Sins07 - The Final Word(s)

Day 4
Location: a servo somewhere in Jindabyne

There are many weird things happening all around us - aliens invading
the place and wheedling themselves into positions of
power and influence*, benthic fauna, people's bizarre and
unexpected $ex obsessions and the variable (and often dubious) pleasures
of YouTube. But, to my mind, there's nothing weirder than your common or
garden event viewed from two-and-a-half a feet to the left (or the
right, depending), or from the point of view of your independent,
dispassionate and objective observer. Take the rigmarole that most of us
go through before getting on a bike and riding off into the distance.
Most of us partake in this ritual with barely a second thought, as do I
for the most part. But, standing there next to my bike, I watched as
though I were some goggle-eyed kid sitting in the back of a car as the
rest of the OzVFR gang put themselves through the same indignities that
I had just done myself.

Each rider, having attended to their bike (check the oil, chain tension,
chain lube and tyre pressures), moves on to their personal kit. Wallets
are stashed away in various pockets and compartments (only to confuse
and momentarily alarm those of us who've forgotten where we put them at
the next fuel stop). Helmet visor cleaning next - this might seem a
fairly simple operation, but if the range of techniques and materials
alone is bewildering (water, soap and water and rinse, spray polish and
cloth, with or without final buffing) that is as nothing to the
meticulous attention to detail: every bug, mark, splat or blemish is
pounced on as if it were an offence and removed with the sort of vigour
most normal people reserve for ridding their house of cockroaches. Then
our observer watches as a bunch of otherwise apparently average blokes
begin to move their heads from side to side, as if they were appearing
in some scene conducted in SuperMarionation (Muz will know what that
means). Some of these afflicted souls will attempt to insert bits of
multi-coloured foam in their ears (with, it must be said, varying
degrees of success), while others (who are clearly further up the food
chain) insert things in their ears that have wires attached to them
which lead to little electronic boxes, which boxes they hide in one of
the pockets that don't have a wallet or a penknife or mounds of lint or
a three-week old sandwich in them. Our virtual observer might think that
this is some sort of hearing aid (well, most of us do have grey hair),
but they would be only partly right - rather than amplify everyone
else's voice, these little boxes play music loud enough to blot out just
about everything up to and including the noise commonly encountered
while standing out in a 120mph wind. Then each rider sticks their head
inside a gaudily-coloured helmet. Now, most of them will have washed
(what remains of) their hair in recent times - if not in the last 24
hours, then certainly within living memory - and are probably quite
proud of their attention to personal hygiene. Yet these self-same
apparently intelligent and evidently well-groomed people are quite happy
to encase their freshly-washed noggins in something that probably hasn't
seen soap and water in some months, if ever. I mean, odd or what? Maybe
it's something to do with standing on a windswept concrete forecourt
with a hangover, maybe I have a pathologically diseased head, or maybe
I've forgotten to take my tablets, but from that mythical viewpoint
called the independent observer, it does look a little, well, strange.
Oddly, the oddness of it all was reinforced the next day on the way
home, when Kirbs and me pulled in at a servo and performed the whole
routine in front of a packed forecourt full of 4WDs full of kids.
Backwards...

But I digress... We're aff for ano'er wee tour aboot the
place, and hie awa tae Dalgety. AQ and Toni are with us (Kirbs, Roy,
Hayden, Dan, Irena and the remnants of last year's inaugural Team Tootle
- Trev and me), as we fend off half a million head of cattle and the
effects of the gutful of alcohol we all had last night instead of
dinner. But what a great way to do it - the roads from Jindabyne to
Dalgety to Cooma are as good as they get, especially when followed by a
group tootle to Bombala at err, well I'm not really sure what speed I
was doing c*nstable. All of us stop there for the obligatory refuel,
then it's off down to Cann River. Having done this stretch the previous
year, I (unlike Bonang virgins Roy and Irena) of course know what's to
come, don't I...

