6am Sat. out the door onto the bike. Nice and gentle as we only have 24km on it so far - so a nice gentle ride up into the the local hills around the town of Mundaring. Nice little bakery there so iced-coffee and croissant for breakfast - life's pretty good. There is an interesting track starting near here - not sure if it's the "pipeline" or "powerline" track (it runs alongside one of them) but it's fairly cut up and is left that way as it makes a good test track for 4WDs. I have been up it once before and some parts I was willing to tackle only because there are about 50 4WD/hr going by equipped with all the best recovery gear. Should be a piece of cake for the bike.
I had my GPS mounted on the bars (as it's not hard to get disoriented out in this part of the world and there are a multitude of criss-crossing tracks to lead you astray until you finally run out of fuel - I believe it would be possible to perish no more than 500m from a perfectly good restaurant if you didn't have any "bushcraft"). Anyway - it still happened to be loaded with about 500 not-found Geocaches (What you haven't looked it up yet!?) so I was distracted and took a wrong turning somewhere while looking at them and ended up off the road I intended. There was absolutely no point to the ride other than to "get out there" so I decided to hunt up a few caches in the area. Generally I would do a little research to determine what I was looking for as there are many types of cache and the clues help but this was impromptu so I would take my chances.
After about 30 mins searching for the first cache I gave up in disgust and assumed it was a type that wasn't meant to be found without the preliminary research. Off to the second one - about 20 mins for this one and "Voila!" It's interesting that a lot of these caches are in black containers or black plastic bags etc. and unless you get your mind around a "solid black object" you can look right at it and not see it. Off to number three - another fruitless 30 mins and I abandoned this one too. Off to number four . . . and then it all went pear-shaped. . . . This one was in a place called "Chinaman's Gully" and a real gully it was. The track became fainter and fainter until I was riding cross-country. Normally in "flat-ish " country this can be bad enough - Oz bush is sometimes just tangled impenetrable bushes (hence the name) and can be as bad as jungle to try and get through - but when this is on 45deg. slopes it's close to suicide (when it's not a complete "blast" :) ) And then it poured with rain!! At this time of the year!! By now it was around 3pm and I had managed about 100km cross-country so it was time to go home - that's when the GPS comes into its own - choose - "Home - Onroad - Shortest Distance" and follow the "yellow brick road" (well purple line actually) - home in 30 mins.
Then the old codger had to have a lie down for the rest of the day!
And Sunday seemed a pretty good day to read a book . . .
(But I did look up the Geocache site to log my one find only to notice that the two caches I didn't find had been closed down some time ago - I felt a little better after that).
Monday . . . Damn I forgot (or actually remembered I suppose) that I had to make a shaft I promised for a customer - adn some body was coming to pick up a machine I had sold - so there goes the first half of the day. . .
OK! So now can I work on the truck???
Off to the truck accessories shop. Mudguards. ABS fully moulded $67 inc. GST. Chinese crap again I suppose. WAIT! What's this ??
If there is one thing I like to do it's to support Oz industry ("without cutting my nose off to spite my face") and if its "green" to boot - so much the better - and it looks the "bees knees"!!
So let's mock it up on the wheel and see what it looks like.
You'll notice that there are mudflaps made to suit as well - same company - $11 for the little one for the back and $14 for the bigger one for the front. Bonus!!
And it all comes with mounting kits (for a modest $18 ea.) and it's all "Green and Gold" and "Green".
So now there is only one problem!! You may remember the whole purpose of taking this route with mudguards and lights etc. was to get the exhaust changed so I could fit the new tanks. Well these mudguards can't be fitted with the exhaust as it is !!!!!! I think I will just have to cut the end off (I will still have the muffler), fit the mudguard and lights and then take it to get the exhaust modified. Not quite like I envisaged but close enough.
Oh. And one last little item I couldn't resist (the current horn is SOOOO WEEAAAK!).
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