tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50787655438537204072024-03-13T23:30:23.515+11:00Huckleberry DreamsBrendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.comBlogger125125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-42080383787307900552015-02-03T23:42:00.000+11:002015-02-03T23:43:08.733+11:00Dad, This one's for you.A couple of months ago something changed in my life. My father passed away. And I have to admit I miss him like crazy.<br />
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Dad was a solitary man. He loved the sea. He spent most of his life at sea.<br />
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That's why he was never very close to his family. He wasn't around much during my childhood, and when he did finally come home I was 12 years old, he and my mother ended up divorced. For a long time I hated my father. I think it was one of those things when you are young, you harbour all those hatreds almost closer to your heart than your loves. It wasn't until my late 20's that I forgave him. He rang me out of the blue one day, I didn't even know he knew my phone number, and we chatted for an hour or so. And that started our real relationship.<br />
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We didn't really talk often, but when we did it was usually a phone marathon. I could talk to Dad just for a chat, he wasn't ringing me because he wanted anything from me, and I never rang him for any other reason than to say hi. That was one of the things I loved about our friendship.<br />
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He moved away not long after we had resumed our relationship, all the way to Tasmania. I always said I was coming to visit but in the end he came to visit us first, at my wedding.<br />
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I'd thought for a long time that I wouldn't have my father to give me away when I got married. To have him there to do that honour was the best thing I could have asked for, and just made my day so special.<br />
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Then of course we had to visit him, we had our honeymoon in Tasmania and a visit with Dad was a must.<br />
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Even though we weren't close, and you couldn't ever say he had anything to do with my upbringing, he still gave me a lot. There are things that are so similar between the two of us. I am like him in my contentment when I am alone, we both love animals. We both have very short tempers if we let them get away from us. I am so like my father it scares me at times, then at other times it just makes me smile, when I say or do something that just reminds me of him.<br />
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Mum says that she has compared photos of me and him at the same age, and that we look the spitting image of each other. I don't have any baby pics of myself, but I did dig up a very cute one of Dad amongst his photos. He was a cute kid! <br />
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Dad was born in Germany. He became an Australian citizen sometime in the 50's, and not long after married my mother.<br />
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It's strange, these are things that I have only just learnt about since he left us. He didn't talk about himself much, about his past he was pretty closed lipped. He did have a couple of stories that he told me, about some of his travels around the world. He used to like to tell me about Casablanca, he knew I loved the movie of the same name, he said it was one of the best places in the world. But no matter what he was talking about, it always came back to the sea, he loved the ocean and he loved his ships.<br />
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There are whole parts of his life that I will never know about. I will never know who most of the people are in his photos (and damn it he didn't write on the back of his photos, I will implore you now to write on the backs of all your photos, just in case), and I will never know about the houseboat that he is steering here. I'll never know about the other photos of ships, and oil rigs, or where in the world these streets covered in snow are, and why is that ship on the beach? I wish I had have said to him, 'hey Dad, got any photos to share?' I just never thought to ask. Someone (probably his mom) wrote on the back of that one baby photo "Klaus age 3 years" and even though it's in German, I know what that means. That's my Dad.<br />
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I also will never know the father he never knew. His father died young in the Second World War. Something I just recently learnt. I wonder how that was for him sometimes. But he did have a few things of his, including one photo which I'm convinced is him even though all the writing on the back is German.<br />
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I think he looks like him anyway. Looking through his photos has made a hungry to learn more about my heritage. I want to know about my family, but I don't know who to ask. It's too late to ask Dad.<br />
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I may not ever learn more, I might be able to find someone to tell me more, but I just might not be able to find the energy to do it. I may in the end be happy with the few photos I have left of him. And the memories of us together.<br />
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I think back now and I'm so grateful that I got to know him. He was never a father to me, but he was the closest friend I ever had. I knew he would never forget me, always be there for me, and always come to me if he needed me.<br />
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Dad used to read my Blog, the last time I saw him, he asked why I wasn't writing on it so much, he missed reading about my adventures. So Dad, this little post is for you. I hope you enjoyed looking at the photos. I just wanted to tell you that I miss you, I'm a little upset that you left me, but I hope that you have found that wonderful endless ocean to sail on, and the only time you go on land is to party in some wonderful Casablanca. I love you.Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-51755405801932473712015-01-18T12:21:00.001+11:002015-01-18T12:44:49.778+11:00Travelling PinkPink is not my favourite color. Pink is the color that the manufacturers of motorcycle gear use to try to tell you that something is for women, regardless of whether it fits a woman. Pink can be a little cliche at times.<br />
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But pink can also be pretty cool. One of my favourite animals is pink .. wheee piggy!!<br />
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And sometimes you have to be brave to wear pink. Pink can make a statement about who you are, just as it made a statement about Ally from <a href="http://shybiker.blogspot.com.au/" target="_blank">Shybiker</a> recently. <br />
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Actually pink often makes a statement about Ally, that she is a person who is proud of who she is and is not afraid to let people know it. A few months ago, before I got busy and stopped blogging, Ally posted a fun outfit on her blog about her plan to send her <a href="http://shybiker.blogspot.ca/2014/03/the-sisterhood-of-traveling-boxing.html" target="_blank">pink boxing gloves</a> to bloggers around the world. Oh I thought that sounded like awesome fun, I put my hand up.<br />
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I got the gloves and was all excited about doing a fun post. I had plans for all sorts of posts, I needed a break from all the study and this would be the perfect reason to get back to my blog.<br />
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Then my world dropped out from under me, and for a while there everything was just too hard. And to tell the truth it hasn't stopped yet. I've just been soldiering on, just going to work and trying to keep up with my lessons at Uni. Doing what needed to be done. Then I looked at the post where Ally used the gloves, she'd been going through a rough time too when she made the outfit with the gloves. So I thought it's time that I got back up and have a bit of fun myself.<br />
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I got on the bike!<br />
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I haven't been for a ride in months, there were networks of spiderwebs on him. Not to mention the layer of dust an inch thick. When I got on him, I was a tad nervous, butterflies were doing acrobatics in my tummy. I managed to get the bike from the back yard to the front, then across the road and park while we put away the car and lock things up. I was wondering if I could even ride anymore, I was so nervous!<br />
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By the time I finally got to the end of the street my butterflies were gone and my heart was soaring!<br />
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We went for a short little ride, to a little town called Narromine about 60km from home. There's a new little cafe opened up here where we'd been for a work Christmas party and we decided that it would be a nice little ride to go check out what their lunch is like. It's called the Soul Food Design Depot and the building it is in was an orange packing warehouse. The outside of the building is still exactly the same as it was when used for oranges (I think there's a heritage listing involved there). <br />
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But inside has been renovated and feels cool and inviting when you walk in the front door. They have some art on display by local artists as well, and it's for sale. Some of it was pretty good too.<br />
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This is just half the building, but the back half is kinda empty with a couple of very large tables and some interior design things for sale, again some nice things... gonna have to come up here for some shopping with a full purse and a car to load up.<br />
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The food was, nothing spectacular but still very yummy.<br />
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Mine was a lamb wrap, with the most tender lamb that I've had in a long time, and freshly squeezed and locally grown blood orange juice. Very refreshing. We'll definitely come back to this one.<br />
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Once we'd refuelled, ourselves not the bikes we hadn't ridden far enough to need fuel in the bikes, we headed back towards home.<br />
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We had spotted a few things that we thought would be good for photo shoots. Terry thought that some of the freshly plowed fields would look awesome as a back ground, and everything was just so green as we've had a lot of rain out here lately. So we took the first turn off towards home and started looking for places to safely park the bikes with a nice field in the background. With not a real lot of luck.<br />
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We'd gone maybe 10km's up the road before Terry said "Umm .. this doesn't look familiar to me, does it look familiar to you?" Hmmm<br />
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Then he said "Have we gone over the river yet?" ... no, there's big bridge just outside of Narromine that we have to cross, and it's not this far outta town, and no we hadn't crossed it.<br />
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Then he said .. "I think we are on the road to Warren" ... ahh well that's only bout 80km's out of our way.<br />
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"Let's turn around eh .."<br />
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So after a very dodgy U-Turn on a gravel driveway we headed back towards Narromine. It was only about 2km from town that I recognised another gravel driveway that we'd done a U-Turn on a couple of years ago when Terry had missed the same turn off. Hehe, I did point it out to him, he wasn't impressed but did have a giggle about it with me.<br />
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So on the right road and we didn't see any fields with a good place to stop for a photo shoot. But all was not lost, on the way out I had decided that we would stop at the bus stop for some pics. This bus stop is in the middle of farm land, at a cross roads which is kinda surreal when you see it out here in the middle of nowhere. And there was plenty of room to pull off the road.<br />
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Time to get the gloves out!!<br />
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Terry said we needed one on the bike ... ok ...<br />
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"No no no .. one with you with the gloves on" he said.<br />
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Oh ..<br />
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Before I post this pic I guess I should warn you, I had my hair done. I'd been wanting to get it done for a while, A real fashion cut and a completely new color. One of the girls at work recently had her hair colored similar to this and I loved it, but felt kinda guilty spending the money on it, and being frivolous at a time that just seemed so inappropriate. The girls at work talked me into it saying that I deserved something for myself that would cheer me up. Ok I did it, just three days ago, and I love it! Hope you do too :)<br />
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So for someone who doesn't really like pink as a color, I think I'm using it an awful lot lately eh .. not all of it is pink though, there's a lot of purple and a bit of blue and yellow and orange as well.<br />
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So now Terry finally told me what he wanted .. a pic of me on my pride and joy having fun with some new riding gear ...<br />
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Truth be told, those gloves made it kinda hard to get a hold of the handlebars. And I don't think I coulda turned my blinkers on and off.<br />
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Now just a couple more pics .. the bikes in the lovely Australian outback after a lot of rain ...<br />
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Everything is looking so pretty at the moment, where normally it's just kinda brown.<br />
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Then Terry wanted one of just me, he said this photo looks flattering, I dunno but my hair looks nice and bright in the sunshine even though it's helmet hair, so lets just go with it.<br />
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And then there's just one more pic, this is what happens when Terry gets too smart ..<br />
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Nah it's all in fun, I didn't really hit him :)<br />
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This has been a fun post, it was a fun day out. And it's been great to write something that isn't academic. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-59343881528772996092014-08-09T20:10:00.001+10:002014-08-09T20:10:47.386+10:00My Home TownThe weather has really turned now. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo taken in the Blue Mountains source: <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/blue-mountains-traffic-blocked-by-snow-and-ice-20140718-zuan2.html" target="_blank">Sydney Morning Herald</a></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Needless to say, this fair weather rider has been busy doing other things. I sat down at the computer tonight, not really knowing what I was going to do then realised I never did a proper write up about the trip to Newcastle, the first and only trip I've done so far on Huck.<br />
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I'm not going to wax lyrical about the trip, you already know I enjoyed the ride .. and loved the adventure on my new baby. I think I'll just show you some pics of the town that I grew up in. It has changed a lot since the years when I caught a train from my home in Lake Macquarie to Newcastle to go to the beach when I should have been in school. It's even changed a lot in the few years since I left and the places where I used to go out are no longer there. We went out for dinner one night with Terry's daughter and her family, I didn't get pics of that cause well .. to tell the truth I forgot to grab my camera when we rushed out of the motel. But it's a great little area that has grown up out of the bunch of run down wool sheds that I remember from my youth. There are many restaurants and plenty of places to go for a night out with friends or family. We visited one of the ice creameries even though the night was decidedly chilly.<br />
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The hotel that we stayed in was strange for me, it is one of the high rises that has popped up in the area that used to be taken up with the Royal Newcastle Hospital. The hospital was unrepairable damaged in the 1989 earthquake and the prime real estate has been taken over by expensive hotels and multimillion dollar apartment buildings that look over the wonderful Newcastle beach.<br />
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Getting into the motel was an adventure I have to say. I was alright navigating us to the motel even in the dark as it was about 7pm by the time we got there. Then we had to get into the car park, I let Terry go first so he could show me how easy it was. We had to go under an automatic gate that was opened with our room key, I was hoping it would stay up long enough while I gathered my courage for the next part. After a sharp left turn it was down a steep slippery concrete ramp and an immediate sharp right hand turn at the bottom, then nearly straight into a sharp left again for the second slippery ramp at the bottom of which was the last sharp left hander before putting them into a parking spot on the right .. oh my! All of this had to be just done in one go, if I had've paused I'm sure something would have gone wrong. As it was I did it and even though I was shaking when I finally got off the bike, I was ecstatic at my accomplishment!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Bikes in their shelter.</td></tr>
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We took my mum out for breakfast the next day at a place that I'd never been to. It's called the Paymasters Restaurant, as it's name suggests it was used as the paymasters office for railway workers. The railway terminal is very close by. It was built in 1879 on a site that was used as a convict lumberyard then stockades from 1804 - 1847. We saw some of the relics that are left from that time when we visited, they are underground things that are covered with glass so didn't photograph very well. Originally it was the Warfingers Office and became the Paymasters Office where they paid the railroad workers in cash later. In 1981 it was left empty and let to become run down.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paymasters house in its run down state. From: <a href="http://www.paymasters.com.au/about-us.html" target="_blank">link</a></td></tr>