All goes roughly according to plan - within a few minutes, Team Turkey
and Kirbs clear off into the distance, despite my best efforts at
keeping up with them, not helped by another half a million head of
cattle (this must've been the splitters group). After about 10 minutes
(halfway there then...) of vainly trying to keep them in sight, I crest
a rise (yes, I know, I am still none the wiser as to what else do you do
with a rise other than crest it) at at what seemed to me to be a
reasonable compromise between losing my mates and losing my head, only
to find that some careless sort had left what looked like most of a
large dinosaur in the road, right where I wanted to ride my bike.
Suddenly, what had seemed like the sort of speed a decent chap can
maintain without losing his respect instantly became Far Too Fast For
the Circumstances. While my brain tried to process the (rapidly
accreting) information and work out some sort of strategic approach. By
the time my brain had caught up with events and had realised that I was
now some distance beyond the point where it thought I was about to
become yet another statistic, the rest of me had done something about
it, had finished its debriefing session and stopped shaking. Not the
most elegant, balletic or even coherently organised swerve, but it worked.

On with the chase - I catch up with Irena, who waves me past after a
short while, and by that time I was into the bottom part of the run,
where the bends get a bit tighter. Most are signed as 55 or 60km/h
bends, linked by short straights, and is almost perfectly surfaced, with
little or no traffic... until 10km or so from Cann River. I catch up
with the world's fastest logging truck who's doing an indicated 125km/h
along the short straights, rear dog trailer swaying and weaving like RDM
on King Georges Road on a Friday afternoon. As its rear wheels slide off
the road and onto the verge it kicks up a blinding mix of gravel, dust,
fence posts and small dogs, then sways back across the centre white
lines, making it almost impossible to see past, let alone pass. I back
off and let him run the risk of any speed cameras or traffic plod and
cruise into Cann River.

After a pie and a pee, it's off to Orbost at the legal maximum speed,
which seems like a soporific dawdle. After refuelling and regrouping at
Orbost, and the obligatory photo session and usual arseing about at a
certain road sign, it's time to reacquaint myself with the Bonang. The
word 'highway' generally tends to evoke images of a wide, sweeping sort
of road with a billiard-table smooth surface and predictably-marked,
gentle bends, all taken safely at whatever speed the cruise control is
set at. The first section of the Bonang Highway almost lives up to that:
it's a bit like the lead-in to the Putty Road with short straights and
steady turns, and the Bonang virgins among us (Roy, Irena and AQ and
Toni) must be wondering what all the fuss is about. But after about ten
minutes, it all rather goes to pot(hole) - the bends come thick and
fast, most of them without any sign or speed warning whatsoever - the
Vic roads mob must have realised that they'd have spent the entire
state's road sign budget on the first fifteen minutes of this road and
thought "bugger it, let's not bother". The road 'surface' is even less
predictable, changing colour, texture, grade and camber every 200 yards.
Just when I thought I'd got a handle on things, I round another blind
bend, roll onto a newly-surfaced bit and everything starts to go
pear-shaped and the bike starts to slide about like a dog on a wet
floor. The surface is covered in miles of small pea-sized gravel, which
is much smoother than the rough rubbish we get in NSW, that has been
sprayed onto bitumen and is now wearing off, leaving wet-looking black
stuff in the wheel ruts. Tricky enough on its own, but then add dappled
sunlight, deep shade on the bends, wet patches (...), leaves, rocks and
all manner of off-road rubbish from the weekend's downpours and it all
becomes rather exciting, in a breathless, hectic and reactive sort of
way. But for a real adrenalin hit, nothing can go past being almost
unable to go past the back of a semi-trailer on the wrong side of the
road. As if negotiating a wriggling, gravel-dressed, poorly-lit goat
track at speedwasn't enough to be going on with, I'm launching myself
into an uphill right-hander when I'm presented with the prospect of a
low-loader trailer towed by a prime mover driven by an extra from Mad
Max III who is obviously on ice. The f*cking thing is steaming down the
hill, the trailer swinging right across my (ever-decreasing) lane as the
rig comes round the bend. Our combined approaching speed is far too fast
for me to do anything other than grit my teeth, keep as far left as I
dare (given the cr*p on the left of the road and the shade from the
trees) and hope for the best, as I know that there is nowhere to go on
the left hand side of the road, and they make the trees pretty
unforgiving down this way... Again, hardly a textbook manouevre, but
I'll bet not one of the track day experts we all give our undivided
attention to at Eastern Creek would have done much different, for all
their admonitions and exhortations to "look through the bend and hang
off the bike". I'd like to see them keep their chin pointing at the back
end of a semi-trailer that may wipe them out in the next few seconds...
A bit further on I see that Team Turkey and company have stopped, and
get off the bike, still t-t-t-trembling and cursing rather loudly. We
wait for AQ and Toni and Irena to turn up, and once everyone has had a
breather, we're off again, but this time at a less hectic pace (for me
at least). Maybe I'm getting old(er) and slow(er), maybe the
rather-too-close-for-comfort acquaintance with the arse end of a truck
spooked me, but I quite enjoyed myself following AQ and Toni for a
while, tipping in and out of the bends, until we got to the second
regrouping point at the start of the dirt section. I trundled long with
Dan for a bit, then we both really got stuck into the tarmac bit between
Bonang and the next dirt section. This is much more fun - the bends are
a bit more open and the whole road is a bit more predictable, and we get
along at a very respectable pace. The second dirt section is dispatched
quickly as it's easier to ride than the first (a very stony, rough bit
of road) and we all regroup again. From Delegate River, we're back on
tarmac and out of the woods again, riding in open country at what might
be called a Fair Clip. Some are doing a Fair Clip plus a bit, and I wave
Hayden and Roy through, and tag along with Roy for the run to Bombala,
which is great fun. Apparently Kirbs and Hayden are up front somewhere,
irritating the locals - tsk, tch, bloddy bikers. As it turns out, Hayden
is more than a little annoyed himself at not being able to get rid of a
couple of local "good ol' boys" in their daddy's ve-hick-le. We all stop
to refuel (again already) at Bombala, and admire the skills and talent
on offer as the locals cruise the high street. Top of the list is a
bunch of yokels in a pale metallic blue Falcon (I think...) that they
seemed to have borrowed from somone's Mum, with the boomtastic ICE kit
wound up full, the full effect of which was undermined somewhat by the
fact that they were playing country music...

