G'day All,
I've been getting the logistics together around planning the trip to pickup my new
!
At the moment the plan looks like this:
Thursday17th, 20:30 flight from Avalon to Sydney, staying with friends in Marrickville.
Friday 18th, 08:30 Rex flight out to Armidale (NSW). Staying with a nice couple near the Uni, will probably get a cab there and offload my camping gear, put my feet up and read a book until the seller knocks off work, around 15:00. He'll pick me up and take me to his place in Guyra about half an hour away. We'll sign some papers, I'll hand over a fistful of cash (
), jump on board and head back to Armidale to park it in the garage and load my gear up to head off in the morning.
Saturday 19th, probably around 07:00 I'll hit the road heading South. My partner is in Kings Point (NSW), just South of Ulludulla, a good days drive away, but I've got a few campsites marked along the way as contingencies. I've generally find I take it a bit easier and don't push myself as much when travelling by bike, so often only make 5-600K's a day (I can hear all you FR'ers scoffing already...) generally because that's about when my back and/or knees have had enough, HOWEVER, I'm hoping that I will gel beautifully with my new ST and will be able to happily sail the whole way into my partners loving arms in the one day.
Friday 25th, after spending the week relaxing at Kings Point, my partner and I will ride south, just a couple hours, and stay in a nice BnB for the night. She'll probably get on a bus back home the next morning, and I'll continue South along the coast (never taken that road before), probably finding somewhere to camp a night, then on past Lakes Entrance, through Melbourne and back to Geelong ready for work on Monday.
I've been playing with SpotWalla and SWConnect on my iPhone. Hopefully I can get that all working easily and work out how to share the live link. I only have two, very mild concerns, one is getting all my riding & camping gear on the Rex flight (the weight isn't an issue, just the bulk, maybe I'll have to suit up and fly dressed like I'm expecting the plane to fall out of the sky?), the other, and this sounds ridiculous, considering what the trip is based around, but it's getting used to the ST. I had a small play on one a couple years ago, I remember it being super comfortable and not really feeling the weight too much, I think just reading the facts, figures and specs too much over the past months I have myself paranoid about the weight. My current ride sits around 230Kg's wet, more when loaded for touring, but that's a very unbalanced weight, I'm hoping the ST will balance it all out much more comfortably! Besides, at the end of the day, it's all just about getting used to a new bike, no matter what its specs are.
So, other than the legs being done by aircraft, I'm open to suggestions as to the exact route... I'd love to see some nice scenery, but for the initial run down to Kings Point, I guess I'm more concerned with getting there fairly directly on safe, mainly well maintained roads. I don't fancy getting used to a new bike, as well as learning how it handles in less than stellar conditions... but still, I know I'll come across whatever I come across on the day.
I'll keep you all updated as it all goes along. Hopefully I'll have a SpotWalla link to upload before too long too.
Cheers,
Steve
