Just a quick post to say Happy Christmas to everyone who has joined me on my adventure this year. We will be biking this year again for chrissy and we wont be home til after all the excitment has died down so I thought I should do this before it was too late.
Hope you all have a great Christmas and an awsome New Year, stay safe and have as much fun as you possibly can!! (And hope santa brings you all the presents you asked for .. but you have to be good for that to happen remember ...)
With all the getting ready for the silly season I haven't had much time to do much blogging this month, though I have been looking at what you have all been up to. I have so enjoyed reading all about everyone adventures, thoughts, advice and looking at some amazing photos throughout the past year. I look forward to seeing more of you all next year and sharing some more of my own adventures too.
This week it seems the whole eastern side of Australia has turned it up a notch. We've had high temperatures that have never been heard of before in Melbourne (the coldest, wettest city in Aus) and the rest of this side of the country has gone with the flow. Last weekend I was complaining about not being able to go for a ride cause of the heat and it only got to 38°C / 100.4°F, We went to the local coffee shop for lunch then straight home again cause we were both melting in the heat. I wore my old jacket with all the hot stuff stripped out of it so it was a nice cool mesh with protective bits. It was a tight fit, but I'd boldly stated in the morning that I was going skins for the little ride to the cafe cause it was just too hot, then I picked my helmet up and couldn't go any further. I didn't even get out the door before I realised I just couldn't ride without the protective gear. So I sweated instead .. ugh.
This weekend started with a high temperature of 41°C / 105.8°F on Friday, it stayed at that temp til long into the evening and I think it only cooled down to about 24°C or so over night. Yep it's just too hot to do anything. Saturday was the same so we headed out early to the markets then came home before the heat really set in, on the way home I got Terry to drop in to check out this bike that I've seen a few times out the front of the local bike shop. It's got me intrigued, I wanted Terry to check it out.
It's a Kawasaki Vulcan Custom Special Edition, click the link above to check out the stats. It's nothing like the White Shadow, it's actually kinda dark with all that mat black where the chrome is on the Shadow, so even though the majority of the paintwork on it is white (it's a gorgeous pearl white too which you can't really see in the photo) it comes across as a black bike. It's so different to what I'm used to, but I'm almost in love with it. Terry was kinda interested, but he didn't really go for it like I did, maybe it's a girly bike. He took us inside to ask about it and the bloke went to get the key for it for me .. he said 'you wont believe how this thing sounds, ya just gotta hear it for yourself.' He was right, it was amazing! It has a lowering kit as well as the air filter and exhaust thingys and it's just too hot for words. I asked the obvious question and no I can't afford it. As Terry pointed out, I can't ride it yet anyway, I'm still on the restricted licence til next May. But I can dream can't I :-D
He was huge and he was scary!! He was adamant that I wasn't going to touch his new domain with my shammy!!
OK he wasn't that huge as such, but he was adamant and he had plenty of attitude!
I had just finished washing my baby bike and was busy drying her off with the shammy when I was accosted by this menacing green maniac!
I stopped what I was doing straight away .. not cause I was scared .. but cause I was laughing too hard to keep working!!
This guy had little man's syndrome to the max, he was being as threatening as he possibly could at me then found my pillion seat and decided to do a few laps on it before I could catch him and put him safely in a tree.
Well I'm all for safety and my hearing is precious to me. As I have a degenerative hearing problem that just means I'm going to be deaf eventually anyway I am all for protecting what hearing I have left. Specially since I didn't protect it when I was younger and sillier. I have been looking for earplugs for when I'm riding for a while now.
I started out going to Bunnings and getting the $3.00 earplugs from the power tool section.
I put them in the way they told me to and waited for them to expand ... intense pain. Yep I have sensitive ears but sheesh not that sensitive. Something must be wrong. So I read the instructions and put them in again .... eeeeek ... I clawed them out as fast as I could. OK they weren't quite that painful but yeah they hurt still. I did the only thing I know to do when I'm after an answer to a question ... I Googled the earplugs. I found a number of posts on forums from people who said that these types of earplugs hurt them, the solution most people seemed to go for was getting custom made ones.
