Tenterfield Ride

A few mates from work and I have been trying to organise a ride for a while now. With all of us working for an airline it is worse than trying to herd cats, what with our rosters being all over the place! In the end it was only Hazo and myself able to line the two days off up to get out on the big chook chasers.

I had a rough plan that would take us down to Tenterfield for the night. It wasn’t looking too likely though as it had been raining pretty well continuosly for the preceding few weeks. Afternoon thunderstorms mainly in those weeks but the day prior to our ride and the morning of it was still raining solidly with a more set-in system. We decided to abandon our 0630am start and try for a 9am coffee/ride. Luckily, the heavens cleared up somewhat and we decided to head off…well, after trying to pair our comms systems for about twenty minutes! Grrr.

We had a good traffic free run until we got to an area by the name of Coulson. Several cars were stopped, watching the water flowing pretty quickly over the low level bridge and its approaches. Chatting to a bloke in a low riding ute he seemed to think the level (40cm/16in deep) had been pretty constant for the last forty minutes or so. 

Shit.

We watched a few trucks and 4wd utes drive through and it didn’t look too deep, especially on the right side but it was flowing strongly left to right.

We stood around for about 45 minutes trying to determine if the level was dropping or not. It seemed to be staying pretty constant, unfortunately. The alternative to get around this flooding was a one and a half hour backtrack which would get us to the intersection that was 200 metres over that bridge.

Hmmm. What to do?

Hazo decided “fcuk it”, jumped on and powered across. I thought “that’s easy” and followed…..and…..it was! All of the “if it’s flooded, forget it” advertising had dented our confidence in trusting our own judgment. 

Noted.

We topped up with fuel in Boonah just in case we came to any more road closures and needed to backtrack.

From Boonah we headed out Carneys Creek road then onto White Swamp road. The countryside was a lush green from all of the rain and the road presented minimal dust. It was near perfect riding conditions. We are glad we hadn’t pulled the pin on the ride.

We stopped at an outlook on White Swamp road just past Koreelah Creek campground to take in the view. 

The green! 

My god, was it green!

From here we flowed along, avoiding cattle on the unfenced road. The few floodways along here only had a trickle flowing over them and most weren’t slippery which was great. 😅

We turned back east at Old Koreelah to head into Woodenbong. I’ve always wanted to check out the Woodenbong Hotel because it doesn’t look like a pub. It looks like an old government/forestry style building and is actually quite inviting. 

Anyway, we broke the drought with a Tooheys Old. 😉

From there we rode the short but fun road to Urbenville, then out onto Paddy’s Flat road. We needed to stop for a rest break a few kilometres along the road, so checked out these cattle yards.

Paddy’s Flat road was in good condition and we didn’t really stop again until the Lunatic Hotel in Drake. The pub was in full swing with the locals, so a quick cold drink and we backtracked to Long Gully road which led into Rocky River road..

It was getting late so we kept motoring as Rocky River road is a looong, slow ride if you want to do it safely. We eventually stopped for a stretch about 25km out of Tenterfield.

Parking the bikes up at our digs in Tenterfield, we had a quick shower and walked down to the Royal Hotel for dinner and a beer. The Royal has decent food and a GREAT selection of craft beers on tap, mainly from Deepwater Brewing. Here we are enjoying a Brewdog Black Heart to cap off the night.😎

Just across the road is the old Tenterfield Saddler building. We spent a few minutes scanning the shopfront before wandering home for the night. It was so nice and cool up here on the range it made for a pleasant way to finish the night.

We were up early next morning, enjoying the cool, dry air. Did I mention that it’s been hot and very humid in Brisbane for the last six weeks? No? Well, it’s been horrible and at ~2500ft above sea level, Tenterfield is cool and dry.

 

Our digs. 

We headed out for a look at the airport, then took a newly sealed tourist loop road around to the Mt Mackenzie road where we turned right, out Gunyah road to take in the view from the Gunyah Road Lookout.

It is a magnificent view from here that is just a little harder to get to being along the dirt road, so nice and quiet….except for the rumble of the odd DX or 1090 v-twin.

