Eildon via Torbreck River Road – 11^th January, 2004

Pete Weyermayr (leader), CBR 929 Liz Oliver, CBR 954 Paul Southwell, CBR 954

Trevor Harris (rear), YZF1000 Ben Warden, CBR 929 Dianne Welsford, CBR 600

Mark Easterbrook, Triumph 955 Ian Black, KLR 650

Pete and I set off nice and early (turning over a new leaf for the New Year), got green lights almost all the way and arrived at Yarra Glen half an hour early. We filled up with petrol and had a chat to a guy riding an Aprilia RSV Factory. He was running it in and told us a bit about it. Factory set rev limiter to 7,000 rpm while running it in, and when he takes it in for a service they can tell what he has been up to – max speed and other stats. Hope the cops don’t find out about that little function. He seemed a pretty keen rider, so we handed out an itinerary and told him a bit about the Club.

Eventually some others started turning up for the ride. Pete gave his pre-ride talk and, just as we were about to leave, Di turned up followed by Trevor and Paul – almost doubling our numbers. There was a rush for rear rider duties, but Trevor won the coveted position.

We headed towards Healesville via Chum Creek road and Toolangi. A quick burst over the Black Spur and we turned towards Marysville where we stopped for a petrol/food/toilet/talk break. That all done, we carried on towards Buxton for a slow cruise down the Maroondah highway to the turnoff at Taggerty. The ride pace picked up again here, but slowed down as we cruised through Thornton past a cop with a radar gun pointed at us.

Carrying on towards Eildon, we turned off on the Torbreck River road. I didn’t think the road was in very good condition this time; there seemed to be a few patches of loose stones on corners, which were hard to see due to the road surface. Still, it was a fun ride out to where the sealed section stops. We all stopped for a rest here and watched some drunken campers arguing over an airbed that they were taking turns to ride down the river on. I think they appreciated the audience, and Trevor was compelled to make a few smart comments to the women – “show us ya t….”. You know the rest. Luckily they were all pretty mellow and didn’t take any offence at this. From here we retraced our route back to the turnoff and on to Eildon.

While stopping for petrol in Eildon, Pete noticed his clutch had no tension. He had a good look at it, expecting a broken cable, but was surprised when he was able to pull the actuator arm almost out of the clutch housing. Something must have come loose or broken inside. Without knowing what it was, he was reluctant to start the motor in case there were loose parts floating around. He decided to leave the bike at the petrol station and we would pick it up later that evening.

With the bike hidden safely behind the servo, we got down to the serious business of lunch. The weather was beautifully warm and we sat under the shade of umbrellas and ate and chatted. Pete asked Ben to lead the ride home and Pete and I would share the riding on my bike (Having no grab rail meant it was pretty hard work on the back). Di headed the more direct route home from here, while the rest of us took the Skyline road to Alexandra, then the back road to Molesworth and the highway to Yea. From Yea it was the usual trek via Flowerdale to break up at Kinglake West for a total of 315 kms.

When Pete and I got home, we grabbed the car and drove out to Ben and Julie’s place to borrow his trailer. We drove to Eildon, put the bike on the trailer and drove home, arriving just after 11pm. Along the way we had various wildlife throwing itself at our car including a wild cat (RIP) and three strangely aggressive ducks who were sitting on the other side of the road and charged us as we came near them (all three missed us).

The next day Pete pulled the clutch cover off to discover the actuator had snapped. Rather surprisingly, Honda had this part in stock, in spite of claiming that this had never happened before. His bike was back on the road by Wednesday.

Thanks for the good company everyone, Trevor for rear riding and Pete and Ben for leading. Thanks also to Ben for lending us his trailer to pick up the bike.

Liz Oliver (CBR 954)