Blast from the Past

Whilst visiting my Dad at Christmas he brought out some old photos he had found when he was rummaging through some draws. Looks like he found some long lost photo's of my old ZX-9R from the late nineties. Good times.

First pic is the bike at Dad's place.

Interestingly enough this second picture was taken on the day of Dave's wedding in Orange in central Western NSW.

God we look young in that pic, christ he even has hair, thats how old this is. Must be somewhere around 99 or 00 before I had the R1.

O'Connell Pub Run

Holy shiz balls, 2 rides in 2 weekends. Must be some kind of record. Might have to quit my job and go professional blogging like that Bandit rider guy, he's always riding and posting and I'm starting to think he doesn't actually work, hmmmm.........er maybe not. Perhaps my wife's getting ready to divorce me and needs time to fill out the paper work....

Our neighbours from Nowra organised a ride out to O'Connell pub for lunch on Sunday and asked around anyone else wanted to go. I think just about everyone went on this trip. Normally its 40 odd degrees and not bike friendly weather here but this summer has been quite mild, only in the mid to high 20's. Perfect riding weather.

So the Sydney covid infested crew headed on out over the Blue Mountains via the Bell's line of road. We were very lucky not to get done by the rozzers in one of the overtaking lanes on Bells, the bastard was hiding in the bushes with his laser. Fucker, just as we overtook 2 slow ass Cam Am Spyder  drivers.

Crossing over Darling Causeway we descended down Victoria pass and gave Geoff's speed camera the finger as we went. Fcukers. We turned off on Jenolan Caves road and headed out to Oberon to meet up with the rest of the crew. Geoff dropped back so I used that opportunity to stop for a quick pick.

What is it with Sunday drivers, we came upon a line of traffic doing 60 in the 100kmh zone. It was difficult to over take due to the undulating terrain and winding road. Only to finally get past some completely oblivious moron with a train of vehicles in their wake and with everyone wanting to road rage him off the road and burn them to death. I hope I scared the bejesus out of them when I went past. Seriously is it that hard to use your mirrors, or accelerator or even pull over to the side of the road and let other pass? So fucking clueless.....

A short break was had in Oberon where a few of the lads inhaled some pies from the bakery while we waited for the Nowra crew to arrive. We received a message saying they'd be 30 min late. It gave us time to catch up and talk bikes of all things.

Soon after the Nowra crew arrived we were off to O'Connell and the pub for lunch. Stu booked ahead when we were waiting in Oberon and it was a good thing he did. They were extremely busy today so we ordered straight away. Still it took about an hour or more for us to get our burgers.......Dave then ate some else's burger, hahahha.

Lunch was ok, the burger wasn't anything special but filled a hole I guess. The short or long lunch stop however you want to look at it was over too soon and we said our goodbyes and headed in separate directions. Our's took us back through Oberon and back up Mt Victoria.

There were plenty of slow Sunday drivers along Jenolan caves road to the point were Stu pulled over so we could let a big long chain of cars go, so we could have an enjoyable run down the hill to the highway. After the 5 minute wait we eventually caught up to them at the highway intersection and had a great run through the twisty bits.

Waiting, waiting.......couldn't have asked for a better day for it.

Bruce made the suggestion to stop at the Lapstone hotel to rehydrate for the last leg home. Not a bad idea and I needed a drink by the time we got there. I've been past here plenty of times before but never ever stopped in. Not a bad little pub.

Thanks for the ride fella's it was a top day out, only a short 350kms but great all the same to be out riding. The alternate is pretty bleak, lets hope we don't go back there anytime soon.

Get your sh!t together mate!

 What the hell has been going on? 

A ride was organised last Sunday at the last minute. It's the first time I'd been on the bike since November last year. God that's sad. So what have I been doing you might ask? 

Well for one I haven't been blogging, and in fact last year was my poorest effort yet. The year that should not be named really took the wind out of my sails you might say. Being a motorcycle travel blog and not being able to get out on the bike really put a dampener on my blogging, managing just 11 measly posts. 

Oh well shit happens as they say. I was only busy with work and normal family life, as we didn't really get out much at all last year. I did get out a bit to photograph some bike racing action which I'll post up about a bit later. So I've got no excuses really, just been plain old lazy. Well maybe its time that I got my shit together and got on with it. On and up as they say, there's no time like the present. Time to start looking for a new bike as well as I haven't done squat about that either.

So on Sunday morning I headed off and picked up Geoff and Scotty for a bit of a loop ride. First stop was for a some lunch on the Old Pacific Highway and to meet St Pat who had just bought himself a Ducati 1198 SP the day before. Lets hope this one doesn't end up like the last one did here. Coming down the hill from Cowan I was followed by a motorcycle cop all the way down through the twisty bits in an 80 zone. D'oh. 

Late last year Geoff managed to pick himself up an sweet looking Africa Twin that he's been using to tour on. Slack bastard hasn't given me a ride yet. What kind of friend is that? Complete selfish bastard!

St Pat's new to him Ducati only had 9000kms on the clock, so it is practically brand new, only just run in. It looked in really good condition as well.

St Pats new to him 1198 SP

Just as we were a bout to leave a guy came over to talk to me about my old R1. He then asked me if I ran a website with a new red & white R1. It's funny, that's the first guy I've bumped into out on the road that's read my blog. I didn't have a chance to have a decent chat as we were moving off, so if your reading sorry about that mate.

Today was the first warm day we've had in quite some time. It was about 30°C today. We've been shivering through high teens and low twenties, definitely not normal for summer here. This time last year we sweltered through 48°C days and bushfires.

We made our way down to Wollombi. The tavern was jam packed with bikes today and there were hundreds of bikes out on the road. We didn't bother going in as there was too many people about, and the dreaded Covid is still lurking about around Sydney so didn't want to risk it.

Wollombi Tavern

St Pat had to head back home, but the three of us made our way up to Broke in the Hunter Valley for fuel and then crossed over the lower hunter and down through the 10 mile on the Putty road.

There were plenty of bikes coming the other way, all of them giving us the swirly finger. Sure enough there was a highway patrol car sitting right in the middle. He had a bike pulled over on the opposite side of the road, but I couldn't see a rider. I saw on facebook user group later that there had been a accident. Hope that the rider was ok if that was him.

We passed by Grey Gums cafe and made our way to Colo Heights servo. This was the first place we had come to that actually wasn't full of bikes, just a handful. We stopped for a break and refreshing drink and chatted all things bikes and still Geoff didn't let me ride his bike, bastard. 

The old R1 felt great out today. It's doing alright for a 21 year old bike. But it's time that I pulled my finger out and got my shit together and got something newer. The old girl is not going to be reliable forever and its just not that comfortable to ride long distance anymore. Still its much better than the 15 R1 was.

One last stop for an ice cold beer before splitting up to go our separate ways. All up a great day out on the bikes.