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You may have seen my previous “Point to point” report where I was trying to get from point A on a map to point B. Well that was my first foray into the so called “Adventure riding”. To me what makes it an adventure ride is what goes right and what goes wrong, making it a ride to remember in years to come. My adventure offsider is Bucky, we have been riding together for nearly twenty years and the third musketeer is Shane. Shane hasn’t taken to the “Adventure riding” as Bucky and I have. Many moons ago he saw an expensive sticker he liked and bought it, turns out you get a free bike with the expensive sticker. If anyone is looking for a brand new 2001 model VOR let Shane know, he might even throw in the satin sheet it hides beneath in his shed!
Regardless of Shane’s feelings towards adventure riders and riding he decided to join us as ride HQ south of Oberon for a few drinks and a feed before heading off for business the next day when Bucky and I would hit the tracks. The property we stayed on is the last remaining part of what was, locally, a reasonably big property. There is a small flat attached to a machinery shed and small shearing shed.
Nev, the property owner, is a bit of a bower bird. He keeps/buys anything that might be useful “one day” he has a collection of old trucks and cars that we moved up when he sold the main part of the property.
Our escape route the next day was up this internal lane into the pines at the back of the property to get us going on our way to Cowra.
I even had the key to the gate!
More of the flotsam and jetsom!
The beast is not a fan of the black stuff… just like it’s jockey!
Bucky finally arrived in his adventure beast… turns out he had ridden about the same number of kays I had on my bike (300km). I know it’s not apparently not the done thing to trailer your bike to an adventure ride, but we’re soft. We like cold beer, hot showers, hot tasty home cooked meals and a nice warm fire. I took my swag… and layed it on top of the bed!
Warm fire and comfy recliners! I like this adventure riding caper!
Swag on the bed! Yeah and a doona… Oberon’s a cold place you know. Ask anyone who’s been there in July.
So we sat down in our warm and comfy quarters and discussed the g(ood)olden days. We toddled off to bed at 11.30pm… we are getting old!
The actual riding part of the report is next! Apologies if you didn’t want to read about the lead up… :silly:
DAY 1
Soon enough the morning came, it was brisk. But this is Oberon, and I have to say it was quite warm… Bucky’s monkey weather wall showed it was 3.2 degrees!
Early o’clock! But like Big Kev… I WAS EXCITED!
How the garage looked…
Nothing like a sunrise in the bush
The first sods turned by Bucky’s 606’s
I dressed like the Michelin man, when stationary I cooked. We didn’t stop for the first 20-30km… but I had to stop to take off the stupid winter (non riding) gloves I had on. Sure they were warm but there was ZERO dexterity… on with the Fox motocross gloves.
Bucky showing true adventure form…
Down in the valley behind the bikes you can just see the TOP of the fog we are about to ride into…
A bit of old stuff happening along the way…
The fog was actually thicker than it looks, probably 20m visibility
Out of the fog, it can be seen just behind Bucky and the hill…
We stopped in Rockley so I could take a layer off…
Here’s Bucky enjoying the serenity…
School of arts
God had the high ground
We left Rockley and rode some great country back roads! Some of it had been bitumenised since the google maps/earth and street view images had been taken. But that’s OK, they call it progress. Eventually we came to this road… that IS EXACTLY what we are looking for!
This was a more open section towards the end of it. I was having way too much fun in the tighter, narrower sections, using the centre “hump” to skip from one wheel rut to another…
I could have ridden this road all day long, it WAS that good. When we got to the end we rode across a small wooden bridge that had planking missing and a “ROAD CLOSED” sign that had been knocked over. Sadly in the not too distant future I imagine some bureaucrat will decide to close the road due to the danger posed to stupid people who may hurt themselves. I hope the same bureaucrat decides he should install a concrete causeway as a cheap alternative for locals… fingers crossed.
Before too long we came across the metropolis of Neville. Checked the maps and increased the snakage input.
Would appear Bucky managed to get behind the lens…
One of my landmarks… a windmill I found on google street view. It signified the start of the ‘unmapped’ (by the NRMA cartographers in 1953 no doubt) section. I looked at google satellite and earth and could clearly see tracks going where I wanted to go. The adventure was to find our way through the other side and hope there were no locked gates or anything else that would prevent us from getting where we wanted to go without back tracking…
While I was planning the ride I was showing a mate, Maf, some of the google street view footage… this included the above windmill. He said to me quite ‘tongue in cheek’ “I suppose you’re going to take a photo of the windmill!”. Obviously I did, and while I was standing there I texted the photo to him. His immediate pictoral reply is below… yes he’s a plumber.
I’m hoping that soon he’ll be an adventuring plumber! Come on Maf… it’s only money!
Bucky modelling his Hi Viz black gear…
We’re going left!
