Ozvfr - Just Another Saturday Ride

[AB-Oz]

Just another OzVFR ride day, Saturday 6th December 2008

A ride was called by Taxus, one of the Sydney OzVFR members. Luckily, an auto-inclusion script that is used when calling rides meant that Trev and I from Canberra would be attending, along with a few other Sydney listers Terry, Hayden, JohnS:

Trev, Taxus: 4th gens

Terry, JohnS: 5th gens

Hayden: Bluebird

Stuart: 3rd gen

Me: 5th gen VFRSP2

Trev and I set off from Canberra around 9am to meet the guys at Robertson Pie Shop, some 150 km away.

As an aside, earlier in the week I had received my latest gadget, a GoPro Motorsports Hero camera, and this was the shakedown ride. I had the suction cup mounted on the side faring, but hadn’t attached the camera as I wanted to see if the mount would stay on at highway speeds. ‘Course, I didn’t use a tether so if it fell off it was gone.

Trev and I stopped at Marulan for a splash of petrol, then tootled off to Robertson for a breakfast pie with the other lads who had only been waiting from us for about 10 minutes. 10:33am

We were going to do a run on Mac Pass, but the guys told us there were cops out today on the Pass, doing breathalyser tests and generally spoiling riders fun, so we just sat down for a coffee instead.

IMG_8725s.jpg

IMG_8728s.jpg

I then fiddled about with my camera, getting it aligned properly etc, looking in the view finder, realising I had it faced backwards, facing it forwards, and generally farting about.

John and Stuart had to go home, so the rest of us left for Kangaroo Valley.

This is from Johns camera just as we were leaving, Trev leading, then Taxus, Hayden, Terry, and me so that I could film them as we trundled down the road.

Johns vid

Little did I know that I had the camera chews battery power like it is going out of fashion, more on this later in the report.

Vid 1

The ride through Kangaroo Valley was excellent, although it was interrupted by too many cars blocking a clear run. Kangaroo Valley has heaps of 35 & 45km/h bends, with a couple of 15km/h thrown in to slow down the trucks! Just after the town we pulled over as Hayden was leaving us here, and Terry had to return home unexpectedly.

I stuffed around with the camera again, managing to only record a small amount of video.

At the bottom of the Valley we pulled into a servo in Nowra as Taxus needed fuel this time.

From there we had a relaxed ride down the coast to Bateman’s Bay, for lunch at the usual café. After a bit to eat once again I fiddled with the camera, choosing a different mounting position. This time I managed to get around 14minutes of footage following Trev and Taxus. A couple of young hoons on sports bikes passed us in the sweepers before the Clyde Mountain, and then we caught them at the bottom – it looked like they were waiting for us so they could repeat their trick, but we didn’t see them again <weg> V4 power wins again.

Vid 2

Into the proper twisties, Taxus waved me past and I set off in pursuit of Trev. We had a great run up the mountain, only needing to pass a couple of cars, and startling a rider on a two-stroke Aprilia of some sort. We regrouped at Braidwood, I showed the boys how I had christened my new boot’s toe-sliders, and we bid farewell to Taxus as he would turn off for Goulburn a little way up the road.

Trev and I then tootled off for Bungendore where we split up, him to Canberra’s south while I went Northish. I couldn’t work out why the cars were going so slow, then realised I still had tootle-drive engaged, and this was an 80km/h road, not 150 !

So here’s a google map of the day, approx 500km covered, through some great roads with some great mates.

googlemaps

Zumo:

97.jpg

GoPro:

I’ve since established that the fully recharged NiMH 900 AAA batteries that I used for the GpPro camera are only good for about 14-20 minutes. I bench-tested this at home and the Camera autosaves and shuts down when the batteries get to about 1.2v each, so the operating range is only 3 to 2.4 volts !! Pretty pathetic really. I’ve also found that the suction-cup mount and its arms allow too much vibration to the camera, so I need to find a better way to mount the camera. Unfortunately, on the 5th gen there are not many straight and flat surfaces on the fairings, its all stealthy curves

(so, I cant work out how to embed the videos, nor the map, so they are just links for now... )

[The Phantom]

Good stuff, the bikes departing Robbo pie shop sound great.

The ride report guidelines at the top of the topic say Google/YouTube vids can be embedded, I tried yours in a few different ways with no luck

Re. your batteries - AAA 900Mh is pretty small for a digital device. But the GpPro site suggests that you should get close to an hour of video from it... I've seen 1200mh AAA batteries which might help, also the quality of the brand may be a factor in how long they last. Try the Energizer 'Ultimate Lithium' if you want what are supposedly the longest lasting batteries, but of course they are not rechargable...

[AussieinUSA]

Thanks AB, always like to see what you guys are up to down there, great stuff

So it appears the Ventura rack rules down there, ya don't see as much of them here but they do exist, I had one for my 4th gen.

I'm heading home for a few weeks in late Feb, gunna take in the first round of WSB whilest i'm there, pretty strange how that worked out huh :biggrin: . Hopefully i'll get to meet some of ya's while i'm over, i'd love to take a ride so if any of you know where I could get a bike let me know, not sure about rental joints so any help would be appreciated.

Looking forward to seeing you guys, keep the Oz videos, pics and stuff coming.

:beer: :beer: :beer:

[Baileyrock]

Well done and thanks for sharing another great ride with us! :biggrin:

[cbar]

Thanks for sharing.

