Eildon Sunday 26^th November 2006

Paul Southwell	Honda CBR1000	Lyn Duncan	Suzuki GSXR1000
Ben Warden (½ rear)	Honda CBR954	Cameron Stevens	Suzuki GSXR1000
Simon Trubiano	Honda CBR929	Geoff Jones (rear)	Yamaha R1
Shane Hindle	BMW R100GS	Tony Raditsis (leader)	Yamaha TRX850
Mick Zrakic (2^nd ride)	Honda CBR600	Dave Ward	Suzuki GSXR600
Renzo Cunico	Honda VFR750	Darryn Webster	MV Augusta 750
Greg Jeffery	Kawasaki ZRX1200R	Ron Solomon	Hayabusa
David Carrington (1^st ride)	Honda CBR1000

What a sight! I pulled into the Whittlesea servo to find a sizeable group of bikers ready for whatever challenges the day’s ride was going to throw at them. And indeed, a few “curve balls” were thrown.

Tony gave us his usual can and can’t do leaders’ speech, followed by the stirring of big bore motors. Immediately I was confused: we were heading back towards Melbourne. If only I had listened more carefully to the brief, I would have known that it was Tony’s intention to cut across to St Andrews via Nutfield and Cottles Bridge. Last time the club came this way (Trevor’s ride) it was slow going due to the great number of Triumph sports cars getting in the way. None of that this time.

Sunshine and (near) empty roads were greeting us all the way to Kinglake. After a quick visor wipe it was a nice run over to Toolangi and down the mountain into Healesville.

Ah, the Black Spur run. Always a challenge and always a gamble. The technical nature of this road is well known, with tight downhill never ending semi-open corners to blind uphill tight corners and every thing in between with the odd tree close to the road thrown in for good measure. The gamble comes in two forms: first the things you can see such as cars that are going in the same direction. Sometimes you can ride the “Spur” and all your favourite bits are car free, other times there is a long queue of very slow moving vehicles. Very frustrating. The second type of gamble is usually met head-on and is white with blue and red ornaments. This usually scares the points right off your licence, even when you’re legal.

However, this run was a bit unusual. The traffic going in our direction was very light and there was no oncoming traffic. Just as we were getting into the swing of things, a policemen standing in the middle of the road stopped the traffic at Fernshaw picnic ground. Bugger. Is this a full-on licence/vehicle check? Am I going to lose 3 points for a dirty number plate? Are they going to get pickie about tyres and exhausts? OK, here comes our man in blue. What’s he saying? Half an hour? Hang on, half an hour for what? Yes officer, we’ll pull into the park and wait for the tow truck to pull out a four-wheel drive that has carelessly driven over the side of the mountain.

With the waiting over, the smart ones, that is riders who didn’t take helmet or groves off, were seen preforming a Le Mans style start before the car drivers realised the road was open. Back to the ride, the rest of us get caught in traffic and push on to Marysville for a food stop. A couple of the crew left us at Marysville while the rest head off towards Eildon.

The road to Buxton is always good for a bit of fun, however the road from Buxton to Taggerty (12 kms) is very dangerous. Be warned this road is usually patrolled and this day was no different. Unfortunately, a small group of us passed an on-coming unmarked very dark green XR8. Allegedly this awoke the beasts’ radar, meaning that by the time beast and rear rider met, the beast decided to attack. Although the noble rear rider put up a gallant fight, it was to no avail and noble rear rider had his licence fried for a month.

All this didn’t become apparent untill the corner markers showed up without the rear rider at the Torbreck River turn off. After Ben and I gave the corner riders (you know who you are) a slap on wrist (Or do we say kick in the bum, Ed?) So I head back looking for our not so victorious rear rider. Luckily we meet at Thornton because I was starting to wonder just how far back I would need to go.

We all meet back in Eildon for the scheduled lunch stop and Geoff got to tell his tale many times over.

Back on the road again, we belted over Skyline with a little detour down into Cotter Bay. Generally the ride back through Alexandra and Molesworth was uneventful with only the back road to Molesworth offering some challenge. The road from Molesworth to Yea is another ‘point taking’ road. As a result, we cruise into Yea for a regroup. As it is getting very warm, we have a quick break.

From Yea it is a quick run back to the ride break-up point at Kinglake West where we say our goodbyes. Thanks Tony for leading and hope to see you lead a few more rides over this summer. And a special thank you to Geoff Jones for taking on the lousy and this time painful task of the rear rider.

Paul Southwell