The Big Ride

The Big Ride.
The big ride had been proposed and started to be organized about 9 months before I found the OzM109 riders board. When I first heard about it I was so very new to riding the 9, the idea of doing a run all the way to Victor Harbor was a little scary, hell the idea of going up to Newcastle was a little scary. Oz is a big place and doing a 3000km round trip when I had only had the bike about a month was more than a little daunting.

So, over the next couple of months I started to participate on the ozm019riders board, I went on some small weekend rides and met a few people, both riders and their pillions. I went on two larger rides, Uralla (600km) and then Urunga (500km) with over night stays in each spot. I began to learn a lot about long distance riding and how much I still had to learn about riding a bike as big and powerful as this one. I was learning what the physical requirements were of doing 500+km in the saddle and what you need to take when doing a long weekend away on a bike.

I got to know several people a lot better and had a blast on each ride I did. I learned a bit about what I wanted to do to my bike ( I got the mod bug) and with the help of BigBadBaz I started to make some additions to the bike. Each little change made the bike handle better or easier to spend time on. Each change incrementally improved the ride and I got more and more comfortable with it. It was on the run back from Urunga that I stopped with Gazza at the Twin Servos for petrol. We had split off from the others at this point and we took some time, had something to eat and had a chat. It was then that Gazz said something that really resonated with me. He had been in Aussie 30ish years and he had never done the Great Ocean Road. It was something that he had always wanted to do, but he had never got round to, the Big Ride was his opportunity.

I really thought about this, I didn't just come to Aus to work and make money, I came here to have a different life, to see the country, to meet people, to experience and do things that I would not have done back in NZ. It was that conversation that convinced me to do the Big Ride. That night when I got back from Urunga, I posted on the board that I was coming and I paid my money for the "Ticket to Ride". From that moment on I was excited and just wanted to get on the bike and go!. I knew I was going to have to do a lot of stuff in a very short time (It was only about 3 months to the ride date) and it was going to cost me a bomb.

I sorted out new tires, I organized a service, I bought a new pack rack, new knee braces, boots and gloves, organized time off and I was good to go. While I was sorting all of this out, I was following the process of the ride organization on the board. It became very clear to me that this wasn't just a "get on the bikes and go" kind of ride. A backup truck was being organized, specific roads were being discussed, spare parts were being sorted, prizes and media coverage were organized, notice was sent to the Police in SA (who have particularly draconian anti bikie laws) to let them know we were coming. This ride was being very well put together and I felt more and more comfortable with the decision to ride 3000km across unknown roads.

Ride day came closer and closer. I think I was boring the shit out of the people of work, all they heard for 2 months was "big ride is coming!" Finally the day arrived and I was ready!. The first stop was Chris's place to meet up with all the people who had headed down from Queensland and were crashing the night. There were LOTS of cameras around, unfortunately the one thing I forgot to organize was a camera so almost all of these pics were taken by other people. I was the first to arrive in the morning and met Rockethead and Col for the first time (actually I had met Rockethead a few weeks earlier at Roadwarriors). They were only just awake after having a really big night the night before. Col was not feeling 100% and he was beginning to wonder if all that scotch was really a good idea. I had originally been planning on coming down to Chris's place the night before and crashing on a coach to get an early start. Looking at Col I was bloody glad I didn't.

Rockethead was up and cheery as hell, when I got there he had the coffee machine fired up and the BBQ going with bacon and eggs!.

Me and Coffee 1st thing

I got there early, about 745am. I had some of the breakfast that Rockethead had kindly made, had a coffee or 5 and waited for everyone else to arrive. They dribbled in one by one till we had the usual suspects gathered around their bikes and a whole lot of new people I hadn't yet met. It was a great start to the day so far!.

Everyone having breakkie, coffee and a chat

Just before we all set off, Chris pulled everyone in for a chat and we talked about the road rules. We were using the Sydney Knights pack ride rules for stopping, indicating turns etc. It turned out to be an imperfect system as there were a couple of corners over the next couple of days where we basically had to rely on peoples GPS to know which was the correct turn. For some reason, occasionally the corner marker either didn't drop off, or didn't wait for the truck to pass and took off before the whole pack had passed. Having said that, it did generally work and I for one was really happy to be looking out for the corner marker, see them and know I was generally on the right track. As someone who is never in the lead and usually cruising along at his own pace at the rear of the pack, knowing that a corner marker would be there was a real comfort.

One of the things that I was both really surprised at, and really happy to know was that there was a truck accompanying us. The truck was used to not only carry every one's gear (yay no heavy bag hanging off the rear of the bike!) and to allow us to carry any break downs, there was also a shit load of spares, heavy duty tools etc all of which would have been very difficult to carry balanced on a bike.

Mannie putting the finishing touches to the truck

Bowjet

Taking off, leaving Chris' place

Waiting for everyone to form up

The Truck, always the last of the pack!

NSW Impressions This is a road?
We left in the morning, it was cool start to the day but the sky was clear blue and you could feel the heat coming on already. We headed off down the southern freeway and then off onto side roads. It was a beautiful day, nice roads, nice curves, then suddenly we turned off onto what I can only describe as a track. I was headed up it thinking "In NZ this would be called a driveway. Where the fuck are we going?" Shit road, really tight, only barely enough space for 2 cars side by side. Oddly enough, half way up it a beautiful customized roadster passed us going the other way.
The road wasn't long, only 5 or ten km and we were back onto decent tarmac.

Oh Fuck I'm going to die
I was behind Chris (the last time that happened) and he indicated for me to mark a corner. It was an off ramp from the freeway, so I pulled off onto the shoulder and sat and waited for the rest of the riders. I considered completely getting off and taking gear off etc but I figured I wanted to be able to take off quickly once I saw the truck, so I stayed sitting on the bike.

