Canberra Riders Birthday Ride

I haven't had much to do with CR for the last couple of years for various reasons.  Was talking to Lurch on MSN one day and he mentioned the birthday ride and I consulted with the calendar and the stars and they all aligned so I said that I would attend.

I rolled up to the meet point in Bungendore to a large group of people of which I only knew about five LOL. All good.  I volunteered to be arse end arnold for the day and off we went, through Tarago and into Goulburn for a splash of fuel - and Esther was missing!!! she'd gone to another servo.  Eventually she turned up (phew) and off we went to Taralga for lunch - man it was windy!  Lunch took a while as there were so many of us, and I think I managed to eat someone elses lunch as well as my own, oops.

Eventually it was time to move again so off we went towards Oberon then onto the Great Western Highway for the last stretch into Katoomba - lucky someone knew where they were going, I would never have found it!  I can say that the Great Western Highway sucks big hairy donkey balls.  Anyway into the YHA where we were staying and I was told that I had been nominated to share with Leen away from everyone else so into the room, got changed and then went in search of some supplies (ie coke for the booze).  Sorted and into it :)

Dinner at the RSL was pretty good (all you can eat buffet yeah!) and before long it was bedtime because I was tired.

I don't know what came over me but I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed (okay that might be overstating it a bit) but anyway I decided I was going to actually go on the ride.  Not only that, I went on the early morning one with DJY also!  (we went and had a look at the lookout).

For the main ride we were going out to Bells Line of Road, through Lithgow, up to Ilford then back to Bathurst through Sofala.  I was again arse end arnold so off we went... onto Bells Line of Road and uh oh! There was a group pulled up so I pulled up too, unfortunately the less experienced rider in front of my lost the front in the gravel, he was okay so was the bike so we got moving but around the corner the leader pulled up again - turned out he'd binned the bike and it wasn't really rideable.  Ooops.  So we sent most of the group on, and Esther and I stayed.  One of the guys came back from Lithgow with a brake lever so with that, some gaffa tape and cable ties we managed to get the bike rideable again.  We just went straight to Bathurst and found the pub we were supposed to be having lunch at and it was good :D

After lunch we went and did a few laps of Mt Panorama then we split with most of the group heading straight back to Katoomba and a handful of us going through Tarana and Oberon (me included - quite the joiner this weekend I was).  I had not done that road before and it was quite lovely.

Eventually back to Katoomba for a few chicken sticks for dinner and then some more drinkies and another earlyish night.

For the ride home it was a bit of a free-for-all.  Nobodies plans really appealed to me so I made up my own.  With spelling words and farchallenge photos to be had I headed out to Lithgow and up to Rylestone where I consulted the map and realised I could get a D and Dunedoo, then back across to Wellington where I stopped for one of THE MOST AWESOME KFC meals I have ever had :D  Snapped my Wellington Caves shot then out through Dripstone and onto Stuart Town for an S for spelling and Euchareena as well.  Lovely rolling countryside out there :o)  Through Molong and Cudal and I was starting to run out of daylight, I wanted to make Boorowa before dark and I just about did...

That's just after the Cowra turn off so just a few kays out of Boorowa.

I had fuelled up in Cowra so I just picked a car to follow and followed them pretty much all the way home (I still had dark visor on).