Slow Road down the Murray

twowheeler

two wheels are best
Day 5

Packed up wet under black skies.

The K already weighs 217kg (dry), so why couldn’t they add a tiny bit of weight & some more metal to the sidestand foot to make it a decent size ?
(as I write this, a Wunderlich sidestand enlarger has just arrived in the mail. It weighs exactly 50 grams ! ) The 5cent piece of decking timber works OK, and BMW must have anticipated its common use as that’s what the otherwise useless side pockets on the tankbag appear to be for.







The light was spectacular so I headed down to the breakwater.




Middle Island, where the Fairy Penguins and their protective Maremmas are.







Note the Fletcher Jones ’ball’ in the background, which has dominated Warrnambool’s skyline since the 60s.







James Doonan was head Painter and Decorator at Fletcher Jones for 25+ years. He was my Grandad. One of his team’s jobs was to paint this 40m-high ball, which was built as a fire-fighting reservoir. They’d climb the (now gone) leg-ladder, then around the ball in an enclosed ladder to the top without safety apparatus, then hang off the top on bosun’s chairs. I don’t know how they pulled themselves about, nor how they managed to paint the underneath of the ball (long roller-brushes would be too heavy to control). They also put a lit-cross on the top at Christmas and took it down at Easter. Grandad had a great head for heights, despite surviving a big fall many years earlier from a job up the Nestle Milk Factory’s tall chimney (which they painted hot, the lead paint sizzling and spitting as it went on); he fell through the boilerhouse’s asbestos roof which did enough to break his fall. This resulted in a knee reconstruction but his nerves remained steely.








He is buried around the corner, and must turn in his grave at the now derelict condition of the Fletcher Jones factory, which in his day was pristine with quite famous gardens.




Warrnambool has grand avenues of Norfolk Island Pines, a great collection of old pubs and as good a coffee/café sector, in Liebig Street, as you’ll find anywhere.







Home via Camperdown, getting blown along by a big wind and brewing storm. Turned left at Foxhow Road, which is full of bike-swallowing potholes.
Fowhow Road bisects Lake Corangamite (Australia’s largest permanent salt lake) and Lake Gnarpurt along a 100m narrow strip of land.















Strong smell of ozone so into wets before the front hit. Heated-grips on max, then off down the last empty road – the B140 - toward Geelong. What a ride – the wind must have been 45-50 knots and right on my tail, the swag acting as a sail. It was like a wild downwind spinnaker run, centreboard up, planing down waves. High speed but the engine was barely working and I could hardly feel the driving rain and hail on my back :thun:weather:; in fact it was so quiet inside my helmet it was like I was doing school zone speed. Trees bending double and walls of rain marching down the road ahead of me. Singing ABBA now :p – Radiohead is too dark for this sort of stuff.

All of which led to the inevitable ordeal of Geelong Road and a gridlocked & fume-filled Burnley Tunnel. Then home :cdle .



I liked the theory that running tyres slightly underinflated (33psi front / 39 rear versus 36 / 42 recommended) on all these straight roads would even out their wear pattern by presenting a bigger bag to the road. I’m not so sure about that theory now with this squared-off rear – bugger :( . It also makes the slow-speed steering heavy, so I’m going back to recommended pressures.




Trip stats – 2962km @ 5.4l/100km (52mpg) ave.


:endu
Thoughts of the K1300R after 4 months and 6000km.
I wanted a naked bike with shaft drive and ABS, which creates a short list of one W-) (actually two but I didn't like the R1200R).

Good points - It has a face like Bender from Futurama. I like its looks and lines. You don’t see many. It’s roomy and comfortable. It’s easy and stable to ride at low speed. It’s practical with plenty of luggage options & tiedown points, heated grips, computer. It clunks loudly into first from neutral – I like that a lot. It has an insane amount of grunt :glu – too much for public roads, even those deserted ones I was on. Its intoxicating gritty growl/howl, when accelerating hard out of towns’ 50kph zones, lasts only a couple of seconds before you’re way beyond legal limits (allegedly). When you’re on it and using the quickshifter, it bangs at each upshift like a rifle shot. It’s economical and very flexible; if you’re lazy, it’ll cruise in 6th gear through 40kph school zones before picking up as happy as Larry. It’s child’s play to get onto the centrestand – so easy (but impossible with a swag covering the grab handles :( ). The ESA works well (I keep it on ‘comfort’ suspension all the time, plus ‘1 rider + luggage’ preload for this trip).

Bad points - It‘s heavy to lift off the sidestand and to walk about the shed. The standard sidestand foot is stupidly small. The throttle-spring is too light. It takes ages to get the last litre or so of fuel in. And it appears to eat rear tyres.
 
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Crustyvarmint

Back road wanderer
Thanks for posting. I enjoyed the wonderful pics and story very much.
I'll be doing the Murray River ferries in early January, so this has been a great intro for me.:clap:
 

glitch

Mapping the next ride...
Staff member
What a thread, HURRAY!!

LOve the pics...and that series of sunset shots is something else:drool::drool:
And the "Fletcher Jones thing"....:clap:
Little words ...with a LOT said .

AWESOME!
Smilie6.gif
 

nev

Super Térrarist
Strong smell of ozone so into wets before the front hit. Heated-grips on max, then off down the last empty road – the B140 - toward Geelong. What a ride – the wind must have been 45-50 knots and right on my tail, the swag acting as a sail. It was like a wild downwind spinnaker run, centreboard up, planing down waves. High speed but the engine was barely working and I could hardly feel the driving rain and hail on my back :thun:weather:; in fact it was so quiet inside my helmet it was like I was doing school zone speed.

A wonderful description.

I liked the theory that running tyres slightly underinflated (33psi front / 39 rear versus 36 / 42 recommended) on all these straight roads would even out their wear pattern by presenting a bigger bag to the road. I’m not so sure about that theory now with this squared-off rear – bugger :( . It also makes the slow-speed steering heavy, so I’m going back to recommended pressures.

Unfortunately, even plausible sounding theories can sometimes omit important info. Like, decreasing tyre pressure will increase the contact patch, which will increase friction, which will increase heat the tyre is generating, which will increase wear and over a greater proportion of the tyre. Even out the wear pattern, probably. Make the tyre last longer, probably not.

The best way I've found to increase tyre longevity is to use old tyres, not new tyres. Not so old that the tyre compound is cracking, but not so new that the tyre still remembers the name of the bloke operating the treading machine in the Michelin factory. I've found from experience of buying multiple tyres and then storing one, is that the life of the 2nd tyre stored for 6 months can be greater than that of the first tyre used from the same batch. I've done this a couple of times and it's the tyre which has sat in the garage for 6-12 months which has always outlived the tyre which is straight off the boat from the factory.
 

twowheeler

two wheels are best
The best way I've found to increase tyre longevity is to use old tyres, not new tyres. Not so old that the tyre compound is cracking, but not so new that the tyre still remembers the name of the bloke operating the treading machine in the Michelin factory. I've found from experience of buying multiple tyres and then storing one, is that the life of the 2nd tyre stored for 6 months can be greater than that of the first tyre used from the same batch.

Jeez, I never thought of doing that. Doh :stupid: . That is old school cycling practice. It works for pushies - I've been doing it for decades, storing them in the dark - so it should work as you say for motorbikes.
 

Sir Francis

Displaced person
Doonap,

I think you've bought the wrong bike if tyre life is an issue.

Sheesh by 6,000km on a Bender you should already be getting close to needing your third set :bs

Go on, twist that throttle :devil:
 
C

cameronp

Guest
Fantastic read, love the photos and bits of personal history.

Makes me want to do a similar ride!
 
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