AFTERSHOCK! 2012 (part two)
Wednesday, January 2, 2013 You can read Part 1 of AFTERSHOCK here
There was a lot of buzz and build up to this event, many an organising meeting was held where all sorts of plans were made and discarded. I decided that I would build a custom special for the event, a mighty CT110. The aim was to build it as cheaply as possible, get it licensed and ride it to the event, some 106km’s from home. Normally this is not a long way to go, but on a 110cc bike with camping equipment, and the steepest/longest hill in Perth to deal with it was going to be a bit of a journey.
A small caravan of slow riders was assembled at the Dog Swamp Car park, Leigh on a 150cc Bajaj Chetack, Mike on a Kawasaki KZ250, Dan on his newly completed GS650 cafe racer and Chris in his Landcruiser with a trailer and a dirt bike on the back. We all met at about 11 ish and started towards York just as the first drops of rain began to fall. From the beginning we knew it was going to be along ride. Despite this, all went well until we hit Greenmount hill. The Bajaj and the CT1110 seemed well matched both slowing to a maximum speed of about 60km/h. However the hill became a bit much for Mike’s KZ, smoke began to appear from his engine and his bike slowed considerably. Leigh flew ahead (relatively speaking) but the rest of the convoy decided to halt and let Mike’s bike cool down a bit. Once the smoke cleared it was deemed cool enough, but it refused to start. Just as we debated putting the bike on the tailer it spluttered into life and we were off once again. Leigh was waiting another 2 kilometres up the road with Isaac and his brother who had a ute load of bikes. The convoy was gaining momentum!
^If you weren't watching your bike, Brock would grab it.
The next stop was Three Springs road house to refuel. The ct110 only took a litre and a half.....
Benny Bones caught up with us here, he had his mighty nifty fifty well prepared and strapped to the back off his ute. After a brief chat Leigh and I left the others as we were obviously now the slowest. It was a long frustrating haul for the next 50 km’s cruising at 80km/h, although at one stage I swear I hit 90km/h, going downhill and tucked in like a true cafe racer.
Once we hit York we decided the best thing to do was eat something, drink a beer and figure out where we were supposed to be. The best place in town to do this we decided was Saints diner. After a beer and a burger we got directions from the staff and headed towards Mark’s place. Upon arrival it was clear that this was a far better set up than we had expected. The camp sites had been prepared, there were speaker stacks and a projector screen erected. The track itself had been graded and there were bikes hammering it around and making a lot of noise and mess.
^Evil Knievel and Robbie Maddison take to the jumps
We quickly chose a spot well away from the beautifully constructed long drop and set to making our bikes race ready. Mirrors were removed, glass taped up and heavy items such as racks and side panels dispensed of. We could see that there were already a few bikes that had retired hurt. Most notably was Joel who had his bike in as many pieces as a DR650 could be with the crude tools that were available. It’s seemed that performance was being enhanced in a fashion that was in as mystical realm but it was far more than mere performance capabilities were was being enhanced it was a much more serious and direct enhancement was being done with the surgical accuracy of a 4 year old on a sugar high, the very difficult and extremely dangerous operation of getting the freaking bike to start!!!
^Scott's W800 is available for ploughing duties at competitive rates
It turns out that in the many hours spent meticulously getting the bike in prime Aftershock competing condition a very crucial step was missed, bringing the keys to the beast on the day to thrash it like it was made. Even though there were several “bikie people" around a serious lack of hotwiring criminal experience amongst the group left him disappointed for the weekend.
^If you were going to come off your bike, we had a camera crew on hand
Oly’s CB400F was out of action as he deemed it to too awesomely fast to ride around the track (I think something was broken on it but it was actually too awesomely fast and would of made the track totally unrideable for the others and would have ended the day early as people would not have wanted to face the blinding AWESOMENESS of the mighty CB400F ;) ) (editors note: <---- This part was written by Oly) He was relegated to the pitbike, or Pitty as it was known. He managed to temporarily destroy this one with a sheared gear lever on a previous PCR event that involved many, many hours of liquor induced fun across a paddock 2-up in a secret location know as Nog.
The first attempt at fixing it involved a set of vice grips which proved difficult to use after the preceding festivities of the night. Mark came to the rescue once again with a spare gear lever and Pitty was being flogged within, no actually beyond it’s life before you could blink, but Chinese indestructible communism prevailed.
^"Pitty" got a hammering
Then it was out on the track for the first of many laps. The next few hours were spent doing a few laps, falling off (Oly fell with a grace and style much akin to the great late Steve McQueen I might add) (editors note <---- Yep, that's oly writing again), checking the bike, and then doing a few more laps. Occasionally the water truck would go out and re-wet the track and by that I mean we used the allocated water for all of WA for the entire summer to turn it into a brown slip n slide!. Nature did its part and rained a few times as well. The result at one point was such a wet and slippery track that the fastest bike around was Benny Bones on his nifty fifty. Everything else had way too much power and was spinning out of control! A special mention to Brock who on first try made it 17 metres before the amazing power of the steroidious CX500 made the earth totally flip sideways and landed on the side of the bike, quite a feat I recall.
