Motorcycle Explorer November 2016 Issue 14 | Page 10

MEM Column: kevin turner
I
struggled to Velcro the buggers across the Ninja’s
pillion seat as the rain lashed down and the side-
stand began to sink in the mud.
It’s easy to forget but there was a time when the
Kawasaki looked naked without those Oxford Sports
Tourers draped across it; sleeker admittedly, but
lacking the purpose which those big black
saddlebags endowed. I once described them as
“drooping across the Kawasaki’s rump like great
mounds of fat on a once lithe form”, but that was a
mean analogy, written after too many days on a very
long road.
In truth, my panniers were, for a time, as much a part
of my life and my routine as nappy bags and
changing mats are now and while panniers do not
add speed, like stickers do, they do add kudos. A set
of well-worn panniers, slightly torn, still muddied,
beaten but resolute, tell of time spent in a spiritual
place: on the road, where all good motorcyclists
belong, for a while at least.
I was musing on this subject in my garage one
evening last week, trying to get a handle on what
might unite writer and reader, when it struck me;
panniers! Why not I thought; this is an adventure
magazine and there are my faithful panniers,
hanging sadly above me from the rafters, laced in
cobwebs and redundant since my boys were born,
but as good a reminder of those joyful days of
adventure as 10,000 photographs could ever be.
“Yes” I thought, “here is a fine topic for a column
that is sure to please the Big Man James. Let’s delve
in to the subject with gusto and really get to grips
with what a good set of panniers mean to a
traveller, not only as a practical tool, but in a
spiritual sense; as soul baggage.”
About now I should probably get deep into the
practical considerations that dictate one’s choice of
luggage: the pros and cons of hard and soft gear;
what you should spend; what you might require for
a given journey….or maybe not. I have never been
one to turn to for practical advice on how best to
spend your money, or how best to plan for a trip. I
brought my panniers because they were very near
the door of the shop I was in at the time and I was in
a rush to get down to Dover; they obscured my
indicators and I only discovered the waterproof
covers once I got home, but they did the trick and
have done ever since.
Over the years and over the miles I came to trust
and rely on them almost as much as the Kawasaki to
which they clung with reassuring certainty, just as
my little boys now cling to my legs when we try and
leave the park.
Which is why I can look at my panniers now and see
Soul baggage? Well, why not? Those sturdy bags are so much more than two bulky bags that take up too
true companions on our loopy adventures; trusted
much space in my cluttered garage. I can unzip a
and faithful friends that hold a lot more than jeans, pocket and find hidden inside the memory of a
beer and cheese. Peering inside my dusty bags, into campsite in Latvia, or an evening’s ride through
the dark empty confines within, I found many long
French countryside in search of wine and petrol
forgotten memories stashed into the pockets and
(either would have sufficed). My battered panniers
folds; of times when I loaded these things up on an are the tangible proof that those days actually
almost daily basis, always somewhere different and happened, and are not the wistful dreams of a
not necessarily where I wanted or intended to be,
deluded suburbanite. They are soul baggage from a
and not always with a chipper grin either, as I
time when my life was, quite literally, wrapped up in