I flew to Victoria and arrived in Geelong on 17th February 2015 and flew back to Brisbane arriving home yesterday 26th February 2015.

While I had planned that I would write daily updates on here, I soon discovered that doing so from an iPad put it into the “too hard basket”.

I did not take many photos while I was away, but those I did, I could not get to upload.  After spending hours trying to resolve “Error uploading media item!” over and over again, I decided it was not worth the hassle.  I was supposed to be having a restful holiday, after all!

I did plenty of nice long walks in the cool Victorian climate.  Here in Queensland, if I go out for a walk, I get home in a lather of sweat!

I made good use of my Myki card which gave me very cheap public transport, so I went and visited various places on buses and trains.

On Saturday 21st February I caught a bus out to Bannockburn where I met Darryl John who owns a Triumph motorbike and whom I had met online through the Disciples Christian Motorcycle Club Facebook page.

On Sunday 22nd February I went with my mother and eldest sister to the Anglican church at Hamlyn Heights.  That church is named “St Albans” which is a very confusing thing since St Albans is also the name of a suburb on the opposite side of Geelong.

On Monday 23rd February I caught a bus, a train, and another bus to Grovedale where I visited Lindsay Smail and had lunch with them. On the way there, when I got off the train at Waurn Ponds station, there was a very dark looking severe thunderstorm approaching.

Shortly after I arrived at Lindsay’s place, the lightning flashed, the thunder crashed, and the rain came bucketting down. Although the storm seemed intense, it was brief and Lindsay’s rain gauge only measured a little over 2 mm of rain. I caught the Southern Cross train from Marshall to return to Geelong and Geelong was as far as it could go!  The storm had taken out the signalling between Werribee and Laverton and trains were replaced by buses for the next several hours.

On Tuesday 24th February, I went into town to go to the Village Cinemas in Ryrie Street to watch the movie called, “What We Did On Our Holiday.” It was a hilarious film and well worth seeing.

On Wednesday 25th February, I walked around to the home of my sister Trudi and spent a few hours with her, catching up.

When Trudi got on the phone to Wendy, I took the above picture.

On Thursday 26th February it was time to come back home, so after saying my goodbyes, I caught the 09:06 Route 45 bus to the station, the 09:48 train to Southern Cross, a Route 80 tram up Bourke Street to Elizabeth Street, a Route 59 tram out to the terminus at Airport West, and then the Route 479 bus out to the Melbourne Airport.  The whole trip on five different transport routes only cost $5.70 on my Myki card.

After flying to Brisbane it was so good to see Wendy waiting to pick me up.  At home it was great to see the kids again and to read to Ben that evening.

It was great to catch up with relatives and friends and to have a good rest while I was away, but it is also great to be back at home with the family.

On Tuesday 17th February, I travelled from Brisbane to Geelong and stayed with my mother and sister at Bell Park.

This morning (18th February) I did lazy things like reading the paper and listening to the wireless while Karen went to a university course she is studying and Mum went out shopping with my youngest sister Trudi. It’s great to see Trudi again, the first thing I notice is that she has lost an enormous amount of weight since I last saw her.

After a nap, I caught the bus up to Bell Post Hill where I renewed contact with my middle sister Ann and my brother Rodney with his son Jack, and met for the first time Rod’s wife Misti.

Edited after returning from holidays on 27th February 2015 to add the pictures, as I was unable to edit or post to the site during most of my holiday.

After my weekend away on Straddie, I had only one day back at work before heading off on a trip to Victoria where I will spend nine days.

I decided to save money by not using all the expensive transport services laid on for the use of tourists. Wendy drove me to the Brisbane Airport yesterday morning and I caught the Jetstar flight to Melbourne.

Before flying I was already aware that Jetstar are now being very strict about the cabin baggage allowed to be carried on board. The allowance has been reduced from a total of ten kilograms to a new total of seven kilograms and this is carefully weighed before almost every flight.  I decided therefore to not carry my usual kit of toothpaste, shaving gear, and other bits and bobs centred around my daily ablutions, but rather to buy everything I need in Melbourne and keep it at my mother’s place in Geelong, since I usually come down here several times a year. Total cost of doing this was way lower than the cost of adding checked baggage to my ticket.

