OzHpv weekend day 1

October 30, 2016

Southern Cross / Spencer Street Melbourne

Spencer St 1 Ballarat.  Gardener by bike.

Spencer St 1 Ballarat

Spencer St 2 Ballarat

Cup of tea at Spencer St. 2 Ballarat.

Hi

This blog entry is going back a few weeks now, I have been quite busy, so am only now catching up and posting a few photos online.

This year, the OzHpv AGM was scheduled for Ballarat.  Pete Heal's Round-Australia record bike was on display alongside an eclectic assortment  of other bikes and trikes, and this was as good an excuse for a trip as any other.

Early on the first day though, I had a bit of work to do.  Some bike frame timber routing I had started was ready for pickup at Clayton.  Don had done the routing for me, all I had to do was pick all the parts off the routing machine and clean up, and the parts were all mine to enjoy.  So I drove out to Clayton and was there not long after 7am, and worked on the routing machine and then came home, shoved the bike frame bits into the shed and packed a few things in the working trike and headed to the station for a midday train to start the OzHpv trip.

The country train terminus in Melbourne is called Southern Cross but was previously called Spencer St. after the street it's on, and I got there in plenty of time and was able to shove the seat up the frame towards the front to make it a bit smaller for travelling onto the train.  It was a holiday weekend and the train was pretty busy and the luggage area pretty full, but I had no problems with carrying the trike on the train either way.

Got into Ballarat, and went to the publicised meeting place a few minutes late, but couldn't find any ozhpvers and headed off in the direction they might have gone, around lake Wendouree, a well known stomping ground for Fiona Elsey Cancer research rides.  Soon I gave up trying to find more recumbents and settled down to some lunch and to sort out navigation to the scout camp where we wre staying from my map book.  Spencer St Ballarat - good, it's that street opposite, just point the trike in that direction, keep going, and a few inexplicable street name changes later I would be there.  Unfortunately not!  I ran out of numbers in that Spencer St before I reached four hundred and thirty something where the scout camp was  meant to be, so needed to try to work out the navigation again. 

As well as the map book, I spoke to a lady watering her garden "Do you know where the Pax Hill Scout camp is?"  "No dear, I only know my way to the nearest Coles" , so it was back to the map book.  Another lady was concerned for my welfare, particularly as there was were ants crawling round and I was sitting in the gutter. "They'll get in your bag" she said.  Well the bag didn't matter, what if they got in my jocks!

Anyway, TADA, there was another Spencer St. in Ballarat and I headed off there to find the scout camp: yes, it was there at the end of the road and after looking round a bit found the huts where we were staying.  Noone was there and I spread out a bit, had a few cups of tea and waited for the others to arrive.  Richard was first, he had ridden 2 days from Howlong to get there.  (To be Continued)