A few die hards were still out on the track in particular Oly, Brock, Mike and Isaac refused to leave. And Johnny come lately Scott finally showed his cards, and what cards they were! It actually looked the shiz! It was a speed demon clearly, a bike to contend with, with a rear knobbie fitted to the front as well as the rear, for traction plusssss! There were a lot of people saying, “you can’t take that out, it’s too good!” There were warnings that 100% of the people had fallen off so far, but did he take heed of such talk from mere mortals FiretrUCK NO!
Within the first 3 laps it was clear that not only would he blitz the field, but he would also show his compassion for his fellow riders and purposely fell off so as not to put the others off from competing (much like Oly choosing not to field the far superior Honda 400F).
Special mention must be made of Phil from the Devils Undies MC with his sidecar managing to do complete laps with Oly and Scott who were fearless in the face of advercity, on two wheels. A great sight, and I am sure a frightening experience for the passengers.
Saturday night’s dinner consisted of an awesome spit roast and salads made by Mark. The movies were soon put on by Oly, even though we had a category 2 cyclone forecast for the west best coast, we soldiered on, the the screen had to be abandon due to winds in excess of 120kph (give or take a hundred Km’s) and instead it was decided to project the visual treats up onto the side of Mark’s huge transit van. The rain started in earnest, but not many were deterred, armed with beer coats, crappy 3x3 shelters and the thought of being shunned by the group for retiring to the palatial accommodation of utes, tents and swags, plus there were many mighty fine beverages left in the bath tubs provided by Mark to keep fine ales at optimum temperature for consumption by such refined gentlemen that had instigated the DGR
^Brock and Isaac test out their safety gear
The nights entertainment included such fine visual and audial (Mark is also a sound tech so the sound system was heard by most of the southern hemisphere, actually surprising that we did not keep you east coasters up.)
and Oly’s own photo collage The White Pony
After reaching the difficult decision that enough beers had been consumed I slunk off to bed thinking that the morning will enable me to have a sleep in and not be woken by children at 6am as per usual. This was not to be the case. Some time earlier on Saturday Brock had lost the header to one of his pipes on his CX500. It now sounded like the bike that Arial the mermaid would ride. Kind of like a supercharged bubble machine. He rode this around the campsite at 6am making sure that everyone was conscious for the first laps of the track for the day.
The next laps were completed by what I believe was a V8 commodore with Nev at the wheel, who showed extreme dexterity by not wrapping the dunny door around the surrounding trees or through the ring lock fence which circled the track waiting to entangle hapless speed chasing sideways actioned motorcyclists that had eluded the starving but stubborn fence.
The track was considerably dryer and the bikes were considerably faster around the track. Everyone got straight into it as soon as they were up, which was about as long as it took to jump out of the swag/tent/ute shake hand with the missuses best friend, down a ibuprofen, throw on boots and kick the iron sleds into action (there were clothes in the equation too it was not that kind of party, we’ll leave that to the more adventurous Newtown dwelling fipsters).
Timed laps were done and a few races were organised. However the hangovers started to get the better of the ibuprofen and hair of the dogs and the crowd started to slowly congregate around one of the most divine smells to ever inhabit this mortal realm, the smell of frying swine!
It was the host with the most, Mark, yet again pulling out all the stops and using his culinary skills and cooked me some eggs bitch, (whoops got a bit lost there sorry Mark) there were other things to appease the lesbian vegan hippies too but who really takes notice of that anyways?
After a truly scrumpcious breaky, the motley crew of beaten riders started licking wounds and reassemble their shattered dreams of being Mert Lawwill or Malcolm Smith and proceeded to load the battered finely dirt tuned assortment of café racers, mail delivery, undersized and sometimes under powered (nifty 50) mechanical contraptions to the back of utes and trailers, while some having to ride the 2 hour sojourn back to the thronging masses (I do take a bit of liberty with that last statement as I do know we live in the backwards capital or good old Wait Awhile)
But before the hardy group of die hard with a vengeance dirt demons made their way to their homes (well some thought it was best to piss off for morning tea into town namely, too cool to hang Scott) to get back to the drudgery we held a ceremony to award the best, the brave and the down right most foolish of the crew with trophies (fashioned from disused motorcycle parts, well if they weren’t welded together some bikes could of used them) being awarded to brave souls in the following categories
- Most inappropriate: bike Benny Bones (nifty 50 race number pi)
- Most/best stacks: Team 99 whoops I mean 66 Motorcycles
- Early Death award: Brett T from Hand Made Vintage Kustoms
- Best tricked out/most skulls bike: Isaac H
- Keyed up award: Joel for leaving his keys at home
- Best mailman: Greg
Can’t remember the last one as we made it up on the spot
After the great fan fare everyone departed!
The end
Oh a special mention to both Mark Lloyd and Innocent Bystander (Doug) for doing a HEAP of prep work and the use of Innocent’s spit and Kanga, ya not bad Doug even though you ride a Ducati.
Rex should also get a special mention for turning up just as everyone was packing up!
Written by Oly Nommadicted and Greg Eastwood
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