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In 1993 it was restored and the restaurant has been there since 1994.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What the Paymasters looks like today.</td></tr>
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We had gotten to breakfast early .. I mean really early!! So while we waited for Mum we wondered down to the foreshore. Now this area has a lot of memories for me as that's the way I walked from the train station to the beach in my youth. Wow has it changed! Some things stay the same though, they can pretty up the walkways and put in parks, they look lovely, but they will never really be able to change the harbour that is the mouth of the Hunter river where it meets the ocean.<br />
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Looking in one direction you can still see some of the industrialisation that Newcastle was built on.<br />
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The mountain you can see in the sunlight in the background is Mt Sugarloaf, those towers are the tv towers that service the Hunter region. It's a great place, and somewhere I really must visit again one day soon.<br />
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Looking towards the ocean you can see where river meets ocean .. and the light house that isn't operational any more but still a landmark called Nobby's. Nobby's Beach is the beach I favored all those years ago.<br />
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All along this here used to be where the tug and pilot boats used to moor, not sure if they still do, you can see one pilot boat there, maybe they were all out working while we were there.<br />
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We wandered around the park beside the foreshore for a little while then went back to Paymasters for breakfast with Mum.<br />
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The rest of the day was spent doing not much at all. We wandered back to the motel, along the way we passed some buildings that haven't changed much since my childhood.<br />
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And they did invoke a sense of nostalgia, even though I never thought about them when I was young, I walked past a lot of them on a regular basis and seeing them after so long away brings a strange feeling.<br />
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This is all that's left of the old Royal Newcastle Hospital, I did some of my nursing training right through those doors and looked out some of those windows at the ocean on my breaks.<br />
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We wandered around the Hunter Street Mall for a while at lunch time and had a lovely meal at one of the trendy new places that has sprung up. Then just spent the rest of the day doing nothing. The next day was our trip home .. first we had to get the bikes back out of that car park. I lined Huck up at the first ramp then just went for it .. not stopping til I got to the driveway. Terry followed me and we made it out of the city center to a new bike shop in Islington.<br />
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Lots of bikes to look at, but I was interested mostly in trying on as many helmets as I could. There aren't a lot of choices here in Dubbo .. but as you know, I didn't end up finding one there. Terry did ...<br />
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And then we rode home without getting lost this time. It was a great trip and all the better for being the last time I've really ridden in so long that my memory of riding is starting to fade I'm sure of it. That will get better soon, the weather will start to turn nice again soon. But even so I do expect that I'll still be a bit slack in the blogging department. I have decided to start a uni course, that might take me 3 years to complete, or might take me a hell of a lot longer if I get lazy. We'll see, the thing is it's taking a bit of my time .. and has held my interest so far. I'll post up when I've nothing else to do never fear .. I'm just not managing to keep up with what all my friends are up to like I used to.Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-8853262723575027752014-07-05T15:06:00.000+10:002014-07-05T15:06:52.783+10:00Wishing For a Ride<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Unfortunately the sign is about at far as I made it that day.<br />
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I did ride to work for a week a few weeks ago, but then I had the next week off, and last week was just too cold. Our cold weather finally hit us last week, it's been a very mild winter up til now, but the frost has been thick on the ground for the last 4 or 5 days. Friday, the ice was an inch thick on the windscreen I swear! While we don't get snow here, we get temperatures that are cold enough to produce snow during the middle bits of winter. Luckily those extreme temperatures only usually last a month or so. Once every couple of years it snows in Orange (150km from here) and last weekend they got some, yep you can feel the wind coming off it even here. I don't really mind the cold, as long as I have some way to keep warmish. I do love the crispness in the air on a cold winters morning, I just don't like to have to get out of my warm bed to smell it!<br />
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The weekend that I was on my break we decided that a ride, even just a small one, was a must. I'd spent most of my time off doing a late spring clean in the house, and sitting round watching movies. Huck got a few new presents, new hand grips, foot pegs and a backrest. I'd put on the grips and backrest the week before, that's why I was able to ride to work. Finally somewhere to attach my bags.<br />
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The backrest was surprisingly easy to install, on Roxy I used to have to juggle backrest, fender, fender rail and all the assorted bolts, washers and spacers that go with it. With the Vulcan you don't have to undo the bolts that hold the guard onto the fender strut, there are 4 bolts each side, two for the guard and two for the fender rail. So I just had to undo the bolts that hold the fender rail on, put the spacers on the backrest struts and do up the bolts .. so easy. Then it was a case of slipping the backrest into it's slots and attaching the rack. The rack came with a slight manufacturing fault which I'm sure quality control didn't think anything of. I didn't think anything of it, until I went to bolt it on. The weld on one side where it bolts to the strut was a little rough, not bad, but bad enough that it wouldn't give enough room for the bolts to line up properly with the holes.<br />
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I guess I could have sent it back to the place of purchase. It's the Kawasaki's brand and cost a lot more compared to others on the market, as they often do from bike manufacturers, so I think I'd be within my rights to send it back. I just couldn't be bothered waiting all that time and not to mention trying to talk to people in the states. It's not that I don't like people from the states, quite the opposite, it's just that the time difference makes it very difficult to get someone during business hours. I'd priced the rack from my local dealer here, it ended up being $100 more than from Cruiser Customising including the grips, adaptors for the pegs and postage. So while returning it would have been easier if I'd bought it here, that price difference just couldn't be ignored.<br />
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As you can see from the photo, I got the rack on eventually by loosening the fender bolts on the troublesome side and just jiggling til I got the rack to line up and the bolt went in. I have forced it a bit by doing that, I'm sure there's tension on that bolt so I'm just hoping that the bolt doesn't eventually snap.<br />
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The grips were another story to put on. The only other grips I've put on were just slip on ones. Whack a bit of glue round the place and slip them on .. easy peasy. These ones did that on one side, the clutch side, but the throttle side had a bit more to it. I had to undo the switch housing and remove the grip from the throttle cables, and then put the whole thing back together with the new one. It was an easy enough job, but I did have to adjust the throttle so that I had a bit of play while doing it. Which all just meant that I have now learnt how to adjust my throttle. It was not quite right at first as I noticed the first time I rode, but now I know just how to fix it quickly. I know I should have learnt all these little adjustments by now, but I do tend to leave that sort of thing to my mechanics, it's just easier ... there's my lazy streak showing again!'<br />
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The grips are black which I think is great on this bike .. suddenly I am not looking for chrome everything, black is actually a lot harder to find for these kinds of bikes. They look great, I got some little green accent rings for them while I was ordering them, they aren't in your face, but just kinda match without being tacky. The important thing is, they are comfortable. These are the same grips that I put on the Shadow so I knew that they were comfortable, these ones seem to be softer though. The last ones came hard and took a bit of use to soften enough to be super comfy.<br />
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So we had to go for a ride. Even though I'd ridden to work with the new stuff attached, I needed a bit of a longer ride to test out those grips. Work is only 4km from home. Also I needed a photo of the bike in front of a sign that had a place of further than 100km's distance for a forum competition. So only 1 km out of town and we stopped for the photo. Then we travelled maybe another kilometre to a turn off for a road I've never been down. The reason I've never been down there is that I wasn't sure whether it turned to gravel as so many of the roads around here do, and Terry wasn't sure either. Well I'm a lot more comfortable on gravel with Huck so I said let's give it a whirl. It didn't turn into gravel. It loops around the back of the zoo, so one side of the road was bush (zoo grounds) and the other side was farm fields .. what a lovely little road.<br />
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Terry had me stop just before a bend in the road while he went on ahead to stop and take a photo of me coming round the bend. I knew it took him a while to get the gist of how my camera works so I gave him a lot of time. I was sitting by the side of the road for at least 10 minutes .. well 8 minutes for sure .. I timed it. While I was sitting there I looked across the road and noticed a building, with a car park .. and finally worked out that this was the Dubbo Observatory. I knew we had one but never knew where it was, now that I know we're gonna have to go back soon to check it out. Then I thought there was no way he wouldn't be ready so I took off slowly. I came round the corner and .... he was running to the side of the road looking perplexedly at the camera. Hmm not enough time. He did get a couple of pics though .. this one isn't too bad eh.<br />
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Behind me if you looked closely enough I'm sure you would see some kind of animal, I think that's the fields where they keep things like Antelope or Barbary Sheep, but it's a big field so maybe not.<br />
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Then we headed into town. I'd noticed that Terry's brake light had been stuck on the whole ride so I suggested that we drop in at the Honda shop on the way, since we were going past. We did, and a bit of WD40 fixed the sticking on the hand brake. His foot brake is corroded and doesn't work at all so they are ordering the parts. I had a bit of a look at their range of leather jackets, I've been wanting to try out a leather jacket since Terry got one earlier this year. As with all the bike shops in town, they seem to be reducing the amount of stock they carry with any cruiser accessories and expanding in the motocross type stuff.<br />
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They only had few types of jackets and only one leather .. men's .. sizes: huge. I had a bit of a rummage with the owner .. lovely man .. and picked up the smallest, a size 14 in men's. I wasn't confident but surprisingly it only floated a little bit on me. The sleeves seemed way too long though, you could only see the tips of my fingers poking out. I didn't mind the loose fit on the body, gives room for jumpers and stuff underneath in winter and breathing space in summer but the length of the sleeves was putting me off. The owner told me to go sit on my bike and see if they rode up when I was reaching for the handlebars .. and they did. It was perfect. Terry bought it for me, and I wore it home.<br />
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And that was the end of the ride. Just a short one but I found the grips comfy and got a couple of photos that I wanted. And since then I haven't been on the bike again. I still haven't fitted the foot pegs that I have here. They were ones that I got to put on for pillion pegs on Roxy, but they hit her back shock so I never did install them on her. All I had to do was get adaptors for Huck and they will go nicely on him. I just remember how painful that little spring was when I fit them before, and I'm having a lazy period. Maybe I'll get the energy this weekend ... and the patience!Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-85689856461844240292014-05-31T18:56:00.002+10:002014-05-31T18:58:59.474+10:00Looking for Photo OpportunitiesEven though I've become a traitor and changed from the Shadow to a Kwaka, I am still a member of <a href="http://hondashadowriders.proboards.com/" target="_blank">SRA</a> even after writing a heartfelt email to the Pres in which I told him I'd understand if I had to hand in my badge. His response said it all .. something along the lines of it will be a cold day in hell when I tell you to leave SRA. Aww I was touched :)<br />
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Recently I was excited to see that they have posted up a new photo competition. I love these comps and they had been let slide over the last couple of months. Probably due to all the planning that had to be done to get the AGM perfect. Now that they have accomplished that .. it's all a go again .. yay!<br />
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This months theme was your bike with a bridge, and there was some pretty good pictures being posted. Australia doesn't have the lovely covered bridges that I've seen on <a href="http://trobairitztablet.blogspot.com.au/" target="_blank">Trobairitz's blog </a>but we do have some that are more than photo worthy. It was going to be hard to beat, but I'm up for the challenge.<br />
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Then I realised that well, since I don't ride a Shadow, then perhaps I shouldn't enter. I went all frowny face for a while, then decided that meh, even if they didn't wanna accept my pics as an entry for the competition I could just post up them anyway.<br />
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Terry and I went for lunch today, then afterwards I thought I might just go find a place to take some photos. With a bridge. That was photo worthy. Hmmm. We thought about it for a while, then decided on this one.<br />
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It was built in 1881, it has survived numerous floods. Terry even walked across it when he was a wee tike once during a flood. It was the only bridge that wasn't under the river and the only link between the two sides of town. Actually he didn't walk, he was carried across on his fathers' shoulders. That's the kind of memory that sticks isn't it. They had to walk along a plank that was just wide enough to walk on and between the two tracks. The trains were still running too, so you had to keep a keen ear out for the sounds of an approaching train and hope you'd be able to run for it if one came.<br />
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So we went over to the bridge, and I had to do a few different angles. Great practise on the new baby. I did U-Turns, they are much easier now! I also got to test out how the bike likes being lowered, last Monday I got him lowered 2 inches. Wow it makes a difference for me when stopped, I can touch the ground with both feet flat. I can comfortably stop with one foot up on the brake now too. I can back him into a parking spot with ease (unless it's uphill, still just don't have the strength for that). I love my Huck!!<br />
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I still don't have any bags for him, so I was taking photos with my phone. I played with them a bit in Paintshop Pro and do like the effects. Even so the phone didn't take terrible photos.<br />
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I just like these effects, especially with that old rusty bridge. Actually bit more history bout the bridge, a lot of the red that you can see isn't rust as I thought at first. Apparently when it was first built it was painted in Red Oxide as an undercoat and stayed like that for ages, it soon earned the name The Red Bridge, and that name has stuck for over 100 years. Yes the trains still run along here regularly and they aren't planning to change that anytime soon. The bridge is as structurally sound as the day it was built.<br />
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<br />Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-7846202747852138012014-05-28T18:12:00.000+10:002014-05-28T18:13:31.837+10:00New Toys to go with the New BikeWell as I said in the last post Terry and I both got new helmets. My old helmet was starting to see a bit of wear, mainly around the chin guard where I carry it when not wearing it, the lining was starting to come undone. The whole helmet was also starting to get a bit too loose on my head, so that if I turned my head a little bit while riding it would move just enough to not be straight, and really annoy me. I was starting to think that I'd gotten a size too big. Not to mention the old helmet, while I love the design on it, just doesn't go with the new bike! So while we were in Newcastle, we stopped into a new bike store that I'd never seen before. It had a good range of helmets, but none that I really liked. Terry, on the other hand, found just the ticket.<br />
