Red Rock Sunday 22^nd May 2011

Willem Vandeveld	Honda ST1300	Cliff Peters (leader)	Kawasaki ZX1200R
Misho Zrakic	Honda CBR1000	Richard Paulson (2^nd ride)	Kawasaki Versys 650
Tony Stegmar	Honda CBR1000	Roman Biaroza	Kawasaki GPx250
Paul Southwell	Honda CBR1000	Phill Hotschilt	Suzuki GSXR1300
Alex Nabelyaev (1^st ride)	Honda CBR1000	Bill Simpson	Suzuki GSXR1000
Tim Emons	Honda CBR1000	Cindy Lee	Suzuki GSXR750
Ben Warden (rear)	Honda CBR954	Peter Ng	MV Augusta Brutale 1078
Pina Garasi	Honda CBR600	Marc Marais	Triumph 675

It’s amazing what a difference a few kilometres can make, hey? I mean, if I’d made it just a few more kays into Colac someone else would be writing this ride report. As it turns out, I was the one that ran out of juice within spitting distance of the next fuel stop which earned me the honourable job of newsletter scribe. Oh! A little bit of advice: don’t try and bullshit to Ben about how many kays you had on your speedo at the start of a ride. I’d kind of forgotten that I went the long way round to get to the starting point when I made the statement “I only had 20 kays on my clock when we left Meredith”. It was several hours later that Ben posed the question “If you reckon you did 275km before you ran out of juice and we’ve only done 190km since we left Meredith, then you must have done a lot more than 20km when you left Meredith”. Twenty? Eighty? Coupla days! Bloody Sherlock Holmes!

When I left home at 10am I planned to meet the main party at Anakie Junction. I allowed half an hour which is more than enough to get there from my home. Saturday had been such great weather but all forecasts were saying that Sunday was going to be average.

As I left home it was overcast, dry and not too bad in terms of temperature. However, I only got about five kms up the road and it started to rain. And rain. And rain. By the time I got to Anakie it was pelting down. I didn’t want to sit there waiting for the crew to arrive so I decided to keep riding in the direction that I thought the Club was coming from and meet up with them. As I rode I was trying to mentally calculate where they might be. I knew the going would be slower than normal because of the wet conditions and I’d spoken to Cliff the day before who said he hoped to make Meredith by 11am. I stopped riding half an hour from Meredith and waited in the now pissing rain.

As I sat there another poor sod on a V-Strom cruised by and gave me a wave. He had enough gear on his bike to sink an island. He was taking it very easy indeed. Any who, after about ten minutes I started to think that maybe MSR was taking a different route. I was worried I might have missed ‘em. So I high-tailed it towards my new rendezvous point, Meredith.

It was a pity about the heavy rain because the ride to Meredith from Staughton Vale is good fun when the roads are dry. Oh well, it happens.

After sitting and drying out for about 20 minutes at the Meredith servo, sipping a nice hot coffee, a green machine arrived. Then a GPx250 roared in behind it and commenced corner-making duty which meant but one thing: I wasn’t the only silly idiot riding in the rain today.

It was nice to see and greet many of the MSR friends that I know and love. It was also good to see a few new faces as well. Welcome to all of them. How gorgeous was that Brutale of Peter Ng? Wow!

Paul and Willem decided to split and head for home. Considering how the weather had been up until that point, who could blame them! Cindy was undecided and a flip of a coin would help her make the choice. Or so I thought. The last I heard as we left Meredith was that the coin told her to continue on with the ride. It was only when we got to Beeac for lunch that I found out she had changed her mind and gone home with the two aforementioned gentlemen, a decision she would later regret. But I’ll leave that story for her to tell.

We had a close encounter with the local Beeac constabulary but because we, the good members of MSR, never break the law, all was well.

Lunch was a pretty mediocre affair but we got a laugh at the local ladies in the Beeac milk bar. More stereo typical country women you would not find! But they were fun and very friendly to say the least.

Mr Plod cruised around giving us the greasies again.

Then it was off to Colac via Red Rock lookout. The lakes and mountains of this part of Victoria are really quite spectacular, and with all the greenness around, I was having a ball. The roads were pretty narrow but the clear skies and great visibility made for fun riding.

Mr Plod reappeared in the middle of nowhere again. One would swear he was very keen to add to the State’s coffers but the cream of the Victorian Police (that’s why he’s stationed in Beeac) failed on this day. [Cindy might have a different view …Ed.]

Red Rock’s lookout was really awesome. I can’t believe I’ve never been here before considering I live so close. We took photos and had a joke or two whilst Ben took the group picture. Then it was off to Colac for fuel.

I was very nervous about how far I was going to get but knowing that Ben was tail-end-charlie (TEC) and always carries a siphon was a bonus. On route to the land of the two-headed farmer we stopped at a house that had a tree on its nature strip. “So what?” I hear you say. But this was no ordinary tree. No, no. This was the most beautiful tree I have ever seen in my life. It was the “BRA TREE”. Of course much frivolities were partaken in with the author (who wasn’t breast fed as a child) smiling from ear to ear. More photos and a lot of laughs.

Sitting on 80km/h with fingers crossed I hoped to make Colac without running out of fuel but the TEC pulled me over and said “Get a move on; we’ll worry about the fuel problem when you do run out” or words to that affect. So I did. And I did. But quick as a wink, I was back on the road, in Colac getting the inevitable ribbing. Undeserved, of course.

Then it was off to Deans Marsh for coffee, a joke or two and some more laughs. I love sitting at Deans Marsh chatting with the gang. It’s always a lot of fun but normally it means the ride is close to an end which is a bad thing. We said farewell to Peter and his MV. We followed soon after.

I had had a great day’s riding and decided to stay with the group all the way to Lara, even though we passed within five kilometres of home. That’s how good a day it ended up being. The weather was close to perfect for this time of the year, especially if you exclude the first stage of the day. As always, the company was first class.

Thankyou to Cliff for another well lead ride and thanks to Ben for helping with that splash of juice. Great to see everyone again and I look forward to my next ride sometime soon.

Billy Simpson