That solution seemed to be a last resort, I looked at a few online and found out about some that Muso's use with the help of a fellow blogger's comment. They looked the part and I was going to go have a look at what was available from my local music shop when I closed down. Hmmm ... OK I was going have to take a look at what was available at the Hearing Centre's in town. This town has 2 Hearing Specialist Centres that I know of and I wouldn't be surprised if there were more, it seems there's a roaring trade for hearing centres in Dubbo .. must be all the machinery those farmers work with all day. And then I forgot all about earplugs.
I went all winter without thinking bout them, well I didn't ride that much through winter. Then when spring came I thought of them .. once or twice. On a work trip to Sydney I noticed a sign for earplugs on the back of the toilet door in the ladies at the airport. Oh they looked good, I should go check it out while I wait for my flight. I found a good book first though and forgot about them again for another month.
I reckon by now your thinking that I'm really not serious about protecting my hearing like I said at the start of this post but really I am, I'm just a bit slack with some things sometimes. If something isn't in my face then I tend to forget it easily and that's what kept happening with the earplugs. Then one day I was shopping and spotted the plugs that I'd seen on the back of the toilet door, it seemed like fate that I happened on them at a time when there was nothing to distract me from them so they went in the trolley.
The first thing I did when I got home was pull these babies out and start playing with them, they are silicon and are supposed to mold in and seal your ear, I couldn't fit the whole thing in so I broke one in half and stuck it in as I was reading the warnings on the back of the packet .. "WARNING: Use whole earplug. Do not cut, break apart or elongate." Ahh oops, well I put it back together and had another go with the whole thing ... ouch it actually changed the pressure in my ear and hurt, and it didn't fit in, there was some hanging out over my earlobe.
They weren't going to do the job but they did get me moving a bit on getting something that would work. It was only a couple of weeks later that I remembered to drop into one of the Hearing Specialist places on the way home from work one day. I asked about earplugs and got a perplexed look, I wonder why I get those looks so much I'm pretty sure I'm speaking the same language as other people. It's odd that a hearing place doesn't have much in the way of protective equipment. I finally got the girl to understand what I wanted and she told me the only thing I would be able to get would be custom made earplugs and they were expensive ... $198.00 a pair! I told her I'd get back to her. I was hoping there would be another answer.
Then I went to the other music shop that I had finally remembered about (this is the one that didn't close down) and ordered two different types of smaller earplugs made for ladies. This was looking promising.
They arrived the other day and the first thing I did was play with them again. The more expensive ones were silicon again but smaller, they fit in my ear but they still did that pressure thing to my ear too, felt like I was underwater and getting beyond my depth. And the warnings on the back of this one were even more worrying ... "If you push the earplug into your ear canal do not try to remove it yourself. See an Ear, Nose And Throat Specialist ...." Ummm I'm starting to really worry about these silicone plugs.
The other ones were nice and cheap, and they are pink! They are just a smaller version of the ones I originally tried from Bunnings. I rolled one up and popped it in .. it expanded .. it didn't feel like it was exploding in there. There was no pain. Yay we have a winner!!
So I stuck them in a few times round the house, just to see if they were comfortable, I didn't wear them for long at any time and I now have a bit of a sore ear. I don't think it's related but I'm going to wait til the ear gets better before I try them on the bike. I don't think I'll be riding very far any time soon anyway the weather has gotten a tad warm and is tipped to get warmer in the next week. So the only trips we did this weekend were to the coffee shop for lunch and home again. If these plugs cause issues with my ears I'm actually not sure what I will do maybe I'll have to shop around a bit more but I'm just not really keen to pay $200.00 for the custom ones when they may not be suitable for me either. I'll just have to see how the pink babies go first, fingers crossed they aren't going to cause me pain and weren't the cause of the ear infection I have now.
