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.

Yesterday I introduced you to the bag of Mixed Nuts that went for a ride together on Sunday 10th July 2011 in what was called the “Sidecar Circus”.  We got as far as the Morning Tea break, where we pick up the story today:

A very important group of people assisting us on these rides are the “Marshalls”: a group of men and women set out before the ride begins to wait on the corners to direct all the riders which way to go.

After a most welcome Morning Tea had been well and truly consumed, we travelled via Mount Glorious Road to Samford, then by Samford Road to Bygotts Road where we turned left up a first-gear hill and then followed Mailmans Track to Bunya Road and then to Eaton’s Crossing Rod. There we all had to smile for the camera again.

From Eatons Hill Road we turned Left onto Clear Mountain Road from which we gained stunning views over Lake Samsonvale, and then turned right onto Winns Road.
From there it was back to the Petrie Markets via Forgan Road, Protheroe Road and Young’s Crossing. After a while chinwagging back at the markets we all left to find our own ways home.

I am not sure how to link to a specific post in Facebook, so I have copied here a post from Claude at Freedom Sidecars and am using this quote to then share some thoughts of my own:

=========

MIXED NUTS…

Did anyone ever notice how ones who ride different machines seem to
fit into a stereotype? Years ago someone wrote an article on this and
I felt it was quite amusing but it did hold a lot of truth.

Think of it…Harley riders with many dollars worth of leather on and a
thirty dollar helmet. They seem to wear the leather on and off the
bike too. Then there are the sport bike (crotch rocket) types who ride
with shorts, tank tops , sneakers and a four hundred dollar helmet. At
a rally you may see the BMW types who come in an Aerostitich suit or
the Ducati riders who will show up in full leathers dyed red. The
Goldwingers are known for wearing matching jackets and helmets with
the ever present headset mike projecting in front of their mouth…they
talk softly when on the bike if you speak to them so as not to blat
the ears off their color coordinated passenger. There are others for
sure if we dwell on this but that is not my point to make.

Sidecarists are, for sure, a mixed breed. Years back at the Cook
Forest USCA National (’93 I think) I was really taken off guard by the
comment of my solo bike friend who came along. He was totally amazed
that so many variations of rider `types’ would be at this rally. He
was more amazed that sidecarists tend to talk more about their
sidecars than the power unit that they are pulling them with. Kind of
neat situation isn’t it?

At one time I had a great love for mixed nuts. In the containers that
the mixed nuts came in it was always a real treat to pick out the
cashews. These were the cream of the crop in my book. The other nuts
were okay but for me the goal was to pick out as many cashews as
possible….yumm. A cashew man I was….if it wasn’t a cashew it was
second rate.

One day while in a store I was walking toward ‘nut section’ when in
the distance I noticed something that was unfamiliar to me. As I drew
closer this site began to come into focus clearer and clearer……
could it be…..is this for real? This site could not be taken
lightly. I stood in awe as my mind raced with wild anticipation. The
beating of my heart threatened to explode though my chest as I ever so
slowly reached forth a shaking hand toward the object. I knew it was
neither a mirage nor a dream as my hand touched the cool glass
container that was plainly labeled CASHEWS ! Yes…oh YES!! Cashews
and only cashews….No more mixed nuts….No more picking though the
walnuts and peanuts and Brazil nuts and all of the other stuff . This
was it…an honest to goodness jar of just cashews…..Life was indeed
good….the days of mixed nuts were over. Today was the beginning of a
new life for me. Me and my cashews…alone at last. No more mixed nuts
!!

Upon returning home with my newly found treasure I flopped on the
couch. I felt as though nothing in this world could ever take the
present satisfaction from me. Pure ambrosia..pure delight…it was
only my cashews and me..alone at last.

After a couple of hours of sleep that night I awoke with a bad case of
heartburn. The symptoms could not be ignored as the discomfort deep in
my chest worse and worse. Minutes became hours. The battle within me
raged on and on with no relief in sight as I drifted in and out of
consciousness. My body cried for sleep but it was not being realized
due to the discomfort within. Finally in my state of delirium sleep
mercifully overpowered me.

The light of the sun was breaking through the eastern sky as I slowly awoke.

It was a new day half opened eyes slowly adjusted to the light within
my darken room. The worst was over although as I saw the three empty
cans of cashews flashbacks of the night before attempted to take
control of my senses. I looked away from them quickly and these
feeling seemed to subside. Yes…It was a new day. Thoughts of the
night before were not clear but in a strange way were also so very
real. The experience was a only a haze but still was attempting to
control me.

Days passed and the memory of that fateful night ever so slowly faded
into a surreal memory.

It was a long time before I journeyed back to the store where the
cashews and mixed nuts were waiting to be purchased. Bit I did return
and, again, in the same isle I noticed them. There they were the
familiar ‘mixed nuts’ and right beside them the notorious cashews.
This time I reached up onto the shelf and confidently grabbed three
jars of ‘mixed nuts’.

