Up at 5.15am today, really quick showers, lots of cereal and yoghurt and the Harley Davidsons packed as quickly as we could saw us on the road home not too much after 6am. We had all our wet weather gear on, opting not to risk getting wet early with such a long distance to travel. It was also quite cool first up so the extra layer helped with that.
While the roads were wet the rain stayed pretty much away heading back through Maryborough, Castlemaine, back onto the Calder Hwy for a little while and then back through Woodend, Lancefield until we found our way back on to the Hume Highway. We didn't stop at all until we hit Avenel Roadhouse where we had a healthy fry up for second breakfast and fuelled the bikes. Yesterday we were told the roadhouse had been flooded in the storms and there was plenty of evidence of that about.
Not in the mood to hang around the next planned stop was wherever we were when we needed fuel. We rode straight past Wodonga/Albury and ended up stopping for fuel just before Holbrook. Without even a drink stop we got straight back on the Harleys for the next stop at the BP Gundagai where we needed to recover the camera we'd left there last Thursday.
Gundagai was about half way home and we were pleased to have a rest, some coffee and food there. The weather had also improved significantly by that ime so we took off the wet weather gear and finally got an opportunity to ride in warm sunlight with clear skies, the first opportunity in five days.
The Hume is relatively boring, we stopped next at Marulan for fuel and coffee, Thornleigh for fuel and pushed on through until we reached home about 8pm. The trip was incident free.
It was a long day's ride, not to difficult in terms of roadway and over the 1140k's we travelled we averaged about 107kph which is pretty easy to do on such a long stretch of freeway. This was the furthest Zanderhar and I had travelled in one day on the Harley Davidson Road King, beating our trip across the Nullarbor by about 60k's. It wasn't particularly an adventure but it certainly felt like an accomplishment and we were glad to arrive home.
I knew that Cuz Clay had another day to go tomorrow heading home to Brisbane, and frankly I would have liked nothing better than to spend another day on the Road King to keep him company, but I had a family to look after and an extremely dirty Harley Davidson to clean and get ready for the next adventure.