Mitch had decided to celebrate his 40th birthday in style… with a ride through the snowies! Plans were made to spend two nights at Khancoban, spending Sunday doing a day trip around “the snowies loop”. Talking with Stevo and we decided we’d kick off Friday after work, so that we could meet up with the Melbourne crew before heading over Hotham. After a mis-understanding about where we were actually meeting (Bogong Hotel at Tawonga, not Bruthen lol, turns out they weren’t doing Hotham at all) Tess, Stevo and I arranged to meet at Hume as close to 4pm as we could.
We were all assembled and fuelled up and rolled out of Hume at about 4:20pm. We bored our way to Cooma at a goodly pace, bypassed Cooma and continued on through Nimmitabel and onto Bombala for a fuel stop. We made pretty good time so decided to continue on to Cann River for the night. Had a good run down to Cann River :o)
And what do you know, we arrived right on bourbon o’clock! (we seem to be very good at this). $70.00 saw us with a room for three so we got out of the leathers and into normal clothes then headed down for drinks and dinner. We had a pretty early night.
Saturday dawned bright and cold! I got up first and went in search of coffee, had my coffee out on the verandah with all the old dudes (there was heaps of them there for a fishing trip) and eventually Stevo and Tess surfaced, they had some breakfast then we kitted up, rolled across the road and were on our way. Cruised down to Bruthen where we stopped for morning tea and met a bunch of BMW riding dudes, including one (german?) guy who had been riding all over the world, through places like Afghanastan and Iran, more recently Thailand (and he was HOT!!!!) Tess promptly struck up a conversation with him and filled us in on his adventures.
Eventually we got moving - there were fun roads to be had! The winter gloves came out here as my hands were getting cold (yeah the other two were okay with their heated grips). Had a good run up to Omeo and then up to Mt Hotham where we stopped so I could have a smoke break (thanks guys!). Then down the other side through all the 35ers, Tess and I riding together, Stevo having disappeared after two corners lol.
Regrouped at Harrietville, then over Tawonga Gap and into Tawonga to the Bogong Hotel where we were the first to arrive. We ordered our lunch and settled in to wait…
Eventually Mitch turned up… where was everyeone else? Unfortunately one of the guys had come off out near Broadford(?), he’s okay but the bike is not and he and his pillion wife were taken off in the ambulance. Mitch had sent everyone else off ahead of him and then followed some 30 minutes later once the Police and everything was sorted. So where the hell was everyone else? We had a bit of a giggle when we realised there was actually a town called Bogong up the road a little bit (in the opposite direction). Eventually Mitch got to speak to the rest of the group on the phone… they were in Myrtleford, Mitch had overtaken them somewhere along the way.
We waited some more and finally the rest of the group rolled in, including Franky, Minna and Ratty and new people I hadn’t met before. They had some lunch and then it was time for the final leg.
We took off up the backroad to Tallangatta then up Granya Gap and into Walwa where some topped up the fuel, before rolling the rest of the way into Khancoban. I hadn’t topped up the fuel here and decided to take it easy just in case… I hadn’t been taking it easy up to there! Anyway the group got pretty spread out, I was following Minna and eventually she waved me past and was following me at a fair distance. Coming into Khancoban, there is a lefty 65er and as I came up to it there was this odd puff of dust on the edge of the road… WTF???? I was looking and then a head popped up and waved me down… damn one of our guys had gone off the edge. I pulled up and ran over, he’s okay, just needed a hand getting the bike up. I went arse up going down the hill lol. We got the bike up and gave it a quick assessment, looked straight enough, broken mirror, some cracked plastics. We pushed it along to a little dirt driveway and got it going and sent him along, Minna and I to follow. (Minna had seen me slow down and go a bit wide looking behind me and apparently thought “oh god, Mel’s lost another number place” LOL).
I know what happened to Jamie… Jimmy was calling me from the pub and he intercepted the soundwaves and it distracted him at a vital moment… I know… (he’s a beer drinker and therefore not accustomed to the call of Jimmy I guess).
