After the disconnect between the handlebars and bike on the Oodnadatta Trak a while back the Super Tenere was in limbo for a while getting repaired at Peter Stephens in Adelaide and then being shipped back home. Sadly the repairs took a week longer than I had hoped so flying back to Adelaide to ride the bike home became out of the question.
The first thing I noticed when the bike arrived home was that the forks weren’t in the same position they usually were. The guys at Peter Stevens probably didn’t read the tip in the workshop manual suggesting the top of the forks should be flush with the triple clamp. Oh well. The Tenere then sat in the garage for a few weeks until an opportunity, provided by 93TigerBill came up for a day ride to Taree to visit the Cudlins at Fineline Motorcycles. Shane is a Super Tenere rider and owns the store so I though I’d let him run his eyes over the forks to get his seal (no pun intended) of approval before I trusted it too much.
An 8am meet at Hexham, that I was a little late for, and we decided to take the short route up to Taree with a Wootton Bends detour. Bill led, it’s been a while since I’ve been on a bike and life’s been pretty busy so it was time just to cruise along behind him and get the brain processing. For me riding is better than REM sleep for packing things away. The brain was busy, I didn’t see the Bucketts Way turnoff, or the Karuah River, or the fake Ayers Rock, or the Buledelah turnoff and when I saw Bill’s left indicator flashing I was surprised we were at the Wootton turnoff so soon.
I like those bends and it was all focus for the next bit, the recent heavy rains had washed the road clean of leaves and it’s fair to say I took full advantage of the plethora of corners on offer until we punched back out onto the highway. Then it was back behind Bill and time for more processing.
We arrived at Fineline, Shane was there and agreed some adjustment to the levels of the forks was in order. With that taken care of it was time to wander into the shop and pick up a new set of UglyFish sunnies and have a quick coffee and chat about IBA Rallies and stuff with Shane and Annette.
From there it was a righty towards Wingham and instead of turning in we kept straight along the Bucketts Way. Of course it wasn’t long before the ride was interrupted and I was properly welcomed back to riding
And just to make a point short time later..
After that it was relatively clear sailing to Krambach and we followed our noses to Roadies Cafe at Gloucester. The burgers are brilliant there and the coffee’s pretty good too so we settled in for an hour and chatted.
After lunch it was time to head home but we didn’t get out of Gloucester before we were turned back. Sadly there had been a serious collision on the Bucketts Way and the road had been closed. Back through Gloucester we found our way onto Buckets Road which sort of runs parallel to the Buckets Way but closer to those beautiful mountains behind the town. There has been a lot of rain about lately and I knew that to get back onto the Bucketts Way there was a river crossing to do, I kept my fingers crossed that it wasn’t going to be too deep to be fun.
While there was plenty of water across the ford and it was moving at a clip we were lucky. It was footpeg depth and the additional traffic that was using it because of the diversion meant it wasn’t slippery, phew. I looked in the mirror as Bill road out behind me, he was shaking his boots. May be they weren’t as waterproof as the Daytona Big Travel GTX’s I was wearing.
Once back on the Bucketts Way, processing now all done it was time to kick back and try to enjoy the ride back out to the Pacific Hwy. It’s no secret that I’m not overly fond of riding the Bucketts Way, but there’s plenty of fun to access from it albeit in the other direction.
So soon enough we were back on to the dual carriageway cruising down to Raymond Terrace in time for the afternoon traffic and a wave to Bill as we went out separate ways at Sandgate. A quick fill of the tank meant $24.55 in fuel for the day at about 4.9litres per 100kms. It’s great to have the Super Tenere back and out on the road.