Not the Tassie Ride or The Great Northern Pub Tour of 2021 Part 1

In February-March plans were for another motorcycle trip around Tassie. COVID put an end to that with the uncertainty that it brings with snap closures and lockdowns. So the Tassie trip was cancelled and plans were made to head north instead. It not all bad at least Rick and my brother will be able to make this trip.

DAY1

The first day of the trip was going to be a big one, I was ready and raring to go and I left early at 6:45am to pick up Stu and the Callala Bay crew who stayed at Stu's last night to shorten the first day. From here our next meeting point was to be at Colo Height service station to pick up the rest of the crew.

We hit a few bits of road works en-route to meet the others and it was cool and pleasant out riding this morning despite this. We'd arrived within about 5 minutes of each other and the other guys were just having a coffee.

With greetings exchanged it was down to business. Bruce had bought himself a new MT-09 Tracer GT, Stu checked his chain tension then next minute out come the tool roll. What is it with these Tracers they overtighten the chains so that it is guitar string tight, same as the ones we hired in New Zealand.

No sooner had the chain been adjusted and we were on our way. Not much time for mucking around today as we had a lot of riding to do. So it was a quick Friday morning fang up the Putty Road. Brett, Dave and Myself had a very spirited ride on the 10 mile of twisties. Haven't had that much fun for a couple of years. Weekday rides are the best.

We picked up 5 more riders in Singleton at our fuel stop, which was only a quick slash of fuel and greetings then we were off to Gloucester for lunch via the Gresford goat track. I've said it before this road is a shit hole, but they have been fixing some sections. It would be no problem on one of the adventure bikes. We stopped briefly in Dungog for a wee break, and relieved the buttocks after the pounding received on the goat track.

Mmmm Africa Twin looks comfortable

A quick stop at the Gloucester bakery and café where I hoovered down a pie from the bakery. Brett had ordered a burger from the café, it was almost as big as his head. The kebabs were also gigantic sized and Doug couldn't finish his it just too big. Maybe should have called this post the great northern bakery and pub tour.....

Next up we headed up towards Wyndham and the back of Taree. We pulled in to fuel up for the last leg of the day. As we were waiting a local guy on a dirt bike thought it would be a great idea to wheelie out of the servo onto the road. What he didn't count on as he reached the road, was the hedge at the end of the servo blocked his view of a car coming the other way. It startled him and he dropped the front tyre back down but locked it up with a fist full of front brake and proceeded to hit the deck and almost roll underneath the car, seriously there would have been millimetres in it. All in his t-shirt and with no gloves. Troy and his brother went to help him pick up his bike. He was a bit shaken up, they later said he looked about 60. Damn old fool shoulda known better.

So from here we droned mindlessly up the freeway to Kempsey. Think I got so bored droning along at 110kmh that I could have shot myself in the head. From Kempsey we made our way out to Gladstone and the Heritage Hotel which sits on the waters of the Macleay River. Beautiful little spot to stop for an ice cold beer.

After we left Gladstone it kind of felt like we were going around in circles a bit. Doug had a great little back road route that allowed us to ride through some nice twisty bits and kept us well away from the highway until we got to our accommodation for tonight at the Ocean View Hotel in Urunga. It's a nice little spot, $50 rooms nice and clean with typical shared bathrooms. The top of the pub is a little bit of a maze of corridors.

Day 1 done and dusted at 655kms. Yeah I need a beer after that.

Ocean View Hotel - Urunga

A long day in saddle and some relaxing beers were a requirement. Many beers were had and tall tales told until the wee hours. The Ocean view did fantastic meals as well.

Day 1 Map Reference

 

10 Year Anniversary

Holey Moley. I can't believe that this blog is 10 years old. Yep that's right I've been clogging up the interwebs with complete bollox for 10 long years. Maybe I should have done something more worthwhile during that time, like getting a degree or learning some new skills or something important. That would be a smart choice but whoever said I did anything that was logical? Ever? That would explain why I owned 2 R1's.

With all the random shit that I've pulled in the last 10 years I'm not sure why my wife hasn't divorced me yet. Ahhh the mystery's of life.........Oh well, on with the blog then.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

I thought that I would have a little look back over the crazy shenanigans that I've gotten up to over the last 10 years. First up a few statistics from the bloggers stats page, if it can be believed. I think most of these hits are from web bots and other such devices.

