Day 311: Heading Home

For reasons too long to explain, Andy dropped Pete and I with the trailer at Pete's sister's place to bring their dad's car back to Canberra. Along with this we also picked up Bron's bike that she rode in the Ride to Conquer Cancer in October. It was quite an effort to fit all the stuff we had from the ute into the car but with a few adjustments and some minor repositioning of things we made it all fit. It was convenient that Pete's dad's car had a tow bar.

The drive home was pretty uneventful with the exception of getting a call from Andy who was a good half hour ahead of asking us whether we'd drop some fuel to him if he ran out. He'd hoped to pull in to a small town on the highway to refuel but found the servo there was no longer in business. As it turned out he managed to limp the ute in to the next town. Apparently the guy at the servo asked Andy what was wrong with his ute when he pulled in because it was chugging and spluttering up to the fuel pump. Andy called to let us know he'd made it so we could stop looking for the old white ute on the side of the road. The whole sequence of events was a welcome distraction from the boring highway.

Day 291: A Welcome Sky

Last night wound up being a lot later than I had planned and it was followed by a full day of training and an early evening flight home. Today was a big day and I was very happy for it to be over.

Because I hadn't had a chance to take a photo during the day, I pulled up on the way home for this one just near Fyshwick. I thought the colour of the sky and how the moon looked was pretty cool, it was nice of Canberra to put on such a beautiful night to welcome me home. It was getting pretty dark when I stopped, so by using the door frame of the car to steady my camera I was able to hold it still enough to get the half second exposure without too much blur. I'm pretty happy with the result.

Day 258: Ver'geten

After all the excitement of the last couple of days I was quite happy to get home, unfortunatley I was exhausted and arrived home in time to have dinner and crash out on the couch. To add to the misfortune I hadn't taken a photo since 11:40pm last night. I could blame being tired after an intense two day conference laced with a big night out, but the truth of the matter is I just forgot to take a photo.

In the place of a photo from today, I'm putting a photo of a page from Belinda's Dutch/English Dictionary. I thought this would make a change to the normal Arty Fart type photo I take when I "Ver'geten".

Day 243: Sick Day

Henry was sent home early from Day Care yesterday afternoon with quite a high temperature, we took him straight to the Doctor and were told to keep him home for the next two days and bring him back on Monday to see how the Antibiotics were working.

He was far from his normal self today, until he talked me into taking him outside. Now, when I say 'talked me into' I really mean he stood at the back door with tears in his eyes crying 'ousside! ousside! ousside!' until I caved in. It wasn't very warm out and normally Monkey and Bear stay inside, but today Henry insisted that they come outside with us. All three of them had a few runs on the slide and Henry was finally smiling, he was even helping Monkey and Bear climb the ladder of the slide.

After only a little while outside I had to pull the pin and drag Henry, Monkey and Bear back inside. The cold was making Henry's nose run like a tap and with that, my reprieve from the grizzles was gone... at least for a while. Eventually, after Henry had calmed down, we had a nice, quiet day at home together.

Day 218: Bonus Day

Apart from Pete getting a new throttle cable yesterday, another good thing came out of his breakdown: We were delayed long enough that there was no way we'd be able to make it home in the remainder of the day.

This is good because it meant we had an excuse to spend the night in Marlo on the way home and we could extend our trip back to include stopping in Cann River for Breakfast, taking the Imlay Road toward Eden and the up to Bombala through Wyndham and Cathcart. From Bombala it was a pretty uneventful ride in to Cooma and then the boring stretch back to Canberra.

My photo today was taken out the front of the cabin we stayed in at the Marlo Caravan Park, we were just about to head off and it was looking like the weather would be good to us. It was a good day weather wise... until we got to Cathcart where the wind stated to pick up and by the time we rode through Bombala it was cold and blowing a gale.

I was glad to get home at around lunch time and out of the cold, I didn't have that much unpacking to do because I was wearing most of it. I think I counted 8 layers on top which wasn't counting my Dri-Rider Jacket or the one piece rain suit that I was wearing to keep the wind out. What a great couple of days.

Day 72: The New Car At Last

The new car - a 2006 BMW 530d. I took this photo on the way home today, the plan was to stop at every tourist trap between Coburg & Canberra.

The first was Glenrowan with the big Ned Kelly, it was pretty busy and it was very hard to get a good photo of the car with Ned.

