Who’s News                April 2010

The Club web site at www.melbsportsbike.net.au accumulated 751 hits during April, up 83 on last month. Total visits are 59,092 since April 1996. The counters on the other pages after another month indicate that the Calendar page took 616 hits (total 9851 since 28th October 2008) and Great Roads 131 hits (total 2855).

Membership now stands at 82.  Official kilometres for the month of April: 2110 km, up 430 from last month – 6 rides versus 5. Official Club kilometres for the month (people x ride length): 28,660 km, up 6,930. We had one crash for the month’s 6 rides, ending the run of 11 crash-free rides.

Ben Warden’s message to Google Group 8/4/2010 outlining various Club web page updates:

A lot of work has occurred on the MSR web site in the last few weeks. Your feedback is welcome and encouraged. Everything is effectively in draft mode and can be changed easily and quickly.

Here is a list of most of the changes:

  • Contact Page updated with Committee person photos and bios – still a work in progress
  • Club Name Change History is now a link on the home page (top right). It is also available from the Members only page and as a hot button in the welcoming paragraph (which has also been modified to reflect “over 80” members, not 70). This information will form the written word content on the back of the T-shirts. Only 4 people have requested them so far …
  • The “What do we look like?” (bottom right, home page) now has low resolution links to 2009 magazine front covers and a couple from 2010 (excluding the multiple crash cover – bad advertising is the formal position). These photos should load relatively quickly at the expense of some resolution. No names or dates are supplied.
  • Removal of Incidents from Itinerary Page (2010 onwards), recaptured in an Incident Log located in the Members (only) area.
  • Relocation of the 2005 Tassy Trip photos link from the Home Page to the Members area
  • Updated 2010 itinerary page with ride information
  • Minor changes to Risk Management Strategy (Policies and Procedures section) – work in progress
  • Minor changes to Aspects of Leading a Ride (Policies and Procedures section)
  • Minor changes to Corner Marking System (Policies and Procedures section)
  • Additional old magazines retyped and added to Members area, particularly 1979. This is an on-going long term project. Thanks to Barb Peters who is getting great pleasure out of typing them up from the slowly deteriorating originals.
  • A new section for Club Minutes (Committee and General Meeting) has been added to the Members area.  Again, this is a work in progress with many minutes hand written and needing to be transcribed into digital format.
  • Current Club magazine added
  • In a related topic, access to the MSR Google Group forum is now strictly Members only.

Seen at the Social Sip, Marks Place on Thursday 1st April: Julie and Ben Warden, Trevor and Barbara Rolfe Harris, Barb and Cliff Peters, Kate Stewart and John Rousseaux, Ron and Julie Johnston, Dave Ward and Bronwyn Manifold, Ian Payne, Paul Southwell, Ivan Radywonik, Tim Emons, Geoff Jones, Chris Pointon, Kurn Bridgeman and Ha Du. 20 people

Seen at The London, Port Melbourne 25th April farewelling Dave and Bron just before catching the boat to Tasmania: Julie and Ben Warden, Cliff Peters, Kate Stewart and John, Alex, Isaac and Isabelle Rousseaux, Ron and Julie Johnston, Ian Payne and Kerrie Gooding, Jo and Paul Southwell, Kurn Bridgeman, Cameron Stevens and Ha Du. 19 people

The Club Participant of the Year is based on aggregate points accumulated at 1 point per ride, an extra point for leading or being rear rider, and 1 point per magazine article (maximum 2 per magazine). Attending one or more days of a weekend event scores 3 points for leading, 3 for rear riding duties and 2 points for participating.

The count is for the 2009/10 year ending the ride before the 2010 AGM in July. After ten months, the top ten count is Ben Warden (88), Pina Garasi (67), Ha Du (65), Ron Johnston (61), Ian Payne (48), Dave Ward (47), Cliff Peters (45), Dennis Lindemann (40), Misho Zrakic (39) and Paul Southwell (37). Still the same old top 10 but some movement with Pina overtaking Ha for second place and Misho moving past Paul who is only just back from injury.

Front Cover.  Photo taken on the Boolarra Ride, Monday 26th April (ANZAC Day Holiday) at the Korumburra Bakery: Back row: Graeme “Pommy” Tattersall, Rob Jones, Mark Welland, Pina Garasi, Misho Zrakic, Kate Stewart, John Rousseaux, Ivan Radywonik, Peter Feistl. Seated: Ron Johnston, Cliff Peters, Marty Thompson, Mark Rigsby and Ha Du. Ben Warden behind the lens.