 I was sitting and watching traffic coming in my rear vision when I noticed set of about 5 cars coming down the freeway towards me. About 3 cars into the 5 car pack there was a BMW who decided he was going to pull off the freeway early and head up the off ramp using the shoulder.

So I am sitting on the bike, watching this BMW pull off into the exact line I happen to be parked in, the BMW is about 750 meters behind me travelling at 100kph when he starts to pull into the shoulder. I had no time to do anything, I couldn't get the stand down, it was hop off and drop the bike and dive out of the way, or hope he notices me and pulls back in. My system was absolutely flooded with adrenalin and my heart was beating like a jackhammer when he noticed me, swerved violently back into the line of traffic and I realized I wasn't going to die.

1st bad corner
Coming down the Kings Road following Gazza; its an old trucking road, or feels like one, pretty rough and ready concrete, no one else on it but us. Coming down a hill into a left hand turn, wooden bridge across a small creek at the base of the hill. Coming into the corner and I realize I have been watching Gazza too closely and not preparing for the corner. I have to lay the bike over hard and go wide across the bridge. If anyone was coming the other way I would have been wiped out.

1st town stop
I don't know exactly where we were but it was the first town we had a major stop in. We pulled over and discovered that Rocketheads C109 had moved around inside the truck. In fact it had fallen over and damaged the rear vision mirror. While 5 of the lads were in the truck trying to get it sorted to not move about everyone else stopped and had a drink and some food. It was a pretty little town and a beautiful blue sky day.

Batemans bay - knackered
Pulled over at a gas station in Batemans bay only about 2 hours from Eden. It was at this point I began to realize how physically hard this trip was going to be. It turned out this was one of the short legs, but towards the end of the day I was aching and my hands were killing me. I had developed a bad case of "grip of death" and this was causing me serious pain.

Eden - Wheres my Bed?
We got to the hotel in Eden. It appeared that somewhere along the line almost all of our booking information had gone missing. I had paid but they had no record of my booking, I wasn't the only one. I ended up crashing in a room with about 5 of the boys. I settled in, went down and had a Pizza at the local Pizza joint and then headed to bed while everyone else got stuck in at the bar. Had a good chat with Rockethead as we were both dozing and settling to sleep.

I fell asleep trying to relax my hand and stop the tingling in my hands. My fingers were curled over and I couldn't straighten them out.

I dreamed of roads, long curving roads bounded by dark green trees and speeding along them.

Leaving Eden

We left Eden about 930 in the morning.
When I first got up about 7am it was clear but you could see the thin gray clouds beginning to roll in from the south. By the time we got our shit together and left the hotel it was beginning to drizzle. We tried to head down to Eden Harbor to get some photos of all the bikes but it just started to drizzle harder so after a while we said sod it and headed out of town.

When you leave Eden you are pretty much straight into a national park and heading up into the hills. The weather continued to threaten but for the first half of the day it basically remained as the occasional drizzle, enough to wet down the roads and make them slippery but not enough to actually be called rain. We rode hard through the national forest and up onto the plains where we started to encounter real rain. It hammered down for about an hour while coming across the plains east of Victoria, that wasn't too bad as we were by then on long straight roads, if we had had that sort of rain coming through the hills there could have been some crashes. By the time we pulled over for a bit of food in Bairnsdale we were all wet and pissed off.

We hit the Melbourne freeway system and I for one thought "Thank God" and opened the throttle. I haven't so far (touch wood) had a ticket from that run into Melbourne. To be honest I'm a bit surprised as I hammered it along a lot of that road. We had planned to get on a ferry on the south west side of Melbourne, cross the harbor and we would only have been 15 or so minutes from our next stop at Torquay. We pulled over for our last fuel stop at a gas station about 45 minutes from the ferry landing. It was at that point that we discovered that the last ferry was at 6:00pm and we weren't going to make it. So the decision was to head back around Melbourne to Torquay along the freeways. Now considering we were talking about 140km in city freeway traffic on heavily monitored roads we didn't know, I was a little apprehensive.

Now Eden to Sorrento was about 597km. By doubling back to Torquay we added 140km to the run making the day nearly 750km. By the time we got to Torquay I was desperate to get off the bike. I had well and truly had enough. It was pitch black, I was hungry, very cold, my hands hurt and I just wanted to get the fuck off the bike. Torquay was another spot where our bookings had been lost and we were all reduced to begging and borrowing rooms from each other. I joined Gazza in a cabin and gratefully dumped all my shit and had a shower. Three of us headed up the local pub only to find out their kitchen had closed. All the Victorian boys had met us in the pub so at this point it was a large contingent of bikers. The guys from Victoria all looked so fresh and comfortable!. Little did they know what they were getting in to.

So we headed up the road and had a very average Chinese dinner. I ate about 1/3rd of mine, Gazz had about 10% and threw it away. Its always a bad sign when neither of the staff in the establishment spoke any form of English at all. So after spitting out the food, we had a few beers at the pub and headed back to the camp ground

Victoria Impressions
State Highway Open roads, pine forests, gas stationsLeaving Eden and straight into the pine forests, tall straight pines, clear open roads for the most part with the occasional hilly, twisty section. The roads reminded me a lot of some of the roads around Rotorua and Taupo in New Zealand. We passed up into a hilly section and it started to piss down, with all the rain and the coffee I had been drinking I badly needed a bathroom. Gazz and I were alternating leads as we headed through the forest, as we entered a small open section in the forest we found a gas station. Quite literally a small clearing of red earth surrounded by green forest with a gas station and a cafe. We pulled over and I dropped about 4 litres of fluid and we moved on into the rain.

Crossing the borderComing down a long straight through the forest I looked up and there was a sign saying "Welcome to Victoria". Being from NZ it was weird passing into a territory where I knew everything from road laws to the colour of police cars was going to change. It was nice to know we had left NSW tho, it felt like we were actually on the way!.

