WATAGANS RIDE REPORT
According to Ollie
I had finished packing up the Courier with all my gear and the bike and had even relocated the loading ramp waiting for the anticipated arrival of Gili. I got a phone call from him soon after with him saying there is no 64 on King Rd!! My reply was mate I’ve lived here for 12 years…..there is a 64!! I then gave him directions and he managed to find his way around to my place. Young fella’s!!
We loaded up and took off , I threw down another litre of water in the car as I knew it was going to be warm and I didn’t want to de-hydrate, By the time we got to Ourimbah rest area my eyes had a water level in them and I had to stop, that took up the best part of 5 minutes, havin a mighty piss must be close to the best feeling in the world I reckon!! We stop next at Woodbury Park and meet Moto ……disappointed he looks nothing like Borat and he’s a POM! He was gonna feel the aussie heat I thought. We then arrive at Dunks Lane a couple of minutes later and unload the bikes and gear, shortly after a couple of more cars with trailers arrive, looks like the Watagans were going to be busy today. We head up the road, bikes are going good and the scenery sort of becomes familiar to me I let Moto take the lead as he has been here more recently than I, we overshoot the turnoff as the signage was covered over and headed down Boyd’s point road. We are cracking a fair pace the ground was moist and it had plenty of overhead coverage (perfect traction and good for getting it sideways !!) Moto goes straight up this gnarly rock section with gili in close pursuit with me right on Gili’s heels unfortunately Gili had to stop which caused me to brake slide to a stop also, with a bit of foot paddling Gili works his way around this 90 degree turn come rocky out crop. I then feed the throttle on and quick as a flash the WR is pointing skyward with me flapping off the back unfortunately the bike heads downhill, upside between two big rock crevices oh shit!!.The boys didn’t see this event but I do have partial footage of it on Camera, they certainly heard my swearing and cursing LOL, We get her upright eventually and pointed in the right direction, Im sucking in huge amounts of o2 feeling my level of fitness is not quite at the elite level yet !! The boys head back up the hill while I roll the bike slowly backwards to a good level spot where I can kick the WR back into life, as I am trying to get the fire ignited my foot slips on the rock that was holding me vertical and muther f#$@ker im on the ground again!! Im trying to spot worms again and we are not even 10 k’s into the ride !! Why do we do this? I get it righted and head up the hill ,no problems this time so I will lay the blame squarely on Gili (young Fella’s!). We then keep going to a spot that has a soft or should I say sore point for me it is another Hill that has a real technical step-up to it at the bottom before you get to it there is a turn around area to get a run-up which in the wet is crucial fortunately today it was dry and offered plenty of traction, In a previous attempt in the wet a few years ago I stuffed up the step up and was catapulted downwards into a big spotted gum and cracked three ribs, this time it wasn’t gonna beat me so I went first and got straight up then the two boys followed in quick succession, that was good to see as it enabled me to evaluate the groups skill level. We then rode over a heap more single trail in some of the best riding area’s in aussie, We pulled up at the bottom of a real technical uphill that I remembered mainly from the distinct smell of fennel, moto said he had spent way to long the week before helping blokes up this Mutha,he told us the best line and we all attacked it with gusto and flew up woohooo!! The hard part was easy but moto had a bit of trouble in the easy part (go figure?) we all got down to a main road and had a bit of a laugh about it, unfortunately there was a log lying across the road when we set off and Gili decided he wanted to look at worms also, He dusted himself off and we helped each other over the log. It was during this next bit of single trail that was a worry, we let gili have the lead and he was travelling at a fair pace, when a couple of lads come around the corner and quick evasive action was required ,fortunately they both went left at the right time as it could have been big, the other lads were on motocrossers (young fella’s) It was during the next section of single trail where all the mechanical problems started to raise its ugly head. Moto’s sump guard fell off fortunately I spotted it as he didn’t and they are bloody expensive (apparently) My clutch started making whining noises and I could tell the engine was not happy, we then headed up some more single trail following moto , we went up this rocky dusty hill and moto picked a crap line and struggled to get her up, he was looking decidedly a bit second hand once we had conquered it, it was just after this section that I had drama’s again got through the hard part of this uphill rut then picked probably the worst line there and got stuck on a exposed root and fell over again ….(old fella’s!! LOL) The WR boiled its tits off so we let it cool down a bit, this was when we noticed moto’s chain guide had lost a retaining bolt, out come the cable ties and she was all good, I was impatient and loosened off the radiator cap to soon and lost a fair amount of water, so I had to top it up with the camelback, it was just after this I said the WR would not handle to much more abuse so we decided to take the easy flowing downhill section down to the tar, (NOOOOTTTTT!!!) This was the legendary Hitchcock’s trail it is glorious riding at the very top and the best part of the bottom is absolute perfection it was just the middle section that was all rock shelves and loose boulders,hardwork going down definitely Erzberg like if you had to go up, thanks Moto! My arms felt like they were going to drop out at the shoulder joint I was absolutely wasted!! We cruised the next two or three kays into Dooralong pub the WR wasn’t able to go faster than about 35 KM/H.WE thru a couple of coldies down had a good chat and took in the serenity, pity it was going to be wasted on a bunch of troubled terrorists in a couple of weeks. We also met the same guys that gili had a misadventure with in the bush, he said he was still shitting bricks!! After the beers we headed back to the cars by the main road, I was impressed with the wheel stand Gili pulled as he overtook me on the grass next to the road, Noice !! (young fella’s) We got back to the cars and loaded up said our farewells to moto and headed back . I had to fix an oven in Ourimbah with Gili’s help,that took about ½ an hour we then had a quick trip home. All in all we had a great ride and rediscovered some awesome tracks, Met moto who is a great bloke with a seriously great attitude to his riding and showed plenty of skill.
When I got home I had a shower and went straight to bed that was about 7.30 I didn’t get out of bed until 9.30 the next morning! (old fella’s !!)
PS sorry if this was a bit long winded
Cheers Ollie
I’m not sure about how many K’s we did, I’d guess at around 80-90K’s all up? The first 50 or so was almost all single track 
