202 On Tour

I made the comment to a few people this morning that we had more than a passing resemblance to the “Beverley Hillbilles” 😁. Anybody under maybe 50 will need to look that cultural reference up😭

Soon enough we were back in Coen, where the main servo was out of both Unleaded and Diesel, so the little shop with a bowser across the road was doing all the trade, one vehicle at a time.

After we fueled up and Liz was eating one of the pack of 4 carrots she had just bought, who should pull in but our savior from a week ago – Craig. Quick chat , then he got to the front of the queue.

There’s 108 kms from Coen to Musgrave and with all the seal around both sides of Coen you get lulled into a false sense of how easy the day might be. And how early you might get off the road.

That illusion is shattered when you hit what felt like endless sandy corrugations while we were trying to be a bit sympathetic with the bike.

With no table drain to work with, at the rougher sections we joined the many road trains along here who were back to first gear riding the ups and downs of each and every single corrugation.

And then this happened. The sidecar wheel caught the soft sand and acted as a pivot, even when trying to power out of it. This would happen on other sections and you’d just go with it and spend some time in the drain before rejoining the road. But there was just more soft sand and no drain here…

A full hour had passed from bogging to getting mobile again, right in the heat of the day. And so it was a bit of a slog to make it into Musgrave RH for the night. We had attacked this section pretty aggressively northbound, while trying to be sympathetic on the way back

Both ways are pretty tiring, but you see a lot more at walking pace😁

Met another motorcyclist on his way back from the top, Jason who had seen us at the Croc Tent and was on a GasGas. He had been keen to go to the Tip for a couple of years, and this was the year. Always interesting to hear other peoples stories – motorcyclists are interesting!