Pissing down with rainComing along the plains towards eastern Melbourne. Long flat, straight roads, flat green fields. The weather had been threatening and spitting, then suddenly it hammered down. Everyone was soaked within minutes. I slowed right down as it was getting difficult to see. At one point the Triumph sprint passed me and I could see the water coming off his wheel as high as the pillion.

Pissing down with PissComing into eastern Melbourne. 3-4 of us had teamed up and were coming through the freeways together. A couple of the lads were following a truck ahead of me when I noticed them suddenly swerving violently into the lanes to either side. At first I couldn't figure this out, then I noticed a waterfall of yellow liquid coming out the back of the truck and spreading across the lane. I too took quick evasive action to avoid the large spreading puddle of piss which was pouring out of the back of what was now obviously a live animal transport truck.

Melbourne trafficAfter 8 hours of open roads, getting struck in Melbourne rush hour traffic sucked.

Get me off this fucking bikeWe had pulled over for gas 45 minutes out from the Ferry and discovered that we weren't going to make the last ferry. It was decided to turn around and head back around Melbourne to Torquay along the motorways. This was a 140km back track. We set off through the traffic, largely we kept together but there were a few times we all started to get pulled apart by the traffic. I remember going over a bridge and cutting hard through traffic to catch up with the pack. We got lost at one point and did a U-Turn on a freeway entrance. By the time we pulled into Torquay I was desperate to get off the bike. I was cold, damp, my body ached all over and my hands were worse than the day before.

The Great Ocean Road
We woke up in Torquay to a beautiful day. When I poked my head out of the window it was blue skies with only a hint of clouds. That was about 730am. It was going to change, oh how it was going to change. This was the first time we all got a good look at everyone's bikes as the Victorian boys were here and all parked up outside of the cabins. I had exchanged emails with Paul from Twowheels.com before but this was my first look at his bike and boy is she a beauty. If you ever get a chance to meet up with Paul in Victoria, do so and have a good look at his 9. We all formed up across the road from the cabins at a gas station. As we were waiting for everyone to get sorted the clouds started to come across heavier and darker. Eventually it started to spit so it was decided we would head to the GOR and get underway.

Leaving Torquay

As we made our way down the coast and along the GOR the rain got worse and worse. Several times I passed people who had started out with no wet weather gear on, who were now pulled over on the side of the road in the pouring rain trying to dig their wet weather gear out of their racks.

About 60 km down the road and just before the official start point of the GOR we pulled up at a little town called Lorne. Everyone was standing next to a little cafe warming up with cofee and bacon and egg rolls. It was a hell of an impressive site with 30+ 9's all pulled up and parked outside of the cafe. We all ate drank, pissed, hoped and prayed the rain would pass and hopped back on the bikes. Now the GOR was the primary reason I came on this trip, it is regarded as one of the greatest bike rides in Australia. I have to say that I agree with that statement with one amendment. The GOR is one of the greatest bike rides in Australia - In.GOOD.Weather. The further we got into the GOR the wetter and colder it got.

Leaving Lorne

Riding in hard twisties on a 400KG cruiser, with wet helmet, wet glasses and unlined leather gloves is not actually a lot of fun in my opinion.

The RATT bike

The Great Ocean Road

The Weather - Thanks Victoria

Pauls Bike

Gaz
Gaz parked up on the side of the road, a few miles into the GOR. I slow down to see if he is OK and I see him racing off into the bush waving a toilet roll...

GOR Wet
It hammered down. I'm from New Zealand, I have ridden in heavy rain and that day on the GOR was some of the heaviest weather I have ever ridden in. Hell just going to work in NZ in winter could be an adventure. Ive ridden to work twice in hurricanes. The rain that day was coming in big and hard, the temperature had plummeted from a cool but comfortable morning, to easily being able to see your breath. The GOR is cliff on one side, cliff on the other, hard narrow 180 degree twisties, do all that in pissing cold rain.

GOR Spectacular scenery
The weather may have been shit but the GOR is absolutely amazing. In some cases the weather actually improved the scenery. For example I came around a corner and could see the coast road for about 6km in front of me. The sea was breaking on the coast and the spray was coming right up the cliff, over the road and blowing over the tops of the cliffs and across the bush. It was like a spray curtain running along the road.

GOR Wind
Coming uphill into a 120 degree right hander, leaned over hard to my right, just as I hit the peak of the hill I also clear the cliff which had been sheltering me from the wind up until then. I get hit with a massive gust, pushing the whole bike back down the road and even further to the right. I am on the verge of both falling over and stalling. I lean harder, gun it and zoom round the corner with the back wheel sliding out, just a little...

GOR Cafe Guy
After the GOR you start to climb up into some hills. Apparently it reaches about 1000meteres and at the top of the mountain is an intersection with half a dozen houses and a couple of coffee shops. I am so cold I pull over into the parking lot of one of the coffee shops to wait for the truck that I think is only about 10 minutes behind me. A chap comes out of the closed coffee shop to have a chat and have a look at the bike. We get chatting, it turns out he has owned this cafe for about 9 years and has just sold it. He once had a business doing Harley tours along the GOR. His plan is to buy a bike and ride around Australia and he goes back into the cafe and comes back out clutching a wad of magazines with articles about the 9.

He loves the bike but is torn between it and a full blown Harley Tourer. So we chat for about 15 minutes and eventually Tony, who is driving the backup truck turns up. I waved him down, he gave me his sweater and we took off again, leaving a cafe owner staring after the freedom of the bike with envious eyes.

GOR Nirranda - WARM
Finally made it to Nirranda after been alternately rained on and blown off the bike. I pulled into Nirranda desperate for some warmth. I saw Chris's MT01 parked outside the Nirranda Suzuki place and I stopped in the driveway. First priority was a piss closely followed by buying some warm glove slip on's for my hands and a hotdog. The guys at the Suzuki place were awesome. I was well and truly late by then as I had only been there about 10 minutes when I found out that I had missed the press conference and we were all leaving. So I only had a really brief stop.