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He chose this Shark Evo-line series 3<br />
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The main reason he chose it was because he hates full face helmets, but also sees that he needs one for highway riding. So he has two helmets, one open for round town and one full faced for highways. The open face is standing up to the test of time quite well, but the full face one is starting to show some wear, mainly in the lining. This little beauty does both! <br />
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As you can the chin part that folds up, actually clicks into place way back on the helmet, so it's safe to ride with it like that.<br />
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He seems to like it, it's just taking a bit of getting used to how to unclip the swivel bits, and while the first trip he said it was quiet, the ride the other day he said it was so noisy he couldn't even hear me over the Sena. We think that the visor isn't closing properly, I guess it's just one of those things you have to get used to, it is a touch awkward to adjust things just because nothing is where he's used to it being. Other than that he's loving the convenience of it all. And of course he loves the red! It also has a handy sun visor inside that's great for us glasses wearers.<br />
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Mine is another Shark, I wanted Shark because I loved my old helmet so much. I was looking and looking, and while at Robertson's (where I bought the bike) I had looked at a few over a couple of visits. There was one that I kept going back to, but I wasn't really sure about it because it was an extra small. Now I knew in my head that if the last helmet was a small, and is too big for me, then the extra small would be right, but I just wasn't sure.<br />
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So the last time I was in there the guy spotted me eyeing it off again, try it on again he said. Then he helped me to decide by telling me he'd give me a deal on it. Oh I just cant pass up a bargain, either that or I'm a sucker! <br />
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It has the things I want, it's a smaller size, and while that felt a bit too tight at first, I have to admit that after only a couple of short rides it's already feeling very comfortable. It also has the sun visor that I was really after, no more being caught at night with a tinted visor that I had to lift up so I could see, and freezing my face off at the same time.<br />
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Plus I really loved the design. I don't know if I'm imagining it, but I also think it's quieter than my old helmet was, I was always impressed with that in the old one.<br />
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Both helmets have spots for you put on the Sena easily, they also both have sections cut out for you put on your glasses easily, which was just a bonus. The lining doesn't go round the chin guard like my old one, so I'm hoping that means it wont fall apart like the old one did. Oh yeah and it has a little clip that lifts the visor up just a touch, to help un-fog you on cold mornings, haven't tried that yet.<br />
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Now I'm just working on finding a way to take my stuff with me on the bike. I have ordered a backrest/rack and expect that to arrive sometime in the middle of next month from USA. I haven't been able to ride to work as I cant take all the stuff I need, like lunch.<br />
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And then the solution presented itself a little while ago, I saw a post on <a href="http://theosmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/14-may-warburton-marysville-and.html" target="_blank">Theo's blog</a> where he reviewed a bag from a place I'd never heard of before. I checked out the site, <a href="http://www.vikingbags.com/" target="_blank">www.vikingbags.com</a> and was pretty impressed with the prices and the range. Before I'd had much of a chance to really think about it, I was asked if I'd like to do a review for them. I've never been approached to do a review for anything before, I'd seen a few on other blogs though. I am not really sure that it's something I'd do, I am not really a promotion type of person, and I knew that I couldn't lie about something .. so I told the contact that. And got a good response, please tell it like it is was the gist of the response. Well if they are that confident in their product well why not.<br />
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I do like the looks of their stuff, and I've already spotted just the bag that I like. I should receive it soon, and the review will come along just as soon as I can get it on the bike to test out. Oh and they have an Australian site too <a href="http://www.motorcyclehouse.com.au/" target="_blank">www.motorcyclehouse.com.au</a> which is great, no more waiting months to get things from America.Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-11484912059537425212014-05-24T21:50:00.000+10:002014-05-24T21:50:40.008+10:00New Bike, Same AdventureI guess it's time to introduce the new bike to you properly now. Everyone please meet Huckleberry, Huckleberry .. everyone.<br />
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Let me tell you a little bit about him. First he is a Kawasaki Vulcan 900 Custom, and he has a few very cool features that made me fall for him, the colour would be the first thing I guess. Isn't that just the greatest green you've ever seen?!?! I also love the blacked out bits, and the streamlined features of him, it's a big change from the chrome and the large guards that I'm used to.<br />
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OK that's the looks, then there's the other things, well he has certainly got more grunt than the baby 400 had, the first time I went to overtake I almost forgot how much more power he had, and he pulled me back on the seat when he took off.<br />
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Handling is something that I've been very pleasantly surprised with, he just seems to love corners .. either that or all the practise I got on those mountains recently did some good. I also wonder if the wider rear tire has something to do with it, he just seems so much more stable then I'm used to. <br />
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He is a bit taller then Roxy was, about 20mm, so not that much. But I
did have Roxy's seat modified to make me closer to the ground so it's
probably a bit more. When I stop I am ballerina tippy
toeing if with both feet, but here's the wonder for me, I can flat foot
if a stop with one foot down, and I can do that with Huck and he just
stays there! I used to feel when I tried that on the shadow as if I
would topple at the slightest provocation. Not now, sometimes I even
wonder if he'd just stay up if I put both feet up .. nah don't think
I'll try that.<br />
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He also has a very handy petrol gauge, love that! The instruments are a bit lower on the tank though, one thing that annoyed me a bit before, now it's kinda worse having to look down to see things, and you cant see any of the lights, like indicator light, without feeling like you are trying to look at your belly button. I've left the blinker on a few times, lucky Terry is there to tell me.<br />
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He is also a bit beefier, at about 30kg heavier than the shadow. At the moment I do have to give it two tries to get him off the stand sometimes, and if I park wrong I have had to get Terry to give me a little push as well. I've worked out the parking on roads now, I just back him in straighter so that he's not leaning too much on the stand.<br />
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What else to tell you, he has more fuel with a 20l tank, but it doesn't actually feel wider, must be deeper. I also love his switches, yeah I know now I'm getting picky, but I noticed on the return trip from Newcastle that we did the weekend I got him, that the high beam switch is really easy for me to reach and flick, but doesn't seem to get in the way so I'm not accidentally flicking high beam all the time when trying to turn on/off the blinker. Little things count eh.<br />
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Hmm too much writing here, time for a pic!<br />
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Terry and I went for a little ride today to Gilgandra. It's a little town about 60km from home, and just far enough for me to get up the k's for 1000km service. I'm getting the service done next week as well as having him lowered, have been waiting for the linkages. Now's a good time to talk about the place I got him, Robertson's Motorcycles here in Dubbo. The service these guys have been giving me has just been fantastic! They lowered the front of the bike when I picked it up, after seeing me sit on it and struggle a bit, since I was expecting it to already have the lowering kit on. Then when I was chatting after the Newcastle trip with them about how hard I was finding it to reach the clutch, he told me to bring it in the next day and he'd fix it for me. All this and every time I walk in I get a smile and asked how the bike's going. There's nothing like that kind of personal service.<br />
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More pics I hear you scream. .. yeah OK here ya go ...<br />
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We went for a little ride round Gilgandra after grabbing some lunch, Terry went up a dirt road to check out a job he has, I waited by the tarred road, huck's great on gravel, so much better than I'm used to, but I wanted to grab some pics too :)<br />
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Then it was time to head home, and I did not get lost, I was following the signs!!<br />
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We stopped along the back road to take more pics :)<br />
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Did you notice the new helmet? Yep Terry and I both got new helmets, but I'm saving that for another post. I did have to get something with green in it though :)<br />
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Terry took the camera for a while, and took about a million photos of me and my new baby.<br />
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At the moment I have no where to put anything so I'm loading up Terry's saddlebags. My tank bag doesn't fit him because of the longer instrument panel, and I don't have racks yet. The Kreiga bags will probably be able to be fitted to the back seat, there's nothing there for the straps to be attached to but I think that when I get the back rack I can fix at least two of the four to that somehow, at least that's what I'm hoping. The other two will just go round under the seat. And that brings me to another thing I love, the seat comes off using your key, no more undoing bolts and then having to line them all back up every time I have to get under there.<br />
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And then we just rode home, haven't managed to wipe the grin off my face yet!! <br />
<br />Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-27621186340978335612014-05-23T12:05:00.000+10:002014-05-23T12:05:39.835+10:00The Next 4 DaysWe spent the next two days doing nothing. Well I did nothing, Terry did a whole heap of work.<br />
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First we got up kinda late, then went down to the wharf for breakfast.<br />
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We had a yummylishous breaky too.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">For me, pancakes with banana and maple syrup.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">For Terry, scrambled eggs and sausages with homemade tomato relish.</td></tr>
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While that was being demolished we watched the water, and the show being put on by the locals.<br />
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Shags or Cormorants, there is a difference apparently, but I cant tell. Actually I think these are cormorants, shags have a shaggy tuft of feathers on the top of their heads, giving them the name I guess.<br />
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Then we went for an explore of the town, did a bit of essential shopping, a new pair of swimmers for me as the only pair I have were last worn about 20 years ago. Yes it's been that long since I went to the beach. I was determined to take advantage of the beach here, til I heard about the sharks! Hmm.<br />
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We struck up a conversation with the lady who lives across the road from the cottage we were staying in, she told me about the little cove that had been made near the harbour, complete with shark proof net. That was it, while Terry worked, I went and sat on the beach and swam. It was awesome, the first time I have been in the ocean in such a long time, it felt foreign but luxurious all at the same time.<br />
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I also explored the bluff, and the view was amazing, sorry I meant to go back and take some pics but never got there. While we were exploring this tiny town, we noticed all the signs for the bike show that was on the next day. It's funny how there seems to be a bike show on in the town we are holidaying in, it happened in Broken Hill too.<br />
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So the next day, Terry had finished his work, we went to town for a breakfast and found the place as busy as a bee. Finally we found a seat and had an average breakfast. Then off to the show. The town was rumbling to the sounds of bikes, it must be strange for the locals to have their quiet little haven suddenly roaring with the idling of so many machines for one day of the year. Apparently this is about the 10th year that this show has been here, and they do seem to draw in plenty of people.<br />
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This is just the show end of the street, the rest of it was just as full of bikes.<br />
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<br />All types of bikes. The show wasn't huge but there was a good variety there.<br />
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<br />And a few trade stands to look at, one had this outside it, shiny!!<br />
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There was cute there too.<br />
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This Harley took my fancy, we chatted with the guy for a while, he has done a beautiful job to make it original.<br />
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A lot of the things have been custom made, like he said, he's spent a lot of money on it that he will never see again, but it's worth it.<br />
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Then there was the biggest tire prize, on a Boulevard.<br />
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I have plenty more pics of course, but that will do give you the idea of how we spent that morning. The afternoon was spent doing some more lazing round.<br />
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All too soon it was time to leave, I had to be back at work in just two days. Monday morning we headed back to the first cafe at the wharf for breakfast, parking the bikes just below our balcony this time.<br />
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I guess a lot of the riders who'd been here for the show the day before had stayed over night, and not long after we got there ...<br />
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Roxy and Growl made some friends.<br />
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After breaky I wanted to take some pics of the bikes on the wharf.<br />
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Then we went back to the cottage and packed up for our return journey. This is where I got a bit lazy, I don't have any more pics of our trip at all. We headed back up those twisties over Brown's Mountain, I have some video but we were going into the sun and with the dirty windscreen, it's just not worth editing. You'll just have to take my word for it that I was a lot better the second time around, a bit of familiarity along with uphill bends made it a lot more enjoyable.<br />
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We stopped at a place called Cooma in the mountains for lunch, which was an interesting little town, where I swore I took a bunch of pics. Cant find any so I mustn't have. Our stop for the night was Canberra, where I only got us lost once, and only slightly. We had dinner that night with Terry's son and daughter in law, very nice!<br />
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The next day was the run home, it started out a bit overcast and wasn't long before we got caught in the downpour to end all downpours. And it didn't let up, after about 100km of freezing rain we finally came to Boorowa and got to stop. We rented a cheap room and had showers and coffee to warm up. Staying wasn't an option, I had to be at work at 7:30 the next morning.<br />
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Thankfully the rain eased while we were there and we managed to make a dry run for it to home. It was another 300km or so, a long run but we were home just on dusk, not a bad effort. I have to say as the landscape became flatter, with fields of canola and cows, I started to feel a sense of relief. It was good to be home.Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-88471329771404812842014-05-21T16:23:00.002+10:002014-05-22T19:55:06.517+10:00A Twisty Ride to the SeasideYou remember how I said we always seem to get up early then don't get going til late. It happened again, but it wasn't entirely our fault really, I think Tom didn't realise just exactly how slowly I ride!<br />
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We quizzed him over breakfast about the best way to get to Bermagui from Bombala, we had crossed back over the border from Victoria, to New South Wales yesterday. We'd be crossing The Great Dividing Range today. The Great Dividing Range is a line of mountains that divides the east coast of Australia from the rest of it, it took a long time for early settlers to get across it, it's that rugged! Tom told us the best way, I'm not sure it was the easiest with my novice riding in mind, I think he was thinking that as bike riders we'd like the twisties, but it was looking like my most challenging day of riding to date.<br />
