"Damn its cold," I thought to myself as Kristen and I headed over to the coffee stall set up outside the closed dealership. I was grateful someone had decided hot drinks were a good idea before a chilly winter ride.

The lovely ladies were also selling raffle tickets to support the local Careflight Westpac Helicopter and first prize is a kids quadbike ... suffice to say I'm now the owner of several raffle tickets!

10am rolled around pretty quickly and the word went out to saddle up. A quick guesstimate on my behalf put our numbers somewhere around the 200 bike mark and the sound when we all fired up and took off was nothing short of bloody awesome!

Traffic lights meant our huge pack was being busted up into smaller outfits of roughly 30-40 bikes.

Clearing the city meant dodging errant cars, slicing through roadworks and tight knit riding two abreast in a lane. Time to concentrate hard.

The noise from all the bikes was thunderous and had many a car driver and pedestrian clambouring for a better view of the pack. Several car drivers were also very courteous and pulled over to let the bikes past.

Ripping down the fast, sweeping Charlestown bypass we quickly discovered that age was no barrier either, just have a look at this little ray of sunshine on the back of her Dad's bike. She was grinning like a cheshire cat the whole way and loving every minute of it!

Southwards we pushed, but we were suddenly back in the traffic at Belmont. Looking at what everyone else was riding I concluded there was plenty of Harleys (including some very nice customs), a smattering of big Jap cruisers and a smaller but faster contingent of sports bike riders.

It didn't take the boys long before they wanted to play either. Sick of the slow moving traffic, four of the fast men slipped up an inside lane at the lights and lit it up big time when they took off. One bloke in particular had his wicked Harley very sideways coming off the line, the back wheel spinning for a good 30 meters!

The last round-a-bout exiting Swansea, still going South. The old Pacific Highway starts just on the other side with a speed limit of 110 and plenty of rolling hills, sweeping turns and long straights... motorcycling mecca!

Here we're climbing the long hill out of Swansea on the Highway. Note to the right of the following shot the filthy "cheese cutter" steel wire rope vehicle barriers that the State Government insist on installing on our roads around here. Arseholes.

Ahhhh, The Wallarah Hotel (which no-one calls it) is quite famous around these parts and is known among bikers far and wide as the 'Catho Pub'. Great tucker (food), cold beer, biker friendly and a great verandah equates to a brilliant place to call into and have one for the road!

With the bikes all lined up out the front, everyone enjoys a beer and a yarn.

The Catho Pub is situated in the sleepy little old ex-mining hamlet of Catherine Hill Bay. Like the small mining cottages sprinkled around the place, the Pub also stays faithful to its original building design of timber and a corrugated iron roof. Its all part of the charm!

Hey, Check out this old chopper, man!

I took this shot around the side carpark of the Pub and was blown away... this old Shovel was still running long and strong after all these years. A well put together scoot!

And in total contrast I was flabbergasted when this smokey old bike came chugging up the hill to the pub, clattering and clanging along. Upon closer inspection the damn thing is a diesel!!!

What the .... ?

Yep its a diesel, it even has mind boggling kickstarter ... wanna try kicking over a bike with a 20:1 compression ratio anyone? Ouch... I looked hard for the owner but he must have sensed his impending internet embarrassment and hid his cruel limp from the world, blending in with the crowd and avoiding detection.

Our pitstop over, the pack again wheeled South and powered down the old Highway One.

The pack got split into three here at the Doyalson lights. We were turning right and heading west to Morriset along a great undulating road with monster straights. A fast piece of road in anyones books.

My apologies to the sporty rider who we overtook, as he himself was overtaking a string of cars somewhere north of 140kmh. I hope we didnt scare the crap out of you too much! Ha ha.

This is the other end of that road and we're back in traffic again. The Morriset Mega-Market is near here and it seems alot of people are out shopping on a Sunday arvo. Some of the boys got the shits with car drivers cutting us off all the time and rode into the intersection sides and blocked them off, allowing the pack to ride through in one piece. Well done fellas!

Here we are around the Western side of Lake Macquarie heading North on the Freeway. The pack was stretching its legs here and stringing out over several kilometers.

A little while later we're on the off ramp and turning west into the mountains... yay!

The boys give it the berries!

Coming up on the sleepy little town of Seahampton, just ten minutes away from our lofty destination at Mt Sugarloaf.

The final leg of the trip. This is the steep winding access road up the mountain itself.

Giving her a big fistful here, blasting through the gumtree forests. I'm not entirely sure how Kristen managed to keep that camera firing all day as the bike bucked and weaved underneath her, the pair of us hammering along up and down the pack looking for good shots. She did a magnificent job considering the difficult 'off the back of the bike' shooting conditions and how cold it was.
Well done Babe!

And thats about where my Memorial run ended. I was not able to ride to the top of the mountain because of the high powered TV transmission towers up there and the horrible things they do to my HD bike alarm (they freak it out).

Instead, Kristen and I wheeled around and shot West over to Kurri Kurri for a piping hot coffee and a feed of warmed fresh crossiants from the local bakers. Kind of suited me better anyway as I'm allergic to Christianity in any of its forms.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of Christians out there who do awesome work for the community and I support them in their work whole heartedly. It's just that I'm not into their whole religon thing that they are insistent on making me listen to.