South AustraliaWe woke up in SA after a great night and a great dinner at the Mount Gambier Motor inn. The guys at Mount Gambier were awesome and I would recommend any biker to stay there. They put us all on one side of the building so we were together and the bikes were safer, they put together a private room and did us up a 3 course meal. We pulled out of Mount Gambier, happy, fed and warm. Initially we thought we were heading in to more rain but we mostly rode past or through the rain clouds so there was very little wet all the way into Victor Harbor.

Mount Gambier : Dinner

Leaving Mount Gambier

Gassing up at the Big Crayfish - Kingston

Chris on his MT01 ran out of gas just outside Kingston. I think he was only a couple of km from the gas station. While he was waiting for someone to come past and help him get some gas, a nice policeman pulled up to ask him a few questions about the large number of motorcycles that had been roaring up his roads. Apparently some of the local folk had complained to him about some 'bikies' traveling very quickly. Now the SA police had been warned in detail up front that we were coming, however it appears that this nice policeman didn't get the word.

So once it was explained that we weren't a bikie gang and we were in fact on a charity run the nice policeman called his friends up the road to spread the word we were on the way and left Chris with 10$ as a donation to the Charity and a request to "tell the boys to slow down". 3 cheers for the SA police!

Chris getting a donation from the SA Police department
See I let it go, its not a bribe!

We pulled into Wellington where the SA boys were stopped to meet us. We got about 35 9's on the ferry and pulled into the Wellington Hotel car park. That was cool, we got to meet new people, all the SA guys most of us had never met before, we got to drool over new 9's we hadn't seen before and just generally hang around like the smelly bikers we were.

Wellington Ferry

We pulled into Victor Harbor about 3pm, I think it was the shortest day we had spent on the whole ride. I was so looking forward to a bed, a shower and time off the bike. It took a bit of time but the folks at Victor Harbor Holiday camp got us all sorted out and assigned to rooms. I ended up bunking with a chap from Melbourne called Tibbie. Initially I thought we were going to have a bit of a break and the big photo shoot was going to be the next day.

I was surprised to realize that in fact we had to get to our rooms, find water and cleaning rags, clean (and polish ) the bikes and get them lined up for the big photo. I was the last to get in line as you can see from the long line of bikes with the yellow seat up front. We had about an hour and a half to get all that done. As tired as we were this was actually quite a big effort and there was much grumbling and "oh my aching back's" but everybody came through with flying colors. The bikes when all lined up looked stunning.

Finally Victor Harbour!

Wating for a room

Parked Up

The Big Ride: Parkup 1

The Big Ride: Parkup 2

The Big Ride: Parkup 2The Riders

South Australia Impressions
Open Roads
Long Straight clean roads, slight curves, good quality. It wasn't as thrilling as some of the heavy twisties we had been through, but I still enjoyed it. It gave me time to look around and just enjoy being out on the bike, the huge cloud banks were amazing, SA is really "Big Sky" country.

Speed
Long open roads, few curves, no traffic. Speed. Pissed off locals.

Silver Lakes and Curves
We came through a section just as we were left Wellington, I think it was Langhorne Creek road. The road was nice and had some great open curves but to the left hand side there were these beautiful lakes of mirror smooth silver. We knew the sea was close on the left but the water people were seeing wasn't ocean. I found out later they were slat flats with just an inch or so of water in them. Lots of people stopped and took photos as it was a stunning and temporary phenomenon.

Tired
I didn't realize how tired I was till the next day at the end of the big ride. I got back from what was supposed to be a short run (10 hours on the bike) and when I finally got to the pub all I wanted to do was sleep. I was utterly exhausted.

Wellington Hotel
Coming across on the ferry, catching up with all the SA guys, seeing all the bikes finally together, knowing that a hot shower and cold beer were only a few hours away was awesome. We picked up a couple of Harleys for the big ride in and I found it quite funny that they both seemed to struggle to stay with us.

Speed
We had been traveling so long and so hard that I began to realize that the average speed, or at least mine, had crept up. I think I left Sydney averaging about 100-120kph. I left Wellington and rode into Victor Harbor about 130-140 and felt really comfortable doing it.

After the big lineup we all headed up to the Victor Harbor Suzuki dealership where Camp Quality had set up a big welcome for us. There were lots of kids, parents and Camp Quality dolls and puppets around. As we pulled up I realized the place was smaller than I thought and on a much steeper hill than I thought. I honestly didn't believe we were going to get 40+ 109's in there. But the boys from VH Suzuki guided everyone in and like a jigsaw we got all the bikes in. Allan who owns VH Suzuki had set up a BBQ with drinks, snags etc and all proceeds went to Camp Quality. There was also an auction of gear donated by Suzuki and by some of the people who were on the ride.

The big items were the Suzuki Waistcoat (man I wish I had bought that) which after a fierce tussle between Tony and Col finally went to Col, and a hand made clock kindly donated by Lefty. That eventually went to Chris for pride of place in his M109 Barn.

Doc and the Clock

Doc and his mates

The official BigRide started the next morning. We all set off to Breakfast at a little local spot where the owner had kindly put on more staff as we had told him there was going to be 40+ people turning up for breakfast that morning.

Breakfast!

A blessing of the bikes had been arranged and a minutes silence was held for Peter Gundry, a 9 rider who was lost to us early in 2009. I have never experienced a blessing of the bikes and although I am in no way religious, having the words said and the final blessing of "ride safe" was a great experience.

