Alexandra 17^th April 2005

Yarra Glen was the meeting point for my third ride with The Club. The weather forecast was a warmish 22° or 23° so I was looking to forward to a good day of riding.

Martin Hastie was the ride leader and somehow I got roped into doing the write-up, so here goes…(The sequence of events is right, the names of places may be in the wrong order, but it’s fairly close, I hope!)

Yarra Glen – Marysville

The first section of the ride was a reasonably short section, about 100k’s from Yarra Glen, through some back roads to Healsville and then across the Black Spur to Marysville for some morning tea. The roads were great, as usual, but there must have been some sort of a cycling event on because there were pushies everywhere, and they weren’t shy about taking up as much road as they wanted!

It wasn’t until I stopped at Marysville that I found out that we had had our first of two incidents for the day - Rick CBR954 (1^st ride) got a little too hot somewhere along the Black Spur and decided to check out a ditch. Fortunately for bike and rider, the damage was minimal – a broken mirror, bent foot peg and a scratched engine cover thingy on the bottom left hand side.

After a bit of food and a latte it was off to our lunch stop at Yea. At this point, a couple of riders peeled off to return Melbourne.

Marysville – Alexandra - Yea

The beginning of this section was fairly easy: a few main highway roads from Marysville through Buxton, Taggerty and then Eildon. The twisty section of road between Eildon and Alexandra was absolutely fantastic, although the cliff edges and gravel patches in the corners were a bit un-nerving to say the least – it was the first time I’d done this road, but probably not the last.

Unfortunately, it was on this section of road that Peter Parissis, on his YZF1000, came to grief in a big way. His bike would be a total write off and, after considering it, he probably did well to have only sustained a couple of broken ribs. I understand he was taken to the Alfred Hospital by helicopter and released a few days later. Get well soon.

After that, the group headed across to Alexandra, Molesworth and Yea for lunch.

Yea – Kinglake

After a relaxing lunch, the remaining 11 riders had an easy ride to the break-up point at Kinglake via Murundindi and Mt Slide. Of course, a day’s riding wouldn’t be complete without a speed camera incident, one just outside Alexandra. I don’t think that any one got pinged. Everyone was fairly well behaved for some reason.

Thanks to Martin for leading and also to Trevor and Rob (BMW) for the shared rear riding duties. Apart from the two accidents, I think every one had a good ride and a good day.

Michael Albanese (Suzuki GSXR 1000)