Ride Report - Sydney - Almost Canberra - Sydney again.

Ok, so Monday being Australia day, seemed like a good day for a ride.
Especially as a mate of mine was heading down to Canberra anyway (he lives
there, see).

So, a nice not-so-early start sees me leaving my house at Guildford a little
after 9am. Get to Loftus to meet up with the guy who's going to Canberra at
around 10. Wait at loftus for around an hour. (Grumble grumble grumble.)
(Something about being at an ex-girlfriends place the night, or something
like that.)

Ok, so then the ride proper finally kicks off a little after 11.

Him on his VTR250, and me on the GPX (which I have now fixed the power issue
with. It's amazing how much difference being one tooth out on the inlet cam
makes!).

'Cause we were running late, we only did the bottom half of the park, but it
was good fun all the same. Road was a little damp which made things a little
interesting (especially as I'm not really used to the 250 anymore).

Stopped briefly at bald-hill and was surprised that there were hardly any
bikes there at all. A bit of a pity really, as it had turned out to be a
really nice day.

Then headed off down to Wollongong to pick up a few more people to make the
ride really worthwhile.

From there, we went up Macquarie pass, which, thanks to the road-works was
free of traffic, but covered in mud. _VERY_ nearly came unstuck on the very
first corner when I hit a big patch of mud. Fortunately, it cleared up by
the third or fourth corner and the rest of it was _SWEET_. Thanks to the
traffic lights for the bridge works, there was no traffic (aside from one
really slow Lancer that we came up to on the fourth corner!) until up at the
first over taking lane.

Then, of course, the obligatory stop for lunch at the pie shop. (They not
only do good pies, but also a good lime milk-shake.)

From there, we went via some back-roads to Moss-Vale, and then the old
highway to Marulan. From Marulan we went along the road to Bungonia. This is
a good ride, with some good fast sweepers. Kinda a bit wasted on the GPX,
but fun all the same.

From Bungonia, we went into Goulburn and had some "second-lunch".

After that, it was getting a bit late, so those of us heading back to Sydney
left Mr Late (who was heading off to Canberra there in Goulburn to go the
rest of the way (via Braidwood, so had I had more time, it would have been
fun to go the rest of the way and come back up to Sydney via the South
Coast), and headed back.

Back via Bungonia again, then up the old highway to Picton, where we had, of
course, a quick stop at the King George IV. (Going to get me a Keggy next
time I'm there!)

Then from Picton, up Menagle road, over to Camden, then up the M5 back to
guildford. (I was running quite late by then!)

On the whole, a good ride. Next time, I'm going to do it properly (round
trip including Braidwood etc) though.

Oh, and the GPX held up fine over the 6-700km or so. And, relatively
speaking, so did my arse.