Blessing of the Bikes

The Padre

Heading off on the Big RideThe rules were announced, no over taking for this ride, no one was to overtake the lead bike and no one was to drop behind the rear bike. We were going to ride in a safe convoy. It was supposed to be a simple cruise up into the Adelaide hills. We had riders of all different skills, ages and experience levels. So the rule was in place to try and keep the run from turning into a race. The first stretch of the run was about 60km or so and ended up at an intersection surrounded by lots of pretty buildings. Not quite a town, I couldn't figure out what it was. There was a Telstra stall there trying to sell mobile services in the car park. I think we scared the crap out of them when we first showed up as they probably through we were big bad bikies.

NFI where this is but it was pretty

After we took off into the second section it seemed to me that the lead bike absolutely took off. I was about 1/3rd of the way down the pack and I was riding well and truly out of my comfort level. I kept waving people past as I was taking the bike way further and way faster than I ever had before. I know that's how you learn, but its not a good idea to be learning at 90kph going through a 45kph marked corner with three bikes hammering right up your ass to get round you. I was trying to stay up with the guys in front of me and keep out of the way of the guys behind me,

I went into one hard uphill left hand corner, first the pegs scraped, then the rear frame scraped, I realized really quickly I was also in the wrong gear for the climb up the hill, I checked in the rear mirror to see a bike coming hard round the corner and decided this was a really bad spot to be in. I dropped a gear and took off, waving the biker behind me past. After that I slowed right down and rode much more to my skill level.

We got to the top of Mount Loftus where prize's and giveaways were handed out and then took off for lunch before entering "the Gorge".

Mount Loftus

The gorge was a hell of a ride. The rules got changed at lunch to say that the gorge was open slather, ride to however you felt best, overtaking was allowed. We headed in and I waved a lot of people past. the incident with scraping the frame on the corner earlier had led me to slow right down so I let everyone go in front of me and I quietly made may way through the twisties. I'm glad I took the gorge slowly as it was a spectacular space and I just enjoyed the view and cruised down to the gas station at the end of the road.

From the gas station I elected to head back to Victor Harbour. There were 5 of us and we managed to get thoroughly caught up in the Adelaide traffic which, after racing around through the hills earlier, wasn't a lot of fun. As I was coming around a roundabout heading for the Motorway my back tire unexpectedly jumped about 3 inches to the left, I felt it go and put my foot down and pushed the bike up hard to keep it upright. Scared the shit out of me and impressed Popeye who was behind me. When we got to the campsite he said he was surprised I had managed to keep it upright.

That night was the official Big Ride Dinner. We all got home, showered and headed up to the local Hotel where a room had been set aside for us all. Food was great and company better. Alan from the Victor Harbour Suzuki got up and said a few words and Camp Quality had brought along a family who were there to show us what all the hard work was about. Both Alan and the father of the young boy from Camp Qality got quite emotional in thanking us for our support.

Alan from VH Suzuki

Tim gets the Longest Ride award: 3800KM (he did it in two days to get back!)

The prizes!

Doc and Baz

The lovely family from Camp Quality

Speeches

The next day was a day "off" so me and Crazy wandered into town, had a very long and leisurely breakfast and just wandered about a bit. Eventually we hooked up with a few of the lads who were having a few quiet beers outside the Hotel.

Keeva and Jerone

Tony and our gracious Lord Wazza

Victor Harbour Impressions
Wind!
Woke up in the morning to a tremendous bang and the sound of howling wind through the trees. It was so loud I thought it was a bike falling over against the cabin. Shot outside to find it was a huge branch having come down and the bikes were fine. The wind was massive that morning, it was hard to stand up straight against it. It went on most of the day and didnt really start to drop away till late in the afternoon. It wasn't a good omen for the ride home starting the next day.

People set off and turned back
Several guys had decided to set off for home on the morning the wind started. A couple pushed through but a lot turned around and came back. You know its dangerous out there when Gazza turns back, he is an absolute machine when it comes to riding, nothing (well almost nothing) stops him.

Barbeque night
On the last night we decided to have a BBQ. Everyone bought stuff to share and we used one of the free BBQ's at the campsite. It was a great night with 10 or so of us just hanging around, sharing experiences and just generally bullshitting. I got a chance to talk to some of the people that had been around for the whole ride but I hadn't been able to talk to and made some new friends. It ended about 11pm and everyone headed off for an early night. The next day was a big day!

The Trip Home
Wind and the Hay Plain
We weren't lucky, the wind didn't drop the next day. About 5 of us set off across the Hay plain with the intention of stopping at Hay for the night. This is easily the toughest piece of riding I have ever done. The wind always seemed to be coming from the left and I was constantly on a 20 degree lean into the wind. Passing B-doubles was potentially lethal as you would have to get into his wind draft, then pass him, get into a clean spot of air and then back out into the wind and the 20 degree lean.

I was going down a straight piece of road and got pushed so hard in one gust I scraped my pegs.

I thought maybe I was just being a pussy but talking that night with the guys I was riding with, they all said that was the toughest day they had ever done in the saddle.

Exhausted in Hay/Dinner
We reached Hay and stopped at the first Motel we saw with a "Vacancies" sign. It was 750km run from Victor to Hay with that massive wind pushing us all over the road all the way. We all got a room, dumped our stuff and gathered outside for a beer, a smoke and a chat. After an hour or so we went back to our various rooms for a wash up and ventured into town for dinner. Hay is an interesting place. If it wasn't for the truckies passing through I don't think it would exist. It seems to be there purely for the purpose of being in the middle of Sydney and Adelaide.

We had a very nice dinner in a seafood restaurant that was about 1000km from the nearest ocean and headed back to the rooms. TonyTwoshoes and Wazza of course, found some girls and partied until the very wee small hours.

The Freeway
After 6 days of back roads, tight curves and a sore ass the Freeway near Goulburn was the prettiest thing I had ever seen. It meant we were close to home and an easy run all the way back into Sydney. Keeva had peeled off and headed into Melbourne leaving only myself and Rocket still running together. We couldnt go too fast as Rockets bike was literally loaded so high at the rear I couldn't see his head.

We cruised into Sydney and Mark peeled off for the last run home, another 300km from my place.

