Pomona to Narribri
4 June 2014
Master Map
Diligent readers of the Seat Time Thread at the CB1100.com forum may already be onto the reason I found myself in Narribri in northern New South Wales and 700 kms from home on the evening of 4 June 2014. If not, there are clues in this thread.
If you can't be naffed reading it, the short story is that I was invited on a ride by Pterodactyl. My wife says—with some truth, I fear—that I'm a glass half empty kinda guy so I had lots of reasons not to be able to accept the invitation. I had some chores under way; it was very short notice; I hadn't ever done such a long ride; I didn't have the gear I needed; I'd have to be on the road by the end of the next day or early in the morning of the day after that; my wife and I looked like having a rare and welcome weekend alone together. So I resolved not to go and got back to the chores.
As it happened, my wife was away at the time of the invitation, and I didn't get the chance to speak to her until mid-way through the following morning—the day on which I should have been heading out. She told me I was crazy and should go. Bugger it, I thought, she's right. So I finished the chore I was in the middle of and set out to organise the necessary gear. A trip to the coast for a waterproof bag and a new, compact tent (because one of the chores I hadn't done was to fix a leak in the fly of the other one); another trip down the road for 4 litres of oil for a quick oil change and I was ready to light out early the next morning, Wednesday 4 June.
And so I piled a load of gear onto the back of my CB1100 and set out. My journey took me south down the main eastern highway before I turned off and headed through a lovely set of twisties towards Toowoomba, a large regional city atop the Great Dividing Range in south east Queensland. It was a good ride there, some straights, some long curves, and some decent twisty bits as well. After a fuel stop in Toowoomba, I was headed south west across a plain—flat and quick but not all that interesting. They were the riding conditions for the rest of the day and I made good time, which was lucky as I had 700 kilometers to travel and wanted to arrive before dusk when the kangaroos are said to make life interesting for motorcyclists.
First fuel stop southbound. I was waylaid for longer than I wanted by a South African bloke who wanted to talk about the bike.
Sadly, there aren't many photos. I'm an exponent of a method of one-handed photography detailed by a forum member known as The Ferret, but I've discovered, to my irritation, that I can make it work only while wearing light-weight gloves. I can press the shutter release while wearing thick ones, but I can't turn the wretched thing on. Leaving it on results in rapid battery degradation. Indeed, on the final day of the ride when I really wanted to take a photo or two the camera was to tell me "the battery is exhausted". By then I knew how it felt.
Eventually, in the late afternoon, after several fuel stops and a break for lunch, I arrived at the Crossroads Hotel in Narribri to be greeted by the sight of a glorious red Honda CB1100, complete with Dart flyscreen and Staintune muffler. And, of course, Pterodactyl, who had not only invited me to go on a ride with him, but also literally gone out of his way to meet me a day early. He can tell the story of how he got there, and why he added a day and at least 350 kms to his trip. I reckon it was because he'd been off the bike for 3 months and couldn't wait to get in some more seat time.
Anyway, here were two Aussie blokes with CB1100s (rare as rocking horse shit in this country) in the same place, again by virtue of an Internet forum run out of the US. Go figure. Even better, we discovered a mutual enjoyment of beer and red wine to add to our delight in Honda's CB1100.
