Glasshouse Mountains Enduro Ride

On a recent trip for work I decided to leave early on Saturday and visit my Older bro and his family. The basic plan was to go dirt bike riding in the Glass House Mountains north of Brisbane on the weekend before going to work in our Brisbane office.

Dave picked me up from BNE airport at around 8:30am, I was disappointed to see no trailer or bikes, ready to go. Oh well. We did stop in at Springwood Suzuki so he could have breakfast  and a second breakfast for me.

They had some very old school RG500 and Katana1100 sitting on the floor. The owners bikes, for sale at a price.

Siting having a coffee and breakfast a guy rides up on his GS1250 and proceeds to frop it in the carpark infront of about 30-40 people having breakfast. Embarrassing much? Dave took me to AMX superstore for a look. I decided on getting some armour to wear under some lighter clothes for hot weather riding. should be good for the dirt bike and adventure bike.

Sunday morning we were up at 5 so we could leave at 5:30am to head up the Glass House mountains. It was going to be hot today 32°C today. Go early to beat the heat. I liked the sound of that. 

It was really a training ride for me, as I'd never really ridden a proper dirt bike like Dave's Beta or SKM. oth light weight dirt weapons. I'm used to a 250kg Africa Twin, so my approach method was slightly off kilter towards heavy bike.

Getting kitted up and ready to go by 7:30am. Dave took me up some sandy hill to start with, which had my pucker factor already high. I don't like sand if you haven't noticed but man was these light weight dirt bikes so much easier to ride than a big africa twin.

I did a hill climb that would have scared me on the Africa Twin but was a piece of piss on the SKM, made it look easy.

Dave has us ride around on various tracks, I had no idea where I was going so was just enjoying riding along at my slow old man pace. I nearly binned it on another sandy section. After about an hour and a bit I was starting to get the hang of it.

Dave took us into Woodford after about an hour and a half of riding for a morning snack at the bakery. Riding into town I saw the biggest Kangaroo I've ever seen standing on the side of the road along the Golf Course, he must have been well over 2m tall. 

 A sausage roll went well washed down with a Powerade. I had to get a photo by the Leopard tank, that's not something you see everyday.

I swapped after a bit and rode the Beta, the difference between the 2 stoke and 4 stroke was astounding. I didn't find the 2 stroke peaky like I thought it would be, it just went quicker.

After about 3 hours of riding and doing some single track I was getting tired and hot so we called it a day and packed up to go home. I hit the hill climb a couple more times for practise.

We drove down the hill after loading the bikes and Dave stopped so we could have a coffee at the Lookout Cafe. Great coffee and slice, and the views here were also very good.

It was quite hot now and I was glad we were heading back in the air conditioned car. A good morning of riding. Off road riding is so much harder and more physical than road riding. Lots of concentration required. Thanks for the ride bro.

RAAF Richmond 100th Anniversary Air Show

I'd booked ticket for the family to visit the 100th Anniversary RAAF Richmond Air Show on Sunday 28th Sept. I was reading reports on Saturday night of the absolute shitshow traffic jams trying to get to Richmond. I didn't buy parking tickets as its a single lane road to Richmond and I knew it would be a shitfight. So my daughter and I jumped on the train, took 30 minutes to get there. Piece of cake, no sitting in queue's of traffic for hours, that would have blown my mind....

There were large queue's of people waiting to get in the gates at 8:30am though. They estimated around 40,000 people for the day. So we waited in the queue but it only took about 20 minutes or thereabouts. Once inside there was ample room to walk around as the base is huge. We stopped for a quick pic in the middle of he runway, it's not everyday you can do something like that.

As we walked across the runway we could see the Roulette' parked up on the taxiway, I stopped for a photo as the Roulettes really do have all their ducks in a row.

Entering the apron, the Globemaster loomed high above us, we had to walk all the way around it to get to the back. Sweet baby Chesus, this thing is big.

As we arrived fairly early we decided to get in the long line to have a look inside the Gigantic Globemaster. Did I mention this plane is Gigantic? The line was at least 120m long, but we had 1.5hrs until the flying starts and may as well do this now while nothings happening. 

Waiting in line.....

We found some shade at least.......

Getting closer after 20 minutes.......

Yep its big inside

Next up we decided to have a look in the Hercules. Bit of a mistake, should have done that first as it was a bit underwhelming after looking through the globe master. It make the Hercules look tiny in comparison.

It wasn't long after we finished looking through the Hercules that another one started flying overhead. For a big plane it was fairly quiet.

A coffee and mini donuts were calling our names, but damn they weren't cheap. We wandered about an looked at the refuelling tanker. One of RAAF personnel was giving us a rundown of the refuelling process. It the pilots choice whether he refuels from the wing pods or the flying boom at the back. The boom extends 17metres. The inside of the plane is fully fitted out to carry passengers still.

We made our way towards the crowded area near the grandstands. There certainly was a large crowd now. Next up was a Rural Fire Service Helicopter, completing a water dump.

Then a Boeing 737-800 did a few flybys at low level.

Getting a position along any of the fence lines was a task however. I wasn't concerned about being in the front row, as we would be looking into the sky for most of the day. Next up was the big guns, the F-35A Lighting II. Now starts the photo dump.

The flare drop was spectacular, he must have dropped 30 flares or more. 

The Hawk127 training jet came out next for a few passes. 

Then a F/A-18 Growler was up next and he put on a great display, also dropping a bunch of flares.

Another 737 did some low slow passes. It noticed when it was passing a long way away over the nearby fields and houses how impressive a big jet is flying at such a low altitude.

Not long after this an announcement came over the PA system, that the air show was cancelled due to "There's a Chance of Thunderstorm and Hail immanent". Yeah, I reckon we got as much chance of hail as a meteor landing on my  head.

My Daughter had gone to try out the flight simulator so I sat and watched the crowd disperse waiting for her to return. When she came back she said, there's an F/A-18 and F-35 on the ground on display. We couldn't see it before due to the crowd blocking them out.

So we went and took a look at them up close without the crowds. We spoke to one of the pilots of the F/A-18 and F-35 who gave us a few insights into both jets.

We had to move back as they were towing the F-35 into the hanger.

We took a look around now with the lack of crowds as we made our way towards the exit. 

That was pretty much the end of the day. We had 2 drops of rain on us while waiting at the train station. Beside getting cancelled we saw most displays, missed out on the Roulettes. All up it wasn't a bad day out, my daughter enjoyed it and it was great to spend the day with her.