After removing myself from bed with a crow bar, Dad and I packed up our things, said goodbye to Jim who hung around to see us off, and we left Sydney. After suffering through another detour, we jumped onto Windsor Road and headed toward Windsor, surprise surprise.
We fuelled up at Vineyard, and they have Dr Pepper, so I did as well as dad checked the air pressure in his bike.
Dad and I took off for the Putty Road to head to Muswellbrook. It was a pleasant day for a ride. Fuelled up again at Windsor and the trailer started to feel a bit funny - Funny funny, not funny ha ha. We thought it just needed repacking.
Cruising through the putty, the sun was shining, the bike was bottoming out every now and then, but it was shaping to be a good day.
60 kilometres out of Windsor, between Colo Heights and Mellong, the trailer went bang! I head butted Dad in the back of the head as he starts breaking heavily. We pull over to the side of the road; the trailer is missing a wheel, and we were pretty sure we left with two.
Next to us a guy in an empty Ute pulls up and gets out, “mate, did you see where that went? I saw your wheel jump off, bounce off the side of the mountain, and took off down the valley about 5 meters from the Amco railing.”
Dad and I were still in a state of shock/pissed-of-ness and could only nod. The guys shifts the lose tie downs in his Ute, “thought I better stop and tell ya, otherwise you would have no hope.” Then he jumps in his Ute and then takes off!
Thanks for offering to take the trailer into town arsehole.
We have a quick look for the wheel, but there was a lot of valley to search. Not a chance, so we decide to call RAA and transfer to the RMTA for roadside assistance. After convincing the operator that motorcycles can have trailers, they tell us it is going to take an hour at least for the tow truck to come from Windsor.
With an hour to kill, dad and I decide to keep looking for the wheel. If we at least find that, it would be one less thing to buy. We looked for half an hour in the area where the man pointed, to no success. Dad then thinks that maybe the guy was a knob, there was much evidence of that so far, and the wheel bounced more square off the wall then in line with the road. 20 meters from the road, square to where the wheel came off, we found the tire sitting against the tree. You can just see Dad in the photo below.
We put the tire back on the trailer and dad went for a walk up the hill to look to see if he could find one more wheel nut. He found both the bearing cap and the last wheel nut to fall off. Dad took two wheel nuts off the other side, 5 stud wheel, and was doing the last wheel nut up when the tow truck pulled up. Thanks for coming.
Having the wheel back on, the trailer still needed some repair, and obviously more nuts, so we turned around and headed back to Windsor. We pulled into a tailer repair brake/clutch place. Parked the bike and noticed the trailer had a heavy lean. It was not meant to.
We put it up on a jack and saw that the Flexi-torque on the suspension on the left hand side had died and collapsed. That caused the trailer to shake the nuts lose. It was cactus. Back to Sydney we go.
The plan was to now leave the trailer at Auntie Chris’ house, find some throw over bags, and continue without the trailer. We stopped at couple of motor cycle shops on the way back to Quakers Hill, dad tripped into a shop and hurt his knee again, he was ropable, and there was nothing. The only thing we could find was a “throw over bag” that could only fit a sneeze. If I tied two of my shoes together, and put them over the bike, it would have more storage. Yuppies on the new sport tourers only pack hair products it seems.
We were ready to pack it in and head home. I told Dad that he should at least continue on and pack his stuff in the gearsack bag and finish the trip solo while I’ll wait in Sydney. Then pack light and head back to Adelaide together. Dad would not hear a bit of it. He called around to see what we could do, and found that Kevin, his cousin in Wollongong, had spare flexi-torques in his shed and could come pick the bike up on the weekend and fix it for us, and then we could pick it up on the way home. The local supermarket near Auntie Chris’ house is selling backpacks, we bought two and Dad made throw over bags out of them. Genius.
We got to spend another night with Auntie Chris, apologised to her for it, and did a load of washing. Tomorrow would be the Putty Road, take two.
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