SMSP Track Day 25-5-2018

Wednesday was Anzac day here in Australia and we had the day off. So I thought I'd try and take some photo's with my new camera. I checked and there was a ride day on at Sydney Motorsport Park. Perfect, so off I trotted with my expensive camera and no idea how to use it. Rather than just use Auto I went full on into changing this that and the other. It took me a while to realise how important shutter speed was. There's some picture's here that look like the bike is not moving hahaha. Practice practise, and more practise.

Laura Brown 300cc Supersport

Even the Ambulances here cut some laps

International Festival of Speed 2018

I thought I'd better get off my fat lazy ass and post this up, it only happened a month ago. I've had a lot on lately so here it is in all it's glory even though I've forgotten half of it.

The 2018 International Festival of Speed was on again last month and our good mate Stu managed to supply me with a free ticket to get in to the track to watch the action. I was busy on the saturday so we decided to head out there on sunday. The lads from the Tassie trip all showed in support of Rick and Stu.

The Festival of speed or as it was formally know 'the Barry Sheen Festival of Speed' is held at Sydney Motorsport Park every year. It is put on by the Post Classic Racing Association. A list of international guests as well as local riders take to the track on over 400+ historic bikes. There are autograph sessions and plenty of bike porn on offer for everyone.

This years riders included

• Troy Corser - World Superbike Champion 2x
• Troy Bayliss - World Superbike Champion 3x & MotoGP
• Pierfranceso Chili - World Superbike & 500cc GP
• Jeremy McWilliams - 250cc GP
• Steve Parish - 500cc GP
• Kevin Magee - 500cc GP
• Chris Vermeulen - World Supersport Champion & MotoGP
• Sir Alan Cathcrt - Journalist

Both Rick and Stu, good friends of mine were racing in this years event, but unfortunately by the time we got to the track on Sunday Ricks bike had already expired and we didn't get to see him racing. However Stu had both his race bikes and was entered into 2 different classes.

It seems like every year the crowds are getting bigger and bigger. And why not? Its a fantastic day out with historic bikes and famous riders all in attendance. There are trade stands in the back of the pits and best of all you can actually get up close to all those bikes.

Troy Bayliss had his 2001 winning World Superbike and his current 2018 Australian Superbike in attendance. It was fantastic to see these 2 bikes side by side. One classic and one soon to be a classic.

Greg Prettys Yamaha #17

Not only are there classic bikes racing but punters turn up on some classics of their own like this Suzuki Katana. It was immaculate.

This next bike makes me feel very young. Why? Well, what the hell is Norvin? Sounds like a cross between a Norton and a Vincent. I'm sure a certain Geoff James from across the ditch will be able to tell a young fella like myself all about this machine and its ancient history as it's probably from his era. Hahahaha

Oopsy

Dr Kwoks ship of broken dreams.....

Art or Junk?

Autograph signing sessions

For us slightly older guys that still remember going to 500c GP and such there's nothing like the smell of Castrol R from the two strokes. Yeah it's probably an older guys thing. You young people just wouldn't understand.

Bruce and I did a little pit crewing for Stu whilst there. However we had a little failure moment where he had 2 races back to back which we didn't realise where we got him out of the pits too slowly and he had to start the second race from pitlane due to his slack pit crew. It actually helped him as turn 2 turned into a massive accident mid-late pack taking out a few riders, so luckily he missed that carnage and stayed upright. Sometimes things happen for a reason.

Another successful day out at the races. If you get the chance get yourself out to the Festival of speed and support local racing. It's a great day out with plenty of things to see and do.



Here is a quick video of the event from Old Bike Australasia. Check them out.

Out with the Old in with the Expensive!

For the last 2 years I've been using my Samsung Galaxy S6 smart phone for photo's for the blog. I have a Canon pocket point and shoot camera that I was using previously to this. It was a good little camera but several things aspired to it's retirement.

