Pictures from the year that was 2017

Another year has just about flown by and there was some fantastic riding throughout the year including a highlight of a New Zealand trip. Here are some photographs from the year that just was.

January
The year got off to a bit of a shaky start with a big crash, luckily no one was hurt except one 1098 Ducati.

February
In February I posted a long term review of my 2015 R1 as we jetted out to New Zealand for a 10 day trip of the North Island.

March
We arrived in New Zealand to a fantastic greeting by fellow kiwi motoblogger Geoff James and then later in Palmerston North we met another moto blogger Andrew Thompson. 

It was fantastic meeting both guys albeit too briefly, I'm sure Andrews neighbours haven't recovered yet from the bushpigs maniacal ramblings.

Geoff James

Andrew Thompson

April
April brought about the International Festival of speed at Sydney motorsport park where unfortunately for Stu his race came to a bone crunching end with a fractured collarbone, again.

We also got to meet one of our all time favourite racing legends Troy Bayliss.

June

July
Revisiting some old memories in my home town with some long forgotten trophies.

August

September
The bushpig did some drag racing at Sydney Motorsport Park whilst I watched on.

October
And it was back to SMSP to watch the Australian Superbikes.

Phillip Island Moto GP

The motogp circus arrived at Phillip Island in October and we got to enjoy the sights and sounds of those 280Hp 1000cc missiles. I also caught up briefly with Victorian motoblogger Jules. Seems to be the year for blogger meet ups.

November

Our annual Snowy Mountains ride occurred again with a few different faces this time out but with some familiar roads and  few new ones thrown in.

Merry Christmas to everyone and hope you have a wonderful new year and I will see you all on the other side with some more riding adventures. I have a few big things planned already coming up in February, could be some WSBK action and another overseas jaunt.

Cheers

Steve

2015 R1 on the Nurburgring

I found this awesome video of Nino Pallavicini riding a super fast lap of the Nurburgring on the same R1 I have. Good to see what it can really do in some capable hands.

Nabbed by the bushpig

On our recent High Country ride I was nabbed by Bushpig on the Omeo Highway between Mitta Mitta and Omeo.

High Country Video

I was hoping to have some of the gopro footage up during the last couple of posts but earlier in the year I had to buy a new PC and when I did that I updated from the old AVS video software I was using and quite used to, to Adobe Premiere Element 15. Upon first look it all looked the same but once I started using it I realised it was very much different so I had to learn how to use this new piece of software all over. So that delayed me putting up any video by a long way.

So in saying all that here is the short video finally, of the roads that we rode on in our recent NSW and Victorian High country trip. If anyone is interested in seeing more video of the Omeo Highway chasing the lads through the forest let me know and I'll put something up that is a bit longer of that particular section. Hope you enjoy. Click on the cog and change the quality to 1080 for better quality.

Victorian High Country Day 5

It was the last day of our high country trip and today was more or less just going to be boring slab work to get back to Sydney. In saying that it turned out to be quite different than I thought it was going to be. To start with I had a road cooking up for the guys that I hadn't ridden in about 15 years.

Rather than take the Batlow road to Tumut I took us out through the Rosewood road which is basically 90kms of road through the forest. The road is only there for the logging trucks as the road doesn't start or end anywhere in particular. But our forestry guys must be commended, a fantastic Sunday morning ride we only saw 2 cars in 90kms. I didn't take many photos today but did put on my Gopro for the first little bit.

After tumut we headed out the Wee Jasper road and turned off and took the back road into Gundagai, another route I'd learnt in my youth riding down to motogp, its a bit out of the way but has many bends and hills and is better than the main road.

Then there was 100kms of boring highway until we turned of and headed for Bungendore and came in through to Tarago and stopped at the loaded dog for a drink.

Doug left us here and took the main road back to Goulburn whilst we decided to take another back road through Bungonia and through to Marulan for the last 150km or boring hwy back to Sydney. A much better way than sitting on 4 hours of boring straight highway.

Arriving home we dropped by Stu's house and cooked up the meat tray we had won the night before washed down with an ice cold beer. An excellent end to our high country trip.

Day 5 Map Reference