10/21/2005 - Practice Ride 1: Blacktown Harley to Coogee

Got in the vans early to go out to pick up the bikes. The weather forecast wound up being correct, sadly, so we were introduced to our bikes in the pouring rain! Since we had a couple of media stops scheduled, we didn’t have the luxury of waiting out the weather. We all donned our raingear and just got on the bikes and rode. My Street Bob was gorgeous – it was love at first sight. It’s a bigger engine – 1450cc, but I’ve ridden bigger bikes so that didn’t take much getting used to, but we had city traffic, pouring rain, highways, tollbooths, roundabouts, and we were on the wrong side of the road – on bikes we’d never laid eyes on before to top it all off - which was the bigger challenge than the bike itself. We did amazingly well and it all went off without incident. Got some great pictures taken for one of the big Sydney papers in front of the famous Opera House at Milson’s Point. In the middle of mid-day rush hour at this famous tourist stop, we made quite a stir on our bikes. It was almost worth the misery of riding in the rain!

That evening it was back to Milson’s Point for a nice dinner outside – again, with the Opera House lit up in the background. The weather had cleared and we had a fantastic time. A small group of us decided not to go straight back to the hotel, and Marie navigated us to the oldest pub in Sydney. There was a little band playing and they found out who we were and what we were doing, and they made a nice little announcement about us to the crowd. By the time we got back to the hotel the rest of the group had gone to bed, so we did too.