Me and Keeva on the way home the day after stopping at Hay

Home
Nearly dropped the bike, after 3500km from Sydney to Adelaide and back, the closest I came to actually dropping the bike was as I turned into my driveway.

It was a huge experience and I loved it. I was exhausted when I got home but if someone had said we are going to keep going and head to Cairns, I honestly would have jumped on the bike the next morning and just kept going. It took me two days to get my head "off the road" and back home.

When is the next one?

We are Live!...

Current Killing Blow count: 22

Well we finally got SA formed last night. Southern Armada now has a presence in 3 games, WoW, WAR and EQ2. I must admit I had a fall back, if we hadn't been able to get enough SA people on-line to be able to actually form the guild, I was going to join TOG. The Older Gamers are a very large Aussie based organisation who have a presence in multiple MMO's as well as Clans in FPS games, tactical ladders etc. They have been around for a while and I have seen them in several games in the past. When I have encountered their members they have always been decent people and if SA wasn't going to get off the ground that was basically going to be my new home.

However we managed to easily get enough people on-line and in The Inevitable City and Southern Armada went live in WAR. At the moment obviously we are only very small but we will use the same sort of recruitment system as Shinrai has adopted in WoW. Basically we make it a lot easier to get in, but its also a lot easier to get booted. We want to expand, but not at the expense of the SA way of doing things. Unfortunately Zarthaz has chosen to side with the forces of Order on an open RVR server and he will not be joining us. If we do get to a decent size who is to say we wont have an Order branch as well for Alts and something different. I was actually thinking we could call an order Guild "Northern Armada" :)

A very very small part of
The Inevitable City

I've been busy levelling up as fast as I can to get past all the stuff I have already done. I've made my way to level 15 and completed all of the current quests available in my Tier for Chaos and Greenskin. I was considering a little trip across to the Dark Elf lands to both have a look around and to check out their quests. Don't get me wrong I have still skipped hundreds of quests as I have outlevelled them, I've just managed to clear the quest lines in the particular areas that I have inhabited.

Beta was fun and this is how I looked at the end of my last day in the Beta before go live.
Some of the most fun quests I've done so far have been the ones in the Troll lands. The Troll models are just awesome looking with different colours and skin textures on each one, the quests are fun with a decent mix of fedex, kill that, PQ's etc. Its enough to keep you entertained and running about the place.

a Plaguewood Troll

I had an excellent couple of nights in Stonetroll Crossing both in open RvR and scenarios. I actually had 2 scenarios run to full term and time out. For those who haven't played WAR, Stonetroll is a chaos human scenario where you have to get a flag in the centre of the map and then take it to 3 different map areas to "capture" those areas for your side. There are a couple of caveats:
Once you have the flag you have two minutes to make it to and capture an area, if you don't the flag reseats and you start again
It takes 3 seconds of uninterrupted time to capture an area, if you are interrupted by attack you have to start the 3 seconds again.
The entire scenario takes 12 minutes.

So basically neither side could force the scenarios and they timed out, 12 minutes of battling the enemy!.

Usually stone troll is dominated by one side or the other and won or lost easily, so people are starting to learn how this stuff works and its getting harder.

Now I'm not saying this game is perfect, it definitely has bugs. One of them is Biletongue. He is the boss at the end of one of the Stonetroll PQ's. We completed the second stage and Biletongue became attackable, I engaged and he one shotted me. Just a touch over powered!.

Biletongue

I have also had several one on one and small group battles in the open field areas. In one I got utterly ganked as I ran into 3 bright wizards, one snared me, the other two smacked me down. Its ok, I took careful note of their names and I will see them again, oh yes I will!. I am hanging out for the anti snare buff BO's get at some point, snares really really drive me nuts as there seems to be at least 3-4 Order classes with a snare including a nasty one that the Bright Wizards get which is also a substantial DOT. As soon as I can break snares, the bloody bright wizards and Engineer's are toast.

I am a kiwi, but on the SA-WAR KOS list I have added a Guild called "fluffy kiwis" just cause the name is so stupid. Much like the guild "The Elite" on Darklands I take great pleasure in smacking any of them I have met during scenarios or RvR.

RvR stories
I was happily killing npc dwarves in droves when I noticed what I thought was a named Dwarf, so I charged him. He took off and I realised he was a player trying to sneak in amongst the NPC's to get some sneaky attacks in on us. He took off back to the cover of his warcamp and I didn't quite have the legs to catch him so I let him go, but I decided to keep an eye out for him as i figured he would be back. Sure enough a couple of minutes later he starts to sneak back. I kept an eye on him making like I didn't know he was there.

As soon as he was in range I made sure I had my snare up and charged him, I got the snare on him straight away and started to hammer him. He took off back to his base, but I made sure the snare stayed on and I followed him all the way into his base. I had 3 NPC's on me by the time I got the final blow on him, I'm sure he thought once he was inside his warcamp he was safe. I turned around, hit sprint, outpaced the npcs and went back to the PQ. About 15 minutes later he was back, this time with buddies and it turned into quite a long protracted battle. RvR rocks.

I got involved in another battle across a wall where Greenskin and Dorf PQ's are on opposite sides of the wall. We were happily outpacing the Dorf killing speed and they kept losing their PQ's. So they decided that it was going to be easier to come across and try and stop us. They attacked en mass while we were heavily engaged with large numbers of NPC's. The battle raged for a good 15 or so minutes with Dorfs and ourselves rezzing and racing straight back into the battle. We finally managed to complete the PQ with about 30 seconds to spare and the Dorfs at that point backed off. It was an awesome battle with no quarter given on either side. Kudos to the Dorf Skum for a great fight.

Undead Dorfs

Ulaa at 10th Level

I will update the screenie every ten levels so I can track how the 'look' changes.

No one is reading me!, Its a beautiful thing!