I noticed that on several photo's that there seemed to be a hair on the lense, I checked and cleaned the outside but the hair must be on the inside of the camera which has ruined a lot of shots. Here's a shot from last years MotoGP of Maverick Viñales. You can clearly see the hair on the lense.

Also now the smart phone cameras have become so good that my point and shoot cameras only redeeming feature was that you could zoom in without any picture quality reduction, unlike the smart phone. It can't zoom much past 1.5 x before picture quality drops. The usb port on the camera failed at some point as well which means I have to take the SD card out and put it in a reader, which in my case is my gopro which is then plugged into the usb port. Another hassle I don't need.

Carrying a phone and camera seemed to me like I'm carrying too many things for no benefit so I stopped using the Camera and just used my phone. And why not, the phone photo's are actually pretty good as long as you don't want zoom.

Phones and small point and shoot cameras are good for everyday photos' but they are severely lacking when it comes to fast moving objects. Motorcycles are fast moving objects. So for many years I've just put up with the fact that I'd never be able to take any decent photo's of fast moving motorcycles etc at places like Phillip Island MotoGP or Sydney Motorsport Park or even by the side of the road.

I've always held a desire to own a DSLR camera at some point so I could capture the photo's that I wanted, but the draw back is that they are not very friendly for packing onto a motorcycle for trips away, or easy to setup for that matter so I've resisted getting one for many years even though the yearning has been there.

Well I finally caved and purchased myself a new Nikon DSLR camera last weekend. I just bought the kit which only had one lense a 18-140mm jobby. I'll be looking at a longer zoom lense soon probably 300mm which should be more suitable for the distances required to photograph motorcycles at the track.

Looking through the 750 page manual and then at the menus on this thing I was blown away with how many settings are actually available. Aperture priority, Shutter priority whats it all mean? It's very much overwhelming to be honest. Learning this camera is going to take decades hahaha. It's a very steep learning curve that's for sure, I've been watching a few Youtube videos to brush up on what setting does what as its quicker than reading the manual to see what the effects and results are.

It's not likely I'll be carrying this around much on the bike and will probably stick with the phone for those trips but I will be using this for other trips to Motogp etc and holidays where it's easy to pack unlike trying to fit this on an R1.

I dropped out to Sydney Motorsport Park today to have a go at using it. I can't believe how many shots you can take with one of these things. I'll post up a few of the better pictures later on so you can all tell me how badly I did with such an expensive toy. One things for sure there's going to be lots of trial and error and plenty of practice, practice, practice....

Return from Tassie - Day 12 & 13

DAY 12

It was beginning to feel like we had been on the road for the 12 days I was getting tired and the others looked it too. We got off the boat and stopped to gather everyone together. It took a few minutes before we were all together again. I think I was all photoed out by then as I didn't take any photo's. The shot below is supplied by our fearless group leader. Thanks Dougie.

Disembarking the Spirit of Tasmania was the easy part. Heading straight out into Melbourne's peak hour traffic was going to be the difficult bit. And I wasn't wrong there we stopped 2 or 3 times within 2 kilometres to consult google maps after a couple of uncertain turns. I wasn't offering to lead here cause I had no idea where I was going and I hadn't even been bothered to look at a map to see where we should be going. East and North is about all I knew.

Turns out that's where we went whether or not it was by luck or good management I can't be sure. At one point I found myself leading and turning off the free way with 2 options north or south with me slowing down but no one offing to come up and take the lead, so I went north and everyone followed. Not sure this was right but we eventually went the right direction.

We stopped in a bakery at Lilydale for some breakfast before we retraced our step from day 1 & 2 almost to a tee. We headed through Warburton and back up the Reefton Spur. I can confirm that riding up the spur is much better than riding down it, as you are not on your wrists the whole time.
Doug rode at the back of the group as his bike had been playing up since yesterday just after Rosebery, it was losing power making riding the real twisty bits difficult. The spur must have been hard work for him.