Back into town we refuelled and went in search of some breakfast. We decided to try the little Potting Shed cafe’ on the main street. The coffee was good and the breakfast burrito wasn’t bad. Jon had a chat to the “Scalies” that had stopped in for a coffee. One rode bikes so was keen for a chat.

We tried to come up with a route home over our coffees. I was out of ideas until I recalled that I had a .gpx file in Gaia that traced the Rabbit Proof Fence (RPF) from Stanthorpe to Killarney.

Much faffing around followed as we tried to share the file onto my Garmin Zumo XT. I eventually got it on the gps but there was no way that the bloody thing was going to navigate the route.😡

 Why?

 If it was a cycling gps it would have loaded the file and Bob’s yer uncle, we would be set but noooo, these road based gps units need the .gpx converted/massaged in Garmin Basecamp before loading into the gps…..which you need a desktop computer to do….FFS!

We rode the road to Stanthorpe then faffed around some more trying to load the route. In the end Jon put the route on Gaia on his Quadlock mounted phone and we just followed the track with the little “you are here” arrow. Not ideal but it worked…..

The trail was pleasant, little used twin track through lush green paddocks. Beautiful riding and it would be totally suitable for a mountain bike ride too. One might need dropping at Stanthorpe and picking up at Killarney though. 😉

There was one section where we had to ride through a farm yard that had several dogs tied up…and one big white bastard that was loose and chased us. Not probs on the adv bike with boots but there must be a way to avoid this yard as it is clearly on the RPF track. It wouldn’t be nice on a mtb either. I would prefer to avoid it as I don’t like riding across private property any day.

There were a lot of gates. Seriously, a LOT! Lucky I had a speedy KTM rider that I couldn’t keep up with who had the gates open for me. There is a benefit to being slow!😏

Yeah, did I mention gates?

We followed the RPF along on the NSW side, looking at QLD just a few feet away. We soon came to Maryland National Park and entered through another gate. This led to a fun, fast blast along a twisting forest track. I almost ran over a four foot black snake but he luckily made it to the edge of the trail as I blasted by. We were descending for a while and I was thinking “there must be a creek at the bottom”. How would it be?

Well, it proved to be small and well lined with blue stone. It proved no problem to cross being little more than a drain. More fun ensued until we came to the eastern side of the National Park.

We followed some dirt then a bunch of sealed road into Killarney. The Killarney Hotel was a welcome break as it was proving to be quite a warm day. My RST suit gets hot above 23C, even with all of the vents opened. It is funny but I can tell when the temperature climbs through 23C because of this is when I start to become uncomfortable and look at the outside air temp gauge on the bike, and it is always 23C.

Because of this heat we decided to rehydrate with another cold Tooheys Old and one of the hotels “best steak sandwiches ever” (my rating, not theirs - they are seriously good!).

Leaving Killarney we climbed up over The Head Road to White Swamp Gate road then dropped back onto White Swamp road (in NSW)  and backtracked yesterday’s route into Boonah.

We pinned it home from Boonah as that last hour into town (or away from home) absolutely sux. I hate it with a passion. Traffic, incompetent drivers and more traffic. I think half of Victoria has moved up to South East Queensland and it appears to be the half that have no driving skills whatsoever…..

🙄

Arriving home I was quickly unpacked as were credit card camping and packing lightly. This definitely made the bikes much more fun to ride on the dirt. Not sure how many kilometres we did - under one thousand I’d say but we covered some awesome new ground, got to drink some very tasty beers and checked out a cool little country town. 

I’ll be up there a lot more in the future. 😉

Cheers.

Adult Education - Level 3

 

I am a bit behind with my blog posts the last few months, as you can see from my Part 2 of our Japan MotoGP trip, which went up almost eleven weeks after the fact. I have a good reason and I may blog about it at some point, but not here or yet.

No, this one is about getting back to Morgan Park to attend Level 3 of California Superbike School back at the end of October. To add to the fun my young bloke, Will, had booked in for Level 1 on the same day. About a week before the day CSS emailed to say that they had secured the track for another day and would anyone like to book more levels. I would have liked to but I had only put in for the one day off work but Will already had the day off so booked in for Level 2 as well. I must say, I am really pleased with his desire to learn how to ride better. While he wants to do it to be faster, I know it will also make him safer as he has quite good situational awareness when on the road (for a young fella).