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This is the route we took...<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="350" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="https://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Bombala,+New+South+Wales&daddr=-36.6072856,149.298226+to:-36.6785181,149.830893+to:Bermagui,+New+South+Wales&hl=en&geocode=FXrDzP0d3DHlCCkRsmjKJns8azHw2kOQtAkGBA%3BFctq0f0dMhzmCClbbzMoKUU8azHxOl90tAkGEw%3BFYpU0P0d7TzuCCn7Tarf2ik8azGgH_rjv6kPoQ%3BFToi1P0dg_rxCCkh6tMYHHI-azGgBkSQtAkGBA&aq=0&oq=berma&sll=-36.650392,149.656057&sspn=1.000407,2.113495&mra=dpe&mrsp=1&sz=10&via=1,2&ie=UTF8&ll=-36.650392,149.656057&spn=1.000407,2.113495&t=m&output=embed" width="425"></iframe><br />
<small><a href="https://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=d&source=embed&saddr=Bombala,+New+South+Wales&daddr=-36.6072856,149.298226+to:-36.6785181,149.830893+to:Bermagui,+New+South+Wales&hl=en&geocode=FXrDzP0d3DHlCCkRsmjKJns8azHw2kOQtAkGBA%3BFctq0f0dMhzmCClbbzMoKUU8azHxOl90tAkGEw%3BFYpU0P0d7TzuCCn7Tarf2ik8azGgH_rjv6kPoQ%3BFToi1P0dg_rxCCkh6tMYHHI-azGgBkSQtAkGBA&aq=0&oq=berma&sll=-36.650392,149.656057&sspn=1.000407,2.113495&mra=dpe&mrsp=1&sz=10&via=1,2&ie=UTF8&ll=-36.650392,149.656057&spn=1.000407,2.113495&t=m" style="color: blue; text-align: left;">View Larger Map</a></small>
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Now I don't really remember the first part of the ride, I think it must have been pretty ordinary. But it wasn't long before we got to the start of the mountain. And we found a little spot to pull in for a quick break and photos.<br />
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First Terry's bike, who seems to have earned himself a name now .. being known now as growl .. and sometimes .. grrroooowl, depends what kind of mood he's in :)<br />
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And Roxy enjoying the shade.<br />
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Then we moved on, it wasn't too bad really, I was pleasantly surprised at how nice this road was. It certainly wasn't the horrendous 25km/hr twisties I was expecting. We'd planned to stop at the top at a look out the Tom told us about. There we found another surprise.<br />
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Oh I needed a proper break before I tackled that!!<br />
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We went to look at the lookout, and this time there was stuff to look at.<br />
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While we were there Tom turned up, he was surprised to see us here, I knew he hadn't reckoned with how slowly I take it.<br />
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Then we headed down the hill!<br />
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Oh I hate down hill bends like this, but I did it, and I have to admit by the end of this bit I was feeling pretty proud of myself too.<br />
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We were passed by a couple of groups of bikes, and I really have to apologise to those guys, I was going slow down there and I'm sure a couple of them got frustrated with me. I'm not going to be pushed too far out of comfort levels though so they just had to live with it for a couple of seconds before they could overtake me and take off.<br />
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One in particular kinda freaked me out though, he was sitting right on my tail going round one of those right handers that I really hate, and he'd come up behind me so quickly that I didn't see him in my mirror til I was well into the bend, then he pulled out and overtook me before I'd finished the bend and it shook me to suddenly see him beside me, I think we're both very lucky that when I jumped I didn't swerve very much and take us both out.<br />
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The left side of the road was just heading straight down the hill, go off there and you'd roll forever before hitting bottom, but for some reason I always find left turns much more comfortable.<br />
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And then we were down.<br />
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There aren't many more shots from the GoPro after this one, they all suddenly look like this ..<br />
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I guess that low gear was all too much for the bracket, luckily it jammed just kinda behind the headlight and didn't cause any problems with my steering. I found it when we pulled up in Bega.<br />
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I didn't like Bega. The town is famous for it's cheese, I love cheese but ... the smell as soon as you got near the town was just horrible!! Not to mention it's a hilly place, and we had to do a u-turn that nearly brought me and Roxy undone.<br />
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We grabbed a quick lunch here then hit the road towards Bermagui again. This country side was so pretty. We soon got to Bermagui, but even so Tom was wondering where we were.<br />
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So when we got lost in Bermagui (we were following his directions so not our fault!) we found a message or two from him.<br />
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Once we'd found out that we had to take the first turn right after the bridge, not the first right after entering town as we had, we also found ... our home for the next few days!!<br />
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And the view from the big back window had more than a glimpse of the ocean over the roofs of the houses behind us. <br />
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This is a fishing village, and the wharves are full of fishing boats. And of course there was a great fisherman's co-op, I went for a wander and brought back the yummiest, freshest fish and chips for dinner. Perfect end to a long day. Tomorrow we'd just laze around on the beach, check out the village, and generally relax. Well I would do all of that, Terry had some work to do, and he wouldn't hear of me helping him, so he only joined me for a little bit of all that. But more about that soon.<br />
<br />Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-87972651746370199292014-05-19T21:24:00.002+10:002014-05-22T19:57:11.593+10:00Platypus, or not.Bombala. Isn't that an interesting name? It's a sleepy little town, and our next destination.<br />
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Here's the map ...<br />
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We'd originally planned to go via Eden and up the coast towards Bermagui, stopping somewhere that looked good overnight. But Terry's client, the whole reason for heading to Bermagui, also owns a B&B in Bombala and insisted that we come spend the night with him and his lovely wife. Who was I to argue?<br />
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We actually left Orbost pretty early this time and the road was lovely, wide and surrounded by trees, with just enough bends to keep me happy and not stressed. <br />
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We stopped in Cann River for breakfast, passing a pretty cool looking cafe on the way into town.<br />
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Unfortunately it didn't quite deliver on it's promise once we got inside.<br />
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It did have a few interesting little things on the walls, and there was an antique shop next to it that looked full of interesting stuff, but we didn't have time to go foraging in it, you would need at least a couple of hours I think.<br />
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We hit the road again. There were a few more serious twisties along this bit, but not enough to slow me right down like the mountain had. We were still overtaken by a group on faster bikes, who we caught up with in Bombala.<br />
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This was our stop for the night, and we'd made it in time to get some lunch and spend the day wandering round.<br />
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First we met up with our host for the next few days, Tom.<br />
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And he made us coffee .. yay! Tom has restored this old building and turned it into a B&B and put in a restaurant out the back, it still has the bank in the front part though.<br />
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This was the building when it was first built, not sure what year it was but there were certainly no cars around eh.<br />
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Doesn't look much different today does it, that house next door (you can just see it in the top photo behind the horses) is even still there, it was the managers residence back in the day, and now it's where Tom and his wife live, they've put an extra story on it and redone it after it nearly burnt to the ground about 10 years ago.<br />
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Bombala is famous for one thing in particular, besides being a lovely little mountain town.<br />
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Platypus!<br />
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The town celebrates them, and their image can be found on all sorts of things. There is a sanctuary for them about 10 minutes out of town, but as I was quizzing Tom about the road to it (no more gravel for me if I could avoid it) he said that we didn't need to go all the way out there to see them, there was a family in the river at the end of the street.<br />
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Dusk and dawn are the best times to see them, that's when they come out to feed. You have be very quiet, they scare easily, you also have to be very patient. So that evening we went down to the river.<br />
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I cant believe how hard it is to be patient sometimes. Terry kept talking, I think he was getting bored. We changed our position a few times too. Then we stared at the river.<br />
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Then we stared a bit more.<br />
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Then we saw some bubbles that just disappeared, so ...<br />
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We sat and stared a bit more.<br />
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We moved again to a shallower part.<br />
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We found some ducks, but no amount of staring would bring the platypus. Aww.<br />
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Then we had dinner with Tom and went to bed pretty early. The next day we got up early and went looking again but alas, still no Platypus. Ah well we had a big days ride ahead of now, over Brown's Mountain and on to Bermagui.<br />
<br />Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-27718772740614326242014-05-17T13:47:00.000+10:002014-05-17T13:47:15.103+10:00Escaping the Mountain.After two days relaxing on the top of a cold windy mountain the time came to make good our escape. We woke up pretty early to zero visibility, no wind and no rain. OK two out of three would have to do .. time to load up the bikes and see if we could find our way down the other side.<br />
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With Lakes Entrance out of the picture, the plan was to make it as far as we could each day til we got to our final destination, Bermagui on the south NSW coast. As far as we could make it each day on this trip would mean from 200 to 250km. We didn't wanna push, we were on holidays.<br />
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Here's the map for this day ...<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="350" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="https://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Mount+Hotham,+Hotham+Heights,+Victoria&daddr=Orbost,+Victoria&hl=en&geocode=FbKmy_0dzBHFCCkp0bWv9zIkazEdSGIb2UdFOA%3BFVSiwP0dMT7ZCCnZa66z0s46azGwSKAwpHkFBA&aq=0&oq=orbost&sll=-36.919156,148.51593&sspn=1.993786,4.22699&mra=ls&ie=UTF8&ll=-37.369518,147.800034&spn=0.77508,1.315723&t=m&output=embed" width="425"></iframe><br />
<small><a href="https://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=d&source=embed&saddr=Mount+Hotham,+Hotham+Heights,+Victoria&daddr=Orbost,+Victoria&hl=en&geocode=FbKmy_0dzBHFCCkp0bWv9zIkazEdSGIb2UdFOA%3BFVSiwP0dMT7ZCCnZa66z0s46azGwSKAwpHkFBA&aq=0&oq=orbost&sll=-36.919156,148.51593&sspn=1.993786,4.22699&mra=ls&ie=UTF8&ll=-37.369518,147.800034&spn=0.77508,1.315723&t=m" style="color: blue; text-align: left;">View Larger Map</a></small>
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So slowly does it down the mountain. We'd talked to a couple who had just come up that side, and they said the cloud was only about 5 km down the side of the mountain then it cleared completely. And it did. Our first stop was at a little town called Omeo, though I couldn't remember that name and kept calling it after my favourite biscuit, Oreo.<br />
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There wasn't a real lot to this little village, the mountains were a lot more open here than on the other side, and there were more grass lands and a lot less trees. We'd been told about this cool little cuckoo clock shop, but as we'd somehow managed to lose half the day already (I don't know how we do this, we get up with the birds then it's lunch time before we even know it!) we didn't go and explore inside.<br />
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So after waiting what felt like an hour for our pies and coffee at the local bakery, and also checking out the very nice HD's that pulled up near us, we went on our merry way.<br />
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It was a lovely ride but I'm afraid the GoPro was pointed through a very dirty screen by now, and the pics just aren't good enough to show. You'll just have to take my word for it, grassy rolling hills surrounded us for much of this part of the trip. I spotted a sign for a lookout and said to Terry that I'd like to see if I can see anything there.<br />
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Turning into the turn off for it was well .. interesting is a word. You had to do a very sharp left turn then the track to the lookout doubled back to go in the opposite direction. And there was gravel. Now some of that gravel was not to bad, but at the edges it had piled up into nice lose deep piles of evilness. Of course I took the corner too wide as I nearly always do and ended up in the middle of one of those piles, Roxy just kinda sank then drifted in it and I ended up standing straddling her while she had a rest. Terry and I couldn't even pick her up because she was buried in that gravel, a nice man stopped and helped us. I love the way that people are always so ready to help while you are travelling round this country, and that's another person who I'll be eternally grateful to.<br />
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Then I got straight back onto Roxy (after checking she was OK) and made my way the 200 meters up the gravel to park and see if the lookout was worth it.<br />
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At first glance we couldn't work out where the lookout was. To us a lookout is when you are up high and looking across at amazing scenery. This one was just kinda showing us the mountain range from a flat bit of ground, you couldn't see very far at all.<br />
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While we were there those HD's we'd been looking at pulled in, one of them was a lady and that was one nice machine she was riding. She looked a bit tenuous on that gravel too and I was praying for her right up til she pulled up next to Roxy. We had a bit of a chat and they told us how nice the road we were soon to be travelling was. I didn't wanna take a pic of their bikes, I'm never quite sure how people would like that, but did get one of the our babies.<br />
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Back on the road, and we started travelling next a lovely little creek. Sorry again no pics. I could have taken one when we stopped by the side of the road once, but I didn't think of it. We'd stopped because Terry told me that my number plate was just about to fall off. Oops, as soon as I touched it, once we'd found somewhere safe to stop, it dropped to the ground. Into the saddlebags and back on the road, we only had a few more km's to go to get to Orbost, I'd risk riding without and put it back on once we were settled into a motel.<br />
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We grabbed a coffee in Orbost then rode for only two blocks to find a motel for the night. Time to relax for a while, after putting the number plate back on of course. The holes where it was attached to the bike had worn bigger and the bolts just slipped through. I put some rubber thingys in the holes first this time, some washers and re-attached it. It worked.<br />
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Oh yeah and just one other nice pic, I cant remember the name of this place, it's where we had turned off to head towards Orbost, we'd just stopped near a park to have a sit in the shade and a drink. It's amazing how much warmer the day had gotten once we left the mountain. I loved this old house and wonder what it's like inside.<br />
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<br />Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-51205789285305084702014-05-15T16:46:00.000+10:002014-05-15T16:46:40.188+10:00White on WhiteAnd after that brief interlude, back to the adventure ... <br />
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When we left Bright it was overcast. It had rained the night before heavily, but even so it didn't look like we would get much rain and the threat of the winds over the mountain the next day made us grateful to get ahead of the worst of it.<br />
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It was about 10am when we left, our destination that day was to be Lakes Entrance.<br />
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Here's the map
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="350" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="https://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Bright,+Victoria&daddr=Lakes+Entrance,+Victoria&hl=en&geocode=FamKz_0dAHLCCClj_UqYdRgkazEwTaAwpHkFBA%3BFeAAvv0dNSzSCCklEvQFhmAlazEw3aAwpHkFBQ&aq=0&oq=lakes+entrance&sll=-32.830735,147.451465&sspn=16.730649,33.815918&mra=ls&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=-37.30448,147.475309&spn=1.157082,1.032583&output=embed" width="425"></iframe><br />
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As we were leaving Bright I remember saying to Terry, "I hope that the mountain I can see ahead of us with it's head in the clouds isn't Mt Hotham." That's the mountain we were to cross over.<br />
