Monthly Archives: May 2012

Damp day in the Otway Ranges

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Marty and I headed for the hills for a short ride last Sunday, 21May. It was around 8C and dry when we left Geelong and remained so for most of the ride.

Our first stop was at the Gellibrand store where a friendly greeting from Maria,a mug of hot chocolate and a chat with some nice folk from the Colac Ulysses club made for a very pleasant stop.

However, around Beech Forest the temp dropped even more.Along Turton’s Track the road was particularly greasy with lots of wet bark and leaf litter on the pavement. It was pretty obvious there had been significant rain overnight up there. I was glad to have new tyres with plenty of tread on them!

By the time we joined the Apollo Bay – Colac road there was a long line of slow cars ahead, so we pulled into the West Barwon dam lookout.

The brewery cafe at Forrest was stacked out so we headed back to Colac for lunch, then dropped in on Steve from 79 x 100 blog and inspected his latest Norton resto project.

I asked Steve if I could have a look at Heidi’s old bike which is stored here. Heidi is a friend who travelled solo around much of the world some years ago, including places like Iran and Turkey etc . This bike has been sandblasted by desert storms and ridden all day in searing temperatures.

The Funduro has well in excess of 100,000 kms on it and has never had any engine repairs. That Rotax motor seems indestructable!  Heidi is now travelleing through Africa with her husband Jens on diesel powered Enfields.Some great pics on their blog Dieselbike in Africa

From there it was a quick sprint along Hwy 1 back to Geelong.

Pilot Road 2CT again

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I’ve followed the lead from Chillertek over at The Road to Nowhere blog and had some new tyres fitted. I was very satisfied with the Michelin Pilot Road 2′s that I had fitted at around 2,000kms to replace the disgraceful old school OEM Bridgestones that the Kwaka came with. Well 9,400kms later they still had just a little tread left, especially the front, maybe just enough for the rear to top the 10K kms with, but after my ride in the rain last Saturday I decided to get them changed. I think it’s great that a tyre with so much grip can last so long on a 250+ kg bike. I bought these online ages ago from the USA when the Aus dollar was running at $1.10 against the US dollar. I think that we are getting shafted buying locally when a pair of the Michelins delivered to my door from the US cost the same as the retail price of a single rear tyre here in Oz.

I also had some lovely 90 degree Ariete valve stems fitted. I had these on the VFR800 and they make life so much easier for checking tyre pressures.

I also learnt something interesting, namely how to check the manufacture date of a tyres. Amongst the series of letters on the side of the tyre after the ‘DOT’ is a panel with 4 numbers. The first two numbers indicate the week of the year the tyre was manufactured and the second two numbers indicate the year of manufacture. So the tyre in the pic below was made in the 14th week of 2011.

All set for a ride now!

One of her favorite places

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I had no expectation of riding today as the forecast was for a blast of wintery weather, however, it was cold but sunny when I awoke, so I decided on a quick spin. I headed from Geelong down towards Colac via Birregurra. Although I was riding in sunshine I could see heavy rain over towards the Otways, so thought that heading east might be a good plan.

By the time I got to Beeac there was a wall of black cloud ahead! Damn, so I turned towards the north to do another few kms before returning home. This took me to the tiny township where my mother was born, so I headed up to nearby Red Rock, which was one of her favorite places. It’s an extinct volcanic region and the last eruption here was thought to be 4,500 years ago.

Many years ago we took Mum for a birthday picnic here, (her first choice of venue) but it was so hot and the flies so thick we had to beat a hasty retreat to Loves Creek picnic reserve, some distance away.

It’s very rich volcanic soil around here. Dairy farming is the main form of farming in these parts, though there’s a newish vineyard at the turn off to Red Rock.

ZX14 at the top of one of the two lookouts here.

A big rain squall was approaching. That’s a volcanic crater to the left of the pic and a huge inland salt lake in the distance. Lake Corangamite.

Volcanic domes

My mother told me that when she was a little girl they used to roam all around this countryside, and sometimes walk over to Red Red to watch motorcycles racing between these two volcanic cones. I haven’t done any research about these daredevils but probably should!

I couldn’t take any more pics as the rain squall hit and I rode off in pouring rain. Lots of memories came flooding back as I rode in solitude past Doran’s Lane and the school my Mum attended as a child. This unexpected ride to Red Rock proved quite evocative.