I’d buy this place and call it “Adventure enduro land”
So we did a bit of a zig and a bit of a zag… and I knew we were travelling, generally, in the right direction. We came around a corner and there it was… a sign that confirmed my hopes.
We’d made it through. Time for a snake.
So we took off at a great rate of knots headed for lunch at Cowra… then we ran into fog AGAIN. And it too was worse than it looked. For while there I thought Bucky may have been collected by a P plater that had passed me with zero idea about anything. Turned out he was OK, his glasses had fogged up.
A “spirited” ride ensued as we tried to make some up, had a minor dead end on a dirt road. I came to a T intersection, time would tell me I should have taken the bitumen and turned right. I just headed down what looked like an interesting dirt road. A kay later I was riding it back the other way. But it was fun. This was the next runway we negotiated…
Shane’s old man used to live in Cowra. In fact where he lived was part of the old site of THE “Cowra breakout” from WW2. These days there’s not much to remind anyone of this except maybe a few of these:
About 1pm we rolled into town. People and cars EVERYWHERE, sure it was a Monday lunchtime, but I had really loved seeing pretty much no one in the past few hours on our cross country travels. AND everyone we did see gave us a wave!
We had a hamburger and chips washed down a Coca. We found the servo and filled up. Bucky had spoken of buying the wife a bottle of wine… I wasn’t sure if he was taking the piss. Turned out he really did want to buy the piss and take it cross country back home!
DAY 1 PM coming…
Great report & pics so far
Looks like some great dirt out there,,
Some od
f us headed into Cowra towards the end of Day 1 on the Feb 2 Dayer, we were running late and missed fuel at Wyangalla so decided to divert last minute, fuel up then head back to Woodstock
Looking forward to the rest of ypur report JTB
DAY 1 PM SHIFT
By the time we ate, refuelled and bought our wine :blush: it was 2pm. No way in hell we would make it back via the route I had planned while there was daylight. I didn’t tell Bucky that. I told him we wouldn’t have time for the longer ‘alternatives’ I had planned. Again some awesome fast loamy farm roads, right on the door step of Cowra. I was having too much fun and burning too much daylight to take too many photo’s.One of the longer straights
Awesome views
Turning right Bucky…
Adventure super highway
Granitors…
It was getting darker and colder… time to layer UP! And REALLY push on…
While we were pushing for home on the run from the Abercrombie river to Burraga we crossed a shallow concrete causeway. I upped the pace as we came out, a couple of hundred metres on I saw another causeway sign and wondered how bad it could be… we’d crossed twenty or so all day and barring the last all had been dry. And the last did only have a couple of centimetres in it. Ohhh bugger, this had about a foot of water in it. Bucky tells me later that it looked like a bomb went off as I hit the causeway with water going everywhere. I can assure you it went all over me! Bucky had a HUGE laugh about it and no doubt in 20 years time he will recount it again! Bastard.
My memory of this intersection, and we were supposedly just 50km from camp was that it was WAY darker than it shows.
City boy Bucky wanted to take some photo’s of sheep… they ran away! Who would have thought…
It was about now that Bucky made it clear that he was NOT having fun anymore! Come and ride my bike, I’ve lost my low beam!
So we are now riding in the pitch black through a logged pine forest area and what do we come across? A DETOUR! Are you kidding me? I was SO close to riding around the sign and finding out what the reason for the detour was. But I just wanted to get home. So we get onto the detour road and travel about 5km before we see ANOTHER detour sign taking us further west from where we want to be…
Then all the cars started coming, towards us of course. So being the good citizen I kept turning my high beam off and hazards on so I, hopefully, wouldn’t get run down. We made it back to camp after riding the last hour in the dark. I didn’t mind it, would have been better with low beam, but Bucky certainly was NOT impressed… no more night rides for Bucky.
Tucked into a few beers left behind by Shane and a lasagne knocked up by Mrs Bucky, a shower some more bench racing and off to bed for day 2. I could get used to this adventure caper, it’s certainly a gentleman’s sport!
DAY 1 was run and won! No real incidents, couple of “scare self” moments… but you get that in 435km of riding.
DAY 2
After the shenanigans at the end of day 1 we had one bar of fuel each on the gauge. Being new to the Tenere camp neither of us knew how much fuel this actually meant we had on board. Day 2 was only to be a half dayer. But we didn’t want to run out on our first real trip. So that meant a 20km run on the tar into Oberon for fuel.Day 2 dawned a pearler! Only problem was the fog on the run into town for fuel.
Bit of frost about
But how could you not want to ride this
After refuelling we came back to the Vulcan forest via a road that literally travels through the middle of three or four properties… I’ve driven it many times, but it’s amazing how fast you can cover a dirt road on a bike compared to in a 4wd! It was a good bit of road.