Later that evening as I opened one of the jars and began to eat I
found that the nuts that I had typically rejects in days gone by were
much more appealing to me. Yes…I did still eat the cashews but no
longer ignored the other nuts in the jar. Everything, cashews and
mixed nuts seemed to taste better than ever….wow…life was now
better than ever even with all of the nuts.

In my world, and in yours, we may tend to look at the cashews as
something special. Some of us are cashews and some of us are various
other mixed nuts but we need to learn that if we were all cashews life
would probably give us a lot of heartburn. It is people, the mixed
nuts that they are that we can learn so much from. It is people, the
mixed nuts that they are, in which we can learn to enjoy life to it’s
fullest. Sidecar people indeed cover the spectrum of what may be
described as ‘mixed nuts’. The old saying that says ‘it takes all
kinds’ is many times thought of in a negative way but it does ‘take
all kinds ‘ to make life what it is. If we want to rise to the
potential that we have it is a good policy to make it a goal to enjoy
the mixed nuts…after all folks …we is one.

Claude

============

Claude’s post on Facebook caused me to start thinking about the “Mixed Nuts” that come riding with us every July on the “Sidecar Circus” which is organised by the HMCCQ.

Every year the Sidecar Circus has been organised by Don Nicol, but Don having passed away after a fight with cancer just last month, it will now have to be organised by other club members.

The sidecar Circus is open to all riders with sidecars, whether they are historic bikes or not, so we get a few modern bikes along as well.

Now for a few photos with comments (quite a bit of this content is stolen from http://www.disciplescmc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4701 where I wrote about a Sidecar Circus four years ago):

On Sunday 10th July 2011 we took part in the second annual “Sidecar Circus” organised by the Pine Rivers Area of the Historical Motor Cycle Club of Queensland (HMCCQ).

This was the weekend following the 100th official meeting of the local HMCCQ branch so was a special ride for the solo bikes as well. We had 11 sidecar outfits and 18 historical solo bikes along to act as marshalls and photographers, etc.

I got up early and checked all the oils, tyres, etc., and set off at about 07:00 on a sunny winter’s morning. The temperature just before I left home was about 8 degrees so I was rugged up like the Michelin Man!

At Young’s Crossing, a causeway across the North Pine River, I hit a huge pothole and heard and felt spokes breaking in my back wheel. As it was only about 500 metres to the gathering point, I kept riding, although the rear end had developed its own erratic wandering feeling – sort of like having two-wheel steering.

I arrived at our gathering point at the Petrie Markets and proceeded to put my spare wheel on the sidecar, my sidecar wheel on the rear, and my damaged rear wheel on the spare wheel mounting on the boot lid of the sidecar.

By the time I had done the three wheel swaps it was time to leave on the “Circus”.
We went straight out Dayboro Road to Dayboro where Gaven Dall’Osto took many excellent photos

From Dayboro, we turned left onto Mount Sampson Road and then right onto Laidlaw Street. From there we were guided up through some glorious mountain scenery over some truly excellent back roads. It was a pity we couldn’t stop anywhere to take photos.

Giving hand signals instead of flashing turn indicators means that the indicator doesn’t get left on after completing the turn.  Or else your arm gets very tired!

For a while we again followed the Mount Samson Road, but turned right onto Gibbons Road and travelled via the back roads to Undambi where we had our Morning Tea break. Our hot tea or coffee was accompanied by yummy snack and even hot cheerios sausages.

During Morning Tea, I took some photos of my own instead of relying on Gaven’s.

Enough photos for today, we shall continue tomorrow!

We truly were a bag of mixed nuts all rolled in together on that circus. Older bikes, newer bikes; bearded, clean-shaven; old farts, young blokes; full-face helmets, jet helmets, pudding-basin helmets (definitely a mixed bag of helmets!); full mittens, leather gloves, cotton gloves, no gloves; leather jackets, fabric jackets, kevlar jackets, all sorts of nondescript jackets; some very talkative fellows, some silent types: really a bag of “Mixed Nuts”!

Steven Green Why don’t you open it all the way?
Glad to hear you’re ok.

There’s quite a story to that too.

Originally there were two holes drilled in the bottom of the roller door equidistant from the centrepoint and a loop of very thin rope ran between those two holes so that if the door went all the way up you could use the rope to pull it down again.

That rope used to break time and time again and we replaced it time and time again. To reach the door if the rope had broken twice, thus leaving no rope to grab, involved getting the stepladder and carrying it down 38 steps to the garage, as the door was far too high for anyone in our family to grab.

If the door is rolled up more than two bricks above the bottom of the window, it goes upwards to the very top of its own accord. This happens because the heavy locking mechanism has passed the centre of the roller towards the inside of the garage and its weight, being greater than the weight of the remaining part of the roller door hanging on the outside of the spindle, is enough to cause the roller to continue to rotate, dragging the rest of the door all the way up to the very top.

So there is about half a brick (they are courses of something like “Besser” bricks, so taller than house bricks) of difference between the door going up of its own accord and Ben or I banging our heads on the door. So there is about four inches of range in which the door will stay put and no heads can bang on it.