For ages I've been saying I'm going to go try the road to Yeoval and not doing it. Something always comes up and to tell the truth I think I've actually put it off, I've been a bit scared. This road had been recommended to me by one of the girls I work with who said 'all the bike riders go out to that road specially cause it's an awesome road with lots of twisties!!' So I was a bit nervous, I've looked at the road, Renshaw McGirr Way it's called, on Google Maps and it looks twistie alright. I don't have a lot of experience on twisties.
Terry had to go see a client in Wellington last Monday, and that was my last day off before I went back to work, so when he said lets take the bikes for a run I was pretty keen. Then he suggested we come home via Yeoval ... ahh yeah ... oh lets do this!!
I rode round Wellington for a bit while we looked at stuff for Terry's work then I had to negotiate two car parks on my own while Terry was busy. I did it all without a problem, oh the confidence is really getting up there now!! I tried not to get too cocky :)
So after Terry was done we headed towards Yeoval via the Renshaw McGirr Way, here's the video ...
As you can see by the video I went slowly round a lot of those bends but it really wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. I even had fun on a couple of them!!
We got through that mountainy bit and had a truck on our tail, he wasn't pushing but we weren't going over the speed limit which I'm sure he was keen to do, so at the first opportunity we pulled into a bus stop where the road widened enough for us to pull over without slowing right down to a stop .. he flew past us. About 5 km's up the road I noticed him pulled over, and then Terry pointed out the funeral procession coming towards us .. oh.
We pulled up behind the truck and waited .. and waited .. I was getting hot so I got off and took my helmet off and stood under a tree, when I spotted this watching us.
There are two of them over there ...
This is the best close up I could get .. I saw a sign in town pointing back this way for an Angora Farm, I think this might be an Angora Alpaca.
Wasn't far to go to get into Yeoval.
Which is tiny but does have a Royal Hotel. I'm starting to see a pattern with these Royal Hotels, I'm pretty certain that every town in Australia might just have a Royal Hotel.
Across the road from that was the petrol station that Terry was happy to see!!
It also had this awesome mural painted by the local school kids! Love small outback towns!!
We hit the road again, this road is the Obley Road and is a part of a touristy thing called Animals On Bikes which has a whole heap of animals on bikes in paddocks or some of the smaller ones are letterboxes. They are sculptures in case you hadn't guessed, I only saw two of them on this trip tho, the first one was this one
It's a horse with gumboots on, not a great pic tho :(
We kept going and before too long the road became .. well ordinary.
Great scenery but in some places it was the worst road I've been on yet, just too uncomfortable for me to want to do it again anytime soon.
Those causeways can hurt if you go too fast over them. like I did with this first one, the next one I slowed right down!
We made it home in one piece, and I did enjoy the ride even though I have vowed not to travel that road on the bike ever again. It was a great experience and I was pretty tickled with not being too freaked out by all the bends at the start. I also did a pretty tricky right turn round the end of a median strip out of the petrol station in Yeoval that I'm pretty proud of, when I got round that corner I saw Terry waiting for me. He told me when we got home that he was getting ready to come pick the bike up for me, such confidence, but he was pretty proud too that he didn't have to do it.
When we got home and I took my helmet off the GoPro caught this shot that I kinda liked.
A couple of weeks ago my wonderful husband got me a GoPro Hero2. I got it home and immediately started taking video of that wonderful husband who then threatened me with all kinds of nastiness if any of those videos ever saw the light of day anywhere. He needn't have worried cause I was just practising and you always throw away the just practising ones don't you .. I'll get better ones of him later :)
I took a video of the Big Red Ride a couple weekends ago, played with editing it and ended up with a couple of videos from that. I like the video thingy, tis interesting but what I'm really excited about is the photo part of it. Set it to take photos every 0.5, 2, 5, 10, 30 or 60 seconds I was dying to test that out! I was going to try it on the second part of the ride but I found out the first interesting thing about the GoPro before the halfway point on that ride, the battery doesn't last very long. So it went flat before I got to try out the auto photo thingy bit. I was disappointed, but you do have to learn these things don't you, next thing on the shopping list is a spare battery along with some new mounts for it.