I was keen to use my GSXR750 for the day but rain was predicted and the Gixxer is on slicks. Another issue is that there is no time to put warmers on after each session as you need to quickly attend a debrief on arrival back at the pits. This would put the slicks through multiple heat cycles in one day, effectively wearing them out.

With this in mind I decided to use my R1 as it had treaded Michelin Power GP tyres on it. Will was going to use his Daytona come hell or high water - not his CBR500 road bike - so we needed to swap the CBR’s near new front Michelin Road 6 onto the Daytona and then purchase a rear Road 6 for it. All for the same reasons I just gave above.

As usual we drove up the afternoon before so as to get a good sleep before the early start. It is nice to have a support driver these days so ‘ol Dad can stare out the window.

We got interrupted sleep as a massive thunderstorm rolled over Warwick that night and proceeded to pound us for about two hours.

The morning dawned clear and calm.

 The Daytona had a belly pan absolutely full to the brim with water though. I had told Will to drill a drain hole and install a bung months ago. 

Now we would need to pull it off and drill a drain hole under the pressure of getting our bikes scrutineered and signed in for the day. I’ve lost count of the number of “told you so” moments over the last couple of years….. either way, I was still pretty much the first through scrutineering and parked up near the instructor’s bikes.

There had clearly been a lot of rain overnight and the volunteer marshals were busy cleaning up the track where run off had dragged mud aross a few corners.

After a introductory briefing we split up into our respective groups and went to class.

The day progressed as expected…well, with one unexpected mishap. One of the instructors was from the US and for some reason seemed to be carving up our combined Level 3 and 4 on track class. As we were taking it easy and following the drills which required the use of only two gears and minimal braking, it made no sense for him to be carving us up. Well, it ended badly for him after he went up the inside of a long train of us into Turn 4 and had a massive high side right in front of all of us. He fcuked himself up pretty badly and was eventually carted off in an ambulance. Chatting to the owner of this Aussie CSS franchise at lunch, he was pretty pissed off at this.

The rest of the day progressed well and I feel I learnt a lot of new little techniques on how to move around the bike without upsetting its balance and feel more “locked on” in corners.

 There were some “light bulb” moments where I realised why the bike was behaving the way it did in certain corners  - it was me upsetting it. Now I know how to make it smoother which will equal faster and safer!

Will was having a good day as well. I was hoping he was making notes in the booklet we were given. I think it helped when I told him that one of the fast riders told me she re-reads her notes before every track day to remind herself what she needs to be mindful of.

The day was hot and predictably it built up into an afternoon of thunderstorms. A couple drifted past and just missed during the mid afternoon but one hit us square on, right before our last session.

 The rain came down so hard that water was 50mm deep in our pit in about ten minutes. Needless to say we didn’t go out for that last session  - even with treaded tyres fitted. It just wasn’t safe.

No problem though, as I was very satisfied with what I had learnt. It is always good to quit while you are ahead, especially when it comes to roaring around at high speeds on a motorcycle.

We grabbed a feed that night at the Horse and Jockey Hotel which is right near our motel. Will needed to hit the hay for his Day 2.

There had been three days of track days prior to CSS and apparently three guys went off in one incident on the high speed Turn 8. This Gixxer belonged to one of the guys in the incident. 

Will has seen the MotoGP riders come off and jump up, run back to the pits and grab another bike so often that he probably has an unrealistic idea of what will happen if he has a decent bingle.

It was a sobering reminder of what happens in the real world when you come off..... but in the mean time,  shit its fun!😁

Cheers.

*** I didn't take many photos as it is a busy day,  so I pinched some from others on the day.  They are watermarked by the various photographers. I'm publishing hoping for forgiveness in lieu of permission.😉

Motegi MotoGP 2024 - Part 2

Day 4 

Well, the alarm went off very early again this morning. Down to breakfast then into the bus for the ~ hour drive to the track. We may have been a bit dusty this morning……

Being the weekend there were a lot more fans in attendance. 

We decided to check out the merchandise and eatery area first up this morning as there was an atm located in the information centre and we needed some more yen. 

