Fifth Gear

front of me. I come to a complete stop. Athird deer ambles out of the brush, wandersacross the road about 10 meters in front ofme. It attempts to clear the fence, howeversnags the top wire and is slingshot back ontothe road at high velocity directly towards me.Great, the bike now with 40 km on the clockgets written off by a deer while sittingstopped!? The deer misses me by inches andruns off into the bush.I had a few accessories added to the Uralfrom the dealer. A second seat on the bike (it uses old styled “tractor” seats) as well as anaftermarket clear windshield on the bike and a Ural folding windshield on the sidecar. Bothdo a great job of directing the freaking cold April air away from the rider and passenger.Other standard equipment on the Ural is a 100-watt spotlight on the nose of the sidecar(presumably for jacklighting deer), spare wheel and tire, and a huge luggage rack. One ofthe coolest features is a fully functioning reverse gear which is great for maneuvering in tightplaces and keeping you out of trouble.OMG moment #4: I found a nice, quiet gravel“no winter maintenance” road heading over tothe river. The township had laid down a layerof soft fresh gravel. While cruising along, thefront wheel suddenly decides to veer left. Icounter steer to correct, which exacerbates thesudden left turn and sends me straight for acanal of icy water. Full application of thoselinear brakes cause all three wheels to burrowinto the soft gravel about thirty centimeters, butI stop about a hand’s width from the water.Time to try out reverse and back out of thesituation!The sidecar has a very large lockable trunk.In fact, it is larger than my three hard bagson the BMW combined. Those bags setme back $2000 when I bought the BMW in2005! Just yesterday I had the following inthe trunk: full size foot pump (standardequipment), 25-pound tool roll (alsostandard equipment), tonneau cover for thechair, Dow canvas cover for the entire rig,Rita’s Aerostich jacket, Rita’s helmet,owner’s and shop manuals, extra gloves, abunch of binders (Rita was in Peterboroughon a course). I still had room to spare. Iam guessing that the trunk will hold about aweek’s worth of groceries.