Oh yeah the mounts, you can mount this thing anywhere right? As long as it's on your helmet, and there's some space on your helmet that doesn't have vents or little buttons to open and close the vents. So I wanted it on top of my helmet, thinking it would give me the best shots, but I have a rotten big vent and a pretty moulded section that the button sits in on top of the helmet. So I worked out how I would be able to mount it on the side of my helmet. It's not too bad a view, you have a bit of helmet in the view but I think I can work out how to minimise that, and I just need to work out how to not get quite so much bike and handlebars in the shots. I've been looking at mounting it at different places on the bike and one of the other things I am interested in getting is some RAM mounts. I'm still looking and working out what I want.
So I went for a bit of a ride today with hubby, just for a late brekky at our favourite cafe for breakfast and I decided to set up the GoPro for camera shots every 10 seconds. This is what I got ... (actually I got a lot more shots but this is some of the more interesting shots) (actually they aren't really that interesting cept to see what can be done and I'm sure a lot of you have seen it before but I hadn't so I found it fascinating, I actually enjoyed sifting through all the 350+ photos to pick out my favourites)
Here we go, photo number one ... looking up the street from our driveway at the red dirt in the vacant lot next door to us. I'm loving this photo cause it reminds me of my first impressions of Dubbo when I came here a few years ago to find a new place to live .. dry, red and dusty! But exciting :)
A lot of this route is the way I go to work every day so it's kinda boring to me, but this pic is exciting cause it's got the motorbike shop I go past every day in it, they always have something that catches my eye out the front.
The next one shows the guy who made eye contact with me while I was going round the round about then decided that he would cut in front of me and turn right from the left lane while he was at it ... I do love when they do that ....
Have you noticed yet how wonderful and blue that sky was today? It was bout 22 degrees too .. perfect!!
And after negotiating all that Saturday morning madness traffic .... (hehe) .... we made it to our favourite cafe, Selah Doro!!
The car park is out the back up that driveway and I'm pretty proud of the fact that I went in there today without a single tremble. I still don't love car parks but this one, even though it's a bit tight, isn't quite as scary as there aren't as many cars around back there and cause it's so small I think the crazys take a bit more care.
After having our usual (we need to change it up a bit I think, they are starting to tell us what we're having) I got in the lead when we left the cafe. Terry said he was going straight home, he had work to do and was expecting phone calls, I figured I'd just head home too I wanted to check out the pics!
I'd noticed when I got to the cafe that the camera seemed to be pointing very up .. I straightened it and wondered if I'd bumped it when I was putting the helmet on at home or taking it off at the cafe. Then I turned it on and headed up the road with Terry behind me.
I should have turned left here if I was going to go straight home but I decided to take the longer way home. I was pleasantly surprised that Terry followed me, I thought he would just head straight home and let me go on my own merry jaunt.
Before too long that road turns into the highway out of town and you get to the 110km/h zone just seconds before you get to this turn off ....
Which takes you down a nice quiet little suburban street that has not much traffic and lot of lovely corners for me to practise on.
Like this ... (yeah I know you cant really see the corner but trust me that sign is doing the S bendy thingy and the road does too)
And this ...
Then you turn onto the road that eventually takes us back to our street, this one has a bit more traffic.
OK so not so much here, there's more up further really. Terry overtook me not far from here and gave me a silly grin (you know the silly grin of a man on a bike) and I was hoping the GoPro caught it, that was the sort of thing I was wanting it for!
Aww it missed the grin :(
Pulling into our house, with a nice shot of the garden and the front of the house. OK so the garbage bins might need to be moved ... and the weeds are going nuts ... shhh I still like this shot :)
To park the bike I ride it up that little path to the right then back it back til it's behind the gate.