The two foot long sausage in bread looked pretty damn good so I grabbed one and chopped it in half to share.

 

It tasted as good as it looked and some stodgy, hot food was just what the doctor ordered this morning.

We decided to check out the “G” grandstand which was opposite our “Z” stand and was located on the inside of Turn 11, at the end of the back straight. Located here, one is quite close to the bikes, looking down on them as they peel under the bridge.

After Steve had taken another 1000 photos of the bikes in FP 3, we wandered over to the “Z” stand to find our seats. It was overcast, cool and with a few light showers passing through. As a spectator it was just perfect for sitting outside. Probably not so nice for the riders!

We then wandered up to the hairpin at the start of the back straight, Turn 10. The rubbish bin system was interesting to see. Very well signed and constantly replaced once full. I understand that the clear bag (and lack of rubbish bins in general) is because of what happened in the 1990s with the sarin gas attacks in the subway system.

Some spectators were allowed to bring bikes into the track and we saw some interesting pit bikes.

Steve took another 1000 photos here before we wandered back down to our seating to watch Q1 and Q2, then the sprint race.

The Sprint was a bit of a procession with the usual outcome this season - J Martin the winner.

The racing over we wandered back to the bus for the drive back to Utsunomiya. There was no formal dinner organised for tonight so we wandered down to the restaurant strip near our hotel with Gordon (Mr Pole Position Travel) and several of the others, so it was almost just like an official dinner.😆

We found an Italian restaurant in the end (I know, I know - we are in Japan) that everyone was happy with the menu and proceeded to order. The food was actually really good and the company was awesome. Because we were a bigger group we were spread across a couple of tables and when it came to pay the bill this became a real problem. Well, the problem was more of a translation issue as the staff had zero English and our “konnichiwa” and “oragato” weren’t of much value either.🫤

After about twenty minutes of hand gestures, assisted by some Google Translate we had the bill sorted to our satisfaction, with a tip thrown in on top. We retired to another little Irish bar that Gordon knew for a Guinness or two then hit the hay.

Day 5

Being race day we were on the bus even earlier than the usual 0745 as we were expecting much more traffic for the drive out to the track.

 It actually wasn’t too bad and we were there in the usual hour or so. I believe spectator numbers were way down on the peak years mainly due to the Japanese bikes and/or riders not featuring at the pointy end of the field for the last few seasons. Ai Ogura being the one exception to this theory.

We wandered into the merch area again this morning as Steve wanted to grab a couple of things. We got to check out Johan Zarco’s Suzuka 8 Hour race winning Fireblade and the winner’s trophy in the Honda tent. Not sure how we missed seeing them the other day?

We wandered up to Turn 10 again for some more photos and it was much harder to get a good vantage point this morning as the crowd was significantly larger.

 No real problem though as the track is sunken down into the landscape so you are looking down on it from pretty much anywhere around the circuit.

The riders came around on the top deck of an open bus for a parade lap. I had to laugh as it looked like Aleix Epargaro (aka The Captain) was lecturing Maverick Vinales’ on the far side (sorry, not a great photo from my phone. I am sure Steve will have a crystal clear one).

When we took our seats we were pleasantly surprised to see a couple from Young in country NSW who we had met at Sepang last year. 

We saw David Alonso clinch the Moto 3 world championship as he mowed down the field to win the race as well. 

We got to witness all of his post race celebrations as he performed them right in front of us. A very funny sight was David riding his first mini- moto bike around in circles on the track before falling off it for fun.

Just as the Moto 2 riders completed their sighting lap we had a light shower of rain come across the track. Just enough to put our rain jackets on but barely enough to wet the ground.

 This saw race organisers declare it a flag to flag race. With the language barrier with the circuit p.a. system we had no idea what was going on. 😆  

Jake Dixon ran away at the start but as Ogura began to mow him down we realised that Dixon was on wets while Orura was on slicks. It was actually awesome to be in amongst a mostly Japanese crowd and have the soon to be world champion charging through the field. Unfortunately Ogura had to cede to an even faster Gonzalez, but then again Ogura was racing for the world championship. Bloody interesting race actually.

