The weather was a few degrees cooler than the last couple of days and after the success of the Tea Gardens lunch with the family a last minute decision was made to head off for lunch again, this time motoring towards the vineyards.
My son chose the bike again so we geared up and away we went. First thing, 13.53 litres of premium unleaded for $15.82.
Heading out the link road there's a few largish roundabouts and as my confidence has grown over the last month or so I've been hitting them a little harder each time. First roundabout today I found an edge, that is, the metal under my right foot found the road. I felt my boy sit up, we started to straighten, a quick adjustment and we were around quite fine. By my old standards we weren't leaning very far at all, so I made a mental note of the limit.
Motoring further west around a windy stretch of road I found the left limit, once again felt my son sit up, it was a little more of a struggle, he fought a little harder but we were around fine. I should say that on both of these scrapes I wasn't going anwyhere near anything I'd describe as hard.
I had a quick work over my shoulder with the boy and warned him that sitting up while going aroung a corner should not happen. My wife was following us in her car and over lunch at a lovely Japanese/Thai restaurant in the vineyards she mentioned she'd seen both strikes and the bike lurching and told our boy in her own way that he should never do that again.
It turns out he was actually quite "concerned" at hearing the noise and leaning further than he had gone before. My wife did a wonderful job at putting him at ease and explaining from years of her own experience the nuances of good pillioning and the importance of sticking with the rider and not being a pea heart. One day soon I'll get her on the back I hope.
After lunch we came back the more upright route, heading out to the freeway and hooking back into the link road. It cooled down a little more as we went, a beautiful day for a ride.
Kilometres travelled: 118
Last though, finding the road with the bike going so easy on the Road King really let me know that this is not a machine made for chucking around and pushing hard. Not sure if I was disappointed or not at this point.