I have checked my blog stats and since I posted that SA has left VG, I haven't had a single reader. That's right not one!. And you know what, I'm bloody happy about it. When I originally started blogging, or as it was known back then "learning to write HTML code so I could write a website so I could put some shit in the web" there was never an anticipation of having actual readers.

What I was laughingly referring to as my website went through several iterations over the years, from my own personal one written when I was a student, to domainadmins.com written with a SQL back end and CSS. Eventually I moved on to this blog in the last year or so, because Google make it so much easier than I was ever able to code it myself. Plus its all backed up and available on Googles servers forever. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if I'm dead and you are still reading through this 100 years on.

I first started to get actual regular readers when I was writing the EQ raiding blog for Southern Armada. People started to ask in game and through emails "when's the next one going up?". What freaked me out most was when a couple of people posted from over seas. One guy posted from an Internet cafe in Spain. He was an Aussie touring Europe and he had found the raiding blog and read it end to end. Apparently it cost him an absolute fortune to sit in the Cafe all day but he wanted to see what happened at the end. I don't think I've ever been so complemented in my life!, someone actually paid real money, and money they couldn't afford, to read my words!.

When SA moved to World of Warcraft I tried to keep up the blogging but for various reasons that I have discussed in depth elsewhere, I simply couldn't find the commitment or the time. Again we moved, this time to Vanguard, I really enjoyed blogging Vanguard Raids, but again it came down to time availability. Its impossible to find enough time to be committed to actually play the games and raid as well, let alone spend the time to do all of that and spend 4-6 hours a week writing up an entertaining and reasonably intelligent blog.

I found it harder and harder to enjoy. We would have a good night in VG and get a good or particularly hard kill and I would get tells "This will be up on the blog tomorrow wont it!" which put all sorts of pressure on me. Now I don't mind pressure, I work in a very high pressure kind of job, but the pressure was starting to intrude on the relaxation time. I was feeling like I couldn't enjoy the game cause I wasn't spending time on the blog. Then I started to get weeks behind with the raids and I felt even worse. The issue got so bad I stopped blogging and I stopped playing which pleased nobody, least of all me.

What I am getting around to in all of this, is that with no more readers, the pressure is off. I can update when I want, about what I want again. I may blog regularly about WAR, or not. If I can get an SA chapter going in WAR I will and I may even blog about it. Whether we do start a chapter or not will depend on how many regular SA members decide to give the game a go. There may be none, in which case I will be very sad and I will be looking for a Guild as a new home in WAR.

I will however wait for the inevitable collapse and shakedown. What usually happens is that the quick to organise "pre-release guilds", in my experience usually fail spectacularly in a welter of recrimination and abuse.

I am trying to find a backup of my old website which had all the sigs that I ever made for anyone on display. I really hope I can find them cause some of them were really good and I would like to show them off again.

We are at the dawn of a new age

We are at the dawn of a new age.

Five years ago there was a term thrown around a lot by marketing people to describe those who were liable to pick up on new technology as soon as it arrived, that term was "early adopters" As with most things on the rapidly changing face of the web this term is already out of date. I believe there are so many emerging new fields that a blanket term like "early adopters" simply can't be applied.

Look at the rapidly changing tech behind blogging. This is a field that 2 years ago didn't exist. Blogging was something us geeks did in the privacy of our own homes, throwing ideas and concepts out into the virtual ether as fast as we could develop them. Fast forward 24 months and the parts of the 'Net that deal with Blogs and Bloggers even has its own name, the blogosphere. Politicians take it seriously, News organizations discuss the death of the Newspaper and both the political sphere and professional News organizations are debating whether Bloggers are Journalists and should their activities be protected by law?. All this because a couple of Geeks liked to tell the world how they were feeling via the medium of HTML.

Back to "early adopters" and the evolution of gaming. Currently we are eagerly awaiting what is generally accepted as being the 3rd generation of the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. 3rd generation?, in Europe that's barely time to claim you have started a successful business, in genetics you haven't even started to see any sort of true variation, even in the development of something as new as the automobile, the third generation would only put us in the 1930's. As gamers and game developers we are only just beginning to explore the very edges of the massive virtual worlds that well eventually explode out of the development studios.

Men like Raph Koster, Peter Garriot (Lord British) and Brad McQuaid (Aradune) we will some day look back on as contributing to the foundations of the worlds of the future, both virtual and RL. Thanks to the efforts of these men and others like them in the last 5 years we have experienced an evolution of the English language the like of which hasn't been seen since the Angles ran into the Saxons a thousand years ago. The Leet of hackers became multiplayer FPS jargon, became MMO speak and has moved into the world as TXT language. The makers of games like Quake and Half-life forced a massive and rapid evolution of 3D video cards, the MMO makers took the expanded graphics capabilities and ran with them to create worlds that became more and more immersive.

People said there was no more space in the MMO market for another player, that the MMO genre was a limited one, there were even articles about the death of Massively Multiplayer gaming and then came Blizzard and the World of Warcraft. In the space of one day Blizzard blew all previous business models out of the water when they claimed a sell through of 600,000 units in the first 24 hours. A year earlier nobody would ever have believed that such a thing was possible. Within a year they were claiming 2,000,000 players in the Western world and talking about another 2,500,000 in China, within 3 years they are talking in terms of 10 million players.

Suddenly the MMO wasn't just an American phenomenon, the bulk of the cash flow was coming from outside the continental USA, people all over the world, mothers, fathers, grandparents, bankers, mechanics were switching on to this new thing called massively multiplayer and they were having an absolute blast. Those of us who had already played through Ultima On-line and Everquest watched this sudden eruption of new players with a wary eye. Would they stay?, would they change the genre? would all the carefully built social norms we had evolved from our previous gaming experiences disappear?.

