Well 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.
We were to line all our bikes up along a back road at the camping grounds in the morning for a photo shoot.
We didn't have far to take our bikes, that's our cabin in the background. Terry was one of the first bikes there.
And my bike wasn't too far behind him, but things were already starting to get untidy.
Then another line up started ...
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.
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 ...
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!
Then we got to our venue for the meeting and lunch.
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.
Cray's bike found a friend .. the same bike in a lovely orange colour scheme.
That's Big Gorilla and his bike .. the other happy chappy with him is known to all and sundry as Happycamper .. always smiling!
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!!
That was fun, no pics of it but I did get one of the boss checking out one of the Queensland members bike.
And that pretty well sums up what the weekend was like .. lots of fun with some good mates.
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.
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.
And even getting the riders to stand still long enough to get a pic too.
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.
Well 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.
Then we checked out what the others were doing.
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 ...
And waited ....
And waited a bit more ...
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.
And then ...
Yep we waited some more ...
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 ..
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.
So we waited ...
And waited ....
Then just to break things up a bit ....
We waited some more ....
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lunch was a bit late, at an Irish pub in the main street of Wodonga.
I love a Guinness but didn't indulge, we still had a fair bit of riding to go.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And then finally we got back on the bikes and soon found ...
Yep that's the cabin we were to stay in for the next three nights and it had a really comfy bed .. yay!!
This was what I was looking for, peace and tranquillity, and friends to share it all with.
This is the accommodation just next to us where most of the guys stayed, and where all of the action happened over the weekend.
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!
Well 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.
But let me start at the start. The trip was started with the SRA second annual AGM. It was held in Bright Victoria, here it is on the map ...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!!
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.
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.
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.
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!!
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.
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!
Here's some video of our little adventure.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And I do promise it will be soon, I've been away for far too long!!
Well 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!
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.
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.
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 ..
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.
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.
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 :)
For 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.
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!!
Yep that's right .. a brand new (to Terry) Shadow! And he's a beauty!!
Doesn't he look at home on his new baby?
It's the start of something new and exciting .. the beginnings of many more journeys.
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.
This will be the longest trip so far and I have to say I'm starting to get really excited!!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 ..
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well 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.
Enjoy :)
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.
The second version has the music to enjoy if you can :)
