Lake Mountain Night Ride          Friday 18th  January 2002

 

Have you ever wondered why your motorbike seems to run better at night? Someone once told me that it’s because of the increased water vapour content in the air. H2O I suppose, which means more O2, which means better combustion. If you’re the full bottle on the scientific explanation you might scribble a few paragraphs and drop it in the next magazine. Maybe it’s just an old wives’ tale and your bike feels like it’s going like the clappers because it’s real dark and the corners come up real fast because you can’t see a darned thing.

 

Back to the story. I arrived at the Yarra Glen Grand Hotel at 8pm to find a select group of members putting paid to copious quantities of food. I’ll let Ben list the non-riders who were recognisable by their lack of lumpy leather clothing and clumpy boots. (Ian Payne, Kerrie Gooding, Ben and Julie Warden, Ron and Julie Johnston …Ed.) I will concern myself here-on in with the midnight cowboys and cowgirls who were correctly outfitted for the evening’s ride:

 

Geoff Jones                              Yamaha R1 (leader)     Liz Oliver                                 Honda CBR919RR

Tim Walker                              Kawasaki ZX7-R         Pete Weyermayr                       Honda CBR929RR

Jon Riddett                               BMW K1100RS          Danny Kosinski                        Honda VFR750

Martin Hastie/Carmen               Blackbird (rear riders)  Les Leahy                                Yamaha XT 595

 

It was a beautiful evening. ‘Balmy’, I think is the adjective most commonly used. Not so hot that you couldn’t wear a jacket, but not so cold that you were uncomfortable. In the lovely half-light of twilight we squirted up the back road to Healesville with the corner-marking system working perfectly. Because of the sports bike nature of most of the motorcycles, I think it fair to assume that most of these machines don’t do a lot of kilometers in darkness. As we entered the swervery of Black Spur this became obvious as it caused an interesting bunching up of the bikes. It doesn’t matter fast the motor is, you’re only as good as your headlight. This made it a much more interesting ride for people like me with a motor producing 34p.s. as I generally watch 929RR’s disappearing into the distance never to be seen again.

 

We all arrived in Marysville safe and sound after monitoring some very interesting driving by the tin-tops through the Spur. It is quite obvious that they don’t do much night driving either. So far, there had been no sign of wild-life on the tarmac but the bugs were building up on the visor. The run up to Lake Mountain turn-off is v-e-r-y interesting in pitch black with the little fingers working overtime on the bars and levers. Clutch, brake, high-beam …, low-beam, clutch, throttle … clutch, brake, high-beam. All of this was dependant on whether a vehicle was coming in the opposite direction or there were bikes in front and you were attempting to keep the high-beam out of their mirrors.

 

All riders eventually reached the safety of the top car-park and turned off their lights. Crikey, where did everyone go? Can’t see the hand in front of my face. There was the tiniest sliver of a crescent moon; stunning … and of course, the stars so much brighter without the city lights. Jon Riddettt suggested we should go over to the other car-park because there was a really good view. Terrific Jon. Good one. It was pitch black just like the first one. By now it was getting just the tiniest bit cool, so we cruised back down the turn-off road with everyone getting the hang of it by now and the standard of riding much improved. On the long steep run back down to Marysville I had caught up with Geoff, our illustrious leader on the R1, and rode out in the other lane and beside him to really light up the shrubbery with two lights on high-beam. I run a 100 W on high in the chook-chaser and it does a pretty handy job of turning night into day.

 

At the roundabout at Marysville we spotted a tatty VFR and helmet, which could only belong to one person. Well … two actually … but I think Rob Langer has sold his now. So yes, only one person. Quite soon Danny Kosinski came running down the road and joined in with us. Once more through the Black Spur and we pulled into Healesville at 11.15 p.m. Nice one. Geoff announced that his shift for Saturday started at 5 a.m. and which way was it to Melton? He’s a keen man is our Geoffrey. Enjoyable evening.

 

Les  Yamaha (Yamaha XT595)