Going Backwards

The reason we were going for a ride  ... we need to check out a road ... well we need to check out a couple of roads. So originally we were going for a longish ride, bout 2 hours or so with stops, then we decided to check out another road that's shorter only bout 40 minutes of riding. That suited both of us nicely.

Both of these rides are part of something exciting that's happening in March (oh wow that's not very far away is it?!?), The Shadow Riders Australia are having their first Eastern States Meet in Dubbo in March. Terry and I offered to help out with it any way we could and one of the things we are doing to help is to organise a couple of rides for the guys and gals while they are here.

We have one longer one planned as a Poker Run, stopping at a few of the local pubs in villages surrounding Dubbo, that one is going to be awesome but we need to ride the whole route we have planned out as we've only done some of the roads on bikes, one of the roads is one that we've only done in the car. Not to mention we need to get out to the pubs and make sure they are happy for us to descend on them for a half hour or so.

That was the ride we were going to do today, but it made sense as we are both a bit under the weather lately that we did the shorter ride. This one is just a bit of a trip to one of the outlying villages near town then back in a big loop.

At first Terry said he didn't think he'd go for a ride after all, so I asked him to get my bike out of it's tricky parking spot for me and I'd just go for a quick turn around town. I had an itch.

Hmm I guess he did feel better today after all .. he went and took the cover off his bike and checked his chain .. yay we're going for a ride!!

That wasn't the only reason I wanted to go for a ride, I also had an idea that I wanted to try out with the GoPro. I know you are going to be amazed and astounded when you hear this ... I put it on backwards. Yep you heard me right .. I was hoping to get some backwards pics. Alright not that astounding .. but I was keen anyway. I wanted to try to get some pics of Terry riding towards me and I'd woken up in the middle of the night about a week ago with the bright idea to just turn the GoPro around so that it was taking pics behind me. Seemed so simple it was silly .. I was really keen to try it out.

Of course the first pics I got were of Terry moving Roxy while I sat on a bench under a tree watching. The next photo I got was a series of this ...

Hmm at least it wasn't all just photos of the sun although I got plenty of those too. We headed down the road for petrol first, where I got heaps of pics of the bowser and the driveway .. but when I put my helmet on the backrest just before I turned the camera off I caught this ...

I was starting to see how useful this could be, not only can I get some cool pics of Terry riding, I can check to see if there's any cheekiness happening behind my back.

There are a lot of photos, you have no idea how hard it is just to pick a few favourites, the GoPro was set to take pics every two seconds ... I have nearly 2000 photos to choose from ... ugh too hard to choose!!

Terry taking a roundabout like a pro, my first thought when I saw this pic was 'do I lean that much?' So I asked Terry 'do I lean that much on roundabouts?' 'Nope' he said 'but that's cause your bike handles differently to mine' 'Oh .. OK'

We soon hit the country road and somehow I left Terry behind so I didn't get the shots of him coming over the rises that I wanted. I slowed down and let him catch up cause I knew that there was an interesting little S bend thingy coming up and I knew I wanted to get him on that.

First there's the right hander as the road goes down under a train bridge.

Then there's the left hander coming back up from underneath the bridge.

When I first looked at these photos you couldn't really get a sense of how much Terry was leaning round these bends, cause I was leaning too and the horizon was at a massive angle ... soon fixed that.

Yep it's turning into another photo heavy post, I just loved so many of the photos .. this is the best one I got of Terry coming over a rise .. look closely he's there.

'Oh oops ...' was what I heard over the Sena, just as Terry overtook me looking for a photo opportunity.

I overtook him back when we got over the next rise, but we were under some clouds so you can't see him shaking his fist at me :-D

Yep .. your blinkers working .. how's mine. I still haven't replaced my back blinkers, the new ones should arrive tomorrow hopefully early enough for me to spend the afternoon fitting them. That's another reason I didn't really want to ride too far today, even though I've been riding for months with water and rust in them without knowing it, I still don't like tempt fate. I did check them before we left and there was no condensation in there, we haven't had any rain since I emptied the water out of them last weekend.

The next bit of road was along the highway for maybe 5 km's, not really interesting for photos I thought, until I came across this photo ...

Terry just seemed to be bringing the sun with him.

Back onto the back roads and corners started again ..

Here's one where I didn't correct the angle of the horizon.

When the road is straight it just seems like you can see for miles, I think it's fisheye lens effect but the sky and the fields just seem to go forever in a lot of the shots along this road.

It's a good road, and fun to ride but we only passed one bike along here today .. this guy just kinda amazed me.

Back to the cool pics of Terry ...

Back in town, we headed towards McDonalds for a bite cause it's the only thing open at this time on a Sunday and we didn't really feel like trying to find a pub still serving food.

Last pic of the day ....

Yep that ride will do just fine for the Shadow Riders .. I think they'll enjoy it :)