For something different I signed up for the Got’M Girls Only weekend away to Goulburn. Figured it’s always good to get away with the girls, even if it was only to Goulburn (approx 100km up the road). I roped Tess into coming along and the plan had been to ride out via Gunning and Crookwell, undoubtedly with lots of coffee stops/breaks along the way :o)
So Friday rolled around and the weather forecast was truly awful. Cold, rainy, sleety, hail, gale force winds, storms, etc. Tess and I reviewed the matter and decided to try and pick a clear window in the afternoon to make the mad dash up the freeway to Goulburn and we’d meet the girls there.
So after a sleep in, I packed up, then headed over Tess’s under a grim sky… we suited up, and hit the road, with a storm hot on our tail. We managed to avoid most of the rain until Goulburn :) The wind picked up around Collector and was pretty rough but we made it. Got into the pub around 3pm, no bikes in sight, so we found a little undercover hidey hole for our bikes and checked in. Turned out the girls had already been there and had lunch, no idea where they had gone to though! So we got our room and noted there was only a vacant double bed…. hmmmmm.
Noodles across the road from the pub were a good late lunch and then off to the shops for supplies (coke and junk food) and we chilled out in the room, listening to the rain/hail come down and being grateful for getting into Goulburn when we did! Still no sign of the rest of the girls… we had a good laugh at some really old video clips and eventually it was bourbon o’clock.
We started drinking, and Mrs Doubtfire came on the telly… hilarious with a bellyful of bourbon! A sad bit came up and Tess and I are looking at the screen in horror - right smoke time. At some point I finally phoned the girls, they were up at the Workers Club for dinner, having spent the afternoon there - we decided we would see them when they got back, which turned out to be not long before Mrs Doubtfire finished.
So, bourbon consumed, movie finished, it was time to check out the band that the pub had told us would be playing. We donned the dancing shoes and headed over… and the band, while they were quite good, was definitely not dancing material. We watched the band for a bit before giving that up and taking over the pool table.
The place was pretty dead and we tried to determine where the action in Goulburn was (where are all the cowboys?????) and were advised that either the Workers Club or a night club called Flamingos (affectionately known by the locals as “Dingos”) were the places to be. We were then advised that Dingos was the place to be if you liked drugs and fights :O
We eventually wondered up the street to the workers club. Scary. Shit. We didn’t hang around, decided “Dingos” just wasn’t going to cut it and headed over to the RSL club where we could hear the band. The band was quite good and there was a total of 5 people rocking on the dance floor… they might have had a full set of teeth between them…. of course we got there when the band had two songs to go…
So back to our room, where Tess and I got to share a very dodgy double bed.
Sunday… was much like Saturday. But windier. We jumped in Becsta’s car for the journey up for breakfast and then when the girls all headed home in their cars, Tess and I went back to bed. We finally got up around lunchtime, lunch in the pub and then packed up and headed for home.
What followed was probably my worst experience on a motorcycle ever.
We left goulburn and the wind was terrible. Truly fucking awful. Out onto the freeway and we passed this poor learner on his little naked 250 being blown all over the place.
And then we hit the Federal. We tried the usual “pick up the pace” and it did not help. I’m leaning the bike so far into the wind, just wondering how long my front tyre is gonna hold it for. We managed to pull up, what can we do? Just continue on. We set off again and the wind got worse. I’m sitting behind Tess, at a ridiculous lean angle fighting so hard just to keep going in a straightish line… and watching Tess lose her battle as she gets pushed closer and closer to the edge of the road. We managed to wobble off to the side of the road again and decided fuck it, we’ll have to go slow. At times we were sitting on 50km/h. Which is interesting with cars coming up behind you at 110km/h+. We made it though. And if I ever see a forecast for gale force winds again, fuck the riding I’m staying home.
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