All week I'd been looking forward to getting away for the day with Roy and JP on Sunday. As the week progressed the details of the day's ride were set, we were going to head up the Freeway to the Old Pacific Hwy at Mount White, a quick stop at Pie in the Sky then on to Galston via the Gorge and to the Old Northern Road. Lunch was planned at Wiseman's Ferry then back home via Spencer and Peats Ridge.
We met at mia casa and were away shortly before 11am in absolutely perfect weather. I was elected Road Captain for this leg of the trip, followed up by JP with his BGF, Roy with Max and Steve (Max's dad) who had decided to join us. My son, of course, was warming the rear seat om the Road King with the tour pack on by request, I guess he was planning to siesta en route.
Heading south on the Freeway with the cruise on was sweet. I'm still kicking myself for thinking cruise on a motorcycle was stoopid! It's a great, stress free way to eat up k's on motorways. The turnoff at Mount White soon was upon us and at the start of the old Highway we stopped for a quick chat. Steve and JP hadn't ridden that section of road before, so they were warned about the jap kamikazes, cyclists, road racing sportscars and the lovely sealed road that occasionally threw largish bumps at you. That said, we decided to run the bends at our own pace and meet at Pie in the Sky for a debrief.
I took the lead, JP behind, but just as we started enjoying the g forces we caught up to a bunch of meandering Boulevardes who seemed like they were more interested in testing their brakes than riding around corners. It was too nice a day to get shirty so we sat behind them and I looked forward to the dual lanes up the hill on the other side of the Hawkesbury Bridge.
When the second lane became available the Boulevarde directly in front of me and a couple more further up in their group moved out passive aggressively, by the time they got there I was on the brakes trying not to arse whack them. The one in front of me realised his mistake, that is, don't get in the fast lane unless you are going to use it, and decided to try not look stupid and turned the throttle. That worked OK for him until he hit the first bend with his pea heart. Luckily his line was bad enough for me to slip around the outside and three bends later I'd passed the other eight or so pretenders with JP not too far behind.
I then had my eye on an HD Sporty ahead, clearly whooping it up as evidenced by the stream of metal on tar sparks flying around on each bend. Quite soon the shiny new white RK, two up with the King Tour Pack caught up, but the guy was going so hard I wasn't about to try to go past, It was too pretty to watch and I was enjoying leaving some of my footplates on the tar as well. All too soon we were at the entrance to Pie in the Sky, JP followed soon after and Roy and Steve after that. A coffee and a great Curry Pie later we were on our way through Bewrowra, fuelled up in Asquith and heading for Galston Gorge.
I was leading down the Gorge, the guys behind were having a ball getting around the 5k hairpins, I could hear them whooping and hollering (hillbilly like) and laughing. Sadly we had to follow some slow cars up the hill, but it's a lovely piece of road to sit back and enjoy anyway.
After Galston JP took the lead and we turned right on to the Old Northern Road towards Wiseman's Ferry. It's quite a scenic rural road with some spectacular valley.mountain views to the left and no shortage of huge mansion like houses to gawk at along the way. Just before Wiseman's ferry the road becomes very windy and the first thing we noticed entering the town were the bikes, lots and lots of them.
We stopped at the pub for lunch, once again for some strange reason, my meal took an age to come out compared to everyone else's but the food Steak good. We could have done without the entertainment, Jock Strap and the Elastic Band (not really, but who cares who it was), too loud and too sad. If I wanted to see a John Williamson clone singing original songs... na, not happening, I'd rather rip my ears off.
After lunch JP and I decided to sway bikes for a while, which saw my son and I on a Heritage Softail. The first thing I noticed was how small it felt and how easy it was to manoeuvre on grass compared to my Road King. JP had the opposite experience but thankfully kept it up. The softail was good for a while, but then the small size became an issue in the comfort department for me. We travelled through Spencer and up to Peats Ridge with Roy in the lead and when we busted out onto the freeway we met up with my wife and other kids who were on their way back from a day in the Blue Mountains. My daughter took some moving snaps of some of us from the car.
A quick coffee stop at the Twin Servos saw the sun disappear and the chill factor increase, and not too uncomfortably we headed home for Chinese.
K's Travelled 337 (1241)
