This drinking game is easy. Tune in to the ABC on election night and drink when any of the following are said:

• Bellwether
• Small booths
• Redistribution
• Pendulum
• Eden Monaro
• Early returns
• Quietly confident
• The Australian people
• Notionally
• Large booths
• The door’s still open
• Too close to call
• Lindsay
• We’ll know more shortly
• Vindication
• Scrutineers
• Factional Warlords

If you really want to get smashed include the following:

• Swing
• Preferences
• Balance of Power

The advanced section for seasoned gamers is as follows:

• Two drinks whenever Antony Green has bought up the wrong slide.
• Two drinks for a cross to the tally room.
• Two drinks whenever Kerry chuckles after interviewing a losing candidate.
• Three drinks whenever Antony says that the computer is wrong.
• Three drinks whenever someone seen as a ‘future leader of the party’ loses. (This does not apply to Peter Dutton, no-one seriously believes he could lead a Shetland pony)
• Three drinks whenever a Politician on the panel refuses to concede a seat that their side has obviously lost.
• Three drinks if you can get a tweet read out on air

And for the truly committed ALP and Greens supporters:

• Scotch and razor blades if you hear the phrase “Tony Abbott is our new