Farewell Tasmania. I can guarantee we'll be back.

27/10/14

I woke early this morning, at about four am. Unfortunately this time it wasn't to a beautiful sunrise and musical bird songs, it was to the sound of heavy rain, loud thunder claps, and flashes of lightening. It looks like a Tassie thunder storm has put an end to our great run with the weather.

After breakfast, Dave and a couple of the guys took a chance on the weather when it eased up a bit and did a quick run across to Bridport for the morning, planning to meet us in Devenport to board the ferry. Rex and I took the opportunity to have a lazy morning taking our time packing and preparing for the next leg of our trip.

Rexy chillin" in the blue room.

Rex and I said our farewells to Sandy and Jan and as we loaded the bikes it started to rain again. The moment we snicked the bikes into gear to ride off, the rain stopped. The weather gods were again being kind to us. In fact we rode all the way to Devenport in good weather.

We suffered one little glitch though. A couple of kilometers down the road my bike started running rough, then cut out. When I restarted it, it was only running on one cylinder, and kept cutting out. We had to make the ferry, so off we went, running on only one. The problem cleared itself in a few minutes and never reappeared. My bet is that as my bike sat outside in the rain last night, some water made it's way into somewhere it shouldn't be. I'll check with a Guzzi dealer when I get home and it will probably be a common problem with a very simple fix. Hey, how could you own an Italian bike and not have an electrical problem?

The rest of our ride to the ferry was just the usual sweeping bends roads with very little traffic, just how we like it. We regrouped with the rest of the crew and rode aboard to tie our bikes down for the trip across the Tasman. I've done this a few times now, but I still get a buzz riding my bike up the ramp onto a ferry.

So that was the end of our trundle around Tasmania. What a place. The roads, the food, the prices, the scenery, and most importantly, the people. All fantastic. I want to say a huge thank you to Jan and Dave who opened their home to us and the acted as tour guides for the week, and Dave for plying me with too much whiskey. You guys are bloody awesome. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope to repay the favour when you're next in Perth. (I will point out that Jan is originally from Perth so that is part of the reason she is so nice.)

I also have to say another huge thank you to Tasmania's drivers. Every time our group was enjoying a winding road, and came up behind a car, the driver pulled off the side of the road and let us past. Wow! That would NEVER happen in WA. I'm loving Tassie more and more.

Once we were on board we found somewhere to sit, and you wouldn't believe it, but the only place we could find was in the bar.

The first round.

Mark can fall asleep mid sentence,
and does so regularly.

After a few quiet ales, (or should that be quite a few ales?) and another big feed it was off to bed. The last thing I remember hearing was the noise of four very loud women, in the row in front of me, taking at each other, at 11:30 pm. Everyone in the lounge could hear every word. Some people have no idea. Grrrrrr!

Tomorrow we ride into the middle of Melbourne for a few nights of luxury accommodation and a bit of fun. Look out Melbourne!