Morpeth Ride 13th July 2023

 Well, what can I say, it seems beyond belief that for a second time the Morpeth ride has led to another rider coming to grief in the corners around Mandalong. This despite a specific reminder at the ride briefing about “not crashing”. Clearly at least one rider was not listening to my entreaties, in fact I also reminded the ride group we didn’t want any more drama queens following the previous tyre inflation issues and yet lo and behold another rider managed to lose their mobile phone off their bike before Spring rd. I mean REALLY?????

 

Anyway to start at the beginning the weather was perfect bar the start being a tad chilly for the gather in Berowra and 18 riders assembled without managing to find any more dead people or let all the air out of their tyres, an auspicious start I thought.

 

The briefing was concise with first up “Smoko is at Cooranbong  Park”, my logic here was that some riders only have a short attention span so if I start with that there is some chance they’ll remember it 🤣 Then I accepted Peter of the Braces kind offer to run as TEC and checked the crowd for new faces of which there were none. 

 

The route was just places i.e. Calga, Yarramalong, Durren Durren, Mandalong and Cooranbong. Then after smoko Mulbring, Richmond Vale, Buchanan, East Maitland, Metford and finally Ray Lawler Reserve in Morpeth. I left out all the roads and turns because I know a number of riders suffer from memory stack overflow as well as attention span difficulties so the less info they receive the less likely it is to leak out 😜

 

As for corner marking, as there were no newbies I decided we’d only start corner marking at Hue Hue Rd after checking everyone knows how to get to the Triangle. We’d regather at Calga and Hue to keep the pack together.

 

All was going swimmingly at the front as I was oblivious to the lost phone drama unfolding at the back of the pack. The Dickson’s and Mandalong roads were great and I was really enjoying myself. That is until I reached that evil turn at Deaves Rd (the scene where the previous drama played out as well) where I deployed the last corner marker and then tootled at 40kph towards Cooranbong awaiting a rider to catch up so they could mark the turn onto Freemans Dr. It was then I got a phone call from the TEC saying everyone was stopped at Mandalong helping a rider who had tried to take a short cut through the S bend on the southern edge of the village.

 

I doubled back, released the Deaves Rd corner marker and found the pack and a luckily intact rider who was collecting pieces of a not so lucky broken bike whilst on the phone to the retrieval crew. It was decided a couple of riders would stay whilst the bike was restarted and hopefully escort the rider to a bike shop. The rest of the ride group would progress as planned to the park in Cooranbong. Shortly after our arrival at the park the other riders turned up sans the broken bike which apparently spewed oil everywhere when started. So the rider had been left to await the arrival of the retrieval crew. Of the TEC there was no sign, a fact that escaped me but more on that later.

 

After an extended smoko to allow everyone to decompress I polled the group given it was now 12:30pm. Some said “nah, going home”, some said “nah, going on a Wollombi loop and then home” and courageous group of 4 riders said “Yeah you betchya”.

 

So 5 riders set off for Morpeth and managed mostly to avoid any further drama and rolled into Ray Lawler park at about 1:15pm. I say mostly because in East Maitland we were into middle of a traffic mess caused by a Jam Sandwich, under full lights and sirens, trying to punch his way through the traffic stacked at the lights. The easiest targets were a bunch of bikers so we had to scramble out of the way as best we could with no indication from the Sandwich which way he wanted to go at all.

 

Lunch was consumed, for one rider by the local avian population rather than him, and we were just thinking of the trip home when in rolls Peter of the Braces, our ride TEC! Apparently we had left before he arrived at Cooranbong park so he’d had smoko and the followed in our footsteps at his own pace.

 

Unfortunately time was against us so after a brief catchup and chat we left Pete to finish his lunch and set off back to Freemans Waterhole to refuel and then down the M1 for home.

 

I rang the unfortunate rider and he was in good spirits stating “I’ll be back……. for next weeks ride but on a different bike” which only someone who has 3 in the garage can do.

 

I hope those on today’s ride enjoyed at least some of it and to the 5 (especially the honoured TEC) who made the full trip my thanks indeed.

 

Until the (crashless) next time…

Andy