When the plane landed at Tullamarine, there were no gates available for the passengers on our plane to disembark, so the plane was parked out on the field for ages before finally taxiing in after one of the boarding gates had become free.

After getting off the plane I made my way out to where the regular local bus picks up and boarded the bus headed for the Airport West Shopping Centre. I alighted at the terminus of the Yarra Trams route 59 and caught the tram into the City. I did some of my shopping in Bourke Street Mall and then caught another tram down to Southern Cross station.

By the time I arrived at Southern Cross, my iPhone belt pouch was hanging by a thread so I went to the cobbler across the road and had him repair it for me. It felt good to be able to carry my phone in its pouch again instead of in my hand where I risked putting it down somewhere and losing it. Next to the cobbler’s shop was a Seven-11 where I decided to buy a $1 cup of brewed coffee partly to keep me awake and partly because I just enjoy drinking a Flat White occasionally anyway. At Seven-11, you have to serve the coffee yourself and I somehow managed to not put the lid correctly onto the cup. I walked out onto Collins Street and went to take my first sip. As I did so, the lid suddenly looped the loop and I almost dropped the cup and spilt about half the coffee all over the front of my shirt. I can’t quite imagine what I looked like as I walked back towards Southern Cross, fortunately there were no mirrors! I changed shirts in the railway station’s toilet.

I boarded the 14:00 Waurn Ponds train which was standing at Platform One about 25 minutes before it was due to depart. The train eventually got under way and I thoroughly enjoyed watching the beautiful Victorian farmlands rolling past the windows.

Having arrived in Geelong, I did some more shopping before catching bus 30 out to Thompson’s Road from where I walked to my mother and sister’s place. There it was time for hugs all around.

Ah it is great to travel without checked baggage!

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s a few thousand words from my son Victor.

Photography is by Keith Alan Sprouse, who told Victor he was leaping too high and kept going too close to the ceiling out of the camera’s field of view.

All of the photos seem to have thick black bars top and bottom. I think that might be because they have been sent from an iPhone. However, when you click on each photo they come up big on the screen and you can scroll away from the black bars.

That last shot very definitely got too close to the ceiling!

Word count is less than 200, but there’s 9,000 in the pictures!

After completing the post for Saturday, I decided to decline the invitation to go out to dinner, mainly because my belly was still too full from lunch, but also because I needed extra sleep to get ready for getting up at 23:30 (11:30 pm) on Sunday night to go to work on Monday.

Sunday morning I awoke about 04:00 (4:00 am) and did my usual reading (you may check out www.bibleinoneyear.org to see what I love to start each day by reading), bought some extra data allowance from my phone company, and finished preparing yesterday’s post for this blog and then went back to bed for another hour or two.

At the perhaps more reasonable hour of 08:00 (8:00 am) I completed the daily ablutions posted yesterday’s blog and breakfasted.  All the other blokes seemed to be very quiet and subdued this morning so I thought it to be polite not to ask what time they had come to bed last night nor how much liquid refreshment might have been consumed.

Most of the blokes seemed to be more interested in reading (or perhaps pretending to read?) yesterday’s papers than in doing anything more energetic.

After breakfast several guys went fishing while others went swimming.  I felt it was important to catch some more sleep so, after drying and putting away the breakfast dishes, I hit the hay for an hour.

When the snores were all done it was tidy-up time and then we all headed for the famous pie shop where our final Straddie pies were consumed.

On to the 14:00 (2:00 pm) ferry and back to Cleveland by 15:00 (3:00 pm)

The Valentine weekend of 13th to 15th February 2015 was the time set aside for the Mamre Men’s Retreat.

Early Friday morning I completed my day’s work and arrived home at 06:15 am to get the kids ready for their various activities, since Wendy was working this morning as well.

At 07:30 I was picked up by my friend David and driven to Cleveland where we arrived in plenty of time to catch the 08:55 water taxi.

