Bikers_from_downunder

October kick off from the us wee kiwis DownUnder, has seen us drop into young friends in Melbourne as our starting point (yip their spare room looks scarily like we aint leaving in a hurry). Why Melbourne.. MotoGP at Phillip Island of course and omigod what a start. Here was I picturing lush warm days totally unlike New Zealand in Spring and what we got was Sub Antarctic weather that many of you have seen on Facebook depicting us looking like we were actually at Base Camp on Everest in our tent. I use that term 'tent' loosely too as you often get the idea of a tent as a shelter to keep out wind and rain.. well that sadly wasn't quite the case either, not going to mention the brand of tent seeing as the suppliers have been so mortified with our somewhat damp experience in the tent that they upgraded us to a better model, lovely folk to deal with. It did appear as though we were in a sieve for a time there, all joking aside the inside is actually a sieve, as in black mesh...the rain managed to seep through some poorly constructed velcro points in the outer fly seams. The soggy bits quickly got forgotten watching the racing ... was awesome...as having been avid watchers of MotoGP on the TV, it in no way compares to actually being there seeing all that speed and smelling and hearing those bikes thunder round such an impressive track. We were lucky also in meeting some totally cool folk at an awesome little cafe, thanks so much Janine for her generosity in offering floorspace to two strangers should we not be able to tough out the conditions at the highside camp, alongside equally awesome neighbours there who shared their fire and their coffee with us...think we looked in need of help hahaha. Most Melbournites have been totally lovely with the exception of the lady at Vic Roads (the equivalent of On Roads or VTNZ) who looked like she really enjoyed throwing as much bureaucracy as she could our way thwarting out second attempt at changing my bike's registration into my name...am sure she felt so good packing us off several blocks again to get more ID stuff to gain enough points to complete the process ...arrrgh

Anyhow we have been kept pretty busy with our set up tasks such as buying two motorbikes and setting them up how we want..mine having been lowered somewhat, buying a tent, and generally getting ourselves sorted to hit the road for next two years. Melbourne is a beautiful city with a wonderful mix of what appears to be European architecture and modern... leaving our 8th floor apartment in St Kilda tomorrow to let our wonderful hosts have their own space back..thanks heaps Alex and Bex you have been awesome