There is something about growing old ‘‘disgracefully’’ that lit a spark in Kim Jacob’s heart. He was 50 at the time but something about heading into the twilight years without a protest didn’t sit right.
So he did what he thinks all middleaged people should – he joined the Ulysses Motorcycle Club and became president of the Whittlesea branch.
The national club has up to 60,000 old codgers – junior members are in their 40s and only graduate to senior membership at 50.
People join the club, rather than one of 140 Australian or any of the overseas branches, but can ride with any branch.
Seven years on, Jacob is a proud member of a club which has a logo of a bespectacled old bloke with a beard, big nose and open face helmet.
The club’s name comes from a poem about how the great Greek hero Ulysses, in charge of his kingdom of Ithaca, was bored and longed to go adventuring with his old mates.
It describes the sort of person who has the wanderlust to ride across the country in middle and later years, Jacob says. The rebel in Jacob raised its head in childhood.
‘‘I have been riding since I was about 12 or 14 years old, not legally, of course,’’ he says. ‘‘My present ride is a [cruiser style] 2006 Suzuki Boulevard VZ800, I have had this bike for about 18 months. Prior to that I owned a 1997 Honda CBR600F, I still regret selling the Honda – it was so much fun to ride.’’
Fun seems to be the password at the club, which attracts dozens of people to its Saturday rides as well as its mid-week jaunts.
Ray Lane, 63, is a founding member of the Whittlesea branch, which started in 2000 with a handful of riders and now attracts about 60 on a Saturday ride. He rode bikes as a kid and returned to biking when he was 40 because ‘‘you become a teenager again’’.
Lane’s mammoth rides include a trip to Townsville of about 4000 kilometres, double the usual distance, because ‘‘you zig zag your way across the country, taking in points of interest’’.
‘‘A two-day trip might take a week,’’ he says. ‘‘Ulysses is not a motorcycle club. It is a social club where everyone happens to like bikes.’’ Age is no barrier.
One of the club’s older members, Don Miller, 76, rode across the Nullarbor to Albany, Western Australia with about a dozen other members a few years ago for the club’s annual general meeting.
‘‘I really enjoy it; you get a lot of time to think when you’re riding,’’ he says.
Many members tell a similar story of riding as teenagers then giving motorcycling away. Ron Laurence, 66, rode a scooter when he was ‘‘young and foolish’’.
He didn’t have a licence “because no one told me I had to have one’’. Marriage and children led Laurence to turn to more conventional transport, but when he turned 45 the family car held little appeal and he returned to motorcycling.
‘‘I saw a motorcyclist wearing a logo with an old man’s smiling face and discovered the Ulysses Club,’’ he says. ‘‘Through the club I’ve met more people than I would have in a car club. People with bikes wave to each other or pull up and say ‘nice bike’; car drivers never do.’’
Laurence has switched to a trike with a lounge-chair style seat and takes his wife, Terri, on the back.
Sue Brabazon, 50, never rides pillion. She rides her own Suzuki 650 Burgman scooter because ‘‘I love the open road’’.
‘‘I live in Preston but love Whittlesea and getting out in the country,’’ she says. ‘‘I lost my brother in a motorbike accident.
“It sounds like a stupid reason to start riding seven years ago, but he was a member of Ulysses and loved it; so do I.’’ Brabazon says it is no different being a female rider.
‘‘All the members welcome you and share their knowledge.’’ And size doesn’t count when it comes to machines.
Brabazon has ridden a Honda CT110 Postie Bike motorcycle – a lightweight 110cc machine designed for commercial and agricultural use – from Brisbane to Darwin in a 10-day Postie Bike Challenge, where riders bought then donated their bikes to charity.
‘‘It was great,’’ she says.
Don Miller and Kim Jacob with members of the Whittlesea branch
