Ride to Agnes Waters: 20th January 2008

by Kevin Cason

After arriving at Quay St car park at 8 am and finding 8 bikes waiting I assumed it would be an ordinary day’s ride, but much to my surprise people just continued to appear. The 8 soon turned to 28 then 38 and finally we departed Quay St at 8.40 am with a group of 40 motorcycles and several pillions (23 club members and 17 guests, 6 of those being from the BURP forum web site) travelling to our first stop at Baffle Creek. This destination was reached without incident or at least so I thought until it was reported that Sandra’s new GS 500 had failed to proceed at Rosedale. After leaving the offending machine at the Rosedale waste recycling centre (the dump) Sandra bravely carried on to The Baffle as pillion on Peter Hansens bike to be met by some good natured comment about the reliability of Suzuki motorcycles. The Baffle country club was a good spot to stop as it was a very humid day and dehydration an ever present danger, although I think the staff might not have agreed when over 40 thirsty bikers turned up on there doorstep at opening time. After refreshments and good conversation we left for Agnes and 1770 via a little known road connecting baffle road with the Agnes road, a recently sealed road with some nice sweeping corners for the enthusiast. I was obviously travelling quite sedately at this point as I was overtaken by several riders, perhaps the reason was that I had a pillion and had to be more responsible. On reaching or destination we rode up to the lookout and; looked out before continuing to the Agnes Waters Tavern for a very enjoyable lunch, a much needed cold drink and some good conversation. Several of the group had already departed having prior commitments by the time the rest of us left the tavern at 2 o’clock for fuel and a very relaxed ride back to Avondale Tavern. The later part of this section seemed to bring out some unusual behaviour in a few of our members. Not mentioning names of course but a certain Cagiva rider and an SV rider seemed to have a very competitive nature. Of course there was the quarter litre rider who seemed to have his ambitions mixed up with his capabilities. We stopped for our mandatory WHS drink stop and debriefing at Avondale before going our separate way to Bundy Anyhow it was a very pleasant ride with some good company and very pleasing to see so many guests turning up for the day. Big thanks to Sid for volunteering to go tail end for the day and also many thanks to Warren, Peter and Tom for staying and helping out with our breakdown at Rosedale (and yes we did eventually rescue the offending Suzuki from the dump).