Castlemaine                          Sunday 29th August, 2010

Misho Zrakic

Honda CBR1000

Cliff Peters (leader)

Kawasaki ZX12R

Paul Southwell (rear)

Honda CBR1000

Mick Bosworth

Kawasaki ZX10

Ben Warden

Honda CBR954

Alan Squires (1st ride)

Kawasaki ZX10

Dennis Lindemann

Honda CBR600

Ben Fuller

Suzuki GSXR1000

Ha Du

Honda CBR600

Ed Simonis

Moto Guzzi S1200

Pina Garasi

Honda CBR600

Harry & Suzanne Buckle (1st)

Triumph 955

Rod Merrett

BMW HP2

 

13 bikes, 14 people

 

I have to say that the only reason I’m doing this write up is because I felt sorry for the editor last month that he’d have to pull something together himself (because no one had done the write up for the ride) two days before the mag was due to go to print, in a addition to his editorial and printing duties.  Once you make an offer to someone in need, there’s no way they’re going to let you back out of it without feeling like a real douche-bag.  I daresay, though, that he’s probably been thinking that it would have been so much easier if he’d had done it himself... you see, I completely forgot about it until after he started printing last month!  Doh!  Of course, my reluctance to do the write up isn’t a reflection on the ride itself; all the corners and sweepers were awesome and it was a very fun day, although it may not necessarily sound like it from my dreary writing.  So here I am, trying to recollect one month old riding memories and cross checking that those memories belong to the correct ride for a composition when I’d rather be thinking about the coming long weekend Cup ride, Dargo weekend, and Christmas camp—riding heaven, here we come!  YEEAAHHH!!! 

It was good to see Ben Fuller and Eddie again, and perhaps we’ll see Ed more regularly now that he’s a member.  We had a couple of new riders and speculating their impressions of the ride wasn’t too difficult as it’s pretty much the same for all new riders, including myself a year and a half ago (believe me, it feels like it’s been much longer than that)... really enjoy the ride, it’s a fast pace, well organised, haven’t been on these roads before, etc, which is always good reinforcement of the Club’s reputation and standard.

So we’re heading up and around the hill from Whittlesea for Flowerdale and what used to fly past me in black with an almighty roar had become a silent shiny flash of red and black—was that... Dennis?  Blink and you won’t even notice.  Like Bjork, the Icelandic singer, sang “It’s oh so quiet”.  At least it’s faster and shinier than the old CBR, huh?  J

The weather forecast had predicted a warm and sunny day for Melbourne, but alas, we were having morning tea in Lancefield.  It wasn’t freezing, but definitely not warm.  From there, Cliff led the way along the Burke and Wills Track to Kyneton and eventually, Castlemaine for lunch where we were joined by Barb, Eileen and Bev. 

After a leisurely lunch, we continued on through Fryerstown, Vaughan, Guildford, Franklinford, Shepherds Flat, Hepburn Springs, Glenlyon, Spring Hill, Little Hampton, Trentham, Woodend, Macedon, Hesket, Bolinda, Clarkefield, and Bulla where a few of us stopped to watch the planes fly overhead.  The CBR cut out somewhere during the second half of the day whilst Paul was rear riding, and then again not long after somewhere between Clarkefield and Bulla while Ben was rear rider.  I rolled as far as the bike would take me and then restarted the routine from all previous occasions of pulling over, turning the ignition off, parking the bike, and waiting.  Just waiting...and waiting.  There were lots of possibilities, but no one could pinpoint the problem, and call it what you will, but after my experience with the VF500 and seeing Pina’s distress over the R6, I refused to take it to a mechanic until I had a better idea of what the problem was—and hey presto!  It happened!  Despite knowing that I still had at least half a tank of petrol left, I decided to open up the tank anyway, just for something to do, I guess.  Ben picked up on the fact that the petrol cap was acting as a suction cap... long story short, from there on, I contacted Metro in Ringwood, got confirmation from Rick that the problem was in fact a kinked tube in the tank and all is good again.  J  Very cheap fix compared to what it would have cost. 

Ugh, hardly an exciting write up.  I very nearly managed to delegate this responsibility to Ron but unfortunately, he wasn’t even on the ride.  Thanks to Cliff for leading and Paul and Ben for sharing the rear riding.

Ha Du