Well the adventure started @ 7.00am this morning when I set of from home in Pakenham to meet Cam Stewart @ the Black Range on the outskirts of Yea. Raining Cats & Dogs and what ever other animal you can think of and flooding threw the Dandenong's but when I got to the Slide @ the Toolangi turn off it just stopped. It was at this point I thought yep good job I do not listen to my other half's advice about riding weather.
Well that was until I reached Glenburn when it started again and kept coming down till I met up with Cam when it started to slow .
We set off at 9.00am having a bit of a poke around to find it was like an ice rink with shoes on, no grip on the front or the back in a lot of places and as Al warned us lots of timber across the track.
It was on one of the many slippery down hills covered in downed 4inch branches that both Cam and myself had our first offs at the same time.
We had to make a few u turns but we pushed on through the slippery fire trails and a couple of single tracks and ups and downs and over and around  more and more trees to get 50klms in for the morning by the time we reach Buxton at around 11.30am for fuel and lunch.
Man if you want a good burger it's worth the trip to Buxton.
Anyway as we had just finished lunch, when it started raining the zoo once again.
With no sight of it easing off we had not much choice but to head off, by the time we were back to the forest every part of us was soaking wet so we decided to take the easier root back but after making one wrong turn we decided after about 5klms we must have gone the wrong way so out with the map which by now was not holding up to the zoo rain to well .
We decided we should turn around and about 3klms down the road we should find a quicker trail to our left.
Once we found the trail there was a sign out to the bridge on this track being closed but we decided to have a look anyway. We reach the bridge after about 10mins of careful riding we found the bridge and found only the LH side of the bridge to be burnt out so we crossed on the RH side but 200m up the trail we found the worlds biggest tree right across our path. We had a bit of a look around and there was no way of passing it so we turned around and carefully crossed the burnt bridge once more and headed back to the main logging road.
Once back on track we picked the pace up once again but as we were climbing we were also going into the clouds and at one point we could not even see 30m in front of us.
The only bonus of the clouds was it had stopped raining and was now just a light drizzle but we eventually made our way over the top and down the other side to were we were supposed to be and making it back to the car cold and wet but safe and sound just after 2pm covering a total of 112klm for the short day.
Even with the weather being crappy I had a great adventure with Cam and it was good to go riding some were different and in certainly most different weather conditions to what I am used to riding in.
Good points of this ride.
No Dust.
The Buxton Burger's
Lots of fresh water to clean our goggles and Glasses.
The cool suits worked very well today.
Small group so moved around very fast.
Great to meet and ride with a AMTRA member who I had not met before who is just as silly as me.
Ride Leader Cam Stewart
Tailman Will Munro
other riders Nill.
Thanks Cam for a good day out on the Bike.
Bad points
MMMMM the extreme rain
Couple of small offs each.
Riding 2hrs in soaking riding gear
Cam having to kick start his bike due to a faulty switch.
Did I say it was wet and slippery.