Quite a weekend, including that sad news from the Queenslanders. Just so sad. Kind of Irrelevant to report my stupid tail after hearing that. My day started with my usual arrival 45minutes early, resulting in a 10k ride staring into the dawn Sunrise. More on the later. So off we went on a Lap of the Old Rd past the 3 Motorcycle Cops down the road a bit. The Group arrives at the T intersection with the first 4 riders turning left and everyone else turning right. It's the usual way we roll. It didn't matter much as all roads lead to Breakfast at Bulladela. Great feed and off we go to the now virtually abandoned Buladela Bends, great fang all around, just more damp than expected. No maintenance on the table drains means runoff across the darker bends. I stopped where it meets the Pacific Hwy to fiddle with something and then went hard to catch up. Maybe 100ks later I notice the bike become less nippy in the steering, a thought flashes across my mind but reject it instantly. I do some weaving and it really does seem sluggish, Mmm. So what brilliant idea do I try and do, catch and pass the group to let them know, that goes out the window seconds later as the bike starts to shimmy violently, I immediately try moving left to pull off the road while applying the front brake. This does a lot more harm than good, come off the front and slow happy the rear as the bike starts doing a slow tank slapper, thankfully and it's been years since I did this chant, Please don't crash, please don't crash and the bike stopped still vertical. Yep, flat front tyre. It's Saturday arvo approx 2pm and who knows where a bike shop that's open is around here. Luckily Will has decided not to ride this weekend and is following in his car with a trailer. The bike gets loaded that's problem 1 fixed. So scrolling through his phone Will remembers there is a Laverda Owner who has a connection to a bike shop in Port Mac, about 30 minutes away and after a call Tony agrees to open that closed shop, supply a tube and a tyre machine to fix problem 2. Unbelievably helpful in a time of need,what a great bloke. So after both Tony and Will knock some skin off, the bike is fixed and rideable. So to that rim tape, nothing was found to cause the puncture other than that petrified rock-hard and sharp rim tape stuck to the rim, under it the alloy was pretty corroded, so a combination of either that sharp rock-hard tape or cheese grader-like rim corrosion rubbed a hole in the tube. So the rim got some sanding and a new black rubber rim tape and tube and held air well. In the past we had learned the hard way not to arrive at Warhope, the start of The Oxley Hwy late in the afternoon as that meant heading west toward the setting sun. And that's exactly what happened next, a good 80ks of holding your arm up to block the low sun to get a gimps of where the next 35k bend was. Bloody dangerous is an understatement, finally the Sunset and a new problem arose. I have a list of jobs to do on my bikes, and on that list is to replace the blown tacho backlights and while doing that I was going to adjust the headlight angle. Usually, I have a really great headlight, slightly illegal 130-watt high and 90-watt low beam but My new slightly shorter new rear shocks had it aimed into the trees, great for seeing Posums. Not so good at seeing in pitch black country roads at Kangaroo Oclock at speed. Add to that plunging Temperature, those two effects made that 160ks seem like a very long road. I ended up waving Will past to use his Car Headlights, which worked well till speeds crept up making me pretty uncomfortable. Anyway, I finally got to Walcha in the end frozen to the core. I wasn't stopping to put any more gear on, I just wanted to get there ASAP. So thanks to Will and Tony I had my little Adventure and survived to tell the tail. So the last 3 Oxley Runs its been, a slipping throttle grip needing multiple cable ties to stop that happening, flogged out rear sprocket allowing the chain to jump teeth, and now a flat tyre. Got to win one sometime soon.
