A Harley Soft Tale
I have only ever ridden a Harley Davidson once. It was a 2009 full-kit Heritage Soft-tail with large screen, crash and sissy bars, triple head lights, and metal studs on the seat and panniers.
It’s not that I dislike Harleys in particular or cruisers in general, in fact the older I get the more my arthritic neck objects to the cafe racer seating position on my Honda GB500TT and the more sense the cruiser layback style makes. It’s just that being into British, Italian and Japanese bikes, the opportunity to ride a Harley never really presented itself.
That is, until my wife Annie and I went to Central Australia to attend a conference at Alice Springs and on the weekend we made the trip to Yulara to see Uluru and Kata Tjuta. After walking a lap of Uluru in early morning I discovered that we could hire a Harley in Yulara and ride over to see Kata Tjuta. So we went to Uluru Motorcycle Tours where we were fitted out in black leather jackets and black openface helmets with black visors and sunglasses, de rigeur kit for the Heritage Soft-tail we hired, which only had about 60 km on the clock. We set off on the bike for Kata Tjuta on a perfect Central
Australian winter’s day, and I have to say that the Heritage Soft-tail was perfectly suited to this ‘Easy Tourer’ role, with its lazy 45° V Twin exhaust beat and gobs of low-down torque.
It was not long after we first sighted Kata Tjuta that we noticed a viewing platform with a car park so we pulled into the parking area to be the only two-wheeled vehicle there. Carrying our helmets we strode off to the viewing platform to take some photographs. I was busy snapping wide angle shots of what was once called ‘the Olgas’ when I heard the unmistakable flat twin rumble of multiple BMWs and looking in that direction saw about 10 big Beemers throwing up rooster-tails of sand as they approached across the desert.
Seeing the Harley in the car park they headed straight for it. I could see the Beemer riders inspecting the Harley, pointing and laughing, and probably thinking to themselves ‘what the f#@% is this thing doing here?’
Having just finished taking photos we were on the path to the car park when one of the Beemer riders dressed in Adventure biker gear suddenly appeared. He and we both stopped, he looked at Annie, looked at me, and then looking back at Annie again, with a beaming smile he exclaimed – “Shit, is that the quality of Sheila you get if you ride a Harley? I’m trading in my Beemer!” We all laughed and Annie told the beaming Beemer rider that was the nicest compliment she’d had in a long time. He then strode off to the viewing platform and we to the car park where there was a lot of exchanged looks and knowing grins while we got ready to ride off to Kata Tjuta. The photo at top was taken by one of the BMW riders who wanted to swap his R1200 (pictured) for the Harley, but he suddenly went soft on the idea when I told him the pillion passenger wasn’t included in the deal.