And so, after a full day's play, back to the dressing room for a
debriefing session. As is my wont, I decided to ride back to Jindy via
the tarmac (back to Cooma in other words), while the rest took the
short-cut from Nimmitabel via the dirt which, they assured me, would
have them halfway through their second beer before I so much as got
within sniffing distance of Mooses. "Hey ho" I thought, as I passed the
rest of the mob at Nimmitabel who kindly gave me the traditional OzVFR
salute using, depending on personal inclination, anything up to two
fingers. Alone and abandoned (sniff), I ploughed my own weary lonesome
(sob) furrow back to Jindabyne on lonely (bawl) roads. Or I would have
had I not enjoyed it so much tongue.gif
And to put the cherry on things, I get back to Mooses to find an empty
car park, for which there are three possible explanations (in decreasing
order of likelihood):
1) they all got back 20 minutes before me and decided to rub salt into
the wound by f*cking off down the pub without waiting for me; or
2) the reason I can no longer see them is that I passed through a warp
or other anomaly in the space-time continuum somewhere around Berridale,
as a consequence of which I am now the most fantastically rich,
successful and sexually desirable male on the face of the planet; or
3) I made it back before the rest who took the "short cut" and can now
spend the rest of the evening justifiably crowing.

About ten minutes later, I hear the unmistakable rumble of a half a
dozen or so VFRs entering Jindabyne. This arouses both joy (I can make
smug remarks about their "short cut") and crushing disappointment (none
of the consequences of 2) above are about to happen).

And that, for those of you who've had the patience to trawl through this
tripatite testament to twaddle, is about it. I could bore you to tears
and beyond with details of the trundle home up the coast, but it was
that tedious that I can't even be bothered recalling most of it, except
for two things:
1) the dirt road from somewhere-or-other-south-of-Nimmitabel to Cathcart
is a shocker, I lost both headlight protector thingies somewhere along
it; and
2) watching Kirbs lane-split between two cars on the Kiama bends - Gordo
would have been proud biggrin.gif

Steve
Maianbar

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* The only satisfactory explanation for Morris Dilemma (NSW state premier). I suspect he's
from a small grey and beige planet orbiting the star known to
astronomers as WD40 - the inhabitants of this planet live off oxides of
iron. I've often wondered why he barely seems able to string a sentence
together and always looks like a hypnotised penguin on camera - it's
because he's reading the autocue which shows his original speech
translated into something resembling English. The reason he often stares
fixedly at an indeterminate point off to the right and slightly above
the camera is because one of the technicians is using a can of WD40 to
stop a dolly wheel from squeaking.