The Sunshine Coast Region of the Historical Motor Cycle Club of Queensland (HMCCQ) conducted a rally named The Sidecar Cruize on Sunday 24th May 2015.

 

As this was going to be the longest ride my bike had done in more than ten years, I did a lot of preparation work in the week before the ride:

• hit 160 spokes with a 7 mm spanner: dreadful cacophony; adjust more than half of them with said spanner: melodious harmony!
• blow up all tyres to correct pressure; they were all down to a greater or lesser extent
• top up all oils
• check all nuts and bolts
• grease under the fingernails: that just happens naturally while working on old bikes
• top up with petrol.

On the morning of the ride my alarm went off as planned at 03:45 am. Then it was prayer, Bible study, ablutions, breakfast, dress up like the Michelin man against the cold, downstairs, out through the garage, around to the motorbike shed, and wheel the bike out of the shed, down the drive, and around the corner so as not to start it outside Ben’s bedroom!

Rode around the block to Richard’s place where he was already seated on his Royal Enfield – Cosy outfit.

05:30 saw us out on the road and headed North towards the Sunshine Coast: Albany Creek, Warner, Young’s Crossing, Petrie, Kurwongbah, Dakabin, Narangbah, to Yvonne’s place at Burpengary where we rested half an hour.

Then with Yvonne leading on her left-hand-drive Dnepr outfit we continued North from Burpengary along lots of back roads via Morayfield, Caboolture, Elimbah, Beerburrum, Tibrogargan, and Glass House Mountains to Beerwah. An old bloke with a walking stick who looked at least a hundred by the side of the road at Beerwah, when he saw three sidecars travelling together, stopped his walking, dropped his jaw, and watched us motoring past with his mouth so wide open a squadron of flies could’ve flown in. From Beerwah we continued North through Landsborough, Mooloolah Valley, Eudlo, and Palmwoods to Woombye where we had a wee stop. Actually, it was a wee-wee stop and it turned out to be well that we made it, since the public toilets at Nambour showgrounds were all locked up.

From Woombye, we took the Nambour Connection Road, which I suspect might have been the Bruce Highway when Wendy and I went around Australia in 1982. We arrived at the Nambour Showgrounds a bit after 08:00.  At first, there seemed to be no sign of any bikes, sidecar outfits or otherwise.  Were we in the right place? Had we gone astray somewhere? No it was just one of those cases where those who drive the furthest arrive first!

After a bunch of other riders had arrived, I went to the servo and filled the tank; it took about eleven litres of petrol.

Back to the Showgrounds and took all of the photos attached to this article. I have spaced the photos out, rather than having a huge block of text and a huge block of photos.

About 09:30 we headed off for a tour of the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. For most of the way, there were corner marshals to point the way so we could all stay together. At one point I saw an old Harley at the side of a road and wondered if he might perhaps be one of the riders on the Cruize, but he appeared to be just sitting on his bike meditating or dozing or whatever, but he most certainly wasn’t pointing us in any direction. A while after that I felt like I had passed a lot of confusing intersections without seeing a single corner marshall, so I decided to admit to myself that I was well and truly lost. Ah well, getting lost is part of the fun!

Lost on the Sunshine Coast without a map, without a route guide, and without the slightest clue what towns and places were on the Sunshine Coast or where they might be in relationship to one another. While driving North through Buderim, as I passed through an intersection I noticed some sidecars parked down the road on the left, but as I was in the right lane I had to keep going straight ahead. Divided road; nowhere to do a U-turn! I eventually turned left into a local street, did a U-turn there, returned to the main road, turned right and turned right again where I had seen the sidecars parked.  They were gone!

I did know that the morning-tea stop was to be at the Bli-Bli Castle, but had not the slightest idea where Bli-Bli was, except that I did know it was eight km from Nambour. I decided the best thing to do was to drive until I found a sign pointing towards Nambour, which I proceeded to do.

Now my engine was beginning to rattle in a way that suggested the oil level was low, so I was also looking for a servo.

Following signs I found my way to the Nambour Connection Road where I stopped at a Shell servo and bought a litre of oil and used a cut-down plastic  water bottle as a makeshift funnel to get the oil into the crankcase.  The cut-down bottle worked better than the professionally produced funnel that I paid good hard cash for and kept in my shed at home!

