Another perfect winter day for riding around Melbourne.  After two foggy mornings, the sun was shining brightly this morning and just over 20 of us gathered at Lilydale to make the most of it.  I won’t mention the zero overnight temperature. 

It was great to see some more “new faces” including members from other branches including several “locals” from Yarra Ranges.  Others rode over an hour from beyond the Westgate Bridge to join us. 

Ian Taylor volunteered to do TEC duty again and he handled it with aplomb all day.  Greetings and introductions took a bit longer than usual and we rode off shortly after 10.00AM in beautiful sunshine.  

After the longest night of the year, we enjoyed good weather for the ride today and a good number of people met at Officer to join Reece’s

ride to Moe.  As well as Reece’s Yamaha, we had Alf doing TEC on his KTM, Two Triumphs,

my Honda and ten BMWs!

Once greetings and briefings were done, we rode off in a light fog, Reece got us away from the freeways immediately and headed south into sunshine and Gippsland irrigation areas.  Vision was good, roads were open and we got along at a good clip.  Somewhere south of Longwarry the combination of shade, glaring sun and varying road conditions (wet/dry/moss/gravel etc etc) made the riding much more challenging and while I (sort of) knew where we were we also got to ride some roads I’ve never previously ridden.  We then crossed north of the freeway and Reece found still more interesting,…

With a fine day forecast it up, out and into the fog to get to Epping, our starting point. Thankfully the fog lifted after passing Doncaster. A total of 14 riders were had for the ride. Brett, who Sam and I met on Saturday's BMW Customer Ride, was with us for his first ride with our group. He lives near Epping. Naturally Brett does the sensible thing and rides a BMW 1250 GS. With our present group of riders and bike choices I think he felt right at home. On Saturday while in Ballan with Sam at m/tea break on the BMW ride I handed out 5 of our leaflets to interested riders.

Our route to m/tea was Wallen, Romsey and stopping at Lancefield. Approaching Craigeburne there had been an accident on the inward side of the freeway blocking both lanes and causing an ever increasing size roadblock.…

Almost two dozen people came out to Lilydale this morning to enjoy some great winter riding weather. 

It was great to see people such as Scott on a Husqvarna this time, David came over from Williamstown, Henk and Don joined us for their first ride with the Ulysses Club and we also had Michael and Peter who often ride with another branch plus Paul who also rides with Whittlesea Branch.  Shamus came along with “Dad” too.

Also good to see Steve back after a longish absence.

Hopefully, we might recruit a new Ulysses member or two (Andrew was also active recruiting another rider at Noojee) and it was a good example of the fact we’re Ulysseans and not just locked into single branches.