I have no comment on the second-best girlfriend, but the second-best bike is the last one I spent time with. (This tells you more about me than the bike.)
Right now, that bike would be the BMW Funduro GS 650. We went to Tasmania together and then along the Great Ocean Road admiring the views of classic Australian beaches. Together we saw Tasmanian devils dead in the middle of the road, felt the salt air in our nose, or in-take valve as the case may be, and sucked into our lungs and carburetor some of the cleanest air in the world. When I was with Cindy, we stayed pretty close to home.

I'm never going to rekindle things with Cindy. And I was very suspicious that things would go well when I attempted to renew my relationship with motorcycles - any motorcycle. Hopping on a motorcycle and screaming around for a holiday is such a "middle age crisis" thing to do.

Actually that was the idea. I had planned to have a mid-life crisis in the summer of 2000, but I didn't have time. My job kept me busy, I bought a house, things like that - if you're anywhere near my age you know them too and they get in the way of being on the open road.

In January it's summer in Australia. They have motorcycles there. I made time for it. It was worth it. It was exciting, exhilarating, rejuvenating, and I did not become road kill like the wallabies, possums and kangaroos that I saw frying on the pavement.

When I had the Bonneville we used to go out west every summer. The road between Montreal and Vancouver is still, in my mind, "my route." But there was no way I was going to ride the comparable distance from Sydney to Perth across the great open frying pan of the Australian outback. I chose to spend some time in Tasmania.

Look at a map of Australia: Tasmania is that little, small island floating to the south of the Australian mainland. It looks as if you can run around it in a day on a moped. Until you get up to it.

But I'm talking about what's over the next hill before I've ridden over it. Before I got to Tasmania, I went to Melbourne to pick up the bike. When I saw "my bike" in the parking lot of BMW Headquarters, I felt like the luckiest guy at the dance, knowing for sure that I was going home with the hottest girl on the floor. "This is for me?" I thought almost aloud.

The Funduro is a great looking machine. Lots of angles and flair, and a colour that's made to be noticed. Beside a Harley or a touring bike it looks like a cool young skateboarder out with his banker father.

In the first five miles of riding through Melbourne, two guys, sitting beside me in their cars at stoplights rolled down their windows, told me they used to have bikes, and wanted to know more about the one I was on. I told the first guy that it was a borrowed bike, that was dumb. I didn't mention it to the second guy. I was on it, therefore it was my bike. Sure, why shouldn't a middle-aged Canadian be riding a hot new BWM through the suburbs of Melbourne?

You don't ride from Melbourne to Tasmania, you take the ferry. It's an overnight trip on a very comfortable ship. Motorcycles get preferred parking on the car deck and that's where I met Bill, Mitch, and Jacinta who was riding with Mitch. Bill and Mitch did not "used to have bikes" - they are long time bikers who continue to own at least one bike at a time.

Bill and Mitch are Australians, long-time friends and long-time bikers. Both have serious home responsibilities but, after a lot of planning they managed to co-ordinate a biking trip to Tasmania.

Why Tasmania? Mitch and Bill choose Tasmania for the same reasons I choose the place from the other side of the world. Good roads, lots of interesting scenery, not much traffic, a great and variety tourism infrastructure (inexpensive rooms over old pubs and fancy "romantic" seaside cabins and everything in between.) And it's not too big to cruise around in a week, although I have to admit that Tasmania looks way bigger when you get there than it does on the map. More than a week would have been better.

"Biking around Tassie" seems to be an Australia dream. When I mentioned to friends and e-mail pen pals living in Brisbane in northern Australia that I was going to Tasmania, they contacted the only Tasmania Motorcycle Rental shop, booked themselves a bike, and met me as I came off the ferry. So within three days of arriving in Australia, I had a bike gang of six members, and we were racing around the island. We were soon to add one more to the group.

We had a couple of brilliant days on the bikes, going up to the high country around Cradle Mountain in the centre of the island, then down to the coast that's strung with dunes and rough water. The very best day of biking had to have been the stretch across the southwest corner of the island - most of which is a forest preserve and a designated World Heritage Site.

A road blasted through the cliffs around an old mining town whose smelters have stunted the trees for a few kilometres, and then some spectacular long lakes embedded in forests. Incredible views across the tops of more forests, and vistas of bald mountains where hikers can walk for days without seeing another human soul.

The air in Tasmania is the purest in the world. The prevailing breezes are from the south, which means that the last land mass the wind blew over was Antarctica. A day on a bike in the Tasmanian clears out your head and brings your sinuses back to life. Every landmark that I came near on the sunny day of perfect biking had its own smell: the old eucalyptus forests, the sheep farms, the dark cold brooks, the dry woods stretching out forever. Coming around each and every one of the infinite number of turns on that road you never knew what you were going to see or sense - and it was all great.