With the engine sounding much healthier, I drove to Nambour and then to Bli-Bli where I found my way to the castle where there were about half a dozen sidecars parked. Someone asked, “Did you get lost, Phil?” A lot of other riders had also gotten themselves lost. Eventually they all turned up and we had a coffee.

A group of us returned to the Showgrounds by the shortest route and then Yvonne, Richard and I headed back to Yvonne’s place for a cuppa.

Richard and I then headed home by the back roads. At Warner, as I was making a right turn, a dreadful grinding noise with accompanying dire-feeling vibration came from the rear end of the bike. Stopped but couldn’t figure out what the noise was. Decided to continue and, once under way, I swerved the outfit a couple of times and the nasty noise and vibes stopped as suddenly as they had started, telling me precisely what had caused the ruckus: a spoke in the rear wheel had broken and its broken-off head had jammed inside the brake drum between the drive spline from the rear drive unit to the wheel, which was rotating, and the backing-plate for the rear brakes which was not rotating. Swerving the outfit had distorted the wheel  sufficiently for the broken spoke head to be spat out onto the road. I was not about to go back and look for it!

At about 4:30 pm we arrived at my front gate where I bade good-bye to Richard.

Averaged 9.7 litres/100 km (10.3 km/litre) for the day. Normal fuel economy doing lots of short trips is 12.7 litres/100 km (7.8 km/litre).

Just over 300 km for the day: the longest single day’s ride my outfit has ever done in the eleven years I have owned it.

 

As a young man growing up in a small Victorian country town, I had never heard of a gym. In those days we walked or rode push bikes everywhere, we climbed trees and mountains, we chased our dogs around the property, we frequently went out rabbiting, or just went for walks in the bush. We got plenty of exercise.

During the decades that have rolled away since then, I have observed the proliferation of gyms spreading like cancers all around every city I have been to. I observed them, but took no notice of them.

Funny places!  People running like hell but getting nowhere, some rowing mechanical boats with nary a drop of water in sight, others contorting themselves into the most peculiar positions into a seeming myriad of enormous shiny machines with cables and weights and pulleys and levers and repeating movements over and over and over and over and … – well, if you have ever peered through the window of a gym, you’ll get the general idea. Funny places!

Some time ago my adult children who are not blessed with drivers’ licences started going to gyms and Dad had to drive them there. So I actually entered the doors of our local gym.

But it was very definitely for the kids; not for Dad!

In September last year I had a stroke.  This meant that I could no longer continue in the parcel delivery job that had me going up and down the front stairs of dozens of Queenslander style houses every day of the week carrying parcels ranging in weight from one to 40 kg. Instead, I was limited to sorting the said parcels in the early hours of every morning so the drivers of the vans could start loading by 05:00 am. The upshot of this change in occupation was that I was getting almost no exercise at all.

I could feel my body getting less and less fit.

Therefore, on Monday this week I had my first thirty-minute session with a personal trainer at the gym.  There was, getting myself into and out of various space-age looking machines and exercising my legs in this one, my arms in the next one, my chest in the next one, and so on.  At one stage as I sat back on a machine where some lifting of weights was involved, there was a giant floor-to-ceiling mirror right in front of me; there I received a real shock when I could plainly see how very large my belly had grown in the months since my stroke. That reflection reminded me how much I needed to continue exercising.  While I could certainly feel that each set of muscles was working hard, I did not feel any pain at all and in no time my half-hour session was over.

During the next few days, I could feel a sensation in my muscles that reminded me they had been working much harder than normal, but I still felt no real pain.  Wednesday morning I awoke with a simultaneous cramp in the quadriceps muscles of both legs.   That was the only actual pain I had.

My second session was yesterday, Friday 8th May 2015, and this time the weights in all the machines had been adjusted to heavier settings and I was expected to do more of each exercise.  Some of the activities were stretching me so far that I had to pause in the middle of the series to rest whichever muscle-group was involved. This time, too, I had my first go at one of those dry land rowing boats; well, not really a boat, but a machine that simulates rowing one. Again, the session seemed to be over in no time – I seemed to have hardly started when my PT said, “Time’s up!”

Today, Saturday, I again feel that sensation that my muscles have been working harder than normal, but still no real pain.

I reckon I shall continue with this gym business and gradually get a much fitter and stronger body.