On Two Wheels · Field Reference
The Bif & Big Dog Glossary
A completely unofficial, entirely biased dictionary of every name Clif and Susan have been called — by each other, by strangers, and occasionally by an Aussie bloke pointing at a broken bike seat — compiled from 235 posts of the blog.
Meet The Cast
For anyone arriving without the backstory.
Rides on the front and talks the whole way. Treats a knee twinge, a cockroach, or a firework hidden in the table salt as a five-alarm emergency. Susan does the actual work; Clif does the narrating, the arguing with imaginary hecklers, and the collecting of nicknames — eleven and counting.
Runs a strict pre-dawn departure schedule, has crossed two continents on genuinely sore knees without complaint, and once fainted at 55mph without so much as a swoon. Issues most of the nicknames on this page. Is, by her own account, never wrong.
A recumbent tandem that hauled both riders and a trailer across Canada and Australia; later a BMW motorcycle with a habit of breaking down in scenic, remote, and thoroughly inconvenient locations. Unlike most touring machines, it was never given a proper name — everyone just calls it Bike.
A recurring character who heckles from off-page (“Oh, come on Clif, I hear you moaning!”) and is routinely credited with opinions neither Clif nor Susan can actually hear. Appears in nearly every post. Never formally introduced until now.
Some couples have pet names. Clif and Susan have a whole naming department, issued on the road and rarely retired. This is the full register: who coined each name, what it actually means, and the post where it first got its licence plate.
Correction on record: an earlier edition of this glossary disqualified “Wally” as a map-tracking pun rather than a real nickname. That was wrong — it’s reinstated below.
Clif’s Aliases
Eleven names, none of them chosen by him.
The name that turns every route-progress post into a geography quiz. Susan stays Susan; Clif becomes Wally, dropped onto a map for readers to spot. “Wally and Susan back in British Columbia,” as one post puts it — no further explanation offered or needed.
Progress By Beer →Not the bike’s name — his. When the tandem’s seat supports gave way on the Nullarbor under the combined weight of two riders, gear, and one rider in particular, the blog left no doubt who was to blame: “I just hope it supports old Lardy Ass.”
Eucla to Ceduna – 492km →Awarded mid-argument and worn for a couple of days before Susan finally admitted what it stood for: “Bast*rd in front.” They reverted to “Clif” shortly after, but the name resurfaces on the blog whenever he’s back at the controls.
Falling Down Is Part Of Life →Handed out after Clif’s bike seat cracked and had to be splinted with a metal bracket — apparently a busted seat and a low-carb beer were enough to demote him a gender, at least for the rest of the Nullarbor crossing.
Eucla to Ceduna – 492km →Short for Drama Queen. Deployed by Susan without fail whenever a hill, a headwind, or both team up against Clif at once — which, on this blog, is often.
Goosey Goosey Gander →Susan’s verdict after a motel cockroach incident, footnoted on the blog with the full Oxford English Dictionary definition — Scottish slang for “an effeminate, weak or oversensitive man” — in case anyone doubted the accuracy of the diagnosis.
Big Jessie in Ocotillo →Earned in front of an audience after Clif discovered a firework hidden in a plate of table salt and reacted by shouting, swearing, and windmilling his arms. Susan’s reproachful look made the record; so did everyone else’s laughter.
Susan Says Pan American Highway →Clif’s own job title while Susan does the actual pedaling up a hill. He notes, helpfully, that when people ask if the tandem has a motor, he just nods yes and points at Susan.
Nobody Said It Was Easy →Awarded for his habit of always having a backup plan — useful when a clutch fails in rural Nicaragua and the primary plan is “hope a stranger named Josias can help.”
Nightmare In Nicaragua 4 →Clif’s self-appointed counterpart to Susan’s “Big Dog,” used through an entire 36°C heat crisis in Panama while he ferries water and commentary in roughly equal measure.
Big Dog Sees The Light →Susan’s assessment of the leg muscles Clif builds up on a long cycle tour — delivered, he insists, as pure admiration, in the same tone she’d use for an Olympic sprinter.
A Spring Day in Norseman →Susan’s Aliases
Fewer in number, considerably more authority behind each one.
Clif’s name for the strict, silent, crack-of-dawn wake-up regime Susan runs on every trip — introduced as “falsely known to many of you as that nice person called Susan.”
Sgt Major Sunrise and the Apaches →Clif’s nickname for Susan’s enthusiasm for the quickest way south, principles about “doing it properly” be damned.
Falling Down Is Part Of Life →Coined the moment Susan unilaterally set the trip’s new guiding principle — get down the Pan-American Highway as directly as possible — and Clif decided the policy deserved a byline.
Susan Says Pan American Highway →“What the big dog says, the big dog gets” — Clif’s rule for pillion privileges, right up until the big dog starts seeing white light on the back of the bike and needs an emergency stop for water and cheap ice cream.
Big Dog Sees The Light →Bestowed somewhere between a syrup-drenched breakfast and a 40°C ride through the Nicaraguan countryside with no shade in sight — a name that, in fairness, she earns twice over in the same post.
Nightmare In Nicaragua 4 →Bonus Entries
Not technically nicknames for a person. Included anyway, on the grounds that they’re too good to leave out.
Most long-distance riders name their machines — usually something female, usually something heroic. Clif and Susan looked at the BMW R1250GS Adventure that’s carried them across two continents and settled the matter: it’s called Bike. No ceremony, no gender, no backstory required.
The name Clif gives his own booming “Oii Oii,” deployed as a defensive weapon against dive-bombing magpies. A named technique, proudly its own character on the blog.
Magpie Mayhem →Not a nickname so much as a clerical error: Clif once scanned his own boarding pass under Susan’s name, briefly registering two Susans for the same flight.
The Woeful Traveller →A one-day-only alter ego, adopted for an entire post while investigating Bariloche’s Bavarian-looking architecture and its considerably darker postwar history.
Bariloche – Gott in Himmel →Clif’s own coinage for the drivers who kept nearly side-swiping the tandem on Canada’s shoulderless Highway 17 — his usual Scottish word, “eejits,” apparently wasn’t quite regional enough for the occasion.
Where Are The Romans When You Need Them? →Clif’s own scorecard for a sore-knee crisis on the Nullarbor: Susan, who cycled 10,000km through Canada and Australia on genuinely sore knees without complaint, is “tough as old boots.” Clif, nursing a single twinge, rates himself “as tough as marshmallow — a BBQ marshmallow.”
Ceduna to Wudinna →Somewhere between Robe and Warrnambool, Clif admits Susan has nicknames for both him and for hills — and that he’s “not allowed to say” either one. History, and this glossary, must accept the loss.
Robe to Warrnambool →