Fish n Chips Travel the world: Day 2 Bathurst

Well I thought yesterday was a tough day today took the cake!!
It started out OK... because we were waiting to find out about my bike we had a little sleep in and Dave bought croissants for brekky yummo. Leigh and I decided to take a little walk around town and check out the old buildings Dave had seen on his run. We decided that we would all meet at the bike shop. Leigh and I got there to find no David, we spoke to Barry for a while and then left again just as we walked out of the shop David pulled up and said he would talk to Barry so Leigh and I went in search of an ATM. While we were in the shopping centre Dave phoned to say that we would be delayed till at least 12 midday so we got some bananas and apples and went back to the hotel for a cuppa to wait... the hotel staff had kindly allowed us to stay a little late. While we waited we decided to pare down our stuff in case we ended up on 2 bikes. So lots of my clothes, our thermos, mugs and morning tea provisons were put into a bag that we had arranged to leave at the hotel. Dave rang Barry at 11:30pm and great news my bike is ready!! so after Leigh and I did a happy dance in the carpark we rode over to get it. the air filter had been full of petrol and the spark plugs were shot so they replaced both of those, they just hadn't taken it for a test ride....so Dave rode it round the block while he was gone my phone rang and I thought uh oh but it was Sharon Freeman ringing to see if I was home for a visit. Dave 'coasted' the bike back into the yard and that immediately spelt BAD news. It wasn't fixed afterall sooooo my bike is having it's holiday in Bathurst and we have rearranged our itinerary and instead of staying in Dunedoo the night before home we will come back to Bathurst and pick up my bike and our extra stuff. So we got going around 12:30pm.........after a few false starts..

A few kms out of Bathurst it started to spit and we kept riding down the road until we came to the crest of a hill and over the next valley we could see the rain was quite heavy so we stopped on the side of the road to don our wet weather gear. It was bucketing down and we had a couple of slippery episodes which made the ride a bit hairy. We stopped under a service station awning in Cowra and asked the petrol pump attendant if we could leave the bikes there while we went to get some food (well out of the way not blocking use of pumps) but he said NO so we stood there anyway and used their loo. We then rode onto Young where we had another very short break before pushing onto Junee. Just before Junee Dave's bike started to cough and splutter so he put it on reserve and then it stopped completely, those of you who followed last year's Tassie trip may remember the petrol cap was sucking and wouldn't let the petrol through so we pulled over took off the cap and sure enough it was sucking again so off we went and then just before Junee it really started to cough and splutter and we limped it into a service station and got fuel but it was doing something weird so after our enormous cups of tea, a nice hot drink because we were all wet and cold, David removed the air filter from his bike to check it and it is filthy so he took it over and tried to blow some of the dirt out with the air hose and that seemed to work it gave another bit of a splutter but then was fine all the way to Henty.

We are staying at the same B&B as last year an old pub converted into a B&B they are fully in the throes of getting ready for a family wedding there are tables all laid out downstairs and everything so we are not the only ones here tonight.

We hurried over to The Doodle Cooma Arms for dinner, steak for me, schnitzel for David and pizza for Leigh I was starving and really looking forward to a beer mmm it was fantastic!!!