And there we are, safe at home in our little cubby hole :)
A few weeks ago I mentioned that I'd gotten a package from Cruiser Customising with a bunch of pretty shiny bike thingys for me to play with. One was the mirrors and that was the first thing that I put on the bike, I did it first because I figured it would be the easiest to do ... hahahahaha!! They went on before the trip to Canberra, and at Geurie (bout 25km) I had to stop and get out the wrench to tighten one of them. I had been afraid to tightened them too much when I first put them on, I soon learned that they need to be tight or the minute you get over 60km/h they start to wobble round.
Well after that seemingly simple task ended up being a bit of an ongoing job I was a little worried about putting on the grips.
One of the big warnings on the instruction leaflet that came with them was about not gluing up your throttle. I could see this becoming a worry. So I put it off. Then this week I have some time off work. I'd been planning to paint the kitchen, something I've been going to do for about a year or so but never gotten around to cause the ceiling is just so big, but then I hurt my shoulder and to tell the truth I just couldn't be bothered painting the ceiling this week anyway. I put on my new grips instead!!
New mirror with the old grip.
I Youtubed an instruction thingy which stated that it could be done in under 8 minutes, yeah right they've never dealt with me before.
After psyching myself up for a while I went out to the bike armed with a screwdriver, WD40 and a wrench. Lets do this!! Got the end of the clutch side off without damaging anything, then stuck the screwdriver under the rubber of the old grip easy enough. Spray that WD40 and then ...
......... give it a couple of twists and that old grip just slid straight off.
I was feeling pretty proud of myself by now, all this had taken me maybe 2 minutes ... wow. I had to go brag to Terry. He then came out while I was getting the end off the throttle side ... oops.
For some reason the chrome endy bit of the throttle side was actually glued to the throttle sleeve and when I tried to twist that endy bit off it snapped the end off the throttle sleeve. Eeek, it's only a little bit of plastic that doesn't seem to do anything except make you break something when you pull the end off the standard grip, so I just kept going with the hopes that things would continue to work.
I got the glue out ready to get this job finished!! The little tube of glue was hard as a rock, they gave me two little tubes of glue, I found the other tube and it was hard too. This wasn't looking too promising. What is this stuff, they keep calling it superglue on the youtube thingy, but it didn't look like it was straight out superglue. Just as Terry proudly placed the superglue he'd managed to find in our kitchen draw, onto the bench, I decided not to use superglue. It was still soft and everything. I was having visions of trying to get a grip back off because it had only gone on halfway cause the superglue had dried before I could get it all the way on the bar. Nope I wasn't going to go blindly here, I turned to the Internet.
I found nothing that said what glue to use anywhere, oh comeon this has to be a basic fact that lots of people need to know!! Right, I was feeling a bit stumped when I couldn't find my answer with Google, Google has never failed me before. Then I had a flash of inspiration ... I would call the bike shop!! I called them and they told me to use grip glue, they have tons of it, I could come down and get a tube wheneva I liked. Me and Gizmo jumped into the car (she likes visiting the bike shop cause it's somewhere that lets her in) and went got glue!!
So now for the scary part, I put glue on the bar and slid the grip on. I was worried that the glue would be pushed along the bar when I pushed the grip on and then pool near the switch housing, not such an issue with the clutch side but on the throttle side... I don't know why I worried, it didn't do anything bad. And I put the throttle side on without a hic-up and the throttle even still moves and everything. Looks awesome too.
Saturday 27th of October is a day I've been waiting for a while to arrive. A couple of months ago I read a ride report on a forum about a ride that had been put on by someone with the Australian Red Cross Blood Service in Queensland, the blood bank. The idea had been to get riders to donate but it had turned into a bit of a shamozel when they had huge waiting times for them to donate and then people who fainted then had to wait round for a couple more hours to be sure they were safe to ride.
