2-1-09

To Coles Bay

I got out of Hobart in the morning and rode on up to Richmond by the back road though some grape and wine country. The roads in Tasmania are really nice for motorcycle riding as I suppose they are for sports cars too. Every once in a while you get behind a truck or caravan (trailer) and it will slow me down for a while but they have a lot of passing lanes and often pullouts for slower vehicles to let you pass. All in all it is a really good ride other than ya have to be on the wrong side of the road. I made a mistake this morning turning onto a road when I looked ahead and there were three lanes of cars headed my way. I had to jump the divider between some bushes to get back over into ‘my’ side of the road. It is a good thing that there are very few cops out on the road. Past Richmond I started getting into a pricey farm area and came across this field. Wow, this sure looked interesting. It was a little spooky too as there were no weeds…

This wasn’t an organic grower for sure, unless he was a really good and lucky organic guy but I doubt it.

I sure know all about sprinkling with hand lines. I did this on my farm in Nevada when I grew row crops. It was interesting that the lines were made of plastic and not aluminum like the pipes I used. It must be a real bitch to move these limp pipes.

A little further down the road I saw this tractor inching up the row and had to stop and see what was going on here. It turns out that they are clipping herbs, lettuce and such just above ground level and it runs up a big belt where the guys load it into the plastic boxes.

The guys had a couple of minutes to visit before they were back to work loading the boxes with fresh cut stuff. That is why some of the rows looked a little thrashed while others were looking pretty good.

I found a little market and went in and got an ice-cream bar and was leaning up against a post when a gal came up with this dog on a leash. I offered to get away from the post so she could tie up the dog as it seemed like they were regulars and that is where she ties the dog up. I asked if the dog was friendly and she said “Oh yes” so I petted the dog for a while. She liked them a lot.

A man came over and said if I wanted to give the dog a drink, there was a bowl of water over there. I thanked him but had to tell him it wasn’t my dog I was just petting it. It sure was a nice water bowl for needy dogs. I sure like the attitude of the people down here. It seems like they go out of their way to be friendly and considerate.

I heard quite a few motorbikes pulling in around the corner and went over to look. Wow, a bike show…  Come to find out it is the Italian Motorcycle Bike Club on a run.

I walked up and visited with this guy on an older Triumph Tiger. He was really nice and said that he was still getting used to sitting up straight. He used to have one of those lean over and forward crotch rocket ones and he said he wanted to do some of the dirt roads as well. Good for him eh? He said he got this older one used because he didn’t like the new Tiger because they have now started using a smaller tire then even on this Tiger. Next photo is a new Tiger.

New Tiger. Look at the clearance between the tire and fender. Its not going very far in gumbo mud for sure. The other one doesn’t have much room for mud either. I guess most of these bikes are not ridden off the pavement anyway so I guess it doesn’t make any difference. You could sure be sitting by the side of the road a lot with one of these, in mud country, waiting for a dry spell.

That Moto Guzi on the left is a 650cc and it had a pretty weak sound as he passed the Ozdog. As I was taking the picture of the BMW K model on the right the owner said to check out the mileage on the odometer. It said 189,xxx miles. That must be kilometers so that really isn’t much over 120,000 so no big deal for one of those whiners. The middle one is a Ducati in Italian colors. 

A rather stylish Laverda.

A Honda Fire Storm VTR

A Ducati ST4s  desmodromico

Honda CBR XX

It was a nice day and they had a pretty good turn out it seemed.

Cavia  1000cc

Ducati ATI 916  Desmoquattro

Triumph… sort of a bastard looking bike I think.

An odd looking Ducati here as well. I guess it is more of a sit up straight type bike. Those motors sure look vunerable down there with no protection.

The only one I saw that was heavily modified for more café type racing. It was very clean and polished perfectly. I would say of all the bikes there it was my favorite. When he blew past me I was surprised he didn’t make a lot of noise doing it. oh, I suppose he was only just a little over idle speed.

I pulled out of town and was enjoying the ride when soon there were lots of bikes passing me. I will have to say that they weren’t the most safe or legal riders. I sure can see why they picked that road for their ride though. There are some really tight little bends every now and then as well as just plain nice curvy road. I wore a little more off the side of my boots on a couple of those tight ones. I ended up in the middle of a bunch of those bikes in a curvy stretch and I was proud of the Ozdog in that I was right with them until the road straightened out and they blew on down the road. I like this little dog, and find myself kicking it up a notch or two, now and then, for fun.

I stopped at a fish and chips place and had a ‘flake’ lunch. That is shark meat. They always seem to give me too many chips or at least I cant eat em all. I am trying to cut back a little on my food intake but haven’t noticed much reduction around the middle. Could be too many fish and chips?

From my eating spot I coud see something strange down the side road and had to go down and see. Isn’t this a cute little one lunger machine? I think the guy uses both of them but maybe only in parades?

This was a really beautiful ride today. I went through a lot of wine growing country and some fruit growers. Quite a few of the orchards are covered with bird netting so birds must be a problem. Oh, yeah, those ‘biker’ birds wouldn’t leave much I bet.

Here is a really nice grape/wine/olive farm. Oh, I even went past a place that had some big walnut orchards.