Ride Report: Syd Ride 2

Shortly after the SydRide mailing list was set up, a few rides were organised. This is my report of the second of these rides on October 30th 1994.

The original post for this ride is still on the net

 
Bell's Line of Road
 
Sunday dawned bright and early - in fact a full hour earlier than it should have, which was pretty disappointing to those of us who stayed up late the night before. Nevertheless, Christine and I managed to drag ourselves out of bed to face the day, and head off on SydRide2.

The Guzzi hadn't been going well lately, and I had in fact put some effort into finding other bikes to borrow, but I could only turn up Thomas's GB400 (used to be mine :-( ), which has only one seat, and my friend Jon's BMW K100, which being an ex-police bike also had only one seat. Christine wasn't too keen on that idea, so we decided to give the Guzzi a go anyway.

At 8:45 we rushed out the door, to rendevous at Cameron's place at 9. The Guzzi seemed to be in good form today, and we made it! This is quite a feat actually, since the previous three rides Cameron has organised (actually, I think I organised one of them), I didn't make it for one reason or another. So, it was a new experience. There were six other bikes there: Cameron on his GPX600, Thomas on a borrowed Hailwood replica Duke (his 900SS was undergoing repair - unusual for a Ducati :-), a 500 Pantah, an FJ1200, a GF250 (Tom's old bike) and a CBR1000. There were of course people riding these bikes, but I'm better with bikes than peoples names...

We all got going (quietly, so as not to disturb Cam's neighbours), about 9:20, and rode out along Parramatta Rd, the tollway (off at Silverwater Rd to avoid the toll), and out to Windsor, where we were 20 minutes late, only to find one bike. We figured maybe some people had failed to observe daylight savings time. So we waited, and in time two more bikes turned up.

Then it was up Bell's line of road, where some of us tended to get stuck behind slow moving buses etc, and some others (who shall remain nameless to protect their licenses) did some smart overtaking manoeuvres to get ahead. The Guzzi started to play up going up this road, and at one point lost power completely. But, we were going down hill at the time, and I just kept rolling til it started again.

Christine and I stopped to let the traffic get ahead, so we would have a clear road, and had a bite of a sandwich at one point. The guy on the GF250 (Peter?) stopped to see what we were doing, and then took off again shortly afterwards. A bit further down the road we came upon him on the side of the road. Apparently a car had come onto the wrong side of the road (on a long straight bit what's more), and he had run off the road onto the shoulder, which fortunately was quite wide there. On hitting the sand he had come off, but fortunately both he and the bike survived without serious injury, and he rode on. Apparently (ask Thomas) you're supposed to fall off GF250s.

Speaking of Thomas, he was the first to get everywhere, due to the fact that he was very reluctant to stop. His borrowed Ducati had a non-functioning kick starter, so he preferred to just keep riding. I was half expecting to see him riding around in circles at the Mt Victoria pub, with a steak sandwich in one hand, but I guess he figured he was high enough up the hill to roll-start it.

Lunch at Mt Vic pub was delicious. They make really good steak sandwiches there, and despite the fact that it had got cooler coming up the mountain, and the clouds were starting to build up to the big soak on Sunday night, the weather was very pleasant.

After lunch we split into two groups: those who wanted to go back down Bell's line of road, and those of us who didn't. Cameron, Jon (ZZR250) and Christine and I headed down the Great Western Highway to Springwood, where we took the road to Windsor. This is a great road, with some terrific views of Sydney and some good curvy bits. Then the last tedious 50k's or so, back into Sydney, where i managed to run out of petrol just outside Christine's place (who turned that reserve tap on??? Well, it's a long story...).

Anyway, I had quite a good day. Thank's Cameron for doing such a fine job of organising and for risking the wrath of your neighbours by having seven bikes over.

I must say though that there's something just slightly weird about a group of a dozen or so bikie computer nerds...

Patrick Jordan - patrick@ariel.com.au