAVEL EDELWEISS TOURING
• WORLDS BEST CUSTOM BIKES
• COLOGNE BIKE SHOW THE LITTLE BITS
• MELTS LIKE PUTTY IN YOUR HANDS
• LAUNCH INDIAN SCOUT
• TOURING TASSIE
• TWO METRIC CUSTOMS
• MOTOGP TECHNOLOGY AND POWER
• BOMBALA BIKE SHOW…
• NEWS THE LATEST AND GREATEST
• FIRST LOOK
• FURBALL

IT’S BEEN A LOVE HATE RELATIONSHIP

I’ll never forget my first trip to Phillip Island for the MotoGP. If it wasn’t for a pair of huge, smelly, bearded men, I would be dead – a frost-blasted cadaver bobbing in Bass Strait.

Mick Doohan was busy winning his fifth world title and I was wedged between the warming bulk of Brother Silverback and Uncle Paint in the Bass Strait stand as a feral ice-gale lashed us from the bowels of Antarctica. I was wearing everything I had brought, including my helmet, in an effort to fend off death. And had I not been compacted between these two vast blokes and feeding off their body-heat like a tick between two bears, I would have surely died. This is no doubt how Vikings survived crossing the North Sea in their row-boats.