Home safe and sound and back at work and Home safe and sound and back at work and while I still have a job and free internet I thought I would take the time to reply.
Firstly, thank you everyone for your good wishes and concern, hospitality and assistance and mostly humour over the past few days.
Thanks to 73MOH (Paul) for collecting me at the train in his nice dry car.
Thanks to Tackler (Dave) for making the trip down to say hi on such an aweful day.
Thanks to Rick who called me at 1.30 and said ‘just at (some town I can’t remember) and it is raining hard but the rivers don’t look too bad so we should be good going home and I will meet you at Ormeau’ Famous last words.
An adventure has been had.
This is the route. Eventually.
http://goo.gl/maps/gZbGjThis is mostly what happend.
Rossco... Once you've picked up the bike........ My place is a short test ride away,(13km)and in the right direction for S'thorpe....... where you can have access to tools/garage to do checks/adjustments as required (hopefully not required)....I'm hoping (fingers crossed) that I won't get the call to go to work.....Paul
This never happened. Thankfully Paul was not called to work and met me at Beenleigh station. He had a car. Yay. By that time I was already soaked thanks to Tiger Airways not having access to covered access to the terminal "Welcome to Brisbane. When you leave the plane, please keep a tight hold on the handrail as the wind is strong and the steps are slippery"
The train did not have covered access to the carpark so drowned again.
Monday, Rick and myself are heading to Guyra, saying hello, patting the dog and Mr Klompy, GroverK and myself are heading back to Sydney. Route to be determined.
This never happened.
charlie99 wrote:hmm..... we might have to meet up as you head through warwick then ...about 4.30 pm- 5.00ish ?
This didn't happen. Read Charlies thread.
https://www.k100-forum.com/t5179-wow-what-a-weekend#57205 Tackler wrote:And the weatherman is bring the rain down from north Queensland just for this little event. Enjoy.
This happened.
groverK wrote:BIG DAY tomorrow Rossco, good luck with the pickup,
try and get plenty of zzzzzzzzzzzzzz..will catch up at Seans.take your umbrella and raincoat,
those northerners have hit the "not so sunny one day, or perfect the next " button for your impromptu arrival.
Well some of this happened. I got the bike. It rained. Never met GroverK
73MOH wrote: What time does the wet weather gear shop open?
Australian Motorcycle accessories is just up the road.... open 0900 - 1500
This happened. Due to circumstances the resultant outfit did not operate as intended.
Tackler wrote:Well, his electrics lasted at least from the house to the servo at Ormeau.
Hopefully Rick and Rossco are safely crossing the Great Divide as we speak.
Nup. While it did happen it took 3 days. Not the 90 minutes as suggested.
RT wrote:Halo spoke to Rossco, think they are stuck somewhere for a couple of days with floods all around, and get this, NO BEER.That is cruel.
Klompy the grey brick wrote:Yep the message I got via Grover that "Rossco had taken up foreign citizenship and that he (grover) would be coming back from Guyra solo"
Rossco said "in a hotel room for a few days"......apparently the rain is coming south...it has not let up here as it is....
This happened.
Have a look at post #57 from Rick G. I can’t remember all the place names. However, left the sellers home and straight down the hill to the servo to fill the bike. It was wet. Really wet. And hot. What a crap combination.
So I have on my newly purchased driRider one piece rain suit and suddenly realise I can’t get my wallet out. Unzip, un velcro, grunt grunt, drag out the wallet, swipe the card, enter pin and the power at the servo goes out for 10 seconds. Yay. Wait 10 minutes and try to pay again as apparently it did not go through (found out later it went through twice).
Back to the bike, helmet on and zip up the nice dry suit I have on. So I thought. Seems you have to zip and tuck and velcro all in one swift movement to make the suit dry. About 30 minutes later my nads are getting wet. /sigh. Leather pants. Joy.
So Rick and myself head off.
After the first river crossing I learnt to lift my legs to prevent my boots filling with water. Like I said, after the first crossing. Not a lot of point in doing it after that. They could only fill so far.
Not too far out of Beaudesert we crossed a little river about 30 metres wide and 3 or 4 inches deep. If only we had known.
