It also seems to jinx my bike... Last year my throttle cable snapped on the morning of the event (at least I got to get to the ride departure point & get some photos) and the previous year I failed to get a blue slip for my bike on the morning.
I was determined to successfully ride on my own bike to the event this year. My new partner also has a bike and was keen to ride as she's never been part of something like this before. Did I say bike? I mean an ex-Postie bike. She bought it from a mail contractor complete with bags and all. That and the fact that she hasn't had a licence for that long and therefore didn't have an excessive amount of confidence as well as not being legally able to filter meant that the approx 200km ride would be a slow trip but I didn't care - I was going to ride my bike there for the first time!
We got up early on a cold morning and got ready to go. For some reason, my bike refused to start for the first time ever. It seemed to be a fuel problem and I thought the event had jinxed me again. I kept persisting and eventually the bike started and I managed to keep it running - just. Whether it was a blockage or bad fuel I don't know but it seemed to clear up after a few Ks.
We eventually got to the departure point (35km later) for the ride only to discover we were 20 mins late & had missed the group. My girlfriend was still keen to go as she had never ridden that part of Sydney (Royal National Park) and insisted we could catch up to the group. I politely told her she was never going to catch the group on her postie bike... Undeterred, she insisted we head off so off we went!
As luck would have it we caught the group at the turn around point in time to start off with the group. My GF suggested we hang at the back since she wasn't comfortable in a large group but she soon got the hang of it and had a ball...until we somehow got separated from the group (they overtook us as we were going up a long steep hill that the scooter struggled up) and ended up heading in the wrong direction. We were then faced with a 3.5 hour ride up the Hume Highway through suburban Sydney to the show. It was a grueling trip but I gained a lot of respect for my new partner as she doggedly pushed that little scooter to the max. So after almost 8 hours in the saddle to cover barely 250km (through a lot of stop start traffic) we eventually made it to the show.
We were both knackered and the sun was low on the horizon so I only got a handful of photos. I met & chatted to a few friends then head off as I only had sunglasses for the 30km ride home and it was already getting dark.
We eventually made it home a little weary after a few miles, near misses and road rage incidents (people don't like postie bikes holding them up). My girlfriend then hopped on a plane 2 days later to complete her first marathon - on the Great Wall of China.
Now for the good part - the pics, even though there's only a few.
This was my favourite at the show. I noticed it as we pulled up at the show but by the time we found a park and I grabbed the camera the owner was firing it up to leave.
