No reason to get up early today, the earliest I would hear from the bike shop was around 10am or so. After surfing the net for a while and catching up on the other posts in various forums, I went over and asked, I was now told the earliest was 11am or so. Hmm, not looking good, so I told the pub I would stay another night and can they fix the sink.
I wandered over the road to the shopping centre and bought some breakfast then took a few photos of the largest sundial in the world. Now, this sundial tells the exact time it is, none of this fancy daylight savings crap, it tells the time, now all we need to do is teach the cockroaches how to read the time and stop mucking around with the cows milking times etc! 🙂
I went back to my room and around 11.30am was told by the shop, my part had arrived, Hooray! I went over and in record time (40 minutes which included syphoning full fuel tank, both ways) had the old part out again and the new part in. The plan yesterday was to ride the bike to the nearest hotel so I had put it all back together again. Good practice anyway.
The burnt out part and the new part.
Then I packed up and was on the road around 1.30pm or so after forking out $350 for the part and a battery charge.
My plans had changed drastically and the whole reason for coming back down this way was now out of reach. So, I decided I would head east and do the Thunderbolt Way again and time permitting I should be able to get to Uralla that evening. The first section towards Maitland was normal highway with a few narrow bridges which is pretty normal for around this area, and the weather was a tad coolish and overcast, I had heard rain may be on the way.
There was a small town just prior to Stroud called Booral; I saw this in the front yard of a home there, quite good work.
On up the Buckets Way then into the Thunderbolt Way and around 4pm with quite a way to go, I decided to add wet gear as the stuff ahead looked damp and i was getting close to the clouds, in fact so close I was in them. It made for very interesting riding I can tell you.
And this is a view of what I should have seen, this was when I did this the other day.
Once I was over the top though and back down below the clouds, it started to clear up and although it was getting cooler, it was better riding conditions.
I fuelled up in Walcha and phoned ahead to make sure a room was available; it was then a fast run to Uralla and I arrived around 6pm. After booking in it was beer time 🙂 And meal time, al a carte bangers and mash, good tucker and cheap as well 🙂
I met up with a fellow rider Stepehn from Gympie who was riding a Vstar to Tassie and we had a chat and some beers while chatting with the lovely Leah who is camera shy and the not so lovely Dan 🙂 Just kidding m8. It is a nice place for a stay and good rates, just mention you are a biker as I said last week. I had an early night for a change.
Day – 359km
Trip – 31,195km
TravellingStrom 