Border Ranges Ride

 So with the Ducati finally all set up (well, pretty much) with accessories and having had it’s first service I took the opportunity to get her out on a multi surface spin. I planned a quick 300 odd kilometre loop through the border ranges on Gaia GPS, despite rain being predicted for the afternoon.

I wanted to be able to explore any other roads while down there, on a whim, so I topped up with fuel at Tamborine. Probably not strictly necessary but better to be safe, eh?

Out through Beaudesert and on to Rathdowny for a coffee. Another cracking morning in south east Queensland!

I took the Lions Road south out of Rathdowny. Clearly they have had plenty of rain in this part of the world as it was bright green grass everywhere I looked. Cloud wrapped over some of the hills that flanked the road making for spectacular scenery.

Some sections were more spectacular than others.

Climbing up to the border crossing I was soon in the bottom of the cloud and getting covered in dewy, misty precipitation. The road gets very twisty here and I was interested to see how the Pirelli Scorpions would feel in the wet. Now, while it wasn’t driving rain, the road was thoroughly wet and I am pleased to say the tyres gripped exceptionally well. I pushed it a bit hard just to be sure and apart from some rear abs activation while braking hard into some corners they were absolutely rock solid.

I turned up Simes road at Grady’s Creek to begin the climb to Tweed Range road but after a few kilometres it became obvious that it was going to be very wet up there. Having a brand new bike that was shod with road oriented rubber, it wasn’t a situation that I wanted to be in. With the escarpment located inside a cloud this morning there would be absolutely no view and I was intending to ride up there as much for the view as for the ride.

So, I backtracked and got onto Forest Road, then Lynch’s Creek road to head back out to the Summerland Way at Wiangaree and on to Kyogle. The rain soon stopped and the road dried up as I descended so I was happy with my choice.

I rode straight through Kyogle and out the Uki road. The road was dry and I enjoyed hooking through the traffic free twisties. I was impressed with how well my Africa Twin handled on the winding roads but this Ducati is next level on the black stuff. The highly muffled exhaust note belies how wickedly fast the engine pushes you from bend to bend!

I turned left into Link road at Wadeville to enjoy some quiet dirt across to Tweed Range road. Yep, I wasn’t giving up on the dream of taking in that view just yet!

The road was damp here but that just made for great traction. In fact, these tyres were proving to be pretty damn good. That was until I started hitting patches of wet clay. They weren’t super-slimy but I could feel the bike moving around a bit now. Stopping at the location below for a “comfort stop” a car coming the other way wound it’s window down and said in a slightly pissed off tone “the roads closed up there”. Hmmm, interesting. 🤔 So I wouldn’t have got through from the other end and I won’t go much further from here anyway. So, I turned around and enjoyed the ride down the hill to the Uki road again. This is why I wanted a full tank of fuel because you never know where you might have to go.

I wasn’t on the black stuff for long though as I soon turned off at Mt Burrell onto Cadel road. This took me through Mebbin National Park which is on the western side of Mt Warning. I have done some mountain bike races here in the past and I did feel some familiarity with bits of the forest. Of course, on the mtb you can duck past the gates that block many an interesting fire trail. Today I contented myself with cruising through and getting to know my bike/tyre combination with nary a soul to disturb me.

Cutters Campground was very familiar. Many a muddy mtb race was started from this point!🙄

I cruised into Tyalgum for lunch at the General store - even though I am only a lowly captain 😜.

They do great fresh food here and I enjoyed a simple, fresh sandwich and an iced coffee milk while swinging my legs like an 8 year old.

Things went a bit south from here as I noticed a number of missed calls from the neighbours who live either side of Dad, my wife and my little bro. 

Shit.

This can’t be good.

Returning the first neighbours call I found that Dad had had a little lie down on the carpet - for about 30 hours. Luckily we (Dad) have good neighbours who regularly check on each other. They called the ambulance and he was on his way to hospital at that very moment. Seems I had only missed those calls by about 5 minutes or so. 

I think I need a Cardo in both helmets.🤔

So, here I was, only 100ish kilometres from home but about 1000 bends in between. I jumped on the bike and hooked it for home. Once I got onto the Advancetown road things slowed up a bit as it had rained and the road was thoroughly wet. Riding into Nerang I began to become concerned as lightning bolts began to rain down. Needing fuel I ducked into the 7-11 at Nerang to top up and wait the storm out.

This is what the radar looked like….

I had several chats with bike owners (who were in their cars) about the weather with one guy showing me a photo a friend had just sent him from Beaudesert showing a massive cell that was green looking!

 Shit!

Checking the radar again and events were evolving rapidly! 45 minutes had elapsed and checking the radar it looked even worse! (Yes, I was under that big red bit under “Nerang”)

I was stuck at the servo until the weather cleared but the silver lining here was I got to make a stack of phone calls to Steve, my wife, the neighbours to generally sort some shit out. 

I eventually decided “fcuk it” and rode out into the weather. I got absolutely soaked by a massive downpour and can safely say that the Pirelli Scorpion tyres on the Duke can walk on water!

