Retirement continues to challenge but I do my best to cope.😇

Last night I went into the garage to prepare some things for gardening today and the old Honda took charge.  It insisted it needed some exercise after sitting idle for just a few days after the long weekend.  Then it contacted its Suzuki friend in Monbulk and Yamaha friend in Gruyere which resulted in Graham, Ian and me going for a ride today instead of attending to home duties.  These things have minds of their own!

The bike did a good job of finding traffic free roads too.

Duty done, home duties tomorrow 😜

Half a dozen of us enjoyed a fantastic few days riding in the “high country” over the Australia Day long weekend.  Andrew,

Jack, Peter and Paul met up at the Epping start point and I rode via Dixons Creek

and Yea and met up with them at the service centre at Glenrowan. I enjoyed a cool ride as far as Seymour (bushfire related road closures prevented me going via Bonnie Doon etc) and then it got hotter once on the Hume Hwy.  We topped up on fluids and headed east on the Snow Road to Myrtleford and on to Yackandandah where we had a minor navigation glitch (quickly overcome) and on to Tallangatta for more fluids (both for us and the bikes) as the heat continued rising. 

We checked out Old Tallangatta and rode on. 

After Saturday’s scorching heat it was nice to see a much cooler day forecast so I headed to Officer to see who was up for a ride through the hills.

A group had gone with Andrew for a weekend ride to Corryong and beyond so I was pleased to see a dozen or so riders turn up. That included Michael on a BMW and Mario on a Versys joining us for the first time. Nice to have your company and I hope you enjoyed ours and the ride.

With Nick as TEC we took off through the new subdivision as Starling road was closed and managed to find our way onto the route.

Temperature was ok as we headed up through Emerald and along Macclesfield Road to Yellingbo and then to the Beechworth Bakery in Healesville for morning tea. Traffic was was not too bad although a couple of slower…

Despite quite short notice, eight of us assembled at Officer today and did a bit of a reconnaissance ride into Gippsland.  As it was a reconnaissance ride, I believe the two U turns included in the ride were perfectly acceptable.  One was due to a road closure and the other down to my route selection.   It was good to see Barry and John join us on Hondas, but we were still outnumbered as Andrew, Carlo, Ian, Jeff and Tez were all BMW mounted.   Ian did a great job as Tail End Charlie and his BMW had some special features

·         His GPS didn’t want to function

·         To compensate, his bike transmitted a special signal which turned every traffic light red for him after the other 7 of us made it through!  We waited and regrouped near Nar Nar Goon and joked that there would be no more traffic lights…