Sunday, October 9, 2016

Old Road Ride

Saturday morning was shaping up to be a good one weather wise so a quick phone call and a ride was organized, nothing like last minute planning. I'd quickly got ready checked tyre pressures and oiled the chain and was off to pick up Bushpig.

He wasn't quite ready when I got there which was good as it gave me a chance to give the R1 a bit of a sponge bath as I hadn't had a chance to wash it since the last ride and it was pretty filthy I must say.


Squeaky clean, almost
Plans were hatched for a shortish ride as my rear tyre was shot, I have booked the R1 in for it's 10k service on monday and a new set of tyres, this will be the fourth set. So we decided on lunch at Wisemans Ferry pub and then take the Ferry across the Hawkesbury river and ride along the river to the Old Pacific Highway and then back home.

The Wisemans Ferry road from Cattai to Maroota has been hot mixed and is now as smooth as, needless to say this was a fantastic ride through here until we turned of and had to over take some Harleys riding so slowly they were holding up a learner driver. Stopping in at the pub for lunch we were surprised there weren't many bikes here today, there were a couple of nice looking Indians.

Hammer Time


Ferry or Fairy

Crossing over the Ferry I'd noticed they were operating two ferry's today, I don't think I've ever seen two ferry's in operation before, maybe it's to cater for all the extra spring traffic?



There was quite a few bikes going through at a reasonably slow pace so we stopped for secret men's business and to let them go so we could have a free run with the traffic. The road surface hasn't improved much in the last few years between the ferry and central mangrove, it's tight rough and a lot of blind corners with drive ways on the other side so it was a cautious ride.



It wasn't long before we got around to the Old Pacific Highway which used to be one of my favourite roads, but has now become a lambs to the slaughter type thing between bikes and the highway patrol. Its sad because its such a great piece of road but now with ridiculously low speed limit 60 kmh for most of it with just a small section from Brooklyn Bridge up the hill is 80 kmh. That's probably why we only come up here once a year. Anyway a quick stop off at the tunnel for a piccy and we were underway again headed for the Road warriors cafe.

Tunnel of love

Oh look what I found lets thrash it!
 There were only a handful of bikes at the road warriors cafe today. We stopped to take on some fluids and just to take a break. It was eerily quiet on the old road today on such a good day as well. Wonder where everyone is? Ah well that's more open road for us then.


 On the way up from Brooklyn bridge towards Pie in the Sky is some of the sweetest set of twisties anywhere. Hot mixed asphalt with 2 lanes heading up the hill and one lane down. I'd notice there was a couple of photographers parked on eddies corner so I combed facebook after the ride and found these gems.

The last two photos thanks to Tee Jay Photography.

Strumpet




Knee down action on the Old Pac



12 comments:

  1. was a nice cool weather day for a ride
    i had to work so grounded lol

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great pictures. It looks like you too had fun on your impromptu ride.

    I was surprised at the 60km speed on the one road. Some of our in town speeds are that high or higher. Even our school zones are 32km/hr (20 mph)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes the speed limit is so low there its a joke. I drove the car along there and thought the speed limit was 20kmh to slow

      Delete
  3. I hear that the guys that run car tyres get insane mileage - have you considered trying some?

    Mint pic of the R1 in motion and the one by the tunnel is pretty cool too!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Can't corner with car tyres Andrew, but thanks for the heads up.

      Delete
  4. i gotta learn to tuck my t shirt in...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I didn't want to mention that you look like a hobo......

      Delete
  5. 4 sets of rubber in 10K - holy chewing gum batman haha.
    But I used to run similar soft compounds on my ZXR750 in the 90's.
    Talking to a expert race team tyre man at a track day back then he suggested I would find lateral grip virtually the same on a slightly harder compound if I did not need as much late braking and early acceleration grip. And he was right so I doubled my mileage to about 6000k per set with no loss of corner confidence but more spin up out of bends (no traction control then) and more squirm and movement under braking. Cannot recall what tyres I moved to, no matter as too long ago. Then I got hooked on spinning it up out of corners which the tyre shop welcomed ...

    P.S. This is Iron Chef. I switched my blogger profile. Anyway I see you got confused you were in the US on one of those photos... Must have been distracted looking at the speedo to ensure you were under 60 ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry Warren I might have led you astray, I'm just putting the fourth set on now, so I used 3 sets for 12km. The two sets of RS10 lasted about 5K and the S20 Bridgestone did 7K. Not much really. I'm going to stick with the S21's for the moment and hopefully get 7K out of them.

      Delete
  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete