I’m sure that the RAT will have more stories to tell along its journey, some not so good, some no doubt will go down in folk law, others will be about a point in time when something out of the ordinary happened. In this one case it was the day that Bumper and I picked up the RAT from Elmore.
We had finished work and left pretty much strait after we closed the shop heading up to Elmore. With near perfect weather for a road trip we get to talking about what was too unfold in the next couple of hours. Discussion turned to Bumper’s joy about finally picking up a W650 Kawasaki that he’d been searching for and almost given up on. Then to the fact that two middle aged, balding, overweight best mates were road tripping to central Victoria to collect a 1960’s motocross sidecar, having no idea what the hell were we going to do with it. We got to the local area ahead of time and had some time to kill as Tim hadn’t finished work, so what better thing to do than join the locals in the pub for a beer.
Eventually we get to Tim’s, load the RAT onto the trailer (it’s one heaver muther) all the time Tim warning us that a big storm was on its way and that we better start moving as the bureau was predicting flash flooding in the area and he wasn’t sure that we would be able to get through. The skies looked o/k so we thought we’d be right and off we meandered. No more than 15 minutes out of Elmore mother nature had one of those F@*k-You moments and the skies opened up with rain like we’ve never seen before and hail that would strip a Honda frame of its cheap factory red paint in 2 seconds flat.
We found a big tree on the side of the road and sat it out for a while and as quick as it came, the storm left, leaving behind the biggest fattest rainbow I’d ever seen. We're back on the road at a much reduced pace as the roads are covered in 2 inches of water. One thing I learnt, 22 rims on a 6.0 Commodore SS ute are great in the dry but aren’t worth shit in large puddles. Eventually we make it to a small town (pictured) and stopped to look back at the storm we'd just passed through and assess the damage. The ute seemed to survive the carnage with no hail damage and I think the RAT had quiet Chuck Norris moment and said
"Is that all ya got"