I thought at the time that a ride to raise awareness of the need for donated blood was a great idea but wondered at the wisdom of getting people to donate blood then hop on a bike. We get regular donors who do that but they are regular donors and they know they feel OK after donating, I didn't like the thought of having a lot of new donors, who are always an unknown factor, then wanting to jump on bikes and ride to where ever home is. So I wanted to do a ride like that locally, but I was already having trouble working out what would be the most useful way to do it.
I talked to people about it, then talked to some other people about it and eventually it came about that we would join in on a ride already being organised to raise funds for an organisation called Can Assist at Peak Hill, a place not to far from Dubbo. It wasn't exactly what we wanted but it was a way to see what we needed to do, and to get the message out there. Basically all we would be doing is riding along and trying to pass on the message of the need to donate blood. I even came up with a name for the ride, Big Red Ride, and I'm hoping it can be done again next year under that name.
We met up with some of the guys that donate blood who agreed to come along to lend us a voice and a roar of their engines, at a service station in Dubbo at bout 8am.
One of those blokes is the guy who helped us to get involved with this ride and led us to the start of the ride at Tomingley.
Already there was a great selection of bikes turning up, there were our two Shadows, a couple of Harleys, a V Star. Another Honda, VFR something (yeah I know I'm not great at the sportsbike stuff).
The guy riding the VFR is the partner of one of my workmates and hasn't been on the bike in a while so he said he'd be taking it easy today ... yay was looking like I'd get a riding buddy for the day.
I was pretty impressed with this when it pulled up just before we took off for Tomingley.
So seven of us on bikes headed out of Dubbo towards Tomingley, with a 4WD full of some of the girls from work trailing behind us. I was already excited!!
We got to Tomingley pretty much on time. The plan that had been relayed to us was that we would have breakfast at Tomingley (put on by the pub) at 9am then head on the road towards Parkes -Bogan Gate - Trundle - Albert- Trangie - Narromine - Tomingley. There was a big night planned for that night as well at the Tomingley pub but we'd already decided that after riding all day we weren't going to feel much like partying on then riding home in the dark late at night so we were going straight home to Dubbo from Narromine.
The pub had a few more riders than us, I think there were bout 20 all together, and we did pick up another donor at Tomingley who'd ridden down from near Collie to meet us with his wife.
The bikes lined up at Tomingley, I was the only one with a dressed up bike but that's OK cause there were plenty of people already dressed up for the Halloween theme they were running with for the nights entertainment.
Breakfast was a BBQ .. bacon and egg rolls, which even the Mario Bros. enjoyed.
More bike pics
Was a pretty impressive sight all those bikes lined up in along the front of the Hotel.
We left Tomingley at roughly 10am and headed along the road towards Parkes. I kept thinking that we were getting to Parkes at every drop in the speed limit and it was just the villages along the way, for some reason it seemed like a long ride. A lot of the the riders took off ahead and we didn't see them on the road at all unless it was to be overtaken by them if they left behind us, riding in our little group was Me and Terry, my workmates partner and the donor who came down from Collie way with his wife on the back. We pretty much sat on the speed limit the whole way.
The first stop was at Parkes for fuel and to catch up. Actually I don't think the group ever rode as a group at any time, there were a lot who just took off ahead and the other thing I would have liked to have seen was some kind of corner marking. There weren't a lot of corners but if you had no idea where you were going and got left behind you would have been completely lost at times. I think they just assumed that everyone was a local and would know these roads like they did.
Right so that stop wasn't worth taking pics, but the next one was. We stopped at Bogan Gate next.
And this is where we found out that it was also a Poker Run, we would be stopping at every little town between here and Albert.
At the pub ...
Railway Hotel, Bogan Gate NSW
Yay I like stopping often, I had been starting to worry bout doing another long run with no stops.