Barb Peters has volunteered to retype old magazines and they will appear in the Members area as well. This is a very long term project. So far this month I have put up 6 new magazines in 1979 and six in 1980.  I will reprint the odd one that is particularly amazing.

Bio Page for the Committee members – check out Dennis Lindemann’s and Ern Reeder’s bio.  

The Committee is considering purchasing T-shirts with the Club logo on the front and our name change history on the back, similar to those produced for the 50th Anniversary. The price will be in the range of $15-20 depending on numbers. If you are interested please advise what size and how many. We will probably get black writing on white background, nominally “white”; white writing on black background, nominally “black”. We could also get “grey” and “navy blue”. If you want 15 red ones, we can do that too. So far the response has been fairly underwhelming with only 6 non-committee members responding.

See elsewhere in the magazine for the Club Name Change History as we morph from a scooter club to a motorcycle touring club to the current sports bike riders club over a period of 55 years. We also change geographical emphasis from Box Hill centric to all of Victoria and back to Melbourne.

Welcome to new member Damir Djikic riding a green naked Kawasaki Z750. He’s keen and is hanging in there, despite the series of crashes a couple of months ago which would deter some new riders from joining. We wish him many safe and fun rides with the MSR.

Email from Ivan Radywonik to the Google Group, that night Monday 26th after his accident on the Boolarra ANZAC Day ride.

A very pleasant ride in an ambulance became a four hour stay at Leongatha hospital where I had 7 stitches in a gashed knee.  Just as well they looked past the long johns - they weren't cut but the blood seeping through them indicated more than a grazed knee.

I phoned the people who were looking after the bike - the accident happened outside their farm (on the Arawata dirt …Ed)  - and Ray insisted on driving in to pick me up.  The damage to the bike was cosmetic: a smashed indicator, severe scratches to the front panels all the way up the side of the windscreen, and a christened crash bar (not a mark at the rear).

I checked out the crash site and took some photos before it got too dark.  I could see where the front of the bike had impacted the road - and a gouge line that stretched diagonally back up the road that the front wheel and crash bar had etched out.  The starting point was quite close to the left edge - soft and slippery gravel. Clearly a front wheel slip - very sudden and quick.  Anyway, I rode it home, sore but relieved I would ride again :-)

Many thanks for all the help today.  Kate was amazingly clear headed and reassuring given I'd lost consciousness and couldn't remember much at all for a while - until pieces started to filter through. I still can't remember the incident itself - it was so quick!  And thanks to John for staying chirpy and to Ron for taking care of the bike. Thanks especially to Mark for his patience and support at the hospital while the medicos did their thing.  I assured him I could manage hanging around and would find a way back to the bike. Thanks mate. And a special thanks to whoever called the ambulance; I might still have this huge gash in my knee! Cheers from a very sore Ivan.

Happy 60th birthday to long standing Club President Ian Payne. Well, not quite, but on the 15th May. If only the rest of us could look as young and be as bike fit. Congratulations from all the members. Now for the party – possibly when Dave Ward returns from Tassy to collect his hail damaged ute.

Leaders required. It is that time of the year again when we need to add another four months or so to the itinerary pages. So if you would like to lead, or have a particular route or destination in mind, please suggest the details to any of the Committee people. Our strength is a Ride Every Sunday. We need you to help.

Google message received from Dave Ward 29/4:  Greetings from the land down under! We have only just got our computer up and running and are sorting through the mail. First of all, a big thanks to all that came to see us off at the London Hotel last Saturday night. We are most grateful.

The trip over was fine though both of us were quite tired after packing all week. The dogs survived the journey and so did the van (thanks Ian). We arrived in Hobart around lunchtime and started unpacking the van and bike. (New black Suzuki DL1000 …Ed.) Then went to bed early to wake up next morning freezing cold, the temperature around 4 degrees! We stayed in bed for a little while to thaw out.

Monday we spent checking out the area which is very nice with the water, boats and Mt Wellington in view. I popped into my new work to sign all the papers and see how long it's to travel to work: 12 minutes in peak hour!

I am going for a trail ride this Sunday with a guy from work and am looking forward to it as I have no idea about the trails around here; I only know just the road stuff at this point.

That’s all for now and we will keep in contact.