Anyway we got to the hotel, stinking hot by now and…. NO POOL!!!!!!!!!! well there was a pool but it was empty :o( Outta the bike gear and into the jeans and it was much cooler. Straight to the pub to buy some coke and then it was bour… no wait Jack Daniels time. We all had a few drinks before heading over to the pub. Tess and I found another bucks party!!!!! but they wanted us to go back to their house where they were staying and we were like naaaaaah so we drank some of their beer, smoked some of their cigarettes, I obtained Geoff with a G’s number and we left them there. Mitch later rung up Geoff with a G and pretended to be my dad, hell funny. They got Tess’s number and rang her numerous times throughout the evening but there was no way we were going out to their place. I had too much to drink as usual, ended up playing pool and dancing to the jukebox, last drinks were called, stole some balloons on the way out and had a very violent balloon fight with Jamie which included some wrestling (I got slammed into the ground at some point and my neck is still sore LOL) before stumbling into my bed at god knows what time. (At some stage during the night Tess checked her phone and Stevo said “so Mel hasn’t made it home yet” and I’m like “I’m here!” so I musn’t of made too much noise trying to find my bed).
Woke up with the sun and looked over and there was a big nasty huntsman sitting on the wall… yuck yuck yuck. I felt too awful to do anything about it (it was too big and high up for squishing anyway) so tried to ignore it but had to keep checking if it was still there. Eventually everybody else got up… me, I decided staying in bed was a much better option. Everybody else took off for the ride (apparently I had already declared at about 8:30pm the night before that I wouldn’t be going riding) and I kept sleeping.
I woke up at 11:30am and decided it was time for breakfast. Got dressed and headed over to the cafe at the servo and there was a red CBR1000 there… that looked like Tess’s bike… got closer, saw the plate and it was Tess’s bike, WTF? One of the guys had run wide on a corner and gone into the armco and cut his leg up so they’d come back so Nurse Tess could patch him up (which she did an awesome job of). They headed off and I headed back to the room feeling better after my sandwich. I pottered around for a bit then headed up to the shops to try and get a book from the op-shop but it was closed. Bugger. Decided to head into Corryong, more to get some phone reception than anything, was a nice cruise, felt very good while moving on the bike. Found a park bench in the main street, bought a powerade and sat and watched the world go by for a while and got the text message I’d been hoping for :o) Got bored after a while so headed back to Khancoban (still hadn’t managed to obtain any reading material) so back to the shops at Khancoban where my choices were Take 5, Dolly or Marie Clare, so Marie Clare it was. Back to the hotel, sat out on the grass and read that damned magazine cover to cover.
(Interestingly, at Cann River, Stevo had been telling us this story about a prostitute who had a customer who paid her just to stand on snails and let them crawl on her, no sex, just the snail thing… whaddya know, that story was in Marie Clare!!).
Eventually some people returned (the Sydney guys who hadn’t wanted to pay the $6.00 to go up to Charlotte’s Pass) so I had someone to talk to again - YAY.
Eventually the whole group was back and we chilled out and had a few drinks (well I had one LOL) then over to the pub for dinner. Funnily enough nobody was really hitting the grog very hard… after dinner we retired to our room to see what was on the telly… CSI and I think I saw the first 15 minutes of it and then…. it was morning!
Mitch and Franky had left very early, I woke up to the Sydney guys heading off. I was awake so got dressed and headed over to the cafe for coffee and ended up getting breakfast. The remaining crew came over in dribs and drabs (just Me, Stevo, Tess, Minna and Ratty). We sat around and chatted for a while before finally heading back to get organised. Minna and Ratty headed off and we packed up and pointed towards home.
Had a very slow cruise up towards Cabramurra, everyone was out of sight very quickly but I was just kicking back and enjoying the scenery - it is so pretty up there. Regrouped at the usual spot at the dam then into Adaminiby for some lunch. Then some fuel and the cruise home.
Was a good weekend… maybe one day I’ll learn not to drink so much on the first night…. hahaha
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