When I lived for a year in Perth, I had a harder time adjusting to riding the Viffer on the other side of the road, compared to the cage. With the cage, I always had more frames of reference. With the bike, not so much! At least with the bike, I didn't try to "get in" on the wrong side for the first few weeks. :biggrin:

[V4 Rosso]

Great sights and sounds from down under, looks like red is also a popular color in OZ :biggrin:

[The Phantom]

I'm heading home for a few weeks in late Feb, gunna take in the first round of WSB whilest i'm there, pretty strange how that worked out huh :biggrin: . Hopefully i'll get to meet some of ya's while i'm over, i'd love to take a ride so if any of you know where I could get a bike let me know, not sure about rental joints so any help would be appreciated.

Looking forward to seeing you guys, keep the Oz videos, pics and stuff coming.

:beer: :beer: :beer:

Will you only be in Vic while you're here?

There's already plans for OzVFR to do the WSB round (for the first time, as an 'official' gathering), I think the collective actually has a house in Cowes booked? AB knows, he's the OzVFR Cat Herder

Hopefully I can make it, all the way from Qld.

[AussieinUSA]

I'm heading home for a few weeks in late Feb, gunna take in the first round of WSB whilest i'm there, pretty strange how that worked out huh :biggrin: . Hopefully i'll get to meet some of ya's while i'm over, i'd love to take a ride so if any of you know where I could get a bike let me know, not sure about rental joints so any help would be appreciated.

Looking forward to seeing you guys, keep the Oz videos, pics and stuff coming.

:beer: :beer: :beer:

Will you only be in Vic while you're here?

There's already plans for OzVFR to do the WSN round (for the first time, as an 'official' gathering), I think the collective actually has a house in Cowes booked? AB knows, he's the OzVFR Cat Herder

Hopefully I can make it, all the way from Qld.

Mostly in Vic, make take a 2-3 day trip to The Barrier Reef if airfare price is right. My parents owned a beach house in Cowes for probably 12 years or so, had a great time down there.

I wanna make sure to hook up and say hi to ya all, maybe a VB or 2 could be had :beer: :beer:

[Guest]

great report AB...

i'll join you ..one of these days :biggrin:

(meddle...one of my all time favorites)

[AB-Oz]

Thanks AB, always like to see what you guys are up to down there, great stuff

So it appears the Ventura rack rules down there, ya don't see as much of them here but they do exist, I had one for my 4th gen.

I'm heading home for a few weeks in late Feb, gunna take in the first round of WSB whilest i'm there, pretty strange how that worked out huh :biggrin: . Hopefully i'll get to meet some of ya's while i'm over, i'd love to take a ride so if any of you know where I could get a bike let me know, not sure about rental joints so any help would be appreciated.

Looking forward to seeing you guys, keep the Oz videos, pics and stuff coming.

:beer: :beer: :beer:

Yep, 90% of us have Ventura racks, a few of us will have Givi topboxes and custom racks soon though.

As Murray says, there will 11 of us at the Island for the WSB, in Cowes on 27/28 of Feb. I'll pm you my phone number so we can hook up.

Muz, I've got some Lithium batteries now so will test the camera out.

Thanks for the comments guys.

[SEBSPEED]

Nice job AB, thanks for posting!

The road at the end of the last video looks like it could be lots of fun! Someone posted here that they had much better luck using rechargeable batteries in the Go Pro, I think it was Turtlecreek. Send him a pm!

[AB-Oz]

Hi Seb,

Yes, at the end of the 2nd of my vids is just when the road tightens up and gets fun, and thats where the batteries ran out. I was using fully charged rechargables which is disappointing, but I have a line on some lithiums that will be tried next.

I tend to ride that road (Clyde Mountain part of Kings Highway) a lot so will do another vid with the twisties

[SEBSPEED]

Hi Seb,

I tend to ride that road (Clyde Mountain part of Kings Highway) a lot so will do another vid with the twisties

:biggrin:

[poconovfr]

Nice!! :biggrin:

[The Phantom]

Mostly in Vic, make take a 2-3 day trip to The Barrier Reef if airfare price is right.

Check out Tiger Airways - they do Melbourne to Proserpine and as I needed to look into flights from Maroochydore to Melbourne this evening I had a look at what might suit you - random March dates returned $90 each way, not bad huh? I've flown with them once from Melbourne to Maroochydore and they were better than Jetstar and Virgin (and as I've flown interstate 80-odd times this year I have a fair idea about this!).

http://www.tigerairways.com/home/index.php

[AussieinUSA]

Mostly in Vic, make take a 2-3 day trip to The Barrier Reef if airfare price is right.

Check out Tiger Airways - they do Melbourne to Proserpine and as I needed to look into flights from Maroochydore to Melbourne this evening I had a look at what might suit you - random March dates returned $90 each way, not bad huh? I've flown with them once from Melbourne to Maroochydore and they were better than Jetstar and Virgin (and as I've flown interstate 80-odd times this year I have a fair idea about this!).

http://www.tigerairways.com/home/index.php

Thanks Murray, thats what we've been looking into but are alittle concerned about there ability to cancel flights outta the blue. Chances are though that if we go thats who we'll go with, works out to be closer to US$120.00 roundtrip which is even better :biggrin: Thanks for the info, hopefully this weekend we'll get it figured out.

[JETS]

So do I get the drift that you Southern Cross guys get to stuff it to us USA toads that you have SUMMER friggin' now!!! We are stuck in ice storms and freezing weather, tho' here in Texas it could be 70F next week.

[AB-Oz]

yes mate, the Southern Hemi summers are designed just to annoy you guys with PMS - parked motorcycle syndrome

It was a lovely 25deg C today, too bad I had to work but the commute was nice and quick.