The answer to all of these questions appears to be Yes. They have stayed, the genre is changing and so are the social models we had evolved. And yet we are only just starting, even Blizzards massive player base of a claimed 10 million accounts is minuscule compare to the largest selling games of all time. Biggest selling game of all time is Super Mario Brothers with sales of 40.24 million boxes. Final Fantasy (series) 32,000,000 Gran Turismo 17,000,000 Legend of Zelda (series) 36,000,000 The Sims (series) 100,000,000

More information can be found at: http://www.video-games-survey.com/software.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best_selling_video_games

Suddenly we are talking about serious money. When you consider the current business model of buy and then pay to play, executives at companies like Sony and Microsoft look at game sales like that and probably start to dribble. Imagine everyone who purchased Halo and Halo 2 signing up to pay Microsoft 10US$ a month to play on-line. The growth and decade long dominance of Sony as a player in the world of electronics was started with the Walkman but was continued with the Playstation. Its only in the last few years with the emergence of Microsoft into the console market that a true competition has evolved, something which is all good for gamers.

Once the big boys start playing, things tend to get moving fast, competition brings development (second only to war) throw the gaming toys into the mix with the world of the on-line warrior; fighting to keep the corporations out of your hard drive and TV, the fighters for digital freedom and open source , the communities of players itching to get their hands on the tools to modify gaming platforms and take them to places the original engineers simply could never have conceived of. Mix all of that into the emergence of broad band, into a world were data and money moves faster than anyone would have believed a decade ago.

The world wide web, once a place for freaks to download porn and share small programs they had written with their friends, has now broken into the homes and businesses of everyman, the modern business world would virtually collapse without the ability to push huge amounts of data around across international boundaries at high speeds. When all of those things come together in the heads of people who are programmers, bean counters, hardware and network engineers, artists and writers, all of whom are fundamentally Gamers, the future is unleashed. Give these teams access to faster CPU and GPU's, more and faster RAM and FSB, bigger and faster drive space and the bandwidth to push all this data around and the possibilities of what can be done with this tech become limitless.

Seamless, immersive living worlds become a reality. Gaming goes beyond simply being a "Game" and becomes a way of life. I think we will look back in 20 years and from our comfortable force feedback seats, wearing our 3D display cups over our eyes and we will remember that there was a time Before Warcraft (BW) and time Post Warcraft (PW) and that the time Post Warcraft evolved in ways we couldn't even begin to imagine as we sat in front of our desktop monitors and read actual text on a 2D flat screen.

We will come to a time where we are always on-line in our virtual worlds from our personal mobile networks. Software will flow from us like expelled breath, businesses will fight wars across binary battlefields of data and people once regarded as freaks and geeks, people who once proudly wore the tag "Gamer" will stride across the digital medium as Warriors and Wizards of the new reality, only now they will be working for countries, intelligence agencies and Corporations.

We are at the Dawn of a new age...

WAAAAGH! - Again

One of the things I've seen a lot of bitching about on various web boards is a perceived "imbalance" of sides. The usual whine goes something like "Waaah Order has 2x as many players, there is no way destruction can win". I have to say bollocks to that. I'm 15 now and I've been participating in PQ's, scenarios, solo questing, open RvR and battleground RvR. Every single thing that you do generates influence points, completing a questing, participating in a PQ etc. So even if you don't directly participate in RvR, you are still contributing to your sides victory simply by showing up and playing. You can PvE all the way to the top, apparently you can PvP all the way as well.

Influence points go to a running total of "who owns the zone". Battlegrounds and open RvR tend to generate more direct influence, however I've been in a lot of fights now and "who has more peeps" on the ground has sod all to do with victory. If a battleground has a massive imbalance it will shut down and send the players back to their start points.

Open RvR is a little different, if there is a massive imbalance it can make a considerable difference, however this game is strongly tactical and a well organised team will decimate a zerg rush. The focused fire power of a number of DPS classes will crush any target its directed at. Once you add in the use of siege weapons, which can change a teams advantage in seconds then there is a lot more to it than just the numbers of people engaged.

Once guilds start to get seriously involved (and they are beginning to) and people sort out how the game is played, RvR will be dominated by tactical squads of skilled players. A team that knows what they are doing will beat a zerg rush every time. I was involved in a keep siege last night where the enemy were using boiling oil to defend their gates and we were using siege weapons (buy able from your friendly local neighbourhood dealer for only 20silver!) to attack the defenders at the top of the towers. Open field RvR is one thing, fighting inside a building is a completely different experience and I'm really looking forward to large keep sieges and city fights!.

I went and had a look at The Inevitable City last night, the Chaos home town. I have to say WOW. I have no idea how it gets taken by the enemy but its HUGE. Ogrimmar looks like shite next to it and it stands up against even best of the VG dungeons without the corresponding hit from framerate.

One of the things I'm enjoying is that there is always a choice of things to do, you can PvP (solo or groups) you can PQ (solo or groups), you can run scenarios (groups), you can run battlegrounds (groups), you can solo quest or you can just explore. This is all without the advantages of a guild to chat and learn with. I ran around between all of the above last night, both in green skin lands as well as Chaos lands. At the moment all the good PvP is in Chaos territory as the cowardly Dorfs don't seem to want to defend their own lands. This is going to be a game that will be better the more people that play. If every PQ is full, every open RvR field is raging, battlegrounds are restarting every 10 minutes and players are everywhere this game will rock.

My one concern would be a lack of people. If a server is half full I think the experience will suffer as, like VG the world is truly massive. It wont feel "empty" like VG did as the world is very cleverly designed to keep your horizons low, there is always a new village or war camp just over the horizon. The fun in the game tho comes from its interaction with other players and without them the game will suffer. I certainly hope they have the technology to be able to run 10,000+ players simultaneously on a single server, then WAR really will be everywhere all the time!.

I really hope we can get an SA presence going in WAR. It will be a huge amount of fun to share the battles of this new world with my comrades in arms of the last decade.