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JANUARY 2009

by Al

It was sort of a spur of the moment thing this trip. I had chucked in the job I had for the year. M had chucked in her job and both of us were technically unemployed again. Wow!

What to do? A dilema that is actually very easy to fix. Get on ya bike n ride!

Where to go? Believe me thats a pretty easy thing to solve when you have a couple of old V7's that have proven they can travel for months without a break. Problem is both of them have spent almost the previous twelve months mothballed so they were in need of a good service then a warm up. That means drop the oil then tackle Queen Mary Falls and see what happens.

Service complete and its off down south. Firstly, a bit of the windy stuff on the way to Armidale and down Thunderbolts way. Spending the first night at Tenterfield battening down for a potential thunderstorm that never happened. Then the second night was spent in Gloucester after a liesurely trip via Bretties Reserve and the twistie bits down the range. Till eventually it was into Sydney and catch up with some friends over a couple of bottles of red.

Of course thats not all we headed down to Bawley Pt for a few days at M's sisters place and catch up on a bit of surfing. Nice place, got some interesting reds in the bottle shop. Whilst in Bawley Pt I took the yellow V7 for a spin down to Bermagui n back. Other than windy it was a great trip with lots of nipping into spots along the way to see what I could find, like grave yards and stuff like that.

  We left Bawley Pt on cold morning and headed up towards Canberra and eventually ending up in a place called Lithgow via the following: Goulburn - Taralga - Mt Werong - Oberon - Lowther. A bloody good ride with hardly anyone other than the odd truck and motor cyclist. Would do that one again some day.

We went to the Workers Club in Lithgow for tea and camped at some place just out of the main town centre in a cabin because it was cold. In fact it was very cold. In fact it was so cold we slept in our sleeping bags inside the bed. In fact it was so cold we slept inside the thermal liner inside the sleeping bag inside the bed. In fact I wore my beenie it was so cold.

After Lithgow we continued to head north via the following little places. Firstly, we headed up a nice piece of bitumen to Ben Bullen and Capertree. We left the highway and headed out to a place called Glen Davis (we're going back there in September) on a mixture of gravel then more gravel once the bitumen ended.

From Glen Davis we headed north via Glen Alice - Rolystone (for a bit of lunch) - Reedy Ck - Bylong - Minghorne - Cross Roads - Frog Rock - Turrill and eventually Coolah where we camped the night. A very brilliant ride over many kilometres of gravel and windy roads. A great day!

From Coolah we headed east, well sort of, back to Tenterfield via Tamworth and a miriad of little towns on the way. We travelled along Black Stump Rd turning left into Coonaberabran Rd to Quirindi. From Quirindi we headed up to Werris Ck then to Tamworth. Not a bad ride, fairly straight and flat roads with not much happening except for a few places along the way.

Well, guess what we get into Tamworth approaching the lights in the wrong lane with a huge truck alongside and presto the accelerator cable snaps. Humm, what a dilema. I somehow navigate the bike through the lights pulling madly on the right hand cylinder throttle cable. The bike doesn't run too well up hill on one cylinder I can tell you, but non the less we made it. Pulling over I then wound the idle in as far as possible on both carbies so it would idle pretty high. Then it was negotiate the road to find a spot where we could pull over and do some running repairs.

From the lights we headed out to the Information place where we located a tree that offered some shade to carry out the deed of adapting the choke as a throttle. About an hour later and its back on the road. Because of the impediment it was decided to head straight back to Brisbane via Tenterfield using the choke as an accelerator. Believe it or not it worked a treat and we got home in one piece.

Now for the next trip. Tu ru.

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