Sunday ride

This is a bit of a shakedown ride for an upcoming trip to Tasmania. Back in May I decided to ride down to Tassie and surprise my parents for Christmas, so I booked my ferry and showed my mate Evan a screenshot of my itinerary. Turns out that he and his girlfriend are going as well, and we're on the same ferry down! We had been talking about doing this trip for years and it just never eventuated, all of a sudden out of nothing more than sheer coincidence, WE'RE RIDING TO TASMANIA! Can't believe it. So now my bike is all serviced and shod with new tyres, and I need a good ride to check that everything is as it should be. Evans gf Katie wants to do one big ride and try to get 1000km in before the trip, I want to check our Sena headsets for range and battery life (Katie's died after about 10 hours of talk time but she hadn't charged it before leaving, mine played music for the rest of the ride). Evan wants to go fishing so Katie and I arrange for a ride, and Evans daughter Cait loves an adventure so jumps on the back of the Harley with me for the day. I have no real plan in mind for the route other than breakfast in Kenilworth and doing the Lions Road crossing the NSW border, maybe hit Tamborine coming back. The Kate's ride up to meet me at Forest Glen and we head straight into the hills, winding our way around to Kenilworth. After eating we head south, by-passing Maleny by way of the postman's track and coming out on Stanley River rd in the middle of a massive Harley Davidson owners ride. Katie felt a little overwhelmed on her CBR500 but we headed in different directions when we reached the D'aguilar highway despite the corner markers best efforts to stop me from turning the "wrong" way - sorry guy, we're going this way. Into Kilcoy and past Lake Somerset to Esk where we take a break and decide on a bit of a route to take. From here we headed west to Hampton and south towards Toowoomba before detouring through Murphy's Creek and across to Ipswich for more fuel and a bit of lunch. Now we're headed to Beaudesert and en-route to the Lions road when we see these hay bales disguised as minions and take a couple of pictures. Stop at the border on the Lions road for Cait to play Back to the Future with the daylight saving time difference. Time is getting away from us, it's after 4pm now and we're a long way from our respective homes. Continue to Kyogle and head east across the range to Murwillumbah where its now dark and raining. We opt out of the unfamiliar roads of Tamborine in the dark and wet and head for the highway. One last fuel stop and its up the highway we go, getting rained on again past the theme parks, Cait is napping on the boring straight highway. Tunnel runs under the city of Brisbane are always good and we're home. This was undoubtedly my best day on two wheels. 99% of my riding I do solo and I'm very much looking forward to our trip to Tasmania with some great friends.