I'll start my ride report the day before I went to Tathra.
Thursday night I went out for a couple of drinks, which turned into a few drinks, which turned into a LOT of drinks which turned into taking a woman home for red wine and movies.
Rather than too many details, I'll just say that I had 3 hours of broken sleep, tops, before getting up, having a shower and packing the bike. I then had to wake up sleeping beauty and tell her she had to go as I was going riding. There is no polite way to do that, so I just woke her and said "I've called you a cab, I need to hit the road, see ya!" I did walk her out at least...
Anyway, I jumped on the GS and started my 7 hour ride feeling like crap and tired as.
I know I stopped for food somewhere, but other than fuel and a couple of ciggies, I went basically straight down there. I went Orange-Blayney-Crookwell-Goulbourn-Braidwood-Batemans Bay then the coast to Tathra.
When I arrived at Rob's street, Tathra did it's best to make me crash the Suzi. I turned into his street in the dark, hit loose gravel and did a nice big front end slide. I kept it upright though and didn't even put my foot down. I rode straight into Rob's driveway, into his garage, hopped off and pulled a couple of Jim Beam cans out of the pannier and handed one to Rob.
After unloading the other crap off the bike Rob and I knocked off a 6 pack of Jimmy's each and went to bed.
I was awaoken at 6.30 the next morning and handed freshly brewed coffee (thanks Judy). After a couple of morning smokes for breakfast we geared up and hit the road about 9.30. This is when I found out my clutch had decided to slip after being fine the whole way down. We stopped for fuel and I loosened off the cable, just in case the cold and not enough free play was the problem. No such luck. My tacho also stopped working as we went to leave the servo. I stopped and checked the problem and found it had come out of the engine. A quick refit and we were away.
Now anyone who has ridden with Buckets knows you need to ride fast. Try keeping up with him on a lard arse GS with a clutch that slips anytime you try opening the throttle...
We headed further South and stopped for breakky in Bombala. Bacon, egg, cheese and onion rolls all round with coffee to drink. With that sorted we headed to the border and found some nice dirt roads, which turned to clay based mud. The GS was sliding all over the place. Fun in a not so fun way if you get my drift.
Once the dirt was cleared we came across a sign:
It was about then I wished I was riding something that handled better than the QE2...
While we were at it, I took a pic of the bikes:
After about 50-60km of striaghts and losing the front a couple of times where vicroads had done roadworks, but put up no signs, we stopped for a quick break in a rest area. I need a smoke...
Buckets did a move on his bike that he'll never be able to do again. He hit the mud and spun around 180 degrees in a space 1.5 times the length of the ZZR1100 and he didn't drop it!
Damn these no crashing Kwaka's!
Here's a pic of the mark he left in the mud. I have marked the slide with red:
Another bike pic too:
We set off again towards Orbust to fuel up, then went looking for the back way to Buchan.
This is the bit that mostly stuffed my fairing.
The back road from Orbust to Buchan has a long straight near the beginning that is bumpy as hell. The bumps actually partially snapped my fairing where the top joins the bottom halves. It was bouncing all over the place. I shoed Buckets how much movement it had and we both laughed. It got worse the next day though...
In the mean time I had
another front end slide on loose gravel and the rear brake ran out of fluid and the pedal did nothing. Not good on a big bike with crap brakes to begin with.
Anyway at Buchan we went to the Pub and had a nice meal and a few drinks. We were both stuffed after the days ride and eneded up going to bed by 8pm.
On a side note, the TV station was crazy. It had ads for QLD telling me I can't smoke anywhere, ads for Mt Isa, ads for NT...
We were watching Funniest HOme Video's (isn't that Ch9?) and there was promo's in the ad break for Thank God Your Here and The Wedge (isn't that Ch10?). Weird...
Next morning we woke up to find a very thick layer of frost and a -7 temprature. The ashtray on the table out side my room was so well stuck to the table I could pick up the table by the ashtray!
