The weather forecast was all doom and gloom but I was a little surprised when only Craig Morley showed up at Whittlesea on his new 40 km old Fire Blade — a pretty red, white and blue. Still, it wasn’t raining so we set off for Flowerdale and Strath Creek.

Craig and I have been riding with the Club for many years and have even been involved in a couple of crashes together, not to mention other less reportable incidents. We know each other’s riding style pretty well. So we made good time to Parrot Creek and Trawool before turning up the Tallarook Road The last two times the bridge was out and I figured today was as good a day as any to find out if it had been made good. This time all was well: a beautiful new concrete bridge was in place.

Heading for Pyalong and running parallel to the Hume Highway for a 500 metres I felt the bike move around as if the front tyre had hit gravel as we turned up the sweeping right hand corner. Pushing on it became obvious that something was amiss, either tyre or suspension failure. Approaching Pyalong I realised that the rear tyre had deflated and was making low speed steering very difficult and dangerous. We stopped at Pyalong for a pie and sauce.

The tyre was almost completely flat and the bike not rideable. We scoured the contents of the Club First Aid kit to no avail. The puncture repair kit ain’t there no more. What we needed in a hurry was a compressor to at least get some air in it and gauge the seriousness of the problem. Craig chatted up the locals and before I knew it an old bloke a couple of houses up from the shop had cranked up his truck tyre compressor and inflated my midget tyre in a what seem like seconds. Seventy psi seemed about right for a dash down the highway. A nail hole between the tread grooves was allowing air out at a fair clip. The plan was to abandon the ride and head back to Melbourne. I had a spare rear tyre and rear stands, Craig had levers and a compressor; so we had a (revised) plan for the day’s activities!

Heading south down the Northern Highway I stopped at Kilmore for air (down to 10 psi) and again at Kalkallo (15 psi) on the Hume Highway en-route to Strathmore and the chez Warden garage. Soon enough we had the wheel out and tyre bead broken (after a struggle in the vice). I followed Craig in the car with the wheel and and new tyre to Epping and the chez Morley garage. Without much of a struggle we soon had changed the tyre and statically balanced the wheel. A job well done. There was stiff enough light to refit the wheel and make the bike ready for work next day.

It was an interesting day and certainly nothing like my initial plans. Thanks Craig for being there and helping in my time of need. As for the weather, it didn't rain all day!

The motorcycle Internet site ‘MCNews’ has quite a strong tipping competition running on local and international motorcycle races with our own Rhys Williams currently placed 2^nd in the "World Supersport" category and 3^rd in the "Aussie Formula Extreme". Well done Rhys.

Riding with the Club leading to motorcycle racing has been a natural progression for some MTCV members. Marty Thompson, Dave Ward and Tony Schrader spring to mind. And so the tradition continues with Club Captain Ray Walker keen to give it a try. Darren Morcomb has just had his first outing in the SuperMotard class where he finished a credible 11^th out of a field of 14 riding his XR600 trial bike. Go team MTCV!

Priya Munasinghe has written off his bike.