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We turned up onto the road that leads to Mt Hotham and we started to get into the tight corners straight away. And it wasn't long before we got a little bit of rain too.<br />
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It stopped though, and I was happily navigating my way the first real mountain twisties that I had ever encountered. It wasn't as bad as I thought, we were going up hill and I don't mind tight bends up hill. I feel like I have more control than when they are down hill.<br />
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Then the rain started again, and we could see now that this was indeed the mountain that had it's head firmly buried in the clouds. Visibility was becoming worse.<br />
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A couple of other things were noticed, first the trees had become slowly scarcer and spindlier until they were nothing but blackened, stunted branches hugging the side of the mountain. The view would have been stunning from here if only we could have seen more than a few feet ahead.<br />
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Then Terry said .. "That's not rain .. that's sleet!" my visor had to go up not long after that because of the fogging up, and I realised that it wasn't just on the inside that I was misting up, the sleet was sticking to the outside of it too, I only opened it a crack to see through but that sleet still managed to get my cheeks and eyes and it hurt!<br />
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The other thing we'd noticed was the bright yellow and red stripped poles along the side of the road, and the sign that said "stay to the right of the snow poles" At first I didn't really understand that, once the visibility got bad I was glad of them, and now I understand what it must be like trying to get up this road once the snow has covered the road completely. Great idea.<br />
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We were crawling along at only about 20 or 30km/h by now, and I was wishing so hard for somewhere to pull over that it was almost like a dream when I came up a rise to see a hulking shadow to my left, that must be a building!<br />
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That's it, the side of the road was wide enough, I couldn't care less, for once, that we were parking the bikes on loose pebbles that were going to slide all over the place under my wheels and the stand. We stopped!! We jumped off the bikes and ran for the shelter of the locked tight building beside us. We took shelter where we found it and were grateful!<br />
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We were both freezing.<br />
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But strangely happy<br />
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and I for one was excited too ... this was snow!!!<br />
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Once the sleet stopped and the soft little flakes of snow started falling, the visibility got a bit better. We could see the sign on the building across the road, and it said 'refuge'. We headed straight over and were immensely happy to find an open door into warmth. And toilets with hand blowers to warm our frozen fingers.<br />
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At this stage we had no idea what we were going to do now, it was just nice to find somewhere out of the elements. As we were poking around another couple walked into the building. They were there for some kind of meeting or something but kindly offered to escort us up the road a bit to the two ski lodges that were open. Yay, we quickly dragged on our cold wet gear and jumped on the bikes. I was in front and could just see the tail lights of the 4WD in front of us, they went slowly, and it was only about 5 km's up the road before they turned into the driveway for the first lodgings. We thanked them for the millionth time, I cant express how grateful we were for their kindness.<br />
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And that was the last photo taken by the GoPro as we pulled into the parking area. Yep it was really snowing now.<br />
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By the time we got inside we'd decided that we could give Lakes Entrance a miss and just stay the night in a ski lodge for something different. All we wanted was somewhere warm to snuggle for the next 10 hours, and a hot shower!!<br />
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Roxy did look pretty dressed all in white, but by the time we'd booked in to the room and come back for our luggage it had started to rain as well. The snow was melting almost as soon as it hit the ground. it continued to snow for a couple of hours then it turned super cold with the rain. We didn't mind cause we had luxurious warmth all around us for the rest of the day.<br />
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It was a split level affair with the living part upstairs and the bedroom downstairs.<br />
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And great views .. when you could see them.<br />
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A break in the clouds that lasted maybe 10 minutes.<br />
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We didn't care, we had our warmers.<br />
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Now do you remember the whole reason this adventure started at the beginning of the day. We'd decided to beat the weather right .. well no one had said anything about snow! And now the weather bureau was telling us that yep those winds were still going to hit Mt Hotham the next day with a vengeance. We'd wait and see what it was like in the morning, so we slept like babes in the woods, or is that perched on the mountain tops. And woke early the next morning to ...<br />
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.. winds that were threatening to tear the whole place down. According to BOM the gusts were up to 80km/h, that was fast enough to make me think about being blown over the sides of roads and down the cliffs lining this mountain. We stayed put for another day. It was relaxing :)<br />
<br />Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-83342583698646084992014-05-14T17:41:00.002+10:002014-05-14T17:45:56.906+10:00A Bit Of NewsI just cant hold it in any longer!! I wanted to wait til I got the posts of the holiday all done, and then I could move on to the new stuff with a sense of having completed the job before it, but, I just cant wait to share my news!!<br />
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I got a new bike! It was something I was only half toying with for a little while now, then there was a 750 Shadow for sale on the SRA forums very cheap. I thought about it a bit more seriously, then started to plan how I could do the 19hr round trip to go look at it. Then I thought about it a bit more.<br />
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Now some of you may remember me looking at a bike in December 2012, something that I liked but knew that I would never get.<br />
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This was the one.<br />
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I'd seen this years model in the bike shop much earlier this year, then when I went back a few weeks later it was gone. I'd loved the look of this years bike, it was green and I'm a bit partial to green at the best of times. This green was pretty spectacular and coupled with that blackened look on the engine and everywhere that is normally chrome on a cruiser the bike looked pretty awesome to my eyes.<br />
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As I thought about a new second hand bike that I would have to travel for 2 days to just go and look at, I also wondered why I was even considering getting rid of a bike that I'd had from new and was only 3 years old and getting a bike that was pre loved and 9 years old. Why even say goodbye to Roxy?<br />
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Roxy has been a great friend to me but, and there's often a but isn't there, I'd done a few things on her now, the last trip (write up to come very soon I promise!) had seen me do some all weather riding in twisties as well as some hard highway miles. She just isn't quite enough anymore, she's a bit of a lug to get around tight twisties, and she just doesn't have quite enough omph to overtake with confidence on the highways. Not to mention something I'd never really noticed before, as soon as you hit 110km/h she starts vibrating like crazy.<br />
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With all these thoughts in my head I decided to put off the trip to see the second hand Shadow, go down to the local bike shop and just sit on a Vulcan. See if I could touch the ground and stuff like that. The next morning that's exactly what I did, I talked to a lovely boy at the shop and he even let me sit on a fully customised Harley Sportster that was really pretty but not what I was looking for. I went home and talked to Terry about my adventure .. it all happened pretty quickly after that.<br />
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Before I knew it I was saying my last goodbye to Roxy and hoping on my very new Kawasaki Vulcan 900 custom. We left for Newcastle for the weekend the very next morning, and after having ridden a whole 4km to get used to him, I rode 800km there and back in ecstasy!!<br />
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Here he is making friends with Terry's bike at our first stop of the trip.<br />
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Yep he's the green machine. Oh I could talk for hours about how much I loved that ride and how much I love my new toy but I wont just yet. I'll save it all for a new post, I think I'm going to have to start a new blog for the new chapter in my riding adventures.<br />
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Soon I'll finish up this blog with the last few posts about our last holiday with Roxy .. it's exciting stuff!!<br />
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Actually I'm not sure how I should do this, should I just start a new blog for the new bike or change the name of this one? The White Shadow Diary doesn't really mean anything once I've finished writing about the white shadow does it .. so something has to change. What do you think? Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-16454049513726331222014-05-13T21:46:00.002+10:002014-05-13T21:46:23.245+10:00A Weekend With SRAWell as much of the weekend as possible anyway. Well one day of the weekend actually. But it was the important day, and we did get to go for a ride with them. Saturday was just a short ride to a place called Harrietville, about 20 mins down the road from Bright.<br />
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We were to line all our bikes up along a back road at the camping grounds in the morning for a photo shoot.<br />
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We didn't have far to take our bikes, that's our cabin in the background. Terry was one of the first bikes there.<br />
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And my bike wasn't too far behind him, but things were already starting to get untidy.<br />
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Then another line up started ...<br />
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Still it was an impressive looking group of bikes .. who would've thought there were that many variations on the same model of bike eh. Have to admit that some of them aren't technically 'Shadows', but that was one of the main topics of the day.<br />
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The whole reason we were going for a ride that day was to get the meeting place for the AGM (Annual General Meeting). So then we rode ...<br />
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This video just doesn't seem that great to me, but anyway it shows some of the great country side. The 'twisties weren't that much I guess, at the time though I thought it was pretty awesome, it was the most I'd done to date. And I enjoyed the ride enormously!<br />
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Then we got to our venue for the meeting and lunch.<br />
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It was a pretty impressive sight seeing them filling up that car park. I have to admit I hated that gravel in there, backing the bike was proving a big challenge for me, and I'd only gotten about 3 inches back into the park before I talked one of the guys to give me a push the rest of the way .. which he did with a smile.<br />
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Cray's bike found a friend .. the same bike in a lovely orange colour scheme.<br />
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That's Big Gorilla and his bike .. the other happy chappy with him is known to all and sundry as Happycamper .. always smiling!<br />
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After the meeting and lunch we all moseyed back to the camping grounds for the afternoon entertainment ... a dart competition then the special surprise .. dummy spit competition!!<br />
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That was fun, no pics of it but I did get one of the boss checking out one of the Queensland members bike. <br />
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And that pretty well sums up what the weekend was like .. lots of fun with some good mates.<br />
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The next day, Sunday, was to be the mystery ride. Terry and I found our own breakfast with another couple of the guys. while we were eating we checked out the weather forecasts for the next day, when we would be taking off for the next part of our adventure. The forecasts didn't look good for the mountain we were to cross the next day, but the Sunday didn't look too bad. We made a decision to leave that morning.<br />
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So we said our goodbyes to everyone and watched them all take off for their great mystery adventure ride. After lining the bikes up properly for another photo.<br />
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And even getting the riders to stand still long enough to get a pic too.<br />
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We took off not long after them, on our way over Mt Hotham and our first stop for the rest of our holiday .. Lakes Entrance, right at the bottom of Australia. But more of that adventure soon.Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-235514452753897272014-05-06T19:53:00.002+10:002014-05-06T19:53:29.101+10:00Going South - Day 2Well we woke up bright and early the next day .. well OK I cant lie, everyone else woke up bright and early, I crawled out of bed feeling like something that was dragging it's body from the primordial swamp .. but it was early. My back was killing me so I stole some of that serious pain relief back that I'd given away the day before, and gave the home made back rest I was using to Terry to prop up his new bags.<br />
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Then we checked out what the others were doing.<br />
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Some of them we doing heaps, the group that had ridden ahead the day before was all ready to go. Some were ready to go but ... one bike wasn't going anywhere. Yep the battery had decided overnight to just die a quite death. The NRMA was duly called again and we told the other guys to go ahead to Terry's son's coffee shop for breakfast, we'd catch them up. And so we waited ...<br />
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And waited ....<br />
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And waited a bit more ...<br />
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Finally Terry thought he should get to the cafe in case his son was worried, I also decided to tell the other guys to just go ahead to Bright, we'd see then there.<br />
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And then ...<br />
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Yep we waited some more ...<br />
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The NRMA guy musta been busy, he turned up eventually, and then told the guy there was nothing he could do, he'd have to buy a new battery. Then he gave them directions to the nearest place to buy such an item. Now I don't remember exactly how it happened, but the guy with the flat battery got his bike jump started and then he and the two others with us headed off down to town .. why I was left all alone I just cant fathom at the moment. I was though, that was OK, I needed petrol, and to let Terry know what was going on. Then I went to find them sitting out the front of the shop ... waiting ..<br />
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They didn't have a battery for a bike, but a nice man had offered to go and pick one up for us .. we just had to wait for him to get back with it.<br />
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So we waited ...<br />
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And waited ....<br />
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Then just to break things up a bit ....<br />
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We waited some more ....<br />
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The nice man really didn't take that long, he soon pulled up with a nice shiny new battery in a box. Was a matter of minutes to put it in the Shadow and then I just had to find my way to the cafe where Terry was waiting.<br />
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So after an early start .. we left Wagga at about 10:30 and finally headed on our way. Oh well it wasn't far to go that day, we could still take it easy.<br />
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Our next stop would be Wodonga.<br />
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Oh I forgot the map, sorry here ya's go ...<br />
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Actually we ended up stopping somewhere else along the way. I cant remember the name of the town, but we all just felt the need to get off and stretch our legs. Well the girls stretched, the boys sat.<br />
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And after a short rest we were all ready for the next leg to Wodonga. I have video of this bit of the ride, but sheesh it's pretty boring. The ride wasn't boring, it's was just plain relaxing to tell the truth, my back was feeling fine and the bike was feeling fine and that just made me feel fine.<br />
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Lunch was a bit late, at an Irish pub in the main street of Wodonga.<br />
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I love a Guinness but didn't indulge, we still had a fair bit of riding to go.<br />