From the rear deck of the catamaran, I took the photo shown above.

After disembarking we were picked up by Ray and driven to the pie shop for some truly excellent Straddie pies. From thence we proceeded to his place at Point Lookout on the Northern tip of North Stradbroke Island where we tested out his brand new pergola and heard about how he had erected it almost single-handedly. Later, we were driven around the corner to Pat’s Retreat which was to be our home for the weekend.

First order of business for me was to select a bed, dump my stuff in the room and test out the bed for a few hours.  I slept like a log!

About 15:00 (3:00 pm), I awoke and found David fully engaged in preparing for the evening meal.  With a total of 14 hungry men expected, there was a great deal of work to be done in preparing and cooking a full roast meal.

Around 18:30 (6:30 pm) the full contingent had arrived and a delicious roast dinner was thoroughly enjoyed by all.  The meal and the hours afterward were accompanied by some hilarious chatter but details will not be recorded here since, as the saying goes, “What happens on Straddie stays on Straddie!”

I retired early at about 21:00 (9:00 pm) and went to sleep very quickly indeed.  I heard some very loud rain on the tin roof at some stage (what a beautiful sound that is!) and made the usual nocturnal peregrinations to the facilities but otherwise slept right through until daylight. Only a couple of other blokes had already arisen, so I had a quick cold shower and my other usual morning ablutions.

Breakfast was bacon and eggs along with several other choices. I ate too much!

A while after breakfast we went for a drive 37 km along the beach to Swan Bay at the Southern end of the island.  The the fishing rods were baited up and a bunch of eager fishermen caught nought but thoroughly enjoyed doing so!

We then drove 25 km back along the beach before turning inland to visit Brown Lake where our canoes were launched.  After swimming and boating we had a picnic lunch in the bush.  We saw a huge lizard climbing up and down a tree.

Mid-afternoon we returned to the home base, where I chose to take some more sleeping time and write up this post.

This post concerns two very different days of a weekend when I rode out to the Samford Show.
On Saturday 16th July 2011, I woke up to teeming rain, but I had brought my wet gear up into the house from the motorcycle shed on the Friday night, so I didn’t have to get drowned on the way to the shed.
I wore my full-face helmet for the first time in years, just to keep the rain off my face.
It rained all the way way there and I was thankful for the sidecar as I slithered about in the deep sloppy mud at the entrance to the showgrounds.
I set up the bike on display in the pouring rain and fled to the nearest tent.
There was a break in the rain and a 250cc 1954 Adler arrived and was parked next to my CJ.

On the Sunday, 17th July 2011, the original plan had been to attend the Annual Laverda Club Concours event which was to have been held at the Cleveland Showgrounds. The moon was hanging in a clear pre-dawn sky at 05:30 so I decided that our ride was on! We left home about 06:45. However, after more than an hour’s riding to get out to Cleveland, we learned that the event had been postponed due to inclement weather.
We all complained: “Haven’t they heard of wet gear?” But it turned out that the concours had been called off by the shire council in the interests of protecting the grass on their showgrounds.
We watched hundreds of bikes arrive and depart and then said to each other: “Let’s go to the Samford Show instead.
The weather was gloriously sunny. I filled the tank as we passed through Brisbane, and we arrived out at the show at about 11:15.
Lex Jepson on his Norton twin came out and joined us and took this photo of our bikes:

For a long time we thought that this would be the second day running with only two motorbikes on display.

Then we heard a sound that was music to our ears!  Another motorbike had turned up!

We were invited to ride in the Grand Parade on the main oval and lined up in front of the crowd for the presentations.
To my surprise, I was awarded the trophy for “Best Vintage Motorcycle”.
Later we were rounded up by the press for photographs for the various papers.

Today we continue with a few more photos that were taken at the Morning Tea break during the Sidecar Circus 2012 Rally.

I took photos all day until my camera memory filled up, but I had better not post the rest of them here for fear of boring everybody.
Despite my own bike breaking down, it was a very enjoyable day’s ride.