We kept on riding passing through Boonah and heading about 7km to the road taking us through Cunninghams Gap and on to Stanthorpe. 200m from the road our way was blocked by 6foot of water over the road. The keeper of the water informed us our way back to Beaudesert was now blocked by the previous river.
Not a lot of choice. Back to town and into the first motel. Good call by Rick as if we had waited too much longer we would have been without a room.
So here we are. Boonah Motel.
First on the agenda was food and drink. As previously mentioned, no beer. We were later informed by the publican that business was so bad due to the flooding etc that he shut up shop and went home. Unfortunately so did the publicans of the other two pubs, bowling club and the golf club.
Eagle Boys pizza and coke for dinner.
The bathroom was quickly turned into a drying room courtesy of a little blow heater. We wandered up and down under the cover of the motel awning listening to tales of water over roads and ruined holidays. The motel owners heard of our beer plight and offered us a six pack someone had left in the guest fridge. ‘Here you go guys. We don’t drink it so you can have it’ Should have been suss at that point. XXXX Gold. Shudder.
So it rained all night. It rained most of the next day. During one fine moment I took a chance and went out to explore.
No need for all that rain gear. I will put on these waterproof pants I have and should be fine. In theory yes. In practice no.
I took a ride out to Moogerah Dam. Nice ride about 20km on country roads. This is the dam in dryer times. (google image)
This is how I saw it.
So I headed back to the motel and took a different route. Part of a loop to bring me back to town. After about 5 minutes the heavens opened. It was the most torrential rain I had ever seen. No wind, just the contents of the sky being dumped on my head and in my now swimming lap. 10km down the road I was informed if I went any further the water would be over my head and 4x4s were turning around. Great. My 20km ride home just turned to 40km.
So I arrived safe and wet back at the motel, clothes into the drying room and managed to coax rick off his bed to take a walk up to town and see if the pubs were open. Praise the lord. Real beer. Well tooheys old, but it was the closest I could get to anything I would normally drink.
Back to the motel, sausages and thongs (feet variety) purchased at the local IGA and out to the bbq.
Did I mention there is a bat colony about 300m from the motel?
Fingers crossed for no rain and a fine day tomorrow and we got our wish. So this picture is very important. Not only did it signal the end of the rain, it is also the site of a now very famous, record breaking and unfortunate ‘down’.
You know those signs that tell bike riders the road ahead is slippery? That is what the road looked liked where rick had just been.
This is the road we were trying to get to. Albeit we were heading in the wrong direction it is the road we were meant to be on two days earlier. It cut through what must be a Queensland oddity. A combined sugar cane and pumpkin field. While the sugar cane is obvious in the photo, what cannot be seen are the pumpkins. Everywhere.
You can see a dejected Rick here heading back the way we had just come due to the road being blocked and you can imagine how slippery the road was with all that dirt on it.
This is the way we were supposed to be going. Cunninghams Gap. Recently (27/12/12) reopened after 2 years and $57,000,000.
So it is the long way we go.
One hour after we left the Boonah motel, I gave a little wave and a toot on the horn as we rode past again. Up the road to Ipswich.
This is another reason why our way was blocked. (Photo stolen from facebook)
So, up to Ipswich, turn left and head off to Toowoomba. Still got the blue sky.
The road into toowoomba was down to one lane each way, but thankfully moving. Here is a random shot of some idiot next to two very nice K bikes. Take my word for it. There are two bikes there. Guess the guy with the camera favoured one more than the other.
At some point we stopped so Rick could remove the warm lining of his pants and inspect the recent damage to his right knee. He mentioned he could not feel his right foot getting wet so the blood letting should be at a minimum.
Let me just say, I lost more skin 50 years ago at the hands of doctor. What a soft c_ck. Which incidently is exactly what the doctor said. Still I have no dout it hurt. Even with crash bars no one wants a fully loaded K1100 landing on them.
Unfortunately I have no photographic proof, but I never thought I would see a sign, that while travelling from Brisbane, south to Sydney, would tell me that if I kept going it is only 3402km to DARWIN. Where was Rick taking me?
So, where are we? On our way to Warwick. And more floods.
Sat here for 15 minutes or so and they opened the road. Yay. Geared up, front of the que and we made it about 500 metres down the road. Stopped again. Read Rick’s post now. #57. I will supply the pictures.