In Hobart, Tasmania's metropolis of about 200,000, half the island's population, the bike gang gained a member. My contacts at the tourist board knew that I was coming through on a bike, and out of the thoughtfulness that really is characteristic of every Tasmanian I met, they arranged for me to go riding with someone somebody knew who had a bike. Maybe they thought I was going to be lonely.

The mystery biker's name was Fabian, and when I asked if the gang could come too, he seemed somewhat hesitant - I could not have been more wrong. Fabian accepted all of us onto his turf and within a couple of hours of meeting we were all at Fabian's cottage eating giant crayfish the size of lobsters and washing the feast down with bottomless bottles of great Tasmanian wine.

In his other life, Fabian is a very serious lawyer and a fine upstanding law-abiding citizen whose Harley makes as much noise as several tractors. Bill and Fabian traded bikes in the afternoon, and we biked in formation down the roads south of Hobart, led by our newest member, the past president of the Australian Bar Association.

We could not bear to part, so even though Fabian had a dinner date with clients, he had all of us back to his house for champagne later that night. Before we went our separate ways, we had pledged that there would be a reunion of the gang and that Fabian and his lady would be with us.

About this time of the trip, I was really getting used to "my" bike. I was still terrified some of the time, but being scared is a great safety measure. It probably was not exactly the very best bike for the trip, although it was great. The GS in Funduro GS 650 stands for something unpronounceable in German that means on-road/off-road, and it's clear that the bike is capable of some very hard off road riding. I can see it bouncing down dry river beds in Africa. On the open road, it had lots of guts and was very capable of exceeding any speed limit.

Loaded up with panniers, and on paved roads, the bike probably felt a little restricted, but it was in the lower gears that it was a star. It has a one cylinder engine that's something of a marvel of engineering (and no, it does not sound like a lawn mower). The engine is made by a subsidiary of Bombardier, so there's a Canadian connection too.

When you open it up in the lower gears you had better brace yourself. The machine leaves a stoplight the way a cork leaves a bottle of champagne. The grip is wide and high, so you feel that you're riding above this speed machine more than you would on a racing bike, but this only adds to the thrill. I was conscious of clenching my knees many times when I was getting the feeling that the bike would be far down the road without me if I didn't pay attention.

At higher speeds and especially in cross winds, the aerodynamics of the Funduro are not up to the standard of a touring bike - but this is a small criticism, and no surprise. It's so much fun, and the moment you get into taking the looks for granted someone always comes along and compliments you on the look of your machine.

A week in Tasmania was not enough. I left a lot undone. There were remote views that I did not have time to spend the hours walking up to see, there were great inland lakes beside mountains that I know only from their turn-off signs on the highway. I had other things to see, and the Great Ocean Road on the mainland lay ahead.

The Great Ocean Road goes along the coast from Melbourne to Adelaide. There's an inland freeway that will allow you to make the distance in a day, but what's the point ?

The road hugs the coast like a windblown scarf and takes about three days at a reasonable speed with enough stops to see half the major sights along the way.

The first day is classic Australian beaches: wide, long, with surf rolling in 24 hours a day. Even in high summer it's a bit cool and all the surfers who stay out for hours are wearing wet suits. In Lorne, I stayed at a bed and breakfast that has tame kookaburras. This bird's song is a demonic laugh and they eat meat which you can feed them from the front porch.

The Second day is along the rugged coastline with a quiet tropical glade of virgin forest at lunchtime and a dramatic lighthouse by afternoon tea. The beaches that formed the coast close to Melbourne get squeezed to a small strip as you go west. A gazillion years of erosion have left some of the headlands stranded away from the shoreline in massive pillars of unapproachable rock in a formation with the unlikely name of The Apostles.

When the whalers were around this coast, Port Fairy was the second busiest post in Australia (Sydney Harbour has always been #1). It's now a tourist village with more than its share of historic buildings. I stayed just out of town at a fabulous, modern beach house that I did not want to leave. A massive indoor Jacuzzi and an outdoor shower a short stroll from the deserted beach and tidal pools. Beer in the fridge and you can watch the waves from the living room. Tragic to stay just one night.

The Great Ocean Road was truly great. A little busier than Tazzy but definitive biking and scenery that is as Australian as a beer-swilling kangaroo on the Harbour Bridge.

I have to say that on arriving at my destination in Adelaide, after 12 days on the bike, I had mixed feelings. I was sad to leave my hot new friend, glad to have survived; heartbroken not to spend more time leaning into more corners but happy to have someone else drive me around and look at the scenery. Happy to have had a great week with an old girlfriend, of sorts, sad to leave her and sad to think that in another 25 years we are unlikely to still be right for another reunion. I think I'd better keep in better touch with the Funduro and the rest of those foxy ladies while we can still show each other a good time.