I've posted up over 411 post's and wasted countless hours of about a dozen or so peoples lives who for the better part will never get that time back. Not many compared to other bloggers but I like to think my posts are quality, quantity, picturesque.

It says 46 followers but I couldn't imagine there would be more than probably 10 people that would regularly check in as most of those followers have given up blogging, but those 10 simply awesome people have commented over 3500 times.

With 340 people checking in and 816,000 bots crawling my little blog, that's a pretty good number for someone that flunked English in high school. Matter of fact computers only just started in school the year I left, now I'm showing my age.

So the all time views charts shows some interesting data. From the start it was pretty slow going for about 5 years before I started to gain any sort of traction. I find it funny that in the year that I posted hardly anything(2020) that I had my all time most views. What the?

How can that possibly be? Not much new content, views through the roof. It's either because everyone was home during COVID and they were surfing for motorcycle blogs instead of working or those same people used a lot more search bots, just so they could drop those nasty marijuana comments in my inbox daily.

So I thought I'd have a little look back over some of my fondest memories during that 10 years of motorcycling bliss. It would be fair to say I had no idea what I was doing back on my first post. Luckily I've learned so much since then and now I almost know what I'm doing.

Back in 2012 my second daughter was born, so I got into the full swing of responsible parenting 2 daughters and riding bikes.

We lost rising MOTOGP star Marco Simoncelli back in 2011. A sad day for all of motorcycling. RIP Marco.

I explored some new roads back in 2013.

Crookwell - Bathurst Road

2014 saw one of my long time motorcycling bucket list items ticked off. My brother and I along with 2 mates explored New Zealand's South Island on hired bikes. Still the best ever tour to date. I'd so love to do this again.

Lewis Pass

Arthurs Pass

Crown Range Road

Glenorchy Road

I even got to meet the worlds fastest Indian

Mt Cook

At the end of 2014 I got to top off the year with riding one of my all time favourite race tracks. Phillip Island. Besides the abysmal weather we got, I still had a great time and brought it all home in one piece.

Me at Lukey Heights Phillip Island

Riding in Australia seemed a little bit boring after our epic New Zealand trip. However a new bike was on the horizon in 2015 an Yamaha released its all new R1. 

200Hp fire breathing dragon

In 2016 I got to unleash the 200Hp monster at Sydney Motorsport Park. A fun day was had by all.

Me on Turn 2 SMSP

I also made this neat video of our day at the track. That bike was an absolute weapon at the track. Loved every minute of it.

In 2017 we turned our gaze across the Ditch again but this time to New Zealand's North Island for another 10 day tour on some hire bikes taking in some of their twisty tarmac. We also managed to catch up with 2 of NZ's best Motorcycle bloggers. It wasn't all smooth sailing however with Geoff throwing his bike down the road on the very first day.

Gentle Annie

Mt Doom

Moki Tunnel on the Forgotten World Highway

Mt Taranaki

Here's a short little video of our 2017 NZ tour.

2018 had another fun packed ride in store for us with a combined World Superbike round at Phillip Island followed by a week long tour around Tasmania. 

Freycinet Peninsula

Hobart

Gordon Dam

Also in 2018 I got back into some of my early bike riding roots and attended the Wombat rally. Severe brain damage was a result due to the alcohol consumption or was my beanie just way too tight.

At the start of 2019 I flew up to Brisbane and rode around South Eastern Queensland with my big Brother on his spare bike. It was a good 4 day get away.

Pomona

Glass House Mountains

Mt Lindsay

At the end of 2019 pretty much most of the Eastern Sea board of Australia was covered in severe bushfires. I saw the ash falling from the sky on a daily basis.

2020 started out the same way as 2019 ended, with more bushfire devastation. If we knew what was headed our way in March no one would have been complaining.

Sadly COVID-19 hit the planet and knocked everyone for a six.  The world hasn't been the same since. Pretty much everything stopped. This blog pretty well stopped.

At some point last year I thought I was going to wrap this little blog up. I wasn't riding anymore and didn't really have anything left to say. My least amount of posts ever, only 11. I also sold my beloved 2015 R1. It still hasn't been replaced yet.

