Friday night
The anticipation of what lay ahead for the weekend was almost unbearable as I sat in traffic on the M5 on Friday afternoon. I had to go get my bike from my parents place and then head out to TB and Salina’s. It was the quickest pack ever and I was on the road. I knew the Wauchope crew would be there plus the chance to meet some new faces of whom I felt I knew already. I was introduced to Chicken, Strucky, Hatto and reunited with crash along with the “Choppy” crew.
I rang the door bell and was greeted by a very excited TB and Salina only to realise that it was me and not “Dougie” the pizza boy. The disappointment was obvious but I had arrived and it officially was on!
Finally the pizza did arrive and we hooked in. We had a good laugh around the dinner table and just when we thought we would never get through that much pizza Bubba arrived. Problem solved! :laugh:
We showed reasonable constraint and whilst everyone rolled out their luxurious swags I threw a sleeping bag on the carpet and settled in next to Kram. I made several mistakes over the course of the weekend and this was my first. I have heard a lot of snoring in my time but this was in a new league all together. :huh: I got up twice to give him CPR but he somehow continued to breathe. TB and family were two levels above us and they commented in the morning so you know it was loud.
Saturday
I knew Thursday night at my parents would be my last good sleep till Monday so I had rested up and I felt fine on Saturday morning. The alarms rang out at 5am and we packed the cars and headed up the meeting point at Maccas.
From there the convoy stretched out as we drove out to Bell. I had warned TB to keep it to a speed that my old trusty Hilux could hang with but that fell on deaf ears on off he went at his speed. :unsure: The old girl hung in there and we all arrived at the meeting point in thick fog and drizzle. The weather report for the weekend was fine but that was not what we were seeing in the car park. I asked Mal what he thought and in classic Blue Mountain fashion he said, “It will burn off’.
We geared up, got briefed and we were into it. Visibility was poor, goggles were steamy but we were on our bikes and we were riding. As we made ground we saw the first breaks of blue and before long the sky broke and Mal’s prediction came good. Blue sky, good crew and some fantastic trails.
The Saturday morning mix of riding was unreal and so different to what I am used too. I have not been riding very long and most of my experience is in Coffs so it was awesome to be riding such different terrain. Previous to this I had done three OBT rides and they were all on the Mid North Coast so it felt like an entirely new world.
We had a good flow on all morning and covered some fun trails. We had a section of twin with water bars every hundred metres and a good trail surface and I got into a trance. Turn air, turn, air, air, turn. It was good fun. :woohoo: I even felt like I was on the gas until Benji went past me as if I had hit a false neutral.
It was at this point that I got put on a corner and waited for the sweeps to come through. The last rider before them was Kram. He nodded at me and I jumped in behind him. We worked our way through corner men and had a really good flow going when disaster struck. It was a section of twin track, undulating and fast. I was sitting about 5 metres back as we crested every rise. We came over one with him on the left and me behind him in the middle of the trail to dogde his dust and the back side of this one crest was just one big rain rut. He tried to cut right to get out but he was already too deep and his front wheel lifted but his rear was locked in. He then swapped in the rut a few times until he hit the deepest part and got high sided. It was a massive crash and his bike compressed and rebounded so hard that it launched up and across me so that when I passed it was upside down, shoulder height and less than a metre from my arm. Kram was still in the air at this point and the vision of him hitting the ground is etched in my memory. It was a massive hit and all things considered a broken wrist is not an entirely bad result. It could have been much worse.
He sat up holding his arm and was a very brave man considering the degree of the break. You could see that it was compound and he handled it well. We waited for the message to get back to the group and Mal rode him out and got him to hospital.
It was time for lunch but it was hard to think of anything but how quickly it can go from joy to pain but that is the game we play and he will be ok.
To be continued
STM