After having replaced the skinny little ropes over and over again, and after having to bring the stepladder down 38 steps to replace the rope and then carrying it back up 38 steps again after the rope was replaced, we decided as a family not to continue replacing ropes, but rather to open the door until the bottom was just two bricks above the bottom of the garage windows so that the door would remain where it was rather than rolling all the way up out of reach.

Our landlord will not allow us to fit any other mechanism, electric or otherwise, even at our own expense, to overcome the garage door’s anti-social personality, so we are stuck with a system of having to be very precise about exactly where we leave the garage door when we open it.

Now, before I hit the Enter key, I shall copy this reply and save it for possible use in the blog.

Today I bumped my head on the garage door.

More than ten years ago, when we were moving into this place, I measured how high the roller door of the garage had to be put up so that I wouldn’t bump my head on it.

It was easy to find the answer: I discovered that if the bottom of the door was one and a half bricks higher than the bottom of the garage windows, then there was one centimetre of clearance above the top of my head so that I could walk under the door without having to duck my head.  It is important to me to figure out in advance how much clearance there is around my body, since I have almost zero awareness of how far any part of my body extends in any given direction.

Apparently this is one of the facets of my autism: lack of spatial awareness.  For most of my life I was not aware that I was autistic.  However, for all of my life I have known that I have to set up my surroundings so that I will not accidentally bump into things as I go past them, around them, over them, under them.  If ever I forget to do this, I end up kicking something with my foot when I am expecting to walk past it or, as happened this afternoon, bumping my head when I expect to pass underneath something.

So, as I said earlier, I ascertained that one and a half bricks higher than the bottom of the windows will always let me pass safely under the garage door.  If I am wearing my hat, my hat will hit the door, but to me that is of little concern.

I have been telling my family until I am sure that they are all sick of hearing it, that the garage door should always be raised to that exact level.  And every time I raise the door it is placed very precisely at that level.

But today someone got lazy and left the door about an inch lower than it should have been.

So I was walking out to get into the car and banged my head on the door.  Wendy and Rosie were waiting in the car for me to join them.  The neighbour was walking along the common driveway. The reaction was instantaneous.  Wendy was very worried that I would have concussion; she was sure I went unconscious for a second.  I am equally sure I didn’t go unconscious at all.

As I analyse it, I was walking rapidly out towards the car when my head was unexpectedly stopped.  My body had momentum and continued moving forward while my head stopped still.  This meant that my body was out of balance and began to fall over backwards.  As I do not particularly like falling, I leaned against the other car (the one parked in the garage) to prevent myself from falling any further.  To me that was all that happened.  Although it gave me a momentary fright, I was over it in a second or two and ready to go out and get in the car.

It was not to be.  Because they all saw it happen, everyone’s reaction was almost frightening.  The neighbour wanted to know if she should call an ambulance to take me to hospital.  Wendy was terribly worried that I had concussion, therefore I must go inside and sit down; I could not go to the meeting I had been intending to go to in the car.  Rosie was all worried that I had hurt my head.

So, I cancelled my attendance at the meeting, went inside, sat down and ate two bananas to make me feel better!

Now here’s the funny thing: over the past ten years I have bumped my head on that door several times before when nobody else was around.  One time, I even fell over onto the floor as there was no car to lean on.  On every one of those occasions, I just shrugged my shoulders, muttered under my breath that some silly bugger ought to learn how to raise the door to the correct height, and continued on with going wherever I had planned to go next.  A couple of times I might have had a slight headache, but I soon forgot about that as I continued on with whatever I had planned to do.

This one time when I happened to have an audience to appreciate my performance does demonstrate something very important to me though.

My family loves me and cares for me.

Wendy loves me and cares for me.

Rosie loves me and cares for me.

Even my neighbour loves me and cares for me.  (And the awful thing is, I do not even know her name!)

Most of all, God loves me and cares for me. (Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will.  But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. – Matthew 10: 29-30 NKJV) And I am worth more than a sparrow!

The divisions of historic motorbikes into classes by date of manufacture actually varies slightly from one geographic location to another. For the purposes of today’s post I am defining each of the classes in accordance with the rules of the Historical Motor Cycle Club of Queensland (HMCCQ).

Veteran

A veteran motorbike is one constructed up to and including 31st December 1918.

Vintage

A vintage motorbike is one constructed between and including 1^st January, 1919 and 31^st December 1930.

Post-Vintage

A post-vintage motorbike is one constructed between and including 1^st January, 1931 and 31^st December 1945.

Post-War

A post-war motorbike is one constructed between and including 1^st January, 1946 and 31^st December 1960.

Historic

An historic motorbike is one constructed between and including 1^st January 1961 and  31^st December of the year 30 years prior to the current year.
Historic motorbikes are further divided into 3 groups:

• HISTORIC 60s – constructed between 1^st January 1961 and 31^st December 1969.

  

• HISTORIC 70s – constructed between 1^st January 1970 and 31^st December 1979.

  

• HISTORIC 80s – constructed between 1^st January 1980 and 31^st December 1984 (as at 2015).

  

This is the set of definitions used by HMCCQ and I do realise that other states and other countries have definitions that are in variance with these.