ALBANY VINTAGE & CLASSIC MOTORCYCLE CLUB

December 2015 Club News

The Robotic Ride

Story and pics by Antoinet

We were looking forward to this ride, it is always interesting to see other people’s sheds or businesses. We decided to wait for the other members in Denmark at the river where we were going to meet each other for morning tea.

Andrew, Ray and Judy were there already and slowly other members rode into Denmark. A nice catch up and a coffee there before we followed the leader to the farm on Hicks Road.

It must have been a nice sight: 25 motorcycles riding along Scotsdale Road. We got to the farm and parked the bikes away from the milking shed, we don’t want to upset the cows do we?

Farmer Malcolm was already waiting for us and was happy (I think) to answer the 100 or so questions we had. Very interesting to see the cows walk to the shed by themselves whenever they feel like it and get milked, fully automatically.

There are 160 cows on the 270 acres and they look all very happy and relaxed. We watched it all for a while and lots of people would ask questions.

The cows would go for a feed and a groom before heading back to the paddocks to munch on the nice grass.

We thanked Malcolm for his hospitality and for all the information he gave us, we hope it will all go very well for him and his family. Some riders decided to head home but most were going to go to Mt Barker for lunch.

When I approached the Denbarker Rd I saw Ronnie was standing on the corner, as he needed my BMW tools. The exhaust had come loose on his latest bike: a 1988 Moto Guzzi V650. This was the bike’s first run so Ronnie wasn’t really sure how it would go. By now everyone else had ridden past us, either on the way back home or off to the bakery in Barker.

All went well until I smelled fuel, very strong in front of me and every now and then there was smoke coming out of the Guzzi’s exhaust. We made it to the Muirs highway, the Guzzi was slowing down pretty fast, at one stage not going faster then 60 km/hr. But the next minute it would go again, full speed. Going up the big hill it was slowing down again and Ronnie stopped on the side of the road.

The bike was running on one cylinder but Ronnie told me to go ahead and tell Andrew to wait for us so in worst case scenario one of us could hop on the back with Andrew. That could be Ronnie I thought because my bike was still going along fine. Ronnie told me he would take it slowly and meet me at the bakery.

Off I went (with the BMW tools on board) and met everyone else for lunch. We had a laugh of course and someone said: “He should have bought a BMW!” Well, I said, we’ve got three of them already!

Anyway, Ronnie didn’t show up so our dear friend Andrew went looking for him and found him on the side of the road under a tree. He had pushed the bike up the big hill to find some shade, the BMW tools out of Andrew’s bike came in very handy and they made it eventually to Mt Barker.

By now everyone had gone home and the three of us were going to try and get to Albany. Lots of options went through out heads, if the Guzzi would stop we could push it in the bush and Ronnie could hop on the back of Andrew’s bike, because my bike is a BMW I can keep on riding!

Another option would be to ring Bob and maybe he could bring out the trailer. Anyway, two kilometers out of Barker it happened again, and Ronnie was going to turn around and leave it at the servo, go home to get the car and trailer and pick it up later.

He did fiddle a bit more and realised it was the condenser. It seemed to work well when he triggered the wiring and off we went again all the way home. He was so glad the bike didn’t have to go on the trailer and it is back into the shed now to get fixed.