Sydney was a ghost town in 2020

So 2021 has rolled around and the blog is still lumbering along on tired legs, lurching forward like a zombie. Perhaps this year maybe I can rekindle some of the love and get out and enjoy riding and what our beautiful country has to offer.

Jenolan Caves Road

Thanks to everyone out there that has read my blog over the last few years. I hope you found something in here that made you smile or laugh and maybe nod your head along in agreement. Hope to meet you one day on the road. Stay safe and enjoy your ride. Thanks for stopping by.

How long does a Motorcycle Tyre last?

That's an interesting question isn't it? If it isn't used that much and sits for a period of time just how long will it last and still be usable.

Back in 2014 I put a brand new set of Michelin Pilot Power 3 tyres on my R1 after we did the track day at Philip Island. It wasn't much longer after that I got my 2015 R1 and the older R1 sat idle in the garage with no use for 5 years due to being unregistered. So fast forward to 2020 and I re-registered the bike again. I used those tyres back in 2014-15 for about 1000kms or so. Then no use for 5 years.

Whilst out on the last 2 rides I had a few rear wheel slides mid corner. Did I hit gravel/oil or just coincidence that the tyres deteriorated to the point of no longer being usable? I cant be sure and with another ride coming up I don't think these tyres would have the distance in them to get another 2000kms.

So a cheap insurance policy is just to change them out for a new set so that's exactly what I did. 7 years and 7000kms from that last set of tyres, not bad.

I took the Bandit Rider/Geoff James route and went for a set of Michelin Pilot Road 5's. These should last me for another 7 years, haha. Gee the grooves in this tyre are huge, but its a slick on the edge..

St George Motorcycle Club Summer Racing series

Late last year SMSP was fitted out with lighting to allow for night racing which I think is a brilliant idea. They can now run all types of night events and maybe at some point in the future we might be able to see  events like V8 Supercars or ASBK racing under lights, that would be cool to see. The possibilities are endless, day/night racing for the benefit of racing fans everywhere.

Image courtesy SMSP Web page

In December, January and February I was able to attend Sydney Motorsport Park(SMSP) for the first ever motorcycle racing series under lights. This was a fantastic event run by St George Motorcycle Club, a local Sydney club with a strong following. Not only did I get to attend the action packed racing, I was privileged enough to attend as Media.

To say I was excited to be accepted was a bit of an understatement, and to be honest I was pretty nervous as well. A few days later the reality of the task finally sunk in. I knew that this was going to be the most challenging thing I've ever tried in photography since taking it up only just under 3 years ago. Photographing fast moving objects in low light, what could possibly go wrong?

In-between round 1 in December and round two in January I'd purchased some additional equipment to make my life a little easier in the process. I'll make another post about that later. But for starters I ordered myself a vest from an online store so I didn't have to wear the pink ones they hand out at the track and I can advertise my photos at the same time. 

Early on when I first started taking photos at the track when I was spotted in the pit area with a DSLR, people would ask where they could view my photos. They must have though if I had a big expensive looking camera I must be a professional right? Those first couple of times I was lost for what to say as I wasn't really putting them anywhere. What to do about it I thought to myself afterwards.

I contemplated putting them here on my blog, but thought I'd rather not combine my blog with the photography side so I decided I'd start a dedicated facebook page for my motorcycle photography work. I can reach a far wider audience with facebook page than I can with my website and I would probably need a dedicated website for photography anyway, like squarespace or smugmug(which I have anyway but don't use much) as the blog is a bit limiting. I'm getting a bit off topic.

After signing on for the first night I  spent a little time in pitlane and I thought I'd make my way around to the inside of turn 1 the fastest point on the track and turn 2 the closest and slowest point on the track.

It was interesting shooting in the twilight even before it was actually dark. I was shooting in full manual settings, and thinking to myself 'jesus' in this low light this is quite hard. I was running ISO setting right up and shutter speed right down trying to find a happy medium. Too high ISO the images are to noisy/grainy, too slow a shutter speed and all the images will be blurry and the night will be a waste of time. At one point in frustration I pulled out my phone and took this image at turn 2. It was looking better than my DSLR pics. Determination set in to get it right. Damn it. This is hard work. Also shows the improvement in modern phone cameras without putting in any effort, this is why smart phones have decimated the point and shoot camera industry.