Now, having mentioned that my bike broke down, how did I get it home after the rally?

Fellow Chang Jiang rider Chris Davey must have been a good boy scout when he was a boy, because he not only carried some good strong rope with him; he also knew exactly how to use it!

Firstly we pulled the sidecar inwards to its correct position next to the bike.  Then we turned the clamp upside down so the good half-fitting cup was above the ball mounted on the frame of the bike.  Then Chris very skilfully tied the rope each side of the joint in such a manner that it could not pull apart.

I rode my bike home while Chris followed me in case anything went amiss on the way.

He must have tied some truly excellent knots, because nothing moved even the slightest amount on the way home.

A few weeks later some new sidecar mountings arrived in the post, but that is another story.

Yesterday I shared about how my sidecar mounting had broken on the way to the 2012 Sidecar Circus, and how I had become passenger in Chris Davy’s Chang Jiang sidecar instead of riding my own. We looked at lots of photos of the bikes and had gotten to the half-way point where we met up with a Panther sidecar being trailered because its front fork had broken.  Today we continue from that stopping point.

Meanwhile, Brian Harmsworth had been riding his solo Panther with no clutch since his clutch cable had broken during the first leg. Here we see Brian removing the good clutch cable from the broken Panther:

Notice the beautiful shape of the boot on the home-built replica Ariel sidecar parked just behind Brian in the picture above.

I think we will let that suffice for today’s post.

Tomorrow I intend to share a few more photos from this rally and then show you how I got my own broken-down sidecar back home. Hint: I did not need a trailer!

Some of today’s post is stolen from http://www.disciplescmc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4867 where I wrote about it shortly after the event:

Last Friday night (6th July 2012) was a race against time to get my engine running. After fitting a new coil, condenser and points the previous Friday, the engine had started with great difficulty and would’t keep running smoothly at all.
For a week I hadn’t gotten near my shed.
But this Friday I gapped the points and plugs (both were miles from the mark) and timed the ignition. She started first kick and ran beautifully.

Today (8th July 2012) was the day for our annual Sidecar Circus conducted by the Pine Rivers branch of the Historical Motor Cycle Club of Queensland. I was due to be at Petrie by 8am so got up at 6am and got everything prepared. The weather forecast said “Showers”. But the sun was shining beautifully as I fired her up and hit the road.

As the outfit crossed a shallow gutter, even though it isn’t much of a bump, I heard this dreadful sounding “bang” and the bike was suddenly leaning in towards the chair. The steering was awfully heavy. I thought either the sidecar suspension had collapsed or I had broken a sidecar mount.

I checked the top rear mount: it was fine; I checked to bottom rear mount: it was fine; I checked the top forward mount: it was fine. That left the bottom forward mount: when I checked it, I found that the cups that should have been clamped over the ball were about an inch away from the ball.
Oh well, three mounts will get me to Petrie if I drive slowly and carefully.

I arrived at the marshalling area for the Sidecar Circus with about half an hour to spare. Several guys came to help but Chris did most of the work, and it was soon apparent when we pulled the mount apart that one of the two half-cups which grips the ball was badly sheared apart: this was not a fix-it-on-the-side-of-the-road repair at all! My outfit wasn’t about to be going anywhere!

We swapped the half-cups so the good one was on top to bear the weight and fitted it back together again. But I felt it wouldn’t be good enough for the run so I got into Chris’s chair and travelled the Circus route on his CJ.

It was a great run: beautiful weather, a great route through the hills, and tremendous to see so many sidecars on the road at once.

One Panther outfit sheared the lower rear girder fork pin and belly-flopped onto the road, so it was picked up by one of the emergency trailers. A solo Panther broke a clutch cable so the good one was raided off the broken outfit to fix it.

When we arrived back at Petrie, Chris loaned me a length of nylon rope which we used to lash the sidecar chassis to the bike frame at the lower mount. He mounted his bike as a trailer behind his car, and then followed me all the way home to make sure I made it safely.

So now it’s off the road until I can get a new lower front mount.

Now for a few pictures:

To be continued tomorrow.