The MotoGp race started dry and managed to stay that way. Acosta looked a good chance for the win but like the Sprint race restersay, he troweled it into the gravel again. This left a fairly predictable Ducati lockout….again.

Post race Steve and I decided not to rush out with the crowd. Our bus wasn’t leaving for over an hour so we grabbed a beer and joined the masses who were entering the track at Turn 11.

It is always very interesting seeing a track from the track. The nuances of rise, fall and camber are usually not able to be seen from the t.v. coverage. It was interesting how steep the fall was into Turn 11 and also how wide the tunnel was out of 11.

We walked around toward the finish line and saw big black marks on the track, not knowing what they were from. As it turns out, it was from Alex Marques’ bike being hooked up on the back of Mir’s bike on the first lap. Scary stuff when seen on the replay later that night!

There were still thousands of fans on the start straight and just as we arrived they were wheeling Pecco’s race winning bike back into the pit garage.

I got a perspective of what it looked like to be Jack Miller starting from P14 today. Pretty sure he didn’t have a beer on the grid though….

As we made our way through the primo-pit-hospitality-area a mate messaged to say that he and his partner had just had a little boy! Steve and I celebrated by tipping a small bottle of Suntory whiskey into an even smaller bottle of Coke. I may have even shed a tear for him. Nice one Dean0!

On the way out we took a look at some of the few bikes that were still in the bike park before making our way to the bus home.

 Think we may have been 3 sheets to the wind by this stage as the trip seemed to go quickly for me  - maybe not so quick for the poor sods sitting opposite. 😁

We then attended a final dinner at a tepanyaki restaurant just around the corner from the hotel. Plenty of exuberance was on show from everyone as we celebrated a great weekend with like minded folks. No photos though…we were busy…..

Day 6

We were all going our own way today, so we slept in a little before heading down for the last breakfast with the Pole Position crew. We had met heaps of new, awesome people in this group but in true “how small is this world” fashion, we had met a guy and his Dad who lived litterally 500 metres from me back in Brisbane. Chris also raced bikes at Morgan Park with The Motorcycle Sportsman Of QLD club! We will definitely be in touch back home!

We had all day to be back at Narita airport so Steve and I took a wander around central Utsonimiya for a few hours, checking out an ancient shrine that the city was grew up around.

 It was very “The Last Samurai” in build with ancient trees  surrounding it. 

Very cool.

The pride in every little thing was duly noted. Check this fire hydrant cover.

When the time was deemed right we caught a cab to the train station for $10 Aussie- it sure beat walking like we did on Day 2! 

We boarded a Shinkansen into Tokyo station and enjoyed the smooth, fast journey again.

We managed to find the Airport Express this time and zoomed out to Narita airport in no time at all. Being there far too early we grabbed a couple of cheap beers and dinner before finally boarding our Jet* flight home to Brisbane. Being a red-eye it was what a red eye is. At least we had a tiny little woman sitting between us and we weren’t cramped. The aisle seat for the win!

In hindsight, we had a great trip and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the Japan MotoGP to anyone. We went with Pole Position Travel as it was cost effective and having everything organised made it very easy in a country where communication can be challenging. Having said that, having seen it done now I wouldn’t hesitate to go solo and organise the whole shebang on my own. Though, doing it “solo” one would miss out on the camaraderie of hanging with a bunch of like minded motorcycle nutters. This benefit is not to be underestimated when purely weighing up cost. 

Speaking more on cost, Japan is a cheap place to visit for us Aussies with food and drinks being very cheap. Even at GP inflated pricing the Motegi beers were half the price that is charged at Phillip Island, the water is one fifth the price while food is about on par but there is so much more choice at Motegi. The ability to purchase cheap, fresh food at convenience stores in Utsynomia and take it into the track with us was a breath of fresh air. In Australia everyone entering the track precinct and their backpack contents are treated like Osama Bin Laden’s offspring - not so in Japan - it was extremely refreshing to be treated like an adult!

Thanks to my bro, Steve, for being an awesome travel buddy AND an awesome photographer! He let me borrow a bunch of photos and they are marked with his "Road To Nowhere Images" water mark.

Where are we going next Bro? 😁

Cheers.