Frustrated phone photo at turn 2

The first night was pretty much trial and error with plenty of settings tried. Lighting levels kept varying within the same corner as the lights shine brightly on one point of the track and then are diffused with dark patches between the next light. I maxed out the ISO at 3200 with a max shutter of 1/500 but shot down to around 1/160 at F2.8, my 200-500 F5.6 just doesn't cut it in the low light conditions. Lots of blurry shots in there but some keepers as well.

There are 3 classes of bikes in this series. There is the Unlimited 1 class which is basically up to 1000cc Superbikes with laptimes under 1:40sec, then there is unlimited 2 class which is Superbikes with laptimes over 1:40sec and the 600cc supersport class. Racing in all 3 classes has been exceptional.

Here's a couple of shots from the first night out.

Timothy Griffin

Andrew McIntosh

Harley Borkowski

Did I happen to mention the actual racing was fantastic, with only the track lit up and everything else being dark it made you more focused on the racing and what was going on. There was quite a crowd of spectators as well which is unusual at this level of racing. This bodes well for future events. This might be club racing but there are some seriously quick guys in here. Glenn Allerton and Cru Halliday on factory Australian superbikes(ASBK) and the likes of Yannis Shaw on the R1 all in the low 1:30's, yep that's quick.

Reviewing the photos later I was reasonably happy with the results. Some disappointments in there for sure where they looked the goods on the LCD screen but once imported on the my PC they were rather blurry. I was more confident heading out for the second round in January as I now knew the limitations my camera has in low light. I decided that I didn't want to go above 2000 ISO if I could help it or 2500 absolute max,  as I wasn't thrilled with any of the results at 3200. ISO1600 seemed to be a sweet spot but have to be oh so careful with shutter speed and try to keep a steady hand.

So for the second night I thought I'd like to head over to the old turn 9(15 now) where Doohan and Criville had their famous come together back in the 96 GP. I really enjoyed this part of the track as well. The bike speed was slow as well as being really close to the edge of the circuit. I think I lucked out being here just on sunset and captured some amazing images.

Lachlan Epis

Andrew McIntosh

Yannis Shaw

It's as easy as A, B, C

Glenn Allerton

Luke Mills

The second round seemed to fly by and it was over in no time at all. Again the racing was fantastic. I couldn't wait to get home and see how my shots turned out. I was a little disappointed as I was shooting on a different camera body and was expecting better results, but I still got some great results, just not as expected. Lesson learned for round 3 and the final race.

I got snapped in pit lane with two of Australia's premier motorcycle photographers. Rob Mott who shoots for Australian Motorcycle News and Nick Edards from Halflight Photographic who also shoots for Bike Me, Kiwi Rider and Australian Motorcycle news and others and me. Haha. Both great guys.

Rob Mott, Nick Edards & Moi - Image by Lin Cotter(I Think)

Feb 6 was scheduled for the final round and conditions have been ordinary all day to say the least with a smattering of the wet stuff flying about. But by the time race time came around it had all dried up ready for an exciting night of racing. Exciting was an understatement, standing on turn one those bikes were flying by so fast it is unreal to be only a couple of meters from those missiles travelling in excess of 200+kph.

Factory Yamaha R1

Glen Allerton aboard the fire breathing BMW S1000RR

I think it was race 7 of 9 or there abouts the red flags came out. I was speaking to the pit lane flag marshall. She said there was an incident at turn 5. A few minutes later they announced the meeting had been cancelled due to the incident. The careflight chopper was called in which landed at turn 5 to assist the rider a few minutes later. Last I heard that the rider was conscious. I wish the rider all the best.

There was an awful long wait for the trophy presentations that concluded the night. It was no surprise to see Glenn Allerton take out the Superbike class overall winner. All up what a great series it was, racing under lights is fun to watch and I can't wait to do it again at the end of the year. Qatar MotoGP round would be something special, I'd love to go there one day.

If your interesting in seeing more photos I have put up several galleries on my Road to Nowhere Images Facebook page. Click the link to open a new page. Thanks for reading.😎