I've been off my Harley-Davidson® Road King® for a couple of weeks now, since the very painful trip back from Canberra. Since then I've moved house, spent Christmas and New Years at home with the family and lots of friends who have dropped by to check out our new digs. It's been so flat out that I embarrassingly haven't had a chance to wash my motorcycle since I returned from the National HOG Rally.
Yesterday on spec one of my friends, Timmo, who has a very shiny new 2011 CVO® Street Glide® sms'd me to see if I was interested in a ride to have a late breakfast somewhere. Of course I was, and Port Stephens was the chosen destination.
We left about 8.30am, a touch of cooling mist about making this morning significantly cooler than some of the previous ones and with Timmo in the lead meandered up to Shoal Bay that was packed with rubbernecks on holidays. We managed to get a table in a decent cafe and caught up over a reasonable feed.
On the way back though, the holiday traffic was at it's worst and on the Nelson Bay Road, in the ever increasing heat, we were gridlocked, alternating between 5 kph and stopped for about 8 - 10k's with nothing we could do about it because of the obvious presence of some boys in blue similarly caught just ahead of us.
On the bright side, I got plenty of practice for my next slow race at a Rally and despite the lack of forward progress was still quite happy to be out on my Harley-Davidson. Timmo had the Angels on his CVO's stereo at the time so I was happy to share some foot tapping. Thankfully his Lee Kernaghan tracks didn't make an appearance while we were caught!
The traffic, as it often does, cleared without any hint of what was causing the holdup and we were on our way, back up to the speed limit, cooling down and enjoyed the rest of the trip home.