For the last couple of weeks my boss had been talking about riding on the back of one of the bikes, so I loaned her my old helmet and she borrowed some boots and gloves from someone else. At Tomingley she jumped on the back of this ...
I think he needed a crowbar to get her off the back at the end of the day.
And here at Bogan Gate one of the other girls was handed a helmet and jacket and happily jumped on the back of this ...
I do have to let her know that if she's getting pics taken on the back of a Harley she has to put her visor up so there's proof it's really her .. shy girl :)
On that stretch of road between Parkes and Bogan Gate we had come across
a brand new harvester being taken to it's new owner somewhere .. it was
huge and I was wishing that the Gopro was mounted on the other side
when I passed it to show how huge it was. Imagine my delight when it
pulled up behind us at Bogan Gate, I ran straight over for pics ...
Oh yeah I got my Gopro, I got the Hero2 mainly because it was there. I know that the Hero3 has just been released but after looking at what is new I decided the Hero2 would do me for the level of technology I can cope with, also the one I got was from a local shop and I do like to support my local businesses if I can, not to mention I wouldn't have to wait for it to be delivered, I got to play with it the day I paid for it!!
I had it mounted on the side of my helmet because I have a vent and a vent button on the top of it that seem to be in the way. I'm not sure that I liked the view it gave me and I think I had it pointed down a little too much. But anyway here's the video that I ended up with after working out how to edit, I'm sure I'll get better with practise.
Yeah I know it's a bit long too, I'll get better at that with time too I'm sure. And there's no sound, I'm trying to work out why but I haven't gotten sound on it yet for some reason. I'll fiddle with it a bit more then if I cant work it out send Gopro an email or something to see if they can help out.
We moved on from Bogan Gate to Trundle next. Which has the widest main street I've seen yet.
But I was completely fascinated by the old building that the pub was in.
Terry managed to sneak in a pic of me and Roxy. The feather boa was
lasting well but my tassells were pretty much gone by now as was the P
plate.
From Trundle it was a quick 35km run to Tullamore. I'm glad it was a short run cause that's when my footpeg started to come lose. I was kinda feeling something funny down there for a few minutes before I realised that it was the footpeg spinning under my foot. Eeek I stopped playing with it with my foot and tried not to put too much pressure on it, keeping the speed to a minimum too as it started to vibrate like crazy if I went too fast. We got to Tullamore and saw the service station was open and a few bikes still fuelling up so we pulled in, I got my tool kit out and was relieved to find that the Allen Keys I had with me contained one that fit the footpeg bolt. So after tightening that and checking the one on the other side I got petrol then headed up to the pub with just enough time to snap one pic of the pub.
Right the next stop was Albert, we were having lunch there at the famous Rabbit Trap Hotel. I'm not sure why it's famous but it was a cool little outback village and nice little pub.
Yes the decor was all in Rabbit Trap theme, there were rabbit trap candle holders on the tables even.
The tourist cabins across the road from the pub.
That's about all there was in town and a service station that seemed to be un-manned, credit card at the bowser when were there anyway.
What do you do if you have a blonde in a Devils outfit and a red bike? Get her to pose on it while an evil wizard takes a photoshoot of course.
The whole party, including a bus load of revellers who came across from the Tomingley pub the short way to meet the bikes here.
Proof we were there ...
Roxy and friend enjoying the shade.
We rested here for a while then people started to get ready to leave.
It was decided not to go all the way to Trangie as had been originally planned, we were to take a shorter way back along a back road that went straight to Narromine. It cut about 20km off the trip but I was told that it was actually a better road than the main one through Trangie. Eek I hope they lied, the road we took was terrible and I'm sure it's the reason my back and right shoulder are still complaining two days later. Oh well it was the only bad road we got in 370km worth of roads so not a bad days ride.
And not as painful as I thought it would be, all that stopping at pubs made it much easier!
The last stop was at Narromine, where we had a last drink and said bye and thanks to everyone who was heading back to Tomingley for a night of music and an auction to raise still more funds.
