Alan White’s: Easter Monday Ride

Great day for a ride. Tim and myself rolled up at Alan’s Merton Property at 9.00 just as Rowan and Dave Smith and Nick Risso and David Minett were arriving. Cam Stewart and Damien Smith already there, nine all up three yellow, three blue and three orange but this was soon to change. Started of on Alan’s tight enduro tracks on his land, in and out of trees up and down dry eroded creek beds, great for warming up. Once out of there took off to Swan Pool for a feed, fill up and back again. The tracks were dusty (pray for rain everyone the HCR is going to need it) Alan took us along some goat tracks that wind in and out of trees, tight, steep, rutted & rocky. Came to our first corner to regroup and Damien said his bike was playing up carby problems apparently, we looked down & he also lost his lower chain guide & there was a bolt missing from his pipe. After a while it fired up so it back to the property by road, he did say though he will have it all fixed by his next ride. At the same time Dave S. was playing with his suspension again so we reminded him what happened last time and he stopped playing. On we went along granite lined tracks lots of erosion jumps on the pegs stuff. One of the rides between corners was long (well I thought so anyway) myself looking for a corner to clean my goggs & have a breather. Apparently, Tim did a pass on Rowan on a downhill. Down on the next corner Rowan said his energy was fading or was Tim just riding better? Arrived at Swanpool with 90 ks on our speedo’s only to find the general store had run out of fuel due to the Easter hols. The garage had no fuel either because he had been closed down complements of OH&S. The only choice we had was traveling 20ks along the road to Barjarg. The general store on arriving had fuel or so they thought it filled Allan’s & Cam’s tank then ran out of fuel mmm what the! All was not lost a few quick calls to contact Damien who was just leaving Merton and Presto! he was on his way with 3 full gerry’s. While we waited, we had lunch, hamburgers all around not in buns but bread, run out of buns due to the Easter hol’s. Just as we finished Damien arrived and we filled up, thanks Damien a great effort. Allan took us back over most of the tracks we did before, not a worry though they seem very different but the dust was still there in force. One of the tracks we went along is part of HCR and we found it traveled right through beehives either side. This did not seem a good idea due to around 300 bikes stirring them up so it was decided to bypass this obstacle by cutting a small track around through the bush (treading lightly of course). A lot cheaper than handing out epee pens. The dust a real problem now with the sun flickering through the trees some of the corners riding blind.
Got back to Merton finishing with the enduro loops. Loaded the bikes had a can Allan fired up the Barby & some of us had some snags Thanks to Allan and also thanks Dave M. for riding tail.

Riders as follows:
Cam Stewart, Rowan Smith, Dave Smith, Rod Wainwright, Damien Smith, Nick Russo, Allan White, Dave Minett & Tim Wainwright.