Bendigo Trip

My first planned trip, as one of the road captains, I had a lot of questions but hopefully ever thing would work out. The weatherman had promised a fine day with a temperature of 18 degrees. The first thing I did when I got up was to check what the weather was like and it was as the weatherman had promised. I had organised to meet a couple of people one was an ex-serviceman from the UK, Michael, who was interested in joining the Patriots and another was a member of the Gippsland Patriots; Cray who lives in Hoppers Crossing. The last was Foggy; our guide to the FUP, I'm still learning some of the meeting points. We organised to meet at Holden in Hoppers before heading off to meet everybody else at the Ampol truck stop on the way out of Melbourne .

After everyone arrived, (Gibbo, Fugue, Lizard, Sandy, Foggy, Gunner, Yo Yo, Cray, Michael and I) at the FUP I gave a quick brief on what was planned for the day and headed off up the Hume Hwy. Our first planned stop was at a small town on the McIvory Hwy called Tooborac. By the time we all arrived everybody was in need of a break to try and warm up any way that they could because it was furken freezing, No Latte's were ordered but there were quite a few hot coffees ordered just to keep the hands warm and then we spent a lot of time just standing in the sun letting the rays in. We were met in Tooborac by Fugues wife Alex and their daughters. Gibbo and Lizard left us for the time being as they needed to do some club business elsewhere in Bendigo ; the rest off us continued up the Hwy to Bendigo . The road wasn't too bad and we arrived in Bendigo in good time, had a small detour as I thought it would be interesting to see the city centre before heading for the Temple for lunch.

While we were waiting for Gibbo and Lizard to arrive we had a look around, Fugue's wife and kids brought tickets for the museum and others had a look at the gardens. We all eventually ended up in the gift shop and most of us brought something either for someone else or ourselves. Once everyone had finished and the others arrived we moved inside and had lunch. The menu was small but varied and everybody found something that they liked (I hope that was the case). After lunch some had a further look around while others started to let the meal settle before we all headed off for a meeting at Lizards Place . . The trip back was very different than the trip up as the road had more traffic and was punctuated by numerous overtaking zones and finally four lanes. The weather had started to become cool again so when we stopped at Kyneton everybody was happy to stay in the sun. We headed off and. Gunner and Yo Yo said their goodbyes there as they needed to get back to Anglesea. I found out later that Michael the Scotsman had a problem with his bike. Apparently he forgot that you need to put up your stand up before you can engage the gears other wise the bike stops.

Eventually everyone was back together and we headed for Lizards where we met his brother Alex and we held the meeting and had a BBQ. There was enough food and drinks for everyone and then some. After the meeting and barbie we said our goodbyes and at about 1730 (ish) We finished up and all speared off to our various home locations. I would like to thank Lizard and Alex for all their obvious efforts with the preparation of the food for the BBQ, it really was outstanding. They have set the bar very high for the next person throwing on a feed.

Everything went well for my first run as a road captain and I'm looking forward to the next trip away.