Mirboo North Sunday 5^th August, 2007

Paul Southwell	Honda CBR1000	Cameron Stevens	Suzuki GSXR1000K7
Ian Payne	Honda CBR1000	Clifford Peters	Suzuki GSXR1000
Jim Corbic (2^nd ride)	Honda VTR1000	Dave Ward	Suzuki GSXR600K7
Ben Warden (leader)	Honda CBR954	Martin Thompson	BMW R1100RS
Rob Cuzner (1^st ride)	Honda CBR600	Geoff Jones	Yamaha R1
Greg Trainor (1^st ride)	Triumph 955	Tony Raditsis	Yamaha TRX850

Weather: cold, windy and wet. 14 degree top temperature (for 3 minutes at 1.18pm!)

Well...what a day! After coping some flack about my tyres on the last ride, I decided to ride the “Flying Marshmallow, not the ZX9R! In hindsight, I am glad I did as it rained ALL day!

I rolled out the driveway at about 8.50am and jumped straight onto the freeway for Berwick. The roads were clean and dry until I hit the Phillip Island exit, where it started drizzling! By Berwick, the drizzle had turned into fine, misty rain. I refuelled, and then headed for McCafe for a latte and a muffin! I wandered back to the meeting point at about 9.45am when I noticed a few bikes gathering. When it was time to leave, the above table of riders had turned up. Note new riders.

The lunch destination was to be Mirboo North and Korumburra for morning tea. However, getting there was to be the usual Ben Warden back roads tapestry. After all the years and all the rides I have been on, the rides lead by Ben are usually three things: 1. Challenging 2. EPIC and 3. Fun. Today we got two out of three, without any real dramas for a change!

At 10am almost exactly, we all jumped onto the freeway and headed for Pakenham. We then ducked around the back way into Drouin. From there we headed down to Korumburra for morning tea. However, getting there was a patchwork of back roads, as expected. The weather was closing in with every kilometre travelled. What started as patchy but heavy cloud soon turned grey, dark and foreboding!

We stopped for morning tea and ran into two different groups of Ulysses riders, one from Melbourne and the other from Gippsland. Included in the Melbourne Group was Pina on her R6. I think we frightened her on the ride Ian lead up around Heathcote a month or so ago, and she hasn’t been back. Pina did come over and say hello in her very shy way! My BMW caused some confusion with both groups thinking it was part of theirs, so therefore they all parked up next to us.

The morning tea conversation was a mixture talking about reconstructed knees, storm covers for your seat and high visibility vests. (I ordered mine this morning.) I also fielded these questions from other BMW owners: “Is it the R 3.2 with the factory W66 option pack or the R3.2A with the high performance handlebar grips?”

As we ate and the heat returned to our blood, the sun started shining too. Unfortunately, what Ben hadn’t told us was that today he had devised a route which would ensure that we headed back into the worst of it at every turn!  Sure enough, just as we departed morning tea, the heavens opened up and dumped down on us with a vengeance! The roads were a bit of a mixture, with some really grippy surfaces mixed in with some very smooth, slimy, mossy and greasy blacktop. The flying marshmallow seemed to revel in the conditions with it sticking on the tail of some riders who normally leave me for dead in the wet when on the ZX9R. Perhaps they were taking it easy or had worn tyres; who knows? But the bike didn't really put a foot wrong all day through some pretty average road conditions at times!

We took a rather, err, loopy route to arrive in Mirboo North for lunch, which included Leongatha (to avoid the dirt as it would most likely have been a bit slimy with all the rain), then we looped around the bottom of Arawata Road to come back into Leongatha, then Dumbalk, Mirboo, Boolarra, Boolarra South, and Mirboo North. Wild Dog Creek Road (from memory) was a particularly nice piece of bitumen, with one section having a series of uphill lefts and rights in succession with positive camber on each one, so even in the pissing rain you could really have a dip. I'll have to wander down one day when it's dry and do that road again! Nice!

It stopped raining while we all had lunch in Mirboo North, watching  the local plod sit in his car outside the police station, keeping an eye on us unruly bikers, and commenced again as we remounted to head off

for the last leg back to the Pakenham break up point! Once again, getting there was the fun part.
We went from Mirboo North to Thorpdale, then Trafalgar and the back way up into Buln Buln, Crossover and Neerim South, then Jindivick where we turned left and headed back towards Longwarry North where the ride broke up. About 300 kilometres for the ride and about 450 kilometres door to door for me.

Despite the weather, it was a fun ride. I think the rain may have got into the Suzuki's electrics on Cameron’s Gixxer as it appeared to encounter a brief kill switch issue halfway down the freeway from the break-up point!

Thanks to Ben for another ripper day with never a dull moment, and thanks to Geoff Jones for rear rider duties too.

Marty Thompson