Most People Don't Suck

The summer  heat has become oppressive, and the whole of next week is going to be a scorcher – relentless heat in the mid to high 30s every day.  I thought yesterday was going to be my last chance to go for a decent ride in bearable weather for a little while, so headed out to lovely Wyangala Dam for a look at it in sunny weather. It was supposed to be an easy 450km round trip, just me and the Crow and the big wide world.

 
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I had a fabulous ride, cutting a swathe through clouds of white butterflies. The Crow handled beautifully, hugging the road like a best friend and chewing up the kilometres. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, the sky was blue, the landscape beautiful through a bit of heat haze. Life doesn’t get much better. 

The dam was awesome at 92% full. I was surprised by the number of people who, just like me, travel out there just to look  at the water levels and shake their heads in delighted disbelief. 

 

 Then I stopped to refuel at Cowra on the way home. Put $12 of fuel in the Crow. Took everything out of my tail-bag three times before having to admit MY WALLET WAS NOT THERE!

My heart fell through the bottom of my Rossi boots. My entire life was in that bloody wallet – credit card, drivers licence, Medicare card, a little cash, and membership cards galore – Health fund, Ulysses Club, Garden Club… . My brain raced faster than the Crow on a straight road and gave me a memory of carefully placing the wallet on top of the loo paper dispenser in the ladies loo at – get this – the massive, ludicrously busy Service Centre just outside Yass.  2 or 3 hours earlier.  Senior moment? Rank stupidity? Bloody disaster!

Just when you’re at that point in your life when the daily news is so depressing, so hate- and crime-filled, that your faith in human nature is approaching rock bottom, something like this happens. 

Pete, the bloke behind the counter at the Mobil servo in Cowra, went through a long and involved process to find the phone number of the Yass service centre (the Cowra phone directory doesn’t extend to Yass), and paid for my petrol out of his own pocket while I spoke to the people at Yass.

Pete, you’re a star – thank you!

Also a star is the very honest stranger who found my wallet where I left it and handed it in at the counter in Yass. Thank you so much! My battered faith in human nature is now restored – it’s true that some people suck, but most people just don’t. Most people are lovely, and that is easily forgotten in the day-to-day bad news world we live in. Thank goodness for the occasional reminder, cunningly disguised as a disaster.

I made an unscheduled trip back to Cowra today to pay Pete back and to thank him again for having helped me out.  My mate, Mrs Humble, accompanied me as far as Boorowa, and we rode home together as well, in 35 degree heat, pouring huge volumes of cold water inside our jackets, only to have the home-made ‘evaporative cooling’ system evaporate within ten kilometres. Crikey, it was hot! It’s a sad fact of motorcycling that one simply cannot get cool, riding at the speed limit – so we arrived back at my house exhausted and dry-roasted in our bike gear.

What a day. I think I need a little nap.

Wyangala - Third Time Lucky!

NERD ALERT!!! Yes, it's true. Sometimes I am a big nerd. While other people are getting excited about overseas holidays, sunning themselves on faraway beaches, or shopping in Hong Kong, I am all excited about riding about 170kms to Wyangala Dam and taking photos of the current water levels. For fun.

Before you (a) get out the violins, or (b) laugh derisively – oh, forget it... Chortle away if you must – but check out these pics:

These were all taken from the same place, believe it or not. Now, as soon as I can figure out how to retrieve/copy MY photos that I uploaded to Facebook (yeah, good luck with that) I should have a few more to show you!

After 2 failed attempts in the last couple of weeks, I almost despaired of seeing the dam so full – I rode to Boorowa last week and found a sign on the way to Wyangala that said the road was closed somewhere or other, so I rode home. I googled. I rang the local copper.

“I'd like to ride to Wyangala Dam. Is the Frogmore Rd open?”

“God no! After the recent floods, there's a dirty big hole in the road. You need to go via Cowra. It's only about an extra 45 minutes.”

After the disgustingly hot and humid weather of the last few days, this morning dawned cool – chilly, even – and with some fairly threatening cloud cover. I thought I'd make a third attempt. I texted my mate Deb. Coincidentally, she was engaged in the completion of a jigsaw puzzle (a 1000-piece beach scene that sounds far harder than the 1000-piece Top Gear Vietnam puzzle that has been on MY kitchen table since New Years Eve) and reluctantly dragged herself away from it to come to see the dam with me. Heh heh, does this mean you're a nerd too, Deb?

Deb & I have Wyangala History – but haven't ridden together for ages now. We were part of the “Mud-Wrestling Biker Chicks” tour (an 'in-joke' – there was no mud-wrestling, honest!) that braved 42C heat to go to the dam – twice – and therefore have a personal interest in the place.

The comparative pics of the dam speak for themselves – here's what you don't get from the pics, though...

The Superb Bakery at Boorowa is just that.

Roadkill smells horrible.

There's a divine scent reminiscent of orange blossom hanging over the road in various spots where the roadkill isn't – I'm such a horticultural numpty that I have no idea where it came from, but it was beautiful.

