2011-05-14 Shambles Boerrie Roll Day

I decided to take Thereza to the Soup Kitchen jol on her own bike and afterwards we went to quickly support Shambles with their fund raising effort.

We had a boerie roll and a cool drink each and spent some time listening to music and just generally chatting to everyone around the place.

Just a good time with friends and supporting them in their efforts to raise funds for the jol they were planning on having later in the year.

(See August's report a little later on...Quite successful!)

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I'm going to break away from the normal "feedback on the jol"-thing and talk a little more about the bike used on the jol.

In 2008 I wrote off Thereza's previous bike, a Kawasaki ER-6F. Due to a number of circumstances beyond our control at the time, I could not replace the bike until the end of 2010, when I was able to purchase a brand new Kawa ER-6F. (See pic on right)

I used Thereza's previous bike a lot and have grown to love this little machine. I found it an absolute pleasure to ride.

It is forgiving, light to handle and has ample torque, as well as top speeds in excess of 200 on the speedo. This is one of the advantages of having a parallel twin, versus a single cylinder, like some of the other 650's on the market.

It is quite light on "juice" and the previous one we had gave me about 18km/l on the open road even though I weigh in excess of 100kg and was riding at speeds over the legal limit in most open spaces.

The new model is just as good, if not better, although I have not been able to ride it such a lot, seeing as my wife has been a little less forthcoming with the keys, for some reason.

All I can say, though, is that it is still frugal on fuel and still handles like a dream and is still quite forgiving and easy to ride.

My personal opinion is that anyone who wants to get a bike which his wife, or any other "beginner", would be comfortable with, they can definitely consider one of these. They are also not that expensive and easy to maintain.

You may have seen the Versys model, which is the more "butch" version of the ER? Well, in the last couple of weeks, I learnt that Kawasaki is launching the Versys... but with a Z-1000's motor in it!

Can you IMAGINE the trouble you could get into with a bike like that?!

Well, imagine an evil giggle and hear me say: "I can!"