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No we didn't stop for a bit of a work out while we were waiting for lunch, that's just the only parking spot I could find.<br />
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After leaving the pub, I only got lost twice. Pretty good I thought considering they had blocked off the road that Google Maps had told me to take and then I had to find my way round the back roads to get onto the country street that we needed to take. I even managed to find a petrol station too. It wasn't just pure luck that while we were in the petrol station I spotted the street we were supposed to be on out the other driveway .. well there could have been a little bit of luck involved I guess.<br />
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You know I don't really remember the rest of that ride, it was pretty, there were trees, and we were starting to see mountains. But what I was looking for was the sign that said .. Bright.<br />
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As we finally entered the town I was being wildly urged by a set of enthusiastic hand signals to stop. So I stopped! I was thinking that maybe I'd missed the turn off for the camping park that were to spend the weekend in. Nope, we'd just missed a whole town, but that wasn't my fault honestly. Apparently we were supposed to pick up one of the guys who was already at the park, he'd ridden to meet us at some town that I don't remember the name of, and that he thought we were going through. But we didn't go through it.<br />
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And then finally we got back on the bikes and soon found ...<br />
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Yep that's the cabin we were to stay in for the next three nights and it had a really comfy bed .. yay!!<br />
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This was what I was looking for, peace and tranquillity, and friends to share it all with.<br />
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This is the accommodation just next to us where most of the guys stayed, and where all of the action happened over the weekend.<br />
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I'll share a bit of that with you soon I promise. I have some video that I still have to edit so it may take me a while, but hang in there I'm sure it wont take me as long as last time!Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-12522977608363130742014-05-05T19:05:00.000+10:002014-05-05T19:05:32.992+10:00Going South Day 1Well the holidays over, I'm back at work. Have been home for a couple of weeks actually but to tell the truth I was feeling a bit exhausted .. just a bit. Just getting up and going to work every day seemed to take it out of me, and I felt like I needed another holiday to get over the holiday. Not that we did an awful lot really, we sat and relaxed quite a bit and paced ourselves, but we did do a lot of new and challenging things on the bikes. Riding in mountain twisties, something I haven't come across in the flat land that I live in, was such a challenge that every day we rode in Victoria took a lot longer than it really should have for the kilometres travelled.<br />
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But let me start at the start. The trip was started with the <a href="http://www.shadowbikers.net/" target="_blank">SRA</a> second annual AGM. It was held in Bright Victoria, here it is on the map ...<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="350" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="https://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Dubbo,+New+South+Wales&daddr=-32.7518909,148.6428613+to:-33.8341095,148.6871813+to:Bright,+Victoria&hl=en&geocode=FZn_E_4d2pnbCCk7kaRMsHEPazEwJUSQtAkGBQ%3BFe4-DP4dLRzcCCnvvBUOi-wPazFw_Ch0tAkGEw%3BFYO7-_0dTcncCCnP7d4Spo0QazGxFSp0tAkGEw%3BFamKz_0dAHLCCClj_UqYdRgkazEwTaAwpHkFBA&aq=0&oq=bright+&sll=-33.20652,148.460999&sspn=2.102695,4.22699&mra=dpe&mrsp=1&sz=9&via=1,2&ie=UTF8&ll=-33.20652,148.460999&spn=2.102695,4.22699&t=m&output=embed" width="425"></iframe><br />
<small><a href="https://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=d&source=embed&saddr=Dubbo,+New+South+Wales&daddr=-32.7518909,148.6428613+to:-33.8341095,148.6871813+to:Bright,+Victoria&hl=en&geocode=FZn_E_4d2pnbCCk7kaRMsHEPazEwJUSQtAkGBQ%3BFe4-DP4dLRzcCCnvvBUOi-wPazFw_Ch0tAkGEw%3BFYO7-_0dTcncCCnP7d4Spo0QazGxFSp0tAkGEw%3BFamKz_0dAHLCCClj_UqYdRgkazEwTaAwpHkFBA&aq=0&oq=bright+&sll=-33.20652,148.460999&sspn=2.102695,4.22699&mra=dpe&mrsp=1&sz=9&via=1,2&ie=UTF8&ll=-33.20652,148.460999&spn=2.102695,4.22699&t=m" style="color: blue; text-align: left;">View Larger Map</a></small>
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We spent a couple of days riding to Bright, then a couple of days relaxing in Bright with the guys from SRA. The trip down was with some of the guys from Queensland and some of the guys from coastal NSW headed over to Dubbo and rode down with us as well. The day that the Queensland guys got into Dubbo we were going to meet up with them and have a spot of dinner, but before that happened I got a text message asking me to do a mercy dash and find a balaclava for one of them. It seems he was wearing an open face helmet and was really starting to feel the pain.<br />
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Right off to all my local bike shops, the last one I walked into I said "Have you got any balaclavas?". The answer was "Of course .. which bank are you robbing?" Haha .. right .. funny .. now just give me a balaclava! So that mercy mission complete, we headed to dinner to catch up with the guys. It was a nice dinner with great company and it made us confident that we were going to have a great weekend.<br />
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There ended up being 11 bikes and one car (the wife of one of the Queensland guys), we all met at one of our favourite cafes for breakfast early Thursday morning. The day before the guys from the Newcastle area had ridden to Dubbo, I'd had all sorts of interesting text messages regarding their journey, and there was a post from one of them on the forums about his little mishap when his bike had a bit of a sleep. It wasn't too bad, just a case of tipping the bike over while he was getting on it, but the bike did land on his foot. Therefore I had to take a bit of first aid strapping and some serious pain relief to breakfast that first day to deal with a couple of unhealthy looking toes. Not sure if they were broken, he reckoned they were but they didn't look quite that bad, very bruised though.<br />
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After a great breaky we headed off on the first part of our adventure. This first day was to be led by me ... eek! It's a long way to lead a group of riders that, for the most part, I've never ridden with before. I don't generally lead very much, sometimes I'll take over from Terry for a little while, but not for this distance. So after getting some fuel for the one person who didn't see the note to fuel up before breakfast, we all met at the zoo then headed off towards our first stop, Molong, via Yeoval. I was nervous so didn't get pics or even think of turning on the Gopro. We weren't going to stop at Yeoval but once we got there one of the guys .. who's bike seems to be running very rich as he has to fuel up every 100km's or so .. said he wanted fuel. So we stopped, kinda split up as we seemed to have been for the whole time getting here.<br />
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Time to explain how I was going leading the group so far. It was stressful, I was worried about one of the last riders who was very new to riding and even more new to group riding, so I wasn't going fast. I'd planned to sit on about 90 - 100km/hr, which is plenty fast enough for this road for me. But I soon noticed the group was kinda falling back a few bikes behind me, so I slowed down. When I slowed the group seemed to fall back even more .. huh. I was kinda worried all the way along here, thinking that something was up back where I couldn't see the last few bikes because of the dips and bumps in the road. We seemed to be strung out. When we stopped I found out that it was because one of the riders has a thing about people tailgating in big groups, so he was hanging a long way back from the rider in front of him .. hence the big gap. Everything was OK but it was really putting me off, so when he suggested that the group split into two groups and that he lead the first group .. I was all for it!!<br />
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They took off then I indicated to Terry to lead the way for the rest of us. The learner rider wanted to ride at the back so she waited for me to take off, along with her buddy rider. I tried .. I really did try .. just goes to show how nervous it was all making me, I was trying to put the bike in gear but it kept on stalling. It wasn't long before it was pointed out to me that my stand was still down. I have never done that before and can only put it down to those nerves.<br />
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I'm still not sure if I like riding with groups to tell the truth, and I think a part of that is the fact that I get kind of nervous when I'm with other people at the best of times. But this time once I started riding I was fine, and not having to look all the time and worry if everyone is still there, I enjoyed the next part of the journey to Molong.<br />
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We fuelled up, where I dropped my fuel cap, bent my key (that little baby costs a couple of hundred to replace!) and broke the little swivel cap thingy off my fuel cap (another $50 or more). The guy who had fuelled up at Yeoval also realised now that he hadn't paid for the petrol at Yeoval, so it was a case of trying to find out the name of the petrol station there and calling them .. they were all good and just took his credit card number I think. So I got my spare key from Terry and we headed out again .. next stop Cowra.<br />
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And finally I got my camera out. I can hear your sighs of relief from here, no more wading through the reams of writing, finally something pretty to look at!!<br />
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All the bikes lined up, this was the last time they got lined up on the trip down to Bright. The groups really split up on the second day unfortunately. <br />
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We headed towards Wagga Wagga, where we would stop overnight before the second leg into the mountains. Our first stop after Cowra was to be Young, just a meet up at the first service station that we found. But first we had something else to cope with .. the almighty weather!<br />
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Here's some video of our little adventure.<br />
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I hadn't bothered putting gear on, you could see that there wasn't a lot of cloud, it was just kinda concentrated, and boy did it hit hard! So by the time we got to that little pub I had a wet .. well everything, but it was a warm enough day and it all dried out before the next stop at Young.<br />
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Where I didn't get any photos again :) Alright I was just being lazy, by this stage I think that I also just wanted to be in Wagga and a nice comfy bed, my back was starting to ache a little worse than it normally does. We were in Wagga that night by 5pm, and only one guy got lost, then found. Soon we were all booked in and comfy, cept one guy who's battery had decided to give up the ghost. He called NRMA (our local road side assistance type people) and before long a nice young man turned up to help so that we could be on our way early the next morning.<br />
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I have to say I wasn't terribly confident when I heard the young mechanic say something along the lines of "I've never worked on a bike before, but lets have a look". Oh dear I do hope it will start in the morning. At least it was going by the time the young bloke left so it was promising.<br />
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Had been a long ride, but that was to be the longest day of the entire trip for us so it was good to crawl into a comfy bed that night and dream of the ride ahead. The next day was only a short trip of 200km's or so til we got to our destination for the weekend. We'd be there by lunch time, well that was the plan, but as we all know sometimes all the best laid plans ... More about that soon.<br />
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And I do promise it will be soon, I've been away for far too long!!<br />
<br />Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-35064895308353402232014-03-10T11:32:00.001+11:002014-03-10T11:32:14.736+11:00Testing TestingWell we're nearly ready to go. Just a few last minute things to do now like packing. I have to admit to being a bit slack these last few days, normally by now I'd be all packed with just the toiletries left to go into the bags. But today I still have all my packing to do, plus Terry's stuff to sort so he can pack. Terry never packs til the morning we are leaving, which kinda frustrates me, being the kind of person who is ready days before any trip and gets everywhere at least half an hour early. He keeps life interesting for me!<br />
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I've been busy getting well. I've had another bout of serial migraines, not even getting over one when the next one hits me. In my endeavour to work out why this was happening to me I have been avoiding computer screens as much as possible, and I also noticed that my neck felt sore and very tense. So I took myself off for a massage. Yep, she said my neck was extremely tense and gave it a good work over. It's taken me three days to get over the pain from the massage, but at least the migraines have stopped now and my neck isn't as tense anymore. My ankle that was hurt at work about three weeks ago is just a bit niggly, gonna take my ankle support thingy with me though to be safe. Now all I had to do was test out the new screen on my baby.<br />
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We went for a ride yesterday. The idea being to see what the screen is like, and for Terry to get a bit more used to his baby. He had it serviced last week, I was thinking that sheesh he bought it from a dealer, surely they would have done the basics, fluids and tires and you know that stuff. Oh no, they had done nothing! The guy we take our bikes to said he was disgusted at the state of the bike and would have been ashamed to have sold a bike in that condition. That was a shock to hear, but at least now we know someone we trust has looked at it and given him some TLC. Even so, no sooner had we started our ride than Terry pulled over. 'It's not running right' he said. Hmm not good, he decided to go on a bit further and see what happened. We were going for a bit of a ride round some of the back roads just out of town but Terry's bike just didn't seem to want to run right, so we turned back after only about 15km's.<br />
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I'd wanted to get some pics of all the new stuff, screen, highway bars and Terry's bike, in some nice little country scene but we just didn't get anywhere and wanted to get home before something really bad went wrong. I did get to feel the screen at about 90km/h and wheeeee, I love it. I can still feel a bit of breeze but no more gripping the handlebars like death so I don't get blown off the back of the bike. It's noisy, well noisier than without it, but not terribly loud. I also love the new highway bars ..<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_NNbkDliang/Ux0BCAhYHGI/AAAAAAAAAgY/bhdFCwH46wI/s1600/IMG_7712.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_NNbkDliang/Ux0BCAhYHGI/AAAAAAAAAgY/bhdFCwH46wI/s1600/IMG_7712.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a>They're much more streamlined than the old ones were, so I don't feel like there are a couple of weights hanging off the sides of the bike counter balancing everything. I guess I hadn't noticed it with the old ones, but having ridden with the new ones on yesterday, I could feel the difference and cornering felt so much better. I had spotted these bars on a bike of one of the Shadow Riders who came to visit us last year, and I also saw his bike go over onto the bar when he forgot to put his stand down .. I know that these bars also catch the bike nicely. Unlike my old bars that actually seemed to roll the bike further over. Don't get me wrong they protected everything they were supposed to protect, but there was once when I dropped the bike on a cambered road and I thought it was just going to keep rolling on those bars til she ended up on her handlebars.<br />
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So today, the first thing we did was take Terry's bike to our mechanic. We had a good talk to him about what it was doing, he thinks it might be something to do with the manual choke and reckons that will be an easy fix. Yay! He's also going to check out a noise that the bike only makes when we first start it in the morning. To do this he has to wait til the bike cools down, so we'll go back this afternoon to pick him up, here's hoping we'll get good news all round.<br />
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Meanwhile, I'm supposed to be packing right now! I'm not. I'm going shopping in a minute, there's stuff I need. Then I might spend the afternoon procrastinating a little bit more. It just feels so nice to be pain free at the moment, and I still have two more days to pack .. plenty of time :)Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-84323966949780712302014-02-21T20:37:00.000+11:002014-02-21T20:37:48.026+11:00Terry's Little JourneyFor the last week Terry has had plans to go for a little trip to Gosford. It's a pretty long way to ride in one day, so he planned to stop there overnight, do what he had to do, then come home. Between work and the bizarre rainy weather we've suddenly had he's been forced to put the trip off three times. Then finally yesterday he saw a break in work that coincided with a break in the weather and he took off for the coast.<br />
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He came home today just as evening was starting to set in, and he was met at the gate by a very excited puppy and a wife with a camera .. I knew what was coming!!<br />
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Yep that's right .. a brand new (to Terry) Shadow! And he's a beauty!!<br />
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Doesn't he look at home on his new baby?<br />
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It's the start of something new and exciting .. the beginnings of many more journeys.<br />
