Window Shopping

Adventure Rider Issue #38

• It’s what we do – adventure motorbike riding tours magazine news events
• Dakar 2019: The Wish
• Yamaha Ténéré 700: First Aussie Ride!
• Under African Skies – australian adventure motorbike magazine
• Ducati Multistrada Enduro 1260
• Congregations (NSW and WA)
• Royal Enfield Himalayan – adventure motorbike magazine – australia
• Kimberley Dreaming
• Ural Adventure Ride = australian adventure motorbike magazine
• Bali Tour 2019 – Perth Adventure Riders
• Scott Britnell
• Window Shopping
• Fathers Day = australian adventure motorbike magazine
• Blue Banger Run = adventure motorbike riding
• KLRRR
• Best Job In The World
• Tubeless Bliss with Miles Davis
• Retyrement with Andy Strapz
• Food For Thought with Karen Ramsay
• Checkout
• Fit Out

In more than 25 years leading rides all over the globe with World On Wheels, Mike Ferris has met some interesting people. Roselyn Jones was one very funny lady with a great attitude to life.

Roselyn Jones had a great attitude to life.

Roz travelled with us for the first time with her husband Dick in 2002 on our Turkish Treasures tour. That was where they met Jim Henington. It was a great group with lots of fun people, but these three in particular, all in their early 60s, hit it off famously. Dick was a very good rider, but I’ll never forget the image of Roz on the back seat, bashing him about the head and shoulders after he ran wide on one corner and very nearly stamped them both at speed into an oncoming car.

With Jim Henington in Morocco.

Tough times

They survived this near-miss and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the tour, and Roz told us Dick was ready to sign up for all the other tours we did around the globe! But a couple of weeks after returning to Mackay in north Queensland, Dick went out for a ride with some of his mates and unfortunately never made it back home.

The coroner determined he’d probably suffered a heart attack and was already deceased by the time his bike ran off the road. There was a significant laceration to his neck but there was no blood loss.

His heart had already stopped pumping.

Roz was devastated at losing her life-long partner and soulmate. Jim flew up from Sydney to Mackay to support her and was instrumental in helping her through a difficult period in her life.

Not being a rider herself, Roz just kind of assumed the motorcycling dimension in her life was now also over, but Jim talked her into coming on a tour of Rajasthan with us in 2005 as a support-bus passenger, and then also to Morocco in 2009 where she more than once rode as a pillion behind Denise Ferris. Her joie de vivre had returned, and at 68 she often had the much younger troops in fits of laughter with her wacky personality.

With Denise Ferris in Iceland.

Teamwork

Roz went on to subsequently travel with us again to Turkey in 2011 to celebrate her 70th birthday, and again to Rajasthan, and then to Iceland and most recently in 2018 to do the three Baltic States and western Russia with World On Wheels.

But it was in Morocco she gave us a priceless moment.

In the coastal town of Essaouira, famous for its surfing and as a one-time home of Jimi Hendrix, Roz needed help on a shopping expedition for a new summer dress. She had brought too many heavy clothes and the climate in Morocco was very warm.

“Come on Jim, we need to go shopping,”she announced to the group in general.

Jim, by now also in his 70s, had only just taken delivery of another cold beer, but manfully accepted the challenge and knocked it back in one swallow.

“Righto Roz, I’m good. Let’s go.”

Making friends in Morocco.

Dress code

They scouted around a few shops and boutiques, but Roz couldn’t see anything immediately edifying. She was beginning to think it was a lost cause, but then Jim steered her down a narrow alleyway just off the main medina.

Through a large, glass-fronted shop she spotted something with potential.

She wandered inside and the two young shop assistants registered her presence but paid no particular attention as she browsed the clothes hanging neatly in rows. In fact, she decided, they were ignoring her rather rudely as she selected one attractive dress and held it in front of her, posing and prancing in front of a mirror to see how it suited her.

“What about this one Jim?” she asked.

Jim pursed his lips and gently shook his head. “Not your best colour, Roz.”

She put it back on the rack. The two Moroccan guys had not yet moved a muscle and were obviously very disinclined to engage.

Finding another dress, Roz held it in front of her and looked at Jim for a second opinion.

“Yep. That’s much more your style,” he offered.

The shop assistants had still not shifted from their seats.Eventually she rounded on them and said, rather shortly, “Excuse me. I like this one. Can you tell me how much this is, please?”

Finally, one of the lads shifted from his backside and wandered slowly over to where Roz was standing. With infinite patience he pointed to the sign in the shop window and said, “Lady, I am sorry.

This is dry-cleaning shop.”