June 2002 Who’s News

The MTCV Home Page has taken only 254 hits during June and 12,824 since April 1996. We are about 50 hits down this month, probably an indication that people aren’t much interested in riding, or reading about riding, in the middle of winter. Note: the password to the member section has changed and is only available to financial members.

Val Jones, provider of fine things of the cake variety, underwent a serious operation recently. We wish her a rapid and full recovery and send her our best wishes.

Seen at the July Social Sip: - Ian Payne, Dicky Otzen, Ben and Julie Warden, Les Leahy, Ron Johnston, Rhys Williams, Di Welsford, Jon Riddett, Derek Atkinson and Kate Stewart (11 people).

Year 2003 has some promise for motorcycle fans with a dedicated “International Motorcycle Show” to be staged at Sydney’s Darling Harbour on May 16, 17 and 18. Thanks Ian.

Tickets are now available for this year’s “Skyy Vodka” Australian Motor Cycle Grand Prix to be held at Phillip Island on October 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th.

From Ian Payne: reading some road stats recently titled “Cause of Fatal Road Crashes in Australia” since 1996: speeding accounted for 12.7 %, driver intoxication was 17.9 % but the largest cause at 29.4% was unintentional errors! (No author quoted. Hope they don’t do us for plagiarism. And where’s the other 40% anyway. …Ed.)

For the latest information on the forthcoming action against the intended $50 rego levy log on to netrider.org.au

This month’s contributers to the Secret Policeman’s Ball are: Liz Oliver, Highlands ride, camera car, and soon-to-be member, Graham Maisey (GTR1000), same time, same place, more dollars.

Orlando’s Iluffi’s string of bad luck continued on the way home from the Pig & Whistle. Not only was he freezing to death (leather jacket and T-shirt) but he dropped his bike heading up the lower reaches of Mt Macedon as the rear rider. The bike suffered cosmetic scratches and the blinker punched through the fairing. Ouch. Luckily Ben Warden arrived to assist in picking the bike up and getting him mobile again.

Liz Oliver lost the contents of her seat bag strapped to the pillion seat on last Sunday’s Great Ocean Ride when the zip, partially open, undid itself, spewing forth the contents. She lost her purse containing her wallet amongst other things, and mobile phone. Rob Langer, thinking he had died and gone to heaven, noticed wads of money blowing around and stopped and collected it, happening upon Liz’s purse. No mobile. But as luck would have it, she received a call from the Apollo Bay constabulary on her answering machine that night. (I’d be scared, thinking all sorts of things.) They had found her phone – Liz had put her home number under “Home” in the address book. What a sensible thing to do.

We all did some serious damage to our tyres last Sunday down the Great Ocean Road, especially Pete Weyermayr. The perennial question, (in my case monthly): what tyre should I fit and how many kilometers life could be expected, is further muddied by Ben’s tyre spread-sheet. See elsewhere for the gory details. The keen observer will note some discrepancies denoted with an asterisk. Sometimes I would take off a tyre with some life left in it, for instance, before a long weekend. And then later I would refit it for a few Club rides. This, of course, skews the mileage figures, and in particular, the odometer readings. So, I have fudged a few odometer numbers so that the figures truly represent the life of each tyre, not necessarily the exact odometer reading. This situation has arisen on about three tyres. Once the tyres have been used “twice” the odometer readings start to align with reality. Be amused.