This year's event drew 35 bikes and over 40 people out on a really great ride around some of Canberra's lookouts, late night parking spots, whatever. Bill Lewis and Jim Alexander trusted their mounts of the Twenties on the steep hills and descents of the ride without any apparent dramas. It was very pleasant weather with a mild 15 degrees at the start but getting into the 20's during the afternoon.

Gathering at The Services Club is now almost second nature and the car park is a very good place to assemble and have a chin wag. Mick Gentleman and Steve Keough had spent considerable time planning the routes to the peaks of Mt Pleasant, Mt Ainslie, Red Hill, Black Mountain and Stromlo. That was before we became aware that there was a BikeAthalon and a Diabetes Walk, amongst other events such as "roadworks", which had closed quite a number of roads in the ACT. Many of these roads were involved in getting from one peak to another. Simon Whittaker had organised that all of the peak participants were to roll a set of dice and record the results. The results were tallied at the end of the run at the BBQ site and the winners of some marvellous reference books were: Alan Boyd and Jim Greethead. The main difficulty in winning appeared to be finding room on the bikes to transport the books home.

Despite having to navigate their way around barricades and closed roads the riders managed to get to the BBQ trailer by the allotted time of 12.30 pm. Stromlo was left out as time was getting short. Mick had arranged with the ACT Rangers to have the lake foreshore open and this worked out very well (A big Thanks to the ACT Rangers). Geoff Duddy had the BBQ well on song when the riders arrived and everyone had a great feed. Many thanks to Geoff for his splendid efforts on the BBQ plate.

By 2pm everyone was ready to head off for other duties. In summary, it was another very successful club function. Many thanks to Mick Gentleman and Geoff Duddy for organising the event and BBQ. Yours truly with the back-up trailer had a very quiet run in the old Packard. Best Regards and see everyone at the Swap Meet on the 1st November.

Peter Toet

Some more photos can be seen HERE