Daylesford Sunday 24^th June 2007

Corbin Spurr	Suzuki Bussa	Trevor Harris (leader)	Yamaha YZF 1000
Cameron Stevens	Suzuki GSXR 1000	Ben Warden (rear rider)	Honda CBR 954 RRrr
Ron Johnston	Suzuki GSF 1200	Les Leahy	Kawasaki GPX 250
Chris Pointon	Suzuki GSXR 1000	Peter Jones (2^nd ride)	Yamaha R1
Misho Zrakic	Suzuki GSXR 750		9 bikes, 9 people

No hard feelings if I cut some corners! This is my first “scribble”. Considering the temperature we copped, most of the ride I was hibernating. Therefore I can’t remember much of it.

It all started with the special alarm ring tone dedicated for Sunday ride mornings ONLY (just to make sure that I don’t hit the snooze or smash the loud mongrel). Quick morning routine, hop on my bike and here we come, Whittlesea. Hopefully I get there by 10 o’clock.

It wasn’t long before I realized that my fingers were not functioning properly. Thermals and neck warmer did the job but there was not much I could do about my hands. Heated grips will definitely be on my bike parts shopping list. Couple of minutes to 10, I was second last to rock up at the usual Caltex servo, just before Ron. We have a chit-chat, emergency phone numbers taken by Ben, ride route introduced by Trevor (nailed by both of them, then butt off ’n get into gear).

All fueled up, we take off towards Flowerdale, passing by the fence where Matt’s GXSR1000 ended up after the stand-up wheelie went wrong and he crashed. The memory came flooding back with a fist in stomach sort of feeling, for a moment. (Hope Matt gets his Gixxer going soon and rejoins the Tribe).

Snap out of it! Nice view ahead! We get on to nice, fast, uphill sweepers. As we came to Kinglake West I forgot about my numb fingers. The road was a bit wet through to Flowerdale, with moldy patches in the middle of the lane which leaves no impression of a good grip. We all set a good pace and just cruised through it, straight into a new challenge: FOG!

If anything scares me on the road, apart from my own stupidity, it’s the Fog. It looks cool, but no matter how far you think you can see, you’re wrong. Unless you have somebody quick in front of you, Cameron for example.

Heading into Strath Creek on the twisty bit, the fog got thicker and thicker. To make the situation even more interesting my visor became all fogged up around the middle. I tried everything: stop breathing? – not a good idea. I tried opening vents on my helmet. Nope. I looked sideways, like a one-eyed chook. I got so desperate that I opened the visor and tried to clean it up with my fingers. That didn’t work either. Shite. Cameron’s getting away. One-eyed chook will do. Left eye for left corner, right eye for the right corner. Easy.

I recognised the uphill twisty bends and could recall sharp rights coming up. Cameron’s gone? Oh, he’s gone right. Yep, right all together with the sharp corner, but it wasn’t that sharp last time I went through here? Sh.t? Yes, it smells bad. Everything’s ok except my pride. Getting through that corner I can only remember how silly it looked. Erase? Yes, but don’t forget you’re a dumb arse (no worries, I’m talking to myself…)

Hitting straight before Broadford the fog cleared up. Short break next to the public toilets (how thoughtful, Trevor). “Anybody got a spare nappy, and a shovel?”

I gave it a good wipe with tonnes of Mr. Sheen (my visor), had a couple of smokes and off we went to Wandong, Wallan, Romsey and Woodend. (I have no idea via which roads as there are no street names marked on the Melway). Then we headed across to Mt Macedon with its magnificent scenery, beautiful roads, and up Straws Lane with lots of gravel on it. I remember there was a dark strip of gravel in the middle which didn’t look comfy, so I tried to avoid riding on it. Peter and Cameron were up in front when I felt a hail of gravel showering my bike. As usual, I’m too close. Rolled the throttle off. Still not good enough. Cameron seemed to have the same problem, so we set some greater distance between each other, and continued gliding and sliding through.

It wasn’t more than a few kilometres further when I saw smoke coming out of Cameron’s Gixxer as he accelerated out of a corner. At first I thought it was just because he’d really nailed it after a long time of suffocating “cruising mode”. Then again out of corner, hard on a gas, a big cloud of smoke again. At this stage I realised that there is something really wrong with his bike. Black smoke means petrol - no big deal. But this was somewhat whitish, and I couldn’t be sure whether its oil or not. It didn’t look good either way.

The fact that he’s not realising what’s going on left only one option: I have to warn him. But how do I do it? I pressed that little button on the bottom of the left handlebar. I could hear my own horn and felt silly again. Flash the lights? Yeah, right. Who would have time to look in the mirrors when we’re riding like madmen through these winding roads in the woods? Overtake him? Believe me, out of all the other silly things I’ve tried, that is at the top of the list. The road is really narrow and twisty and there are not many places you could pick for overtaking. I just got really close, getting out of the corner, cranked the sh*t out of my 750 cause I knew he’s gonna do the same thing. It’s when I got in his mirror that he rolled off, realising I’m doing silly things riding on the wrong side of the road in that short straight. Waving him to pull over, we stopped.

There was a cloud of steam around him. I saw a green stream virtually pissing underneath the top fairing, between the forks, over the front wheel, about a half a metre in front of his bike. Radiator puncture. Ambient temperature was around 8 degrees. Lucky it’s so cold. I believe even without any coolant his bike wouldn’t overheat.

Coming up one by one, everybody pulled over on a narrow shoulder of the narrow road. By the time Ben (rear rider) arrived, it was a mess, bikes everywhere. We were all whooping and hopping around. Worried about safety, Ben suggested that we all leave ASAP. He and Corbin stayed to help Cameron to fix the leak. The rest of us continued with the ride.

At Daylesford Corbin and Ben rejoined us. They had poured some stuff into Cameron’s radiator to stop the leak, so he could take the short way home.

Judging by the crowded shops, I guess it was the centre of the Daylesford. It was even hard to find a parking spot, so we all parked on the corner of the nature strip between road signs. Bad Boys.

In a split second everyone disappeared. I picked the bakery, ordered a pie, and a latte, and sat outside so I could have my nicotine dose with a coffee. Chris joined me. After a while the others snuck out from somewhere. That’s when we realised Ben and Corbin were back with us again. Shortly afterwards we took off to Little Hampton, Spring Hill and past the reservoir to Kyneton. Then across to Lancefield, Pyalong, Tallarook, Kerrisdale and Strath Creek. Then back through Flowerdale to break up at Kinglake West. As per the mag itinerary and Trevor’s prediction, 300 km for the day. Of course, not enough, as usual.

I chose to go home the long way and joined Ron, Corbin, Peter and Chris through to Kinglake and down to St Andrews. The others turned off towards Eltham while Chris and I headed through Hurstbridge to Greensborough where I got on the Ring Road with a smile under my helmet and 446 km on my odo.

I know it wasn’t easy to read all this crap, if anyone has the patience to get this far. Just keep in mind, this is my first article (imagine what the second will look like). O…ooo! It’s not over yet!

I would like to use this opportunity to thank everyone who helped in the process of getting my bike fixed.

So thank you Ben, Ron Johnston, Dave, Danny and Ron Solomon (Balls High Performance Tuning).

Misho Zrakic