I had a few things to do this morning including meeting up with some of the local HOG® Chapter to discuss an upcoming event. I drove to the meeting because I ran short of time to grab my Harley Davidson® Road King® from its air conditioned home at my office and when I joined the others I was quite jealous of those of us who had brought their motorcycles and planned to ride today. It'd been a couple of weeks since I'd clocked up some k's and I was feeling withdrawals!
Luckily yesterday my mate Heffy, formerly known as JP, had hinted he was up for a ride and had followed it up with an SMS earlier this morning so after the meeting was squared away I organised to meet him after a healthy lunch of hot dogs with the kids. I donned the leather jacket, the draggin jeans, picked a pair of gloves, dusted the helmet off and went to get my Road King. Heffy arrived shortly after 1pm just as I was getting back home. He determinedly announced a favourite cafe, Perenti at Gloucester, as the destination. Given the time of the day 120k's each way seemed about right so we were off without any adieu.
The last few times I'd been up this way were with larger groups riding in formation at the speed limit and the roads are a bit dodgy. Today the bumps were smoothed out for a number of reasons, with Heffy taking the lead on the way up. There was however plenty of opportunity to relax into the ride and by the time we arrived I was reminded of why I love to ride my Harley-Davidson. A couple of weeks buildup of work, family, beating my body up running and going to the gym all gone before we sat down to enjoy a couple of double shots of very decent coffee.
With Spring in the air Gloucester was packed with motorcyles of all descriptions and the coffee shops and cafe's in the main street were busy with black leather clad people. Many took the opportunity to stroll down the street and check out the thousands and thousands of dollars worth of machines who had carried their enthusiastic owners there.
Last year Heffy rode his Road King with Zanderhar and I across the Nullarbor we are making plans to ride to Perth next winter, the long way. So we took the opportunity to discuss the proposed route and enjoy the feeling of looking forward to a 9000ks+ in three weeks epic... more about that later.
Just as the cafe staff were about to lock us in for the afternoon we left Perenti, I grabbed some fuel and I took a bump smoothing lead back to the highway, sadly with a little more traffic than on the way up. I gave Heffy a quick wave as he turned off to head home and not much later my Road King was back in its air conditioned home, I reckon I saw it smile back at me.
