Excuse me, have you seen my willy...?

Yeah, I’m Willy. What are you lookin at?



To be continued…

I outlined the rough plan for day 1 over coffee in Noojee.



Man these KTM’s are awesome! For the first time in the twenty years I’ve been riding with Hoty, not only did I feel at ease in keeping up but I kept wondering why he was slowing down for the tight corners. Both Hoty’s modified Hayabusa and my KTM made a heck of a lot of noise on the ride up Mt Baw Baw.



After seeing just how much of the road the logging trucks use, we all tempered our ride off the mountain. Good thing too, as we encountered the Melbourne Chapter of the Fast and the Furious. Excluding the chap in the silver Supra who seemed determined to have me as a hood ornament the rest of the crew seemed smooth and in control.

I managed to yet again run the King of Upwey out of fuel on the way to lunch Darnum. Now I must admit, I was quite excited as this gave me the opportunity to use the fuel syphon that I bought eighteen months ago following my only previous foul tasting attempt at syphoning petrol. I can assure you that not only does petrol taste horrible but it is a bugger to wash out of your beard!

After lunch more back roads led us to the start of the Grand Ridge Road.



Hanging out with the tourists at Tidal River.



I made the mistake of swapping bikes with Hoty for the ride to Yarram. For the rest of the trip, he was like a hyped up kid. Can I have another ride? What about now? Now?

After the splayed out comfort of the KTM, I felt like one of them circus clowns on the tiny pushbikes. Sorry, a correction – I felt like of them circus clowns on a rocket powered tiny pushbike. Yikes! The power! If Hoty’s bike was my ride, I reckon I could go for years without visiting the second half of the rev range.

Doof who had to work during the day was just pulling into the Yarram Club Hotel when we arrived. Perfect timing.



Other than the King of Upwey winning a ball sack in the Friday night raffle it was a pretty quiet night.

To be continued...

Day 2 began with a blast up that snaking single lane of slimy bitumen that follows the Tara River up to the Grand Ridge Road I had so much fun on in November on my Daytona.



I watched black lines appear from the Hayabusa on the road to here.



A ride to the end of the bitumen and back.



Cookie and Peggy were to meet up with us at lunch in Briagolong. A screaming engine marked Peggy’s arrival. It was so spectacular it stopped traffic in town. Doof jumped at the chance to do some bush mechanics to make Peggy’s Suzuki rideable again. Doof assured Peggy that all his work was guaranteed.

After lunch, we took a quick ride out to Dargo whilst Cookie and Peggy headed to Bairnsdale in search of replacement parts.



Doof fix number two. It turns out the guarantee was that fix one would fail within a few km. To be fair, fix two got Peggy back to Melbourne. I think Doof is still wearing his ear plugs so that he doesn’t have to listen to our suggestions…



We settled into the Bruthen Hotel for the night.



We sampled many of the offerings from the Bullant Brewery.



I think there must have been something wrong with the beer. Things got very silly whilst we waited for our meals at the pub. Here, Hoty helps Sudz re-enact the birth of his first child. <roll



To be continued…

I awoke to the sound of heavy rain on the tin roof at 5am.

Cookie and Peggy made the wise decision to take the easy way home to Melbourne.

The rest of us did our best to out ride the rain to Omeo. It was dry in Omeo.



Things had changed somewhat by Mt Hotham village. Visibility and conditions in this pic are fantastic compare to what was to come.



The ride along the ridgeline from the village to the start of the ride down through the forest was genuinely frightening. Vision was reduced to 5m, you could feel the bike sloshing through little rivers across the road and the gusts of wind almost ripped me off the bike. For some reason, the gang were not all that keen to pose for pictures.

Soggy at Harrietville. 1km through town, the storm had knocked down a massive tree across the Great Alpine Rd.



A brief stop for coffee and farewells to Famous Rog in Porepunka. Thanks to our host (who we had only just met) for the coffee and allowing six near drowned bike riders to leave puddles on your floor.

It was dry when we stopped for lunch in Whitfield. It looked like this when we were about to leave. Perhaps a new career as bringers of rain?



Follow me, I know the way…

Trip distance: 1,556 km.

When was this trip Sir Francis?

We encountered the same conditions when we rode from Anglers Rest up over Falls Creek on the cup weekend last year. It was the scariest feeling not being able to see the rider in front of you. Our visors fogged up, and when you opened the visor to try to see, the rain was like needles in your eyes.

By the time we got to Mt Beauty we were drowned, but there had hardly been any rain in Mt Beauty. So sat outside the bakery in the "sun" trying to dry out for the remainder of the trip to Jindabyne.

Hi Canary,

We did this trip Jan 6-8 2012.

Later in the week, there was a dump of snow on the mountains.