camping = no lie in

Sunlight at about 6am meant I was up and ready to go (or at least up) helpful hint: when camping in tent city with a field load of bikers - its gonna get noisy - buy earplugs!!! The revving, fireworks, and burnouts stopped around 4ish I think - and I was FREEZING!!!!!!

Anyway - we got on the bike and heading back to the mainland for a huge ride out to the island with a police escort and over a thousand bikes expected to make the ride.
Having never done a large organised run before, I was totally unprepared for the sheer number of bikes cramming onto the high street. It was a carnival atmosphere with custom bikes View image, View image, food stalls, the local radio station and hundreds of specators lining the streets to see it all. View image

Some people come from a lot further afield than Sydney to watch the GP.

When the signal came to leave, the noise of a thousand bikes revving was deafening - but deeply cool :oD

The ride was about 2 hours through amazing scenery, with most of the streets along the way lined with spectators who turned out to see the parade - they had their deckchairs and snacks and waved at us all along the route - 2 hours of waving is highly knackering, so I stopped after about 10 mins :oP

It was loads of fun, but I really wish that both me and the zeal had been up to going there ourselves, as much fun as it was being pillion, I reckon it'd have been WAY more fun on my own bike! Ah well - maybe next year?

The rest of the day was spent watching qualifying, View image, View image, View image, View image and shopping (well you just HAVE to have the t-shirt... or 2... or 3... and the fleece... and the pants... *ahem*)