TravellingStrom

I woke up after a restless night, exacerbated by the storm cell that hit around midnight, right on top of us and a big thunder bumper.
The day was going to be a long one. I had been contacted by an unknown vstrom rider asking whether I could install some farkles on his bike. I had thought about it over the past week or so and even with the other dramas I had decided I could fit it in on the way home. But, he would not be home until 7.30pm, so I had a lot of time to spare and in this heat it would be fatiguing. The magic words were I could meet up with his wife who would lead me to the fridge with cold beer in it after 5pm 🙂

So, to start with I took the wrong turn through all the damm road works and ended up heading to Brisbane, crikey!

After that stuff up I did a Uturn and headed to Maleny but the traffic was horrendous, so the nice twisty bits turned into a challenge 🙂

The challenge was good, but none of this passing one at a time, I did two at a time, more fun that way.
Once I got into Maleny with a few cars still to do, it turns out they did not want to play and all stopped here anyway 😉

That meant I had the road to myself for a long way 🙂

After that I was up on the tableland area fast to start with then the road got narrower

The next bit was nice, except for roadwork’s before I fuelled up in Eumundi.

After that it was highway, highway, highway!

Then after the turn off to Bundaberg it was sugar cane country. I had spoken to a friend called Bruno who lives here and we had planned to do the Rum distillery together at 1pm. I made it with a few minutes to spare 🙂

He could not make it until 2pm as it turns out, so I had time for lunch 🙂 Then we did the tour, now I am a security technician and I know security systems and CCTV etc, but this place had better security than some banks I know of!!!! No cameras, phones etc and guided by two guides at all times and always counted in and out 🙂 I guess the tax man does not want any of his revenue going missing. So, as there are no photos a quick explanation of the following picture. It is a brick building called a Bond Store, they have about 18 of these. In each are about 20 vats of maturing rum, each containing around 60,000l. Each vat is worth around $6M and the government takes around 4 of that! So, the electric fence and all the other stuff is probably worth it.

After the tour we were allowed to tastes of whatever, so I had a triple filter, very nice and the new red rum, which is OK, but not something I could drink all night 🙂

The molasses they use for the rum comes from the sugar mill right next door.

They don’t import the molasses from anywhere else as the different growing conditions would change the taste of the rum, similar to whiskeys etc.

So, after Bruno and I had our tasters I headed off north again, I got to GinGin and fuelled up and phoned Alison to advise of my late arrival. Lucky there was internet as I had forgotten to write down the phone numbers and contact details from the emails 🙂

I got into Miriam Vale around 5.40pm and getting dark and overcast. Something I did not expect once I met Alison was to follow her home on her chook chaser 🙂 Or the fact that we had 15km of dirt ride, but no worries, once I slowed down and out of her dust it was a breeze.

So, after that I had a nice welcome cooling shower, we had a good chat then Eric arrived home and after dinner planned the next day’s work. There was a lot more to the job than I expected as the bike was an 08 ABS version, which was different to what I was used to and it had pannier racks on, which needed to come off. Due to the lack of available lights I could not make a start that night, but no worries, I would do what I could the next day.

Day – 562km
Trip – 33,965km

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