Clouds of white butterflies rose from mauve roadside flowers in a bizarre sort of Mexican Wave as we rode past them. Some of the silly little buggers splattered themselves on my helmet. One even managed to get inside my visor – how the heck did that happen?

Just as we got to the dam, thunder rumbled, and we spied forked lightning as well. We spent enough time at the dam to take a couple of pics (thanks, by the way, to the elderly gent who took pics of us in the rain) and then, mission accomplished, we headed for home via a huge goss session at a lovely cafe in Boorowa (a cafe that makes potato scallops from REAL potato!)

Water water all around.... including coming from above!

It was almost 7.30pm when I got home. What a splendid, splendid day!

Hijacked!

What has happened to my motorcycle blog? Eek! It's been hijacked by life, school and piddling cats. There hasn't been much mention of motorcycling lately. What a travesty. Have I really done so little motorcycling of late?

The answer, sadly, is YES, dammit. I know my mood has reflected the lack of bike therapy. Talk about miserable! I've been sadder than a snake on ice; more miserable than a microbe in a glass of Dettol; and more desperately despondent than a dieter in a chocolate factory.

You know, a lot of people seem to think that it's just a throwaway line when I say that I need to ride in order to stay sane. They just don't 'get' how deadly serious I am, coz they don't 'get' motorcycling in general, and what motorcycling has meant to me in particular. It was just about the only thing that kept me from going under at a very dark time in my life, and all it takes is a few days of bikelessness to push me into a mindset where I feel out of control and downright depressed. Hopping on the bike and heading out of town to far-flung destinations is the ultimate medicine.

The lack of bike time is in fact one of the reasons I've found the adjustment to school life so difficult.

A couple of weekends ago, on a glorious Sunday, in an attempt to regain some equilibrium I chased 6 Ducatis and an R1 around the Southern Tablelands, with absolutely no hope of catching any of them. I ride like a nanna, and they rode like - well, Ducati riders... A lovely day, but I was a little (read: a LOT!) outside my comfort zone, and my day began and ended at my house. I prefer rides that take me away from home.

So anyway - last weekend I was Desperate and Determined Betty: desperate to ride, and determined to get out of town.

After doing my democratic duty, and voting in Australia's most boring election, I saddled up the Bomber and headed to Cowra with my lovely friend Mark (Mark, friend of Miffy the Geriatric Cat, remember?) He's also had a long period of enforced bikelessness, and was suffering a bit of cabin fever.


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Cowra's a nice little town. I've stayed there before, and at only about 200kms from Canberra it's an easy ride over a weekend if you have a shitload of schoolwork to do (which, of course, I did)..

Saturday was cold, grey and showery. Did I care? Not a bit - I have heated hand grips on the Bomber, and quilted winter liners inside my jacket and pants. (Heated socks would've been nice though...) The Bomber was just glad to get out of the shed and to go somewhere besides the school car-park for a change!

Since the last time I was in Cowra, the main street seems to have shrunk. There are lots of empty shops. I don't know if it's the drought or the GFC, or perhaps a sign of the general malaise that afflicts so many small towns in Australia. Are the youngsters upping and leaving, seeing no future on the land? I don't know - but it was sad to see such a lovely little town struggling.

Cowra was the setting for the 'Cowra Breakout' in WWII, when a bunch of Japanese POWs staged a mass breakout. There was a bloodbath, and now the little township of Cowra (population 9,500) is an avid supporter of world peace. It's a nice town.

After exploring a bit, it was back to the motel to mark many many essays before dinner. We had the blandest fried rice in the universe, and drank lots of wine to make up for it while we watched the election results on the telly. Sigh.

Sunday dawned chilly but golden, and with a hung parliament likely. Boo hiss. At least the weather was good, and a great relief after the iron-grey bleakness of Saturday. Rather than riding straight home, I wanted to make my annual trip to Wyangala Dam to take a photo of the water levels. To check out the water levels over the last couple of years, have a look at a previous post - Spring Riding and Bug-Splats - from September 2009.

Here's what it all looks like now, after the wet wet winter we have had:



The condition of the Frogmore Road, after that very same wet winter, was atrocious! Pot-holes galore, bits of road surface missing, shockingly bad 'patch' jobs - and after having ridden that road about a dozen times, I was really surprised to ride through a couple of inches of water on the causeways - water! Amazing! The area's been a bloody dustbowl for the last gawd-knows how many years!

Last weekend I discovered a few things, the most important of which was this:
when it comes to motorcycling, you lose skills fast if you don't ride a lot. My recent riding has overwhelmingly been nothing more than commuting. I have developed a stiffness in my shoulders, and don't look far enough ahead at the moment. Too used to looking at traffic and side-streets, and traffic coming OUT of side streets, I suppose. Grrrrr.

Must get out on the open road more! Hurry up Spring!

The final verdict? Great weekend - shit weather, nice riding, great company! Wheeeeeeeeee!