Merriwa04

Arriving at the Rally site around about 11.00 o’clock on Saturday morning Gina, Kaz, Shane and myself found that the trees we had camped amongst last year had not been fully booked out, so naturally we promptly moved back in again, much to the consternation of Laury and Margaret from the Southern Cross Cruisers Club who had set up camp a bit earlier thinking they had found a nice quite spot. Any remaining vestige of their hope was finally shattered with the arrival a bit later of Duds, Fu and Hooky, so figuring that ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ they pulled their chairs up along side ours and settled in for the rally.

The number of people attending appeared to be down a bit this year, due I think to the heavy rain that had been falling over a lot of the State the previous couple of days, plus a not too promising forecast for the weekend. However I bet there’s a lot of people out there kicking themselves now for not going, as the weather stayed fine and the ground was just moist enough to make putting your tent pegs in real easy.

Midday saw quite a few bikes already lined up for the Bike Show and the Kiddies Gymkhana kicking off, the food tent was serving up biker size portions of quality food and the bar was doing a good job of supplying the means to wash it all down. Mid afternoon saw the judging of all the bikes that were in the running for trophies in the seventeen categories available, and then it was on to the adults Gymkhana, a good turn out of contestants with a lot of them wearing pink T-shirts from having done the Pink Ribbon Charity ride to Merriwa, gave the crowd plenty to cheer and laugh about, and with most of the participants getting some prize or other no one walked away disappointed, now I include Gina in the last sentence as she sort of hobbled, not walked away having done her knee in during the ladies tug-of-war.

As the day drew to a close the fire drums were lit up and were throwing out a nice friendly glow as Jack Russell & the K9’s took to the stage and started the evenings entertainment, they were followed by the presentation of the trophies and the drawing of the Just Girls raffle, we scored well with Kaz winning the first prize of a huge framed photo of a Harley Davidson. Johnny Green & the Blues Cowboys then took the entertainment into the wee small hours as we took turns in carting Gina around the place, due to her knee now being swollen to twice the normal size. As usual with most people just dozing off in their tents, the ubiquitous Gina arrived back and promptly woke everyone up, I think that I might not be alone in wondering how long it will be before that glorious day, when, if Gina stays in form and keeps hurting herself, and the injuries keep progressing up her body, that she will injure her jaw and we can bandage it shut, thus finally getting a good nights sleep.

Sunday morning saw the food tent getting a good roll-up for breakfast and as we packed up the swags and tents it became obvious that Gina was not going to be able to ride home, so it was decided that calling the ambulance and getting her to the local hospital seemed like a good idea, this left us with a bit of a problem of how to get Gina’s bike back to our place, the problem of too many bikes and a car was solved by Russell and Toni who coincidently had donated the Harley picture, with Russell volunteering to drive Shane’s car to Denman whilst Shane rode Gina’s bike home, Many thanks again to Russell and Toni for doing that favour for us.

Is that the Just Girls leader uttering the same words as the

AMC Chapter leader used not that long ago?????

All up another damn good effort by the Rally Operating Committee, thank you for all your work and thank you to Murray James who started it all.