Well, as you can guess, I haven’t been riding much, a quick ride to Kiama and back the other day is about all there has been. I HAVE got the CBX registered for another year which is good and the bits and bobs that Gary did last week means that I can ride it any time now.
But I haven’t been on a long ride for so long. The combination of Winter cold (which never seemed to worry me but now it does – I wonder why that is?) and commitments has kept the VFR in the shed apart from that little bimble down to Kiama. I really have been hankering for a longer ride so, when I looked at the forecast for yesterday (Monday) and it looked pretty reasonable, I decided I’d go.
Now, for a Putty ride, I’d normally light out around 7 or even before if I was feeling really keen but I haven’t been sleeping real well of late (thanks to disintegrating metal implants) so I didn’t actually get under way until after 0830. Nevertheless, the weather was good, around 10 degrees and no hint of rain now or on the horizon.
I was mostly concerned with how my leg would hold up so I took it easy and stopped more frequently than I’d normally do. So my first stop was a nice broad slab of bitumen off the side of the Mulgoa road opposite the Glenmore golf course. It’s usually a pretty busy bit of road so I made sure I was well tucked away. I took off the helmet and gloves and worked my way through the usual on-road exercises that I do and I was pretty pleased that I was feeling much better than I thought I would.
Then, looking around, I noticed that I was stopped right outside a little farm with a paddock full of alpacas. I LOVE alpacas, they are so cute. And, to add to the cuteness overload, one of the mummies was feeding a baby.
The run through Penrith was excellent and I was more than a little surprised at how light the traffic flow was. On the VFR, a fill-up at the big Shell servo at Cranebrook means that I can to to Milbrodale and back to Cranebrook with plenty of juice to spare so that was the aim.
Once on the Putty it didn’t take long to see that there were LOTS of roadworks being done. That’s not to say that they don’t need doing but slowing from 100 to 80 then to 60 and then to 40 before stopping at one of those rinky-dinky mobile boom gates and waiting forever certainly started adding a lot of time to the journey and adding a little to the frustration too. The only good part of it was that there was no traffic, I mean ZERO traffic. It’s like they had closed the road for me for the day.
I got a perfect run up the hill out of Colo and it continued all the way to Colo Heights; I just LOVE that section. The usual camera car in the village came up empty and it was hammer down on the other side of town. The continual stop/goes were still there and it will be a while, I am guessing because even the places that they were repairing are hugely outnumbered by rough sections preceded by “Warning – Broken Pavement” signs at regular intervals.
As usual, I took the opportunity to watch out on the southbound lane as well and noted that, if anything, it was worse. It was going to be a rough ride home.
By Grey Gums I was ready for a pit stop but I wasn’t expecting the place to be open. But, surprise, surprise, it was, so got my pit stop PLUS a cup of tea and some raisin toast, man, I needed that. I shot the breeze with William and a couple of fellow travellers and it didn’t take long for the time to pass.
That was when a consultation with the watch and a quick calculation in the head led me to the conclusion that, if I was going to continue north, do the 10 Mile and turn around at Milbrodale (a further 120kms) I was looking at getting home in the dark, or at least in the last part of the dusk. Did I want to do that, especially with the usual presence of wildlife? No. Was it going to start getting much colder? Yes. Had it already clouded over and started looking less pleasant for riding? Yes.
So, I chickened out. At the gate I turned left and scuttled for home. Good thing that I had scoped out the road on the way up, the southbound lane is dreadful, far worse than the northbound and it was bad enough. Fortunately, though, still no traffic and I made great time till I hit the suburbs. I had enough gas to get home so I pressed on, down the Northern Road (before the afternoon traffic had cluttered it up) and a pit stop at Appin before the last run down the mountain and home, before dark and still not excessively cold.
How did I hold up? Surprisingly well, actually. The leg is certainly an impediment but the distance is still doable.
My shed has another bike in it at the moment, no, it’s not mine. A good mate has bought a brand new, shiny, Triumph Tiger so the BMW is on the market. Sadly for Kevin, he had a fall in the car park (not off the bike, just a fall) and he’s done a ligament in his knee. So the F800 is living in my shed till he’s better and he can make concerted efforts to unload it. What a bugger, brand new bike and he can’t ride it.
It hasn’t been a good couple of weeks for racers, though. A Spanish rider died at the Isle of Man and New Zealand’s Damon Rees, passed away late last week, the victim of a previously undiagnosed hereditary condition. Life is so cruel.
Brisbane’s Senna Agius is lighting up the FIM Junior Grand Prix class with two wins (both from pole position) in the last round at Portimao. I’ve seen this kid race since he was a lot younger than he is now, he is the real deal.
Oh, and here’s how Relive saw the day.
Catch you next time.