313km for the day through some magic countryside proved that this bike was the right choice. I am trying not to be a “fan boy” but can I just say that I am quietly impressed. 😎

Thankfully, I have an awesome brother who also cares about our parents too and he dropped everything to head straight out to see Dad. I organised to drive the 1000km a few days later with Lucy and we are spending some important time with Dad. He isn’t out of the woods yet and at 82 and some change he might never be but at least we are here for him. 🤗

Despite planning with Gaia GPS maps I find Ride With GPS the perfect interactive mapping tool to post to the blog.

Cheers.

I needed a beer after today…….

Wild Weather

While I do not normally talk about work here on my blog, I have just spent the last three days operating through what must surely be the worst sustained thunderstorm activity that I have witnessed in my twenty odd years of flying for a living and feel it warrants a mention, if only for my personal amusement at a later date.

A large trough of low pressure has lain across south eastern Australia for the last four days. The ensuing instability in the atmosphere has seen these cells "pop" with incredible speed, just after midday each day and form into massive, impenetrable lines of thunderstorms.

I had the dubious pleasure of taxiing for departure in Sydney as a massive thunderstorm rolled over on Tuesday afternoon. Air Traffic Control(ATC) basically just "parked" us and all of the other aircraft attempting to depart, on the taxiways, until the storm passed and it was safe to depart. We happened to be parked about one hundred and fifty metres from the control tower and at some point during the light show I happened to look at the tower at the exact moment a bolt of lightning struck it about midway down! Shortly after, a sheepish voice said over the radio "we think that one just hit us". It sure did, but as testament to the design of the control tower there was no interruption to the service provided from ATC. I did feel like moving a bit further away from them though. Sitting in an open field with a metal tail sticking 12.5 metres into the sky makes you feel somewhat like a fish in a barrel!

Tuesday proved to be just a warm up for the main event on Wednesday though. Scheduled to operate from Melbourne to Adelaide, we never actually got onto our flight planned track!

A cold front was moving in and (referencing the Mean Sea Level chart above) the blue line with the sharks teeth exactly represented a complete line of thunderstorms that stretched from just south west of Melbourne to about 180 kilometres to the north east of Adelaide. Unbroken. 780 kilometres long. 39 000 feet high.

Fortunately we had gassed the aircraft up to almost ludicrous levels and flying 180 kilometres out of our way was no fuss. We actually managed to deliver our load of passengers to Adelaide without so much as a bump. Icing on the cake for our professional egos!
The return flight to Melbourne would be the more interesting sector though. It was obvious to me that these storms would be overhead Melbourne Airport by the time we arrived. These fronts usually move from west to east at a fair clip and you can count on an affected airport being clear within an hour or so. The fact that these were moving northwest to southeast was somewhat disconcerting though. In this industry you must always have a plan "B", "C" and "D", with the possible option of an E and F too. It will simply not do to paint yourself into a corner and need to be on the ground, now. With this firm rule in mind we yet again rang up big numbers with the refueller.
Nearing top of descent into Melbourne and the picture wasn't pretty. The aircraft's radar was painting a picture with lots of red and yellow returns. Now, bright colours are fine on a lollipop, but not at all what you want to see on the weather radar. That white arrow is the direction of the wind and the speed is 101 knots(187km/h) and it was blowing the line of cells along, keeping them continuously over Melbourne Airport (the small green circle near the top of screen).

  ATC let us know that Melbourne was closed for arrivals and departures and to hold in our present position(which was about 80 kilometres northeast of Portland). Fine with us as we would not make an approach with this kind of weather around the airport anyway.
So, we proceeded to hold. For about fifty minutes we went in circles or speared out over Bass Straight in the Cape Otway area as we made room for more aircraft to hold. Eventually we reached a point where ATC was estimating (read guessing) that the airport might reopen in 20 minutes and then we would be about number eight or ten in the sequence to land. Hmmm, the unpainted path out was about as small as we felt comfortable with and we decided to bug out back to Adelaide, take on more fuel and try again as the front would have progressed about three hours further along.
This done, we eventually arrived in Melbourne at 11pm, after leaving the first time at about 6:45pm! Not bad for a fifty two minute flight! I avoided pointing out that if our passengers had driven to Melbourne they would have arrived at a similar time! Sometimes the old addage "got time to spare?, go by air!" assumes more truth than a pilot would like!
 I would like to point out that our cabin crew were fantastic throughout and ninety nine percent of our guests disembarked in Melbourne with a smile on their face and a kind word. The other one percent were too tired to talk!  It is pleasing to see that we must have done something right and kept peoples spirits up despite the loooong day that were on duty. This job has too many sublties for the average traveller to grasp whether we are doing a good job up the front, so we tend to take kind words as a measure of a job well done.
It certainly made me feel better about clocking on late morning and clocking off at 1am!

Thunder Struck

Arcing out of Sydney the other day with a majestic, yet menacing line of thunderstorms approaching from the west, there is no better feeling than the weight of responsibility lifting when you spot an opening just made for a 737.

Hell week ahead with sim and a line check. The silver lining is four weeks away from it all from next sunday. I love my job, but sometimes you need your personal space.