Friday, June 24, 2011

Fiery Ride

Its sometimes funny how things just seem to work themselves out. I missed my RDO on monday due to work commitments and was wondering when i would get my RDO when Geoff just happened to ring on wednesday and tell me he had organised a ride with a few friends for friday if i can get the day off. Then my boss tells me i need to take my RDO on friday. Well i couldn't have planned that better.

Plan is to meet up at Heathcote Macca's and head down to Macquarie Pass and Kangaroo Valley. Its very cold this morning only 3 - 4 °C so i decide to wear my thermals this time and take my neck warmer. Thats the best thing i did all day. It was so good to not get cold today.
Stefans R1 has had its under seat exhausts remove and replace with one of those short pipes out the side that looks like MotoGP. Oh and the sound that thing made was ooh so MotoGP as well. It sounded horn without being overly loud. He also had a power commander put in and it made an extra 30bhp at the wheel. Now thats some extra bolt on go....
After leaving Heathcote we headed down to Albion Park and turned off up to Macquarie Pass. Being Friday there wasn't much traffic on it and it was a very good run up the mountain. Lots of fun. The surface here is as good as anywhere as it has only recently been resurfaced with hotmix. Very sweet. Then it was a quick stop at the pie shop again for another pie, because i just haven't had enough pie's.

Then it was down through Kangaroo Valley, there was a fair bit of water on the road here as the sun didn't touch some sections of the road here in winter. After this we turned off up Kangaroo Valley Rd towards Berry Mountain. I had never been on this peice of road before, it was very scenic with some spectacular views and some real sharp hairpin bends, but the road surface here was much to rough to be riding fast. I was at the back on this section when we came round a downhill right hand bend that had water on it to find all the bikes parked on the side of the road. First thoughs were 'whats going on' then 'whos crashed'. Only to find that Steve on the beemer had run on through the bend and up the driveway of someones house and squeezed between the mailbox and the vine/bushes. Phew, that was close.
After this little stop is was on again to Berry where we hit up the pub for lunch. The hamburger and chips looked great except not $15.50 great. So it was a quick beer and chips then off again.
Up through kiama bends, these bends are really fantastic when you can get a clear run, nice radius smooth sweepers, i wish there where 10km off these. We turned off the main highway and went up Jamberoo Rd and onto Jamberoo Mountain Rd. This was the first time i had been up this road as well. I was a fantastic little ride around 25km's but would be a lot better in summer.

Another quick stop at Robertson Pie shop, yes the pie's were tempting me but no, no pie's this time.
Leaving the pie shop it was starting to get quite cool as it was now mid afternoon and another quick run back down Macquarie Pass and you may have forgiven me for thinking that all the riding was finished for the day. However little did we know things were only just about to heat up, literally.

Turning off up Picton road after leaving Wollongong we saw some thick black smoke rising up into the sky not far ahead over the hills. Suddenly we come upon  2 lanes of traffic completely stopped. Oh shit its an accident for sure to be blocking the road, and no cars going the other way either.....

Geoff suggested lane splitting to the front to check it out which sounded like a good idea to me. Well what did we see when we got to the front?
A semi had run straight into the centre divider and up on top of it then rolled over. The driver was trapped inside, some guys smashed out the front window and rescued him then the truck burst into flames. Diesel fuel was flowing all over our side of the road.
With police, ambulance and firey's turning up left and right and it starting to get late, this was starting to look bad for us. We had dark visors on and it was about 4:15, it will be dark near 5pm and with still about 80kms to go. The policeman said the road will be blocked for a couple more hours yet. This was looking really bad for us as it would get really cold up here. Steve asked one of them if we could sneek around the back of the fire trucks, the fireys said it was ok, the policeman said it was all good. YIPEE, the cars were stuck but we just got through.

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