We went over to where my point B was that I never got to last time. Lots of “private property” signs and a huge fark off chain and padlock swing from an open gate. Didn’t want to be on the wrong side of that. Discretion was the better part of valour and I went looking for the stomping grounds of my youth in the Vulcan.
Found some familiar tracks that I last rode on my WR450… I like the perimeter tracks of the pine forests. They HAVE to follow the property boundary serving as a fire break and access road in case of fire, they follow creek lines and go up and down with the contours of the land. Generally they are never well maintained either.
It IS Oberon in JULY, of course there was ice in the puddles
We stopped for a snake break at the bottom of this rise. I had seen what I would have explored on the WR, an old road that had been overgrown by pines and wanted to ‘stage’ a photo of me coming out of it… here is the hill in question. Yes, it was a little steeper than it looks Shane VOR. As I went up I gassed it up on the clay, yeah smart move I know. Naturally the rear wanted to overtake the front and that’s when you let a 200kg bike do whatever a 200kg bike wants to do. But at least I had finally had my first off on my new bike.
Bucky’s yells “Wait! Leave it there… I’ll get a picture” I mumble to self “I’m not picking this bastard up by myself, take all the pics you want…”
The uphill headed bike now wanting to go back down again…
The staged single track photo that was for the benefit of former enduro riders who’s bike reside under satin sheets… (apologies for the shaky photo, the cameraman thought he had to do it too!)
Bent the crap out my rear brake lever… what do they make them out of these days? I’ve never done that before, mind you I’ve never had a 200 keg bike either.
The compulsory fire tower visit…
Inspecting the damage
I’m no expert, but that’s not where it should be.
Bucky said I could approach the white Tenere only if I did so on bended knee
Arty farty fire tower shot
I’ve been whinging and moaning about the fact that I didn’t receive a stock tool kit. I didn’t want to cheap arsed crap just the suspension tooly thing, fork allen key and the spark plug spanner. Bucky takes my seat off to look at air filter and turns my seat upside down (who does that??). Underneath the seat
He finds this
Good prize Bucky!
Too bad the other black key and the red key weren’t hidden there as well!
We hit some more technical/clay trails
All good things must come to an end! 135km for a half day in the pines…
Thanks for a great ride Bucky. We’ll have to do it again, but in reverse so we can see the bits that we did in the dark!
Things I learnt this weekend:
If the TEN wants to change wheel ruts on clay in the pines… let it.
It does NOT handle like a WR450.
This adventure riding stuff is good fun!
The Torpedo 7 50L dry bag makes a good “boot”. I was so much more comfortable with the bumbag and some spare gloves etc stashed away in there! It’ll be there for the Aug 2 day ride with my overnight gear in it!
The MEFO stonemasters are really squirmy at times and the tyre has squared off as it has worn down. I reckon I’d be lucky if there was another 500km in it. Maybe 606’s next? 3000 kays sounds pretty good right now.
Lovin the strorey
Especielly the pics
I have no thoughts of doing that kinda miles on a bike
Did double the Misses to Cresent Head and back in a day,
Was a GPZ1100, very first of the EFI. I do believe. :whistle: :pinch:
Even so we went through the whole puncture, on a motorcycle trip’
Fu_k the pickle??????????????
I don’t won’t a pickle, I just wanna ride on my motorcycle!!!!!!!!!
After shoooting the pickle through the long end at 100ft
Well I realised never wanted a pickle??????????!!!!!!!!!!!
And then
And then
Twas a trip
A C I D
Is it still out there??????????????
And whats the quality?????????????????
We all love a good trip!
Yeeha
Its only 11:20
So?????
I aint drunk yet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Love you lot
MurphMurph the surf wrote:Lovin the strorey
Especielly the pics
I have no thoughts of doing that kinda miles on a bike
Did double the Misses to Cresent Head and back in a day,
Was a GPZ1100, very first of the EFI. I do believe. :whistle: :pinch:
Even so we went through the whole puncture, on a motorcycle trip’
Fu_k the pickle??????????????
I don’t won’t a pickle, I just wanna ride on my motorcycle!!!!!!!!!
After shoooting the pickle through the long end at 100ft
Well I realised never wanted a pickle??????????!!!!!!!!!!!
And then
And then
Twas a trip
A C I D
Is it still out there??????????????
And whats the quality?????????????????
We all love a good trip!
Yeeha
Its only 11:20
So?????
I aint drunk yet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Love you lot
MurphWhat ever you do don’t go through the drive through… :unsure:
No doubt I will become hungry soon?????????
WELL what do I do????????????/Cheerio
I am the one in ten!!!!!!!
Rusta!!!
Peter Tosh is next
Lerts do a little reggae :laugh: :laugh: :pinch:
Cheers
Ya’ll
Murph
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