The last day of the Long Ride was met with some trepidation. Finally we would be getting home, but a for one didn't want it to end, I could've kept on riding for ages. Just pack up and explore our nation.
Unlike the last long ride I hadn't felt much pain at all, maybe my butt had taken on more padding in the last 18 months, or more likely the bigger bike was actually a bit more comfortable. Thank God for Yamaha's big cruiser.
 |
| Are we ready to go? |
With only 200 kilometres or so to complete we took it fairly easy, besides it looked like it would rain so we didn't care much for getting too wet. Trying to find somewhere decent for breakfast in Sale wasn't too easy, so again we settled for a McDonald's breakfast. In fact their ham and cheese toasties aren't too bad, the coffee was also pretty good. So at least the last breakfast was going to be OK.
We fuelled up and set off. The weather was actually pretty warm so it looked like it would be a nice easy ride home down the Princes Highway. That's certainly the way it started however, on the horizon dark heavy clouds were forming and rolling down over the hills. It wasn't long before the horizon started to disappear in a hazy grey mist.
 |
| The ride up the highway was a bit boring, but I wouldn't give it up for anything. |
We got as far as Rosedale, only 30 kilometres down the road before we decided to stop and put our wet weather gear on, it wasn't really raining yet, but it was far off. We continued on all agreeing that we didn't want to be soaking wet on the last day, I just hate the wet weather but also hate wearing dorky wet weather gear.
We continued on down the Princes Highway towards Traralgon, the Morwell and Moe, these bastions of civilisation. We only got another 60 kilometres or so down the road but at least it was somewhere to stop and have a hot drink and get warm, by now the temperature had dropped significantly and was starting to become a little unbearable.
We rode around the back of a shopping centre in Trafalgar to get out of the way of traffic and started to enjoy the hot soup. I marvelled at how many hotted up Ford's and Holden's were down here, this 'suburb' of Moe. I couldn't help but wonder if it was the same in Yarram, from memory I think it was, except for one Saab 95.
I chuckled to myself and remounted the bike. This last section would be all the way home despite the rain, and all of it on multi-lane highway and freeway. It would be a cold and boring ride, all 125 kilometres of it.
 |
| Knackered ... but ready to go again! |
We continued on down the road and although the rain wasn't too heavy the mist did hide the city skyline making it seem like we were continually chasing the city. It sunk in that we were finished when we started on the Monash Freeway, I think all of us started to feel a little regret that we weren't continuing on. In fact I was starting to feel a little sad maybe even depressed, so to pick things up a little we started mucking around. I went into the 'chipmunk' position, something we had dubbed for people on cruisers who put their feet on the pillion pegs, it makes you ride more upright and look like a chipmunk or meerkat. We all had a good laugh as we got closer to the city knowing that the Long Ride 2013 was now over ... it had been a huge success.
Today we had completed 233 kilometres taking the total ridden to 7,651 ... everyone of them was
enjoyable.
No comments:
Post a Comment