Well I didn't drive the 400 miles home to Melbourne yesterday, instead I elected to stay in Canberra for the weekend. There was a ride organised by the FJR1300 riders group, but it got postponed until next weekend, due to crappy weather forecast for tomorrow.
Oh well, before I cold even go for a ride, I had to fix my tyre. Last week I picked up a sheet metal screw in my nice new Pirelli Angel ST rear tyre, and it was as flat as a tack when I went to go for a ride the next day.
No worries, I had this happen on the Bridgestone that was on it before I replaced it with the Pirelli, so once again, I bought a bottle Slime, dumped it in, pumped the tyre up, and......... it went down again. Problem was, the hole was up high on the edge of the tread and the slime was sitting in the lowest part of the tyre, so not enough would pool in the hole to seal it. Poop.
Jeff at Ace Motorcycles gave me a couple of the tyre repair plugs he uses to repair his customers tyres, but they aren't much use to me as the tyre has to be removed to install them. I remember seeing this vid of a guy fixing a tyre with a plugger kit, so I found one on ebay, and had it sent to my landlords address in Canberra.
So I gave it a try. Geez, what a great tool! I had it plugged and re-inflated in under 30 minutes! It comes with 15 plugs, which should hopefully be a lifetime supply, but extra plugs are available if you need them.
Anyway, now that it was all good again, it was time to try it out, so I decided on a ride to Goulburn for lunch. Goulburn is a 120 mile round trip via the Federal and Hume Highways so was a good opportunity for me to test the plugged tyre on reasonably good surfaces, as if the weather is gonna be good next weekend, I'll be doing the 800 mile return trip to Melbourne.
I had no problems, the big blue Yamaha went like a bird, and I had a great lunch at a Chinese Restaurant. It was the first Chinese restaurant in country New South wales I've eaten at that was good, if you're a visitor to Oz, the only decent Chinese restaurants are located in Melbourne or Sydney, or Goulburn. I also stopped for a pic of the bike beside the "Worlds Largest Turd", aka the Big Ram. Goulburn apparently has Australia's largest New Zealand expat population, and they erected this monument to their favourite, er, pet...........
On the ride back I ran into a huge group of motorcycles, riding anything from Harleys to trail bikes and everything in between, then some vintage police cars from the 70's and 80's, then more bikes. There were over 100 bikes I reckon, but they were all sitting on the speed limit, and I like to ride fast, so I shot past them at speeds in excess of 100 MPH.
I waved to a few of them, but they looked a bit pissed off, which I thought was strange. I went past a couple of stationery highway patrol cars and of course sh1t myself because I was way over the limit, but funnily enough, they didn't chase me? Oh well, that was a good thing, but weird, just the same. Anyway, I got home after a lovely ride and was so happy that my tyre didn't explode, that I actually gave the bike a wash.
I'm sitting here watching the evening news, and have just realised that the heap of bikes I passed were all cops! Oops, turns out it was the annual "Ride of Remembrance" today, to honour our fallen cops. Hmmmnnn, considering that over 100 cops witnessed me riding at "go straight to jail" speeds today, and no-one locked me up, I am a lucky boy indeed!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-17/fallen-nsw-police-officers-remembered-in-charity-motorbike-ride/7854714 