Lunch and a quick wizz. Rick mentioned that beyond the hill on the right of the photo is Cunninghams Gap. It had just taken us over six hours and 250km to travel what should have taken less than an hour and about 80km.
And back to the front of the que and instantly the road is opened and off we go to Warwick. The queues of cars and trucks was amazing. Stretched for miles. I had never seen anything like it with the police setting up mini road blocks to break up the lines.
Eventually we came to Ricks turn off. Not sure what time it was, but I still had a few hours to go to get to Saksons. Thank yous and ride safes and I was off, leaving Rick the short ride home and a nap on the lounge.
Made my way down to Tenterfield, finally on the right side of the border and needed to call Sean to let him know I was coming. As I was only going to be away for two days I did not bring a phone charger so all the notice Sean got was a hasty text message before we left. So I pulled into the nearest likely shop and asked if they had a phone charger. Only had one charger in the store. I told the guy I would buy the charger if he let me use his power point for 30 minutes. No problem. Off to the bottlo to get some red as a peace offering and back to the shop for a chat. 30 minutes later I rang Sean, all good then off again. Mitre 10 Tenterfield if anyone needs hardware in that area. Nice folks.
So I get out of town and have one song stuck on repeat in my head. The Tenterfield Saddler. Now if I knew more than ‘time is a traveller, tenterfield saddler, turn your head. Hum hum hum hum hum, kangaroo up ahead, hum hum hum hum, cockatoo.
This HAS to stop. Look, a town called Deepwater. Thank God. So I start singing again. As loud as I can so I can stop channeling Peter Allen
‘O deepwater, keep on rollin'
Mississippi moon, won't you keep on shinin' on me’
‘hum hum hum turnin your back, pretty momma gonna make everythin alright hum hum’
After about 10 minutes of this I realise it is not Deepwater, but Old black water. I am sure the Doobie Bros won’t take offence.
En route to SaKson7-LunchboKsrider’s place. Finally a sign with Sydney on it.
Won’t be long now.
After evading almost every police officer and camera between the border and Seans I arrived about 5.30pm. Only taken me about 10.5 hours to get here.
Welcoming party.
I had a great time with Sean. I took off to the pub to get some beers. Unfortunately I returned with an unknown quality beer that turned out to be low carb, no taste, probably should have got XXXX Gold instead pour it down the drain, manufactured waste water. Or as the locals call it ‘piss’.
Sorry GroverK, I did not attempt the bourbon and thanks Mr Klompy, we did attempt your wine. I was even nice enough to leave a bit for Sean to nurse his headache with.
So we just sat round, drank, talked and patted the dog. Dinner was a hastily prepared and very tasty spag bol.
After a good nights sleep I was up about 7. Bella was up about 7.00.02 and greeted me at the door. Mild heart attack followed after I opened the door to let Bella out for her morning duties and she took off down the road. Thankfully only as far as the second tree and then came running back. So out the back with the ball until Bella spied the rabbits. Here we go again. Thankfully no rabbits were harmed. After making enough noise to wake the dead, it appears I did and out stumbled Sean.
It was getting pretty close to leaving time. I had to get back to Sydney for a work meeting to see if I still had a job. The company was taken over and a bit of uncertainty around.
I thanked Sean for his hospitality, had the obligatory photo with bike and dog and started the journey home. Rode out of Seans about 8.30 to bright sunshine and dry roads. What a joy. I made it to about 100km from home and the heavens opened again. Under a bridge on the highway and on with the rain gear again. Five minutes later, bright sunshine. Stop again and off with the gear. Arrived about 4 at the meeting. Walk on in to find the room full of men in suits I had never met and probably don’t want to meet. I am sweat soaked and smelly in boots and leathers. Grabbed a beer and a horses doover and did my best to blend in. Thankfully I am still employed and the first part of the adventure is over.
If you get this far through my ramblings, well done. No doubt I have forgotten stuff already, but this is as much a reminder for me when I am old and need a story to tell as it is for all the great forum members who went out of their way to help, offer assistance or just be plain old concerned.
Thanks again everyone for an adventure had.
rossco
Re: Impromptu ride to guyra and beyond Mon Jan 28, 2013 9:19 pm
Thanks for the blog.