The Ettamogah Pub was next on the list, I actually drove past it and had to make a U-turn to go back... I was sure I didn't see the signs leading up to the turn off. Turns out I didn't, they've been pulled down and the Pub's closed. At least it was easy to get a photo of the car with the Pub in the backround.

After Ettamogah is Holbrook with the enormous submarine that somehow landed in regional NSW a very long way from its natural habitat.

I knew I was getting closer when I pulled in to Gundagai, I was starting to feel pretty tired too. As I was grabbing a coffee I heard someone yelling out my name... It was my brother Dion who was driving a truck in the opposite direction and had pulled in for some fuel. After a quick catch up and showing off of the new car we headed our separate ways.

Eventually I made it home, the car and I travelled around 760km and the fuel gauge is showing about half way between the quarter and half tank marks. So far I'm pretty impressed with my purchase.

Day 43: Allo Allo Allo, Wot 'Ave We 'Ere Then?

Day two of our jaunt  saw us riding from Bright after in glorious sunshine and on to Mount Hotham which was shrouded in low cloud that reduced visibility to around 15 meters in some sections.

Right up the top of Hotham we cruised past the Highway Patrol car pictured above. It pulled out quite quickly behind us and I started to worry. After a few minutes of tailing us the lights went on... Pete and I continued on for a little while looking for somewhere safe to pull over, Andy had done the smart thing and disappeared into the mist ahead.

I didn't think we'd been doing anything wrong, but the three bikes all have fairly noisy exhausts and I figured we were probably going to be given a talking to about the legality, or illegality as it were, of our exhaust systems.

I'm glad to say I was wrong.

After a bit of a yarn with Mick the friendly rock chucking plod we discovered that he was conducting a survey of riders that come through the area in an attempt to find out where the riders come from, why the come to Mount Hotham and why they keep falling off the roads up there. Apparently there had been two fatalities in the last two weeks up there, not good. Mick gave us a bunch of pamphlets and brochures on protective gear, choosing the right line for the corners and stats on accidents and risks associated with riding.

So why did I call Mick, our friendly Highway Patrol Officer, a rock chucker I hear you ask? Allow me to elaborate: While I was taking this photo Pete was having a bit more of a chat with Mick and noticed that his shirt was looking really grubby, I guess the constant attention Pete was showing Mick's uniform was enough for him to offer up an excuse for being such a grot. The reason he gave was that he got a bit bored waiting for bikes to show up yesterday so he decided to pick up a large rock and throw it over the edge of the hill to see how far it would roll... apparently all the kids are doing it these days. My question is: Why didn't he change his shirt from yesterday? Pete reckons that one was probably too stained with Coffee & Donuts from the day before...

The rest of the day cruised along smoothly, we managed to dodge more rain than we got caught in and only struck a small amount of hail about 30km out from Jindabyne on our return trip. We covered somewhere around 640km today and Andy dropped me home at a little before 8pm after a big day.

What an awesome weekend I've had with two good mates, but damn it's good to be home.

Day 40: A Very Long Day

After a full day of product training that involved sitting, listening and being shuffled from one room to another all the while feeling a little tired from the previous nights activities I drove my colleagues back to Canberra. I was comfortable in the role of chauffeur and aside from the 10 minute stop at Marulan for a 'comfort stop' and some Hungry Jacks we drove straight through.

The hire car was a current model Calais which is not that different to Belinda's Commodore, just a little more plush with the leather seats and dual zone climate control. I was glad to be in a car I was familiar with because I knew how to disable the annoying rest reminder that chimes at you every 2 hours, I was also able to set the time correctly (it was 10 minutes fast when I picked it up).

I was interested to see how the newer V6 engine felt and performed compared to our older non SIDI V6 so I reset the trip computer before we headed up the highway.

The end result was actually pretty impressive: 4 adults with over night bags traveled around 690km with an average speed of 88.5kmh and average fuel consumption of 8.8 litres per 100km. It still had a good quarter of a tank when I got home. The SIDI engine still felt as good as our Commodore but the economy really was better than what I'm used to in the SV6, I have to congratulate Holden on the evolution of their V6 powerplant... I just wish they'd been able to come up with a better name for it that "Spark Ignition Direct Injection". I mean really, it's a petrol engine, where else is ignition going to come from if not from a spark?