As we got close to the Eildon - Jamieson road turn off, Doug said he would meet us in Mansfield and bypass the twisty bit as the bike wasn't working well in the twistys. Well that's a real bummer.
 Now that we knew what the road was like we had a pretty good run through the Jamieson road. The first part had quite a bit of leaf litter over the road and I had a couple of front end slides on them but after about 20 minutes it cleared and we had a sensational run to the lookout.

Jamieson Road

Stu had been waiting for us at the look out for about 15 minutes as we stopped earlier for the above photo's. The picture from the lookout today was much clearer than it was when we came down. We picked Doug back up again in Mansfield.

We had another brilliant run over to Whitfield with plenty of spirited riding taking place. We stopped in at the Whitfield Hotel. I wasn't ready for a beer yet so we hit up the Whitty cafe. The owner suggested Iced Coffee's which we agreed was a great idea, it was a hot day today and they were fantastic.

Geoff and Bruce decided they'd like a beer instead so they stopped at the pub. We parked the bikes out the front so they would be in the shade.

Whitty Iced Coffee's

 The ride back into Myrtleford was quite boring and I was thinking that I was going to fall asleep, lucky then I didn't have a beer as that would have made it worse. Stopping in Mytreford Stu, Dave and Myself decided we'd like to ride through to Bright and then do the Tawonga Gap and then come back up to Dederang from the south rather than take the Happy Valley Road. I followed Dave across the Gap and and it was fantastic fun, this is one of my all time favourite roads.

We were soon in Dederang after about 20 minutes and back to the Dederang Hotel, again in the cabin out the back.

Day 13

I'm not sure that finishing a long trip like this on day 13 is a great idea, when riding motorcycles one should not poke the superstitious road gods in the face. Again today's ride was also going to be the reverse of the first day. We fueled up in Tallangatta and then headed up over the Granya Gap and onto the Murray River Road. This was another fantastic ride along the river until we turned off at Jingellic and up to Tumbarumba. There was quite a lot of road works along this bit of road, I didn't remember being this much on the way down, seems like they were ripping up lots of the road. It would be nice when they finish it.

We stopped in Tumbarumba at the bakery(again) for a spot of lunch and coffee's. Rather than ride all the way out to Rosewood we took a more direct approach and took this nice little back road that cut out about 20km's of boring bit and it spat us out right onto the Broadleaf Park Rd and up through the pine forests.

 We were soon in Tumut for a fuel stop and a drink of water as it was quite warm today. Geoff's zipper had broken on his jacket and he was wearing his rain jacket over the top of his leathers for the last 4 or 5 days. He got sick of that and just wrapped duct tape around his leather jacket. Pity we didn't tape his arms up as well.

The pic below was the last time we would be all together at the same point on the trip. I put my sheepskin back on the the long boring bits coming up. After we got on the Hume Highway aka Highway Patrol central the guys were riding off at a blistering pace. There was now also very strong crosswind that was also battering us about. Must have been 40-50kmh gusts. It was very tiring riding along here and by the time I pulled in at Marulan for fuel there was only Dave getting some fuel. He said Geoff had pulled in at Goulburn and Stu pulled in at Yass and Bruce had stopped for fuel at Gunning. Talk about getting split up.

Rain was predicted for Sydney by 6pm so I got underway again pretty quickly just after Dave had left. About an hour and a half later I was pulling into my drive way with a severe case of sore ass and I was exhausted. A few minutes after getting home it just started to rain so it looks like the timing again was spot on. 

Looking at my rear tyre it was pretty well shot. It was down on the wear markers and the centre was now starting to get cracks in it. The Bridgestone S21's are a fantastic tyre, with great grip and superb handling. The tyre has done 7,707kms since I put it on last November which is pretty good out of a sports tyre. 

It has done 2 tours, the Vic High country tour at the end of last year and this Tassie trip, I wasn't sure if it was going to make it back but it all worked out well. This Tassie trip was around 5400km over 13 days, although 2 of these were technically non riding days when we were at the World Super Bikes.  It's now time for a full service on the bike, tyres, chain+sprockets, oil & filter.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the trip as much as I did.