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Oh I guess I should give a few stats .. he's (I've dubbed him a he as he's just so beefy compared to my little baby) a 2007 VTX1300 Honda Shadow. And that's all I really know about him so far 'cept that he's a handsome fellow.Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-83728177980732848552014-02-17T10:42:00.002+11:002014-02-17T10:59:30.116+11:00Getting Ready for Another Big TripThis will be the longest trip so far and I have to say I'm starting to get really excited!!<br />
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The trip will start off with a group ride, then a weekend with friends followed by a week or so of rest and relaxation with my husband. Here's the story, it all started with the AGM of the Shadow Riders Australia last year in Dubbo, they decided to make it an annual event. And now that event is only weeks away!<br />
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We'd organised with the Queensland guys to ride down from Dubbo to Victoria at the last event, as they have to go through Dubbo to get there, and I thought it would be nice to ride with others for at least part of our trip. So in a little over three weeks we will leave with them and take two days to ride to Bright, Victoria.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.brightvictoria.com.au/f.ashx?v=9935" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.brightvictoria.com.au/f.ashx?v=9935" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.brightvictoria.com.au/" target="_blank">From: Bright Victoria Tourism Page</a></td></tr>
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It's a mountain village that's supposed to be beautiful during Autumn, and guess what, we will officially be there in Autumn. I'm not really expecting it to be like this though, we are getting there right at the start of Autumn, the middle of March and the seasons all seem to be running late this year. We are still getting more days of temps over 38ºc than not, and that's just not normal for February.<br />
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We will be spending the whole weekend with the Shadow Riders. They have a lot planned for us, in the program there are rides and meals and even a darts competition. I haven't played darts for years and even then it was down at the local pub after a few beers, I just hope I don't disgrace myself too much and manage to get a few pointy bits into the board.<br />
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Here's a map of what the trip will look like.<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="350" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="https://www.google.com.au/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=205808169539165510866.0004f27c388ec055e29c3&hl=en&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=-35.061702,148.518454&spn=5.635741,3.115162&output=embed" width="425"></iframe><br />
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<small>View <a href="https://www.google.com.au/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=205808169539165510866.0004f27c388ec055e29c3&hl=en&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=-35.061702,148.518454&spn=5.635741,3.115162&source=embed" style="color: blue; text-align: left;">Victoria Trip 2014</a> in a larger map</small><br />
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Now after doing this map I realised that I lied. I know you are shocked but we are not all perfect :) It's probably not the longest trip we have done, not in kilometres anyway. It is however the longest in time, we will be away from home for 11 days this time. Normally that would drive Terry crazy, he'd be thinking about all the work he has to get done the whole time .. but I think I've hit on a solution this time. Let me tell you why ..<br />
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As you can see by the map we are heading down to the coast after the SRA meet to a little town called Lakes Entrance. We are possibly meeting up with an old work mate of mine who moved to Melbourne recently, if she can get the time off work for it. If she doesn't that's OK, we'll just spend the half day we have there wandering around looking at the sights. Then we are heading back up the coast into NSW .. and here's the clever bit.<br />
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We are staying for a few days in a little place called Bermagui (pronounced ber-ma-gu-ee) with a client of Terry's. Yep he offered us free accommodation a while back when Terry took on the job for the tourist accommodation he has in this little seaside town. I'm not sure even what kind of accommodation it is, but we have taken him up on it for this holiday. It means that Terry will be working while we are there, but that's alright, he will ease his mind, so we can both enjoy a long relaxing holiday. I'm living with the belief that while he is working I will be putting round looking at the sights or lazing on the beach, but I do have a feeling I'll get roped into helping with a few things. Not much though, I reckon we'll have more than enough spare time to explore.<br />
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Then after that little rest we'll just be heading home. Taking two days finding accommodation where ever we are when we feel we have to stop for the night.<br />
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And so I have started preparing the bike for the big trip. I've been planning the things I need to do for a while, as has Terry. I got some new presents for Roxy and Terry was busy looking for the things he wanted for the Black Shadow. I found a new screen which I'm rather excited about, it's easily removable so I don't need to have it on all the time but I'm really hoping it will help ease some of the fatigue I get after really long rides.<br />
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I also got some new highway bars. These were purely cosmetic as the one I had on worked perfectly well, I just never really liked the way it looked on the bike. I also never really liked the way it was fitted onto the bike, the top attachment point was using the small bolt that attaches the top of the radiator to the bike. It's always worried me that with excessive vibration coming from the bar my radiator wouldn't be particularly happy and I'm always looking for leaks from the radiator indicating a nasty crack. No more of those worries with the new bars, these ones have a more streamlined look, they look pretty sexy actually! And they attach as two separate pieces to the frame of the bike. They got put on last weekend, but no pics yet as there's one other thing I did while I was at it.<br />
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The light bar has been on the bike for a while, I'm not sure if I mentioned the little hiccup I found with it here. When I go over a particularly large bump, my driveway is one of those, or if I hit a bad bit of road too fast, the front guard hits the bottom of the light bar. It has spacers that came with it and it just hangs down a fraction too low. It's leaving a little mark on my guard which I'm obviously not happy about and don't want to get worse. So I took it down to my local bolt shop, where I know one of the guys from work. I asked him about it a while ago and he said yeah don't see why ya cant just shave a bit off one end. Sweet!! I took the lights apart while I was fiddling around and took them too him, he didn't have the right kind of grinder at the shop but he was more than happy to take it home and do it for me. The bad part is I told him to take his time and that I'd be back next weekend, now the bike is sitting with all her lights balanced in place and I cant do anymore work on her. Next weekend I'll get those lights back together and the screen on to see how she looks.<br />
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Terry couldn't find anything that he wants for the Black Shadow anywhere. He's at the very moment working on a solution, I'll give you that information when it happens. It's exciting! I only have that little bit more to do then book her in for a service and Roxy is ready to roll. I'll post up a few pics of her when I have her all back together.Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-11769823228077927942014-02-05T01:05:00.001+11:002014-02-05T01:05:42.716+11:00A Little Video Tour of Forster-TuncurryWell as promised, even if it is a bit late, here's the video of our ride round Forster-Tuncurry. Have to apologise for some of the quality as the GoPro musta been dirty and the sun reflections are a bit bad at times. Also gotta apologise for the length of the thing, I just seem to have so much trouble cutting it down to a decent size. So it's 15 minutes long and if that's just too much for you I do understand and don't blame you for turning it off or going and doing the washing up instead.<br />
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Enjoy :)<br />
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I've done two versions. The first one has no music added for the people who cant watch with the music. If you'd like to know what I chose for my riding music it was Crowded House - Pinapple Head, Paul Kelly - Gunnamatta and the John Butler Trio - Peaches and Cream.<br />
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The second version has the music to enjoy if you can :)<br />
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<br />Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-56599032358670150872014-01-28T22:27:00.000+11:002014-01-28T22:27:48.406+11:00Finally some TechnologyA couple of days ago someone on the SRA forums posted up a link to a new helmet.<br />
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Here tis ... <a href="http://www.skullyhelmets.com/" target="_blank">http://www.skullyhelmets.com/</a><br />
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Now to me this looks like it has some good points and some things that I'm not too sure about. To myself I was thinking .. 'not the kind of thing I would just fork out the money for without knowing more about it.' Upon reading the post I discovered that these Skully people were giving me the opportunity to do just that .. test it out before a I buy. Ooh well I'd do that.<br />
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So here's the story, you can apply to be a beta tester of these brand spanking new helmets. Sounds too good to be true I thought, but then I thought well they can't shoot you down for trying can they, so I applied. And now I'm waiting to hear whether I got accepted.<br />
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So why do I want to try it? Because of what the Skully helmet is capable of. I'm still kinda on the fence about it all but a couple of the features do interest me. It has a HUD that includes among other things a rear facing camera and GPS, those are things that I could see as useful. Some of the features may be lost on me, I cant ever picture myself using it with my phone to answer calls. I don't need those kinds of distractions and I'm the kind of person who screens calls at home and never .. ever! answers her mobile. So talking on the phone while I'm riding is never going to happen .. I'm way too busy enjoying my ride for those kinds of interruptions and nothing is ever that important.<br />
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The question I am asking myself is, would the features I'm interested in be distractions instead of being useful. Would a rear facing camera that shows me what's going on behind me make me lazy, so that I would not be as aware of what's going on around me and stop the meticulous head checks that I do now? I'd like to think not, in my mind knowing what's in those blind spots that I can never be really sure about, at a glance, could only help me.<br />
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The GPS is the other thing that has really got me interested. I don't use a GPS now, I've always thought of them as more of a hindrance up to this point in time, I'm quite capable of getting lost on my own without the help of an annoying voice in my head telling me politely to just do a bloody U-Turn cause you're going in completely the wrong direction! But having said that, I do see the use of them, and have one for the car for just in case I get too completely lost to find my own way out. I don't use it that often and I do also have a husband who is more than capable of getting me a little less lost sometimes (sometimes we just get lost together :D ). The only real reason I haven't contemplated getting one for the bike is that distraction thing, taking my eyes, and my concentration, off the road for long enough to make sense of something like a map just seemed incomprehensible to me at my level of riding. Now I'm thinking that having it there in my helmet, at eye level, so that I don't have to shift my eyes too much to see it, might just work.<br />
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Hence the reason I'd be interested in trying before buying. I could just do it the way I check most things before buying .. Google it. But I figure since they are giving me this chance why not give it a whirl. If I don't get the chance to try I guess I'll just have to wait til it comes onto the market and look at all the articles and reviews on it to try to decide if I'd like it. If I do get to try then for sure I'll write up my thoughts and let you all know about my experiences.<br />
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What do you think, is this innovative technology or just another distraction?Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-81730647814657725402014-01-21T23:30:00.001+11:002014-01-21T23:30:58.817+11:00Sneaking to the Coast for a WeekendI'll warn you in advance, this one is a photo heavy post. And there's not much to do with bikes either, besides the fact that we rode the bikes to get there, this one is gonna be chock full of holiday snaps.<br />
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Yep we managed to sneak away for a long weekend just for ourselves. Well it wasn't all for ourselves, there was a reason, my Dad. I was chatting on the phone with my father a while ago and he reminded me that he'd been living in NSW for over two years, and still we hadn't seen him since our trip south nearly four years ago. Oh I felt bad, so I was talking about a trip to Taree sometime soon. Every month I'd say we'll do it soon .. maybe not this month, too busy .. there's too much holiday traffic .. cant get the time off work .. there always seemed to be a reason why we couldn't go this month. Well I asked and got an extra day off work this month and planned to go east come hell or high water.<br />
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And it nearly was high water too. Dubbo recorded a fall of over 20mm for the Thursday that we had decided to start our ride. Now I don't really know much about rainfall amounts, and those kinds of figures mean nothing to me not being the farmer type, all I knew was that whenever I looked out the window that day it was pouring. It wasn't looking very promising, we had planned to ride the first 200km on the Thursday afternoon when I'd finished work, to a little place called Merriwa. It was one of those last minute decisions that seemed like a good idea at the time, that meant that the next days ride would be easier and we would get to Forster with enough time and energy to enjoy that afternoon.<br />
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Oh yeah and we weren't going all the way to Taree, we'd stop at Forster which is only about 30km short of Taree. In my fathers words 'why would you want to spend a weekend in Taree, there's nothing here.' So we decided on a weekend in Forster, where's there's plenty of sun, surf, cafes and relaxation to be had. Foster has a place in our hearts as it's first place that Terry and I went to as a couple and we have fond memories of that weekend.<br />
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Thursday afternoon, I sent Terry a text asking him what he thought the weather would do .. it became an unanimous decision .. it was just raining too hard to ride that day, it was decided to cancel the room we had booked at the little B&B in Merriwa and then just ride all the way through on Friday. Terry came to pick me up after work that afternoon with the wonderful news that the woman wouldn't cancel the room, actually she had already taken out the full payment from my bank account! Needless to say I was less than impressed by this .. I thought briefly about just writing off the money but it had just annoyed me that she had done this, and I'm pretty sure it's illegal too. Sooo we left Dubbo at 6pm on Thursday afternoon in pouring rain. Our destination was only 200km down the highway, but it seemed like the longest 200km of my life and it ended up taking us 3 hours to get there. The rain actually stopped about halfway there but the roads were still slippery and we were still kinda damp. Terry also found out that his back rack bag is not as waterproof as it's supposed to be .. he had wet pj's when we got there ...<br />
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It was a lovely B&B, but I have to admit that the only thing on my mind that first night was a hot shower and bed .. oh and food, it seems that everything in Merriwa closes down at 9pm, our arrival time was .. yep 8:50pm. We shared a chocolate bar and raided the coffee and bikkies in the kitchen.<br />
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After a big breakfast we were all fuelled up and ready for the long haul to the coast. It took us about 5 hours to travel the 300 or so kilometres, but we were riding away from the rain, towards the blue sky all day .. seemed like an omen for good things to come. We just took it easy, stopping whenever we felt like it. No photos along the way but I do have a bit of video of the weekend with some of the trip down on it. I just have to edit it there's about 4 hours worth that I need to cut down to no more than 5 minutes .. well 3 minutes seems ideal to me but sheesh that's a lot of cutting .. maybe I'll do two videos. Anyway I'll post that up as soon as it's done.<br />
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We rested in the motel and grabbed fish and chips for dinner. Wow I miss seafood!! And that was it for Friday, we were meeting with Dad late in the morning then heading down for more fish and chips for lunch .. yay!<br />
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Now Dad's probably gonna kill me for posting pics of him here but I got some really good shots of him so had to be done. First pic .. photo of a man happy with his fish and chips.<br />
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Second pic .. photo of a man wondering when his calamari is gonna get here ..<br />
