Anniversary memories

[Nev..]

So I have all of my photos scanned into the photos app on my phone, and it is continually popping up memories, and anniversaries in the notifications, and the other day it showed me a photo which I immediately recognised as being the vacant lot across the road from the Cooroy Real Estate offices of Davo, where we a whole gaggle of riders met up at 4pm on a Friday afternoon.  It was the 17th July 2009 and the occasion was the check-in for FarNat '09.  It was my first taste of FarRiders. 

For those who weren't around then, that was the first national Rally of FarRiders, organised by Davo Jones, checkin was at Cooroy and the rally camp was at the Deer Farm in Imbil.  I had been aware of FarRiders for a couple of years, having bumped into Davo spruiking FarRiders on other forums, but it was my first foray into organised long distance riding.

I still remember a lot of events from that weekend.  Early mornings and late nights, riding, collecting photos for scoring in the rally portion of the FarRide.  I still have vivid recollections of the first few encounters I had with other FarRiders on that ride.  Meeting Rod "TripleTreat" at a petrol station in Dubbo.  I was heading towards Cooroy, he was heading towards Melboune.  Meeting "Chasnee" at the entrance to Australia Zoo and him posing with my 'rally flag' for the required photo, and then pulling into the vacant lot to park, next to Derrick on his ZZR-600, to be amazed that I had started my FarRide 24hours earlier in Gunnedah, at the same time he was just departing from Melbourne, which I'd departed 27 hours before him.  All good memories and my first taste of what would become for me, like many others on the site, a bit of an obsession. 

Over the course of FarRider's history from there, I clocked up about 120,000km in FarRides, both official rides and various unofficial catch-up rides which people organised from time to time.  I crossed the WA border once, the QLD border 7 times, SA border 11 times and the NSW border over 30 times along the way. 

The new retrospectives feature on Spotwalla allowed me to generate the map of my FarRiding for the past dozen years.

https://new.spotwalla.com/retro/3bc1-22d15f4-4301/view

and the photo which sparked the memory is attached

[Biggles]

That Retrospectives is a neat feature- I must try it out.
What a sad thing it is that a great organisation which began there was destroyed in the same vicinity after so many wonderful years!   

[Walshy]

That's way cool Nev. Now we need to make some more great memories.