Email from Barbara and Trevor Rolf Harris travelling around Europe: Hi, we are currently in Germany - Dusseldorf. The conference starts tomorrow. We were meant to fly to Paris on Wednesday 21/4. At 10am we got a call from the travel agent to say that we had two options: 1 - fly to Bangkok and join the list of people trying to fly to Europe and probably not be able to get to Paris, or 2 - fly to Paris on Friday 23/4. We picked 2. On Friday 23/4 we got a call at 11am to say that we have 3 options: 1 - fly to Madrid that day; 2 - Athens on 28/4; or Paris on 30/4. We picked option 1. Not particularly happy about it. If we had known earlier we would had had time to organise things further and possibly had our car moved to Madrid and started our holiday from there... Anyway, we thought it best to start our holiday, so flew to Madrid. We then managed to get a flight to Paris that day. So our holiday started two days late and took longer to get to the start point. But since then it has been great.


We spent a day in Paris walking around Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter (we think). Next day picked up the car and drove to Brussels, staying for the night seeing some of the sights. We would like to go back to Brussels another time to see more. Today we drove to Dusseldorf, Germany, and have found some nice goats cheese :)

We went for a walk today around the area the hotel is in. We are close to the Central transit station and have found that we have free travel on all public transport provided as part of our hotel deal. We also have Internet access :)

Trevor's phone has international roaming, but we have only been able to call our friend Toni at this point. There seems to be some sort of magical art to international calls on mobiles. Trev has found in the past that if he has received an SMS from a number while overseas then he can reply to it. My phone also seems to have international roaming set up. Hope all is well. 

Google message from Ron Johnston for those people interested in buying TYRES...Road, Off Road, Motorcross, Super Motard. The Club is considering doing a bulk buy (at a discount price) of tyres, provided there are enough people interested.  I have spoken to Rick at Treads N Things, Ringwood and he's prepared to allow us to visit the Workshop one evening during the week to give us a run down on the products, whether they be Michelin, Bridgestone, Pirelli, etc. The tyres will be on the racks and he will go through their applications and we will be able to see what we want to purchase. Those interested please email me at  [email protected]  by 12th  May, 2010.

Ben Warden was offered to purchase a bike at what seemed to be a price too good to be true. The deal was buy it tonight or it goes to a mate the next day. No pressure! I needed a second pair of eyes and Misho and Pina accompanied me to the viewing in Misho’s ute. Prior to inspection the smart thing would have been to use the service offered by Vic Roads (see attached document) that notes the status of the bike, in particular whether it has a higher purchase agreement with monies still owing, who owns it, of course, and whether it can be registered again ie whether the bike is a statutory write-off, or just a technical one. For $24 over the net all of this information can be provided within minutes. As it turned out, I was not well enough prepared and delayed the purchase until doing the checks by which time the sale had gone.  Thanks to Misho and Pina for their time and help. Pina was particularly astute in reading the body language and listening attentively for relevant, subtle clues. Brilliant work!

 

Second Email from Barb

Hi, we left Düsseldorf on May 1 – a public holiday in Germany. There were a lot of protest marches, a tradition all over Europe. We spent most of the day at Cologne and climbed the 500+ steps up the right tower of the cathedral. A lot of this is a spiral stair case that is two way but only just wide enough for people to pass. I did not like that much but the views from the top were excellent.

We spent so much time walking around the cathedral that we ended up staying in Cologne the night. On the 2nd May we drove to Wurzburg. There is information in the Rathaus about how the city was damaged during WWII. It was one of the cities fire-stormed during. There was no habitable building left at the end of the fire and hundreds dead, mainly from the fire. Many of the cities in this area were bombed.

Wurzburg is the start of the Romantic Road. If you can find and follow the signs you can drive along a very pretty part of Germany. I was driving today.  At one point we lost the signs. After looking for a while we decided to put the next town in the Sat Nav in the car. I am sure the roads we took were not on the tourist route, but we did get to see more of rural Germany :)

We have learnt the hard way the Sat Nav does not know about road closures. For instance, the main route into one town was closed for road works. We backed up and then followed what we hoped were locals, along a back road. Driving on narrow roads while on the right side of the road is fun enough. Having a big truck come at you from the other direction and having no room to move over is more than a little scary. Trev was worried I was going to put him in the ditch or up a wall; I was worried that the truck was going to take us out. We made it :)  And I stayed out of the ditch and away from walls.

Tonight we are in N … We have walked around the city wall. It is a very old town.

We are deciding what to do tomorrow - try to find/follow the signs or speed things up and head to the towns of interest quickly, so that we can then get to Italy and on to our original plans.

Barbara and Trevor  'The Honeymooners'