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Then we wandered down to the wharf to check out the scenery and people watch for a while.<br />
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Dad and I are good at looking at stuff .. <br />
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And sometimes we even look at the same thing ...<br />
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We lazed round for a while, catching up then sadly it was time for Dad to head home. I think we were all tired but it was great catching up again and I hope we don't leave it so long next time.<br />
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That evening we headed to a local tapas bar for dinner then came back to the motel in time to catch the regular evening chorus. Native parrots of all types were feasting in the palm trees bordering the motel. I took a lot of photos of them but only this one of some Scaly Breasted Lorikeets turned out.<br />
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They were great to watch, there were some Eastern Rosellas and Rainbow Lorikeets there as well playing and making a racket.<br />
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The next morning we really had no plan of what to do. We wandered down the main street for a quick breakfast that turned into a long one. Then headed towards the beach.<br />
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We found some local markets which we wandered round for a bit before heading back towards the channel. Where we found the fishermen were cleaning their catches by the water. Some other creatures were quite interested in what the fishermen were doing too.<br />
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That was across the water from us, closer to hand we noticed ...<br />
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It seemed these two had the monopoly here, and they knew to wait patiently.<br />
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I didn't mind, it meant I got a tonne of great photos of one of my favourite birds.<br />
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And the reward for all that patience ...<br />
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The pelican gets his fish .. and I get a fantastic pic!!<br />
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Forster had a sister town on the other side of the channel called Tuncurry, they are joined by a bridge.<br />
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And in the middle is a heap of these sandbars and a largish sand island .. the sides of which are all covered in boats of all sizes and shapes. I was amazed at the amount of water activities going on here but then is it the middle of school holidays and this is a very popular tourist destination. I could see why.<br />
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I would have had a go on one of those ski-jet thingys but apparently they don't hire them anymore cause of insurance of something .. shame, one day I'll get on one :)<br />
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We'd talked about hiring a little boat with Dad the day before but really were happy enough just sitting round and relaxing, it seemed the Sunday was going to be more of the same til Terry suggested we jump on the bikes that afternoon for a bit of a ride round the town. All of that ride is on video so I'll save the commentary for when I get it finished.<br />
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After dinner that evening I was trying again to get a good shot of all the parrots when I noticed that the sun was setting quite prettily .. I grabbed my camera and headed for the water.<br />
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Got some good pics too .. what a great way to end a perfectly relaxing weekend.<br />
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The next day we headed back home. It was a long ride at just over 500km so we stopped often. We even stopped at one place that I didn't even know existed, well we'd driven through Denman often enough but I'd never realised it had more than just a couple of houses by the road. There was a cafe called Chocolate Hills, I had to eat there!!<br />
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And that's about it. Took us a long time to get home but it was still daylight at least. I don't think I like travelling that far in one trip though, from now on I'm going to plan our trips like I have in the past with the longest day being no more than 400km's. The heat was turned up again after the first hour or so and that in itself makes for a longer journey since we have to stop more often just to hydrate. I really wish summer would just take off now .. and I'm waiting for Autumn so we can ride again. Our next big trip is coming up soon, in March we head over the border to Bright, Victoria for the Annual SRA meet. Can hardly wait!!Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-12326195663112558952013-12-21T18:10:00.002+11:002013-12-21T18:10:28.202+11:00Have a Great Christmas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It seems to me that the months leading up to Christmas I just seem to get too busy and too tired to ride or even think about riding. I am noticing a trend in my blogging that shows me writing much less in those couple of months. Not just from being busy and tired either .. it's at least 40°C here today!<br />
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With that in mind I'd like to take the opportunity while I have not too much on my plate today to wish all my blogging mates everywhere a special Christmas and hope the new year brings you all many more wonderful adventures :)<br />
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<br />What ever you are doing over the holidays whether it's spending time with your family, getting out on a new adventure or just kicking back and relaxing ... I hope you have a great time doing it!!Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-91334424886511701092013-11-11T10:17:00.000+11:002013-11-11T10:17:02.857+11:00From The Pen Of The White ShadowHi! My name is Roxette but my friends call me Roxy. I am a Honda Shadow who happens to have a very sexy white color scheme .. hence the name of this Blog. Yes I am the namesake of The White Shadow Diary. As such I thought it was about time I had my say here.<br />
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Now I dont want to sound like I'm whining but I have noticed that the White Shadow has taken a bit of a back seat in Brenda's life lately. Both the bike and the blog. I know she's been a bit busy of late, her work has been hectic with her taking on a new role as a trainer and now they have all this new staff, yes she gets home after work and just flops onto the lounge and immediately falls into a trance in front of the TV. Not to mention the fact that her computer recently started to give up on her, she did get a new one (that's what I'm playing with now .. fun!) but she has hardly turned it on, there's only one folder of photos on it so far .. she's really been slacking!<br />
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Brenda and Terry had a wedding that had to be attended last month, I thought for sure they would be taking us, but no .. the black shadow and I were left at home, quietly crying ourselves to sleep in the dark for two days. We both got very dusty! They went all the way to Canberra without us and their pathetic excuse, neither one of us could fit the present on our back racks ... I reckon they shoulda just bought the present down there.<br />
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So having raided Brenda's one folder of photos on this new pc I found this ...<br />
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That's the lovely couple, Terry's son and new daughter in law. Looks like it was a fun wedding doesn't it. I was feeling very left out when I saw that picture .. then I spotted this!!<br />
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There was a scooter there!! And I wasn't even invited and I'm a grown up .. sigh. It looks like the bride actually rode up to the end of the aisle on that scooter ... oh what fun!<br />
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I have mentioned to Brenda that the next time she knows a bride that wants to go to her wedding on a bike, I would be a great choice .. I'm all class!<br />
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Both of our riders have been promising to take us out for a weekend jaunt for weeks you know. And it still hasn't happened! I don't mind spending time with the black shadow (I wish Terry would give him a name though, the black shadow is such a mouthful) he's good enough company, but he is quiet a lot of the time .. the best fun we have is on the roads, zipping along looking at the scenery with the wind blowing through our chrome. Oh I miss that!<br />
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But no, our riders have been too busy or too tired, last weekend they promised us a nice long ride while Terry went to sort out some work stuff. I heard them talking about it, "we'll take the bikes, blow the cobwebs outta them" I heard Terry say that. Nope Friday night their shed blew down in an almighty wind. I heard the bang and it kinda scared me, I thought our house was blowing down and we would be crushed. It was OK, it was only the lawnmowers home. That small catastrophe put a damper on our ride plans though, our riders were busy cleaning up the mess all day Saturday then catching up on Saturdays stuff on Sunday. Yet again us poor bikes were left sitting forlornly in the driveway whimpering softly in loneliness.<br />
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Oh it's not all bad, don't get me wrong. Brenda does take good care of us. She noticed that we were both getting very dusty one afternoon last week and got out the hose and bucket and gave us a nice bath. And she does ride me to work when she can .. actually I think it's just when she thinks she can do without her morning coffee, a lot of the time I hear her taking off early in the car with the words "I need my coffee!" on her lips. But at least a couple of days a week I get out with her for the short journey to her work, then I sit outside her work all day and get lots of admiring looks from passersby. I don't mind that :)<br />
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We are having fun on our short rides, Brenda's really coming along nicely with her skills lately. It makes it all the more enjoyable that it's the only time we really get together lately, when it does happen, even if it's a short ride it's just so much fun. I've tried to talk her into keeping on going past work a couple of times but Brenda wont do it .. sheesh I don't reckon work would miss her for just one day.<br />
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This weekend we are going for a ride! They cant get out of it, they are meeting other riders from SRA and they organised this ride ... they are the leaders so that means no getting out of it guys!! Yay!! So hopefully Brenda will take the camera, I know she is planning to take the GoPro cause I saw her charging it last night, then she will have to post the story. I can make do with the precious time we spend together riding to work for the rest of this week, cause I know that we are getting out onto the highways in just a few short days. I cant wait!!Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078765543853720407.post-52096205255387756482013-10-06T23:01:00.000+11:002013-10-06T23:01:50.129+11:00100 Posts .. A ReflectionAs I posted up the video in the previous post I noticed that it was my 100th post. That gave me thoughts about how far I've come since I started both riding and blogging about my riding. I went back and read my very first post. I decided to do a bit of a reflection of both the blog, the riding and the bike, it's all changed .. a lot!!<br />
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The blog has changed, I'm doing much bigger posts now with big
glossy photos. I guess that's a reflection on the new fascination I have
with taking photos and trying new things like video and the GoPro. I also think it's
because I don't really have as much to write about my riding, everything
just seems to be going so nicely, so I pad it out with lots of pics.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FQ4rIFwfCtI/Ty4M0w8WqmI/AAAAAAAAABI/hLw77IdgPGs/s1600/the+shadow+newcastle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FQ4rIFwfCtI/Ty4M0w8WqmI/AAAAAAAAABI/hLw77IdgPGs/s640/the+shadow+newcastle.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The White Shadow at Newcastle Harbour</td></tr>
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But then I had a lot more the write about back then I think. Reading my first four posts about learning to ride .. sheesh just getting the courage to ride .. was fascinating for me. You can check them out <a href="http://whiteshadowdiary.blogspot.com.au/search?updated-min=2011-01-01T00:00:00%2B11:00&updated-max=2012-01-01T00:00:00%2B11:00&max-results=4" target="_blank">HERE</a> if you're interested. I loved the first post about our trip to Newcastle, remembering how weird it all felt to be riding into the wind, I never thought I would get used to that or be able to go faster than 80km/h.<br />
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I feel like I have come a long way with my riding but still remember some parts very vividly, I still get butterflies every time I have to do a U-Turn and I did mention how hard I was finding them in a lot of posts. But some of the things I had actually forgotten about .. my problems getting used to braking, I'd forgotten how for the first couple of weeks I was actually braking so hard that I was riding the tank. Then there's the way in one post I would be all excited that I'd got the hang of something then a couple of posts later I am lamenting that I will never get the hang of it and that I think I'm doing it all wrong (I'm thinking particularly about braking and keeping one foot up while stopped here). Now I don't think about those things .. now I just wanna find more exciting things to do.<br />
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Another post that I loved but really am disappointed that I didn't put more pics in was the one about my <a href="http://whiteshadowdiary.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/ride-to-gulgong.html" target="_blank">ride to Gulgong</a> <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WhEP8MxAfjY/TzE5OAlQxuI/AAAAAAAAACA/L4jpXUgQExU/s1600/IMG_02771.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WhEP8MxAfjY/TzE5OAlQxuI/AAAAAAAAACA/L4jpXUgQExU/s640/IMG_02771.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The White Shadow in Feburary 2012 in the main street of Gulgong.</td></tr>
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It was an exciting ride and it shows in the way I wrote about it, the thing that still sticks in my mind is the smells .. good and bad, I still love riding past a freshly baled stack of hay or a wet forest. I'd forgotten about how much every little bump in the road used to affect me though.<br />
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It wasn't really that long ago that I was worrying about not being able to park or back the bike comfortably cause I couldn't touch the ground properly. Now while I'm still careful on gravel, I don't stress like I used to, and parking is just happening naturally all of a sudden. I find that pretty amazing actually.<br />
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I have done a lot of posts about prettying up my baby, I even did a post where I officially named her .. Roxy. Those posts are interesting too, not just to show how the bike has changed and evolved but how I learnt more about her and what makes her tick. I still have a long way to go there!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/ac24/greebo10/Broken%20Hill/Getting%20There/IMG_7682_zpse95de577.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/ac24/greebo10/Broken%20Hill/Getting%20There/IMG_7682_zpse95de577.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roxy as she looks now, on the road to Broken Hill</td></tr>
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Then there are the rides where we met some like minded wonderful people and shared the adventure with them for a while. The first one was the <a href="http://whiteshadowdiary.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/riding-with-shadow-riders-in-queensland.html" target="_blank">adventure to Queensland</a> where the Shadow Riders Australia (SRA) took us under their wings and showed us around for a day.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i1197.photobucket.com/albums/aa440/rayd59/P1040170.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://i1197.photobucket.com/albums/aa440/rayd59/P1040170.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Morning tea with some of the Queenslanders.</td></tr>
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And that was so exciting on so many levels, there were so many firsts on that trip that I can't list them but by far the best first was getting to meet all those wonderful people.<br />
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There were other rides with groups and every time I remember the dread that I would do something embarrassing in front of all those people, I never did until the last big meet up when the SRA came to Dubbo for their first annual meet. Yep I dropped poor Roxy right in front of the leader of the group, who leaped to help me almost before I realised what was happening .. such a sweet man, as they all were.<br />
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And fun too!! Check out the posts <a href="http://whiteshadowdiary.blogspot.com.au/2013_03_01_archive.html" target="_blank">HERE </a>if you're interested.<br />
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Of course there are a lot of other posts that I love and reading back through them has been absorbing for me, so many that I could point out that it would take another 100 posts .. so I wont go on. It's all there to look at any time I want to.<br />
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That's what it's all about isn't it? It's why I wanted to do the blog thing to start with. It's a record of the journey that is my bike riding adventure. From the very shaky start to the awesome plans for the future. It's fun!! So now 100 posts in and I'm still going strong, my love for riding hasn't waned (like most things I take up often do). I'm still blogging, though yep have to admit I do have times when I just don't get to it as much as other times, but I still love it! It has been a great adventure so far, I have learnt so much, and there's still a lot more to learn and experience .. I can't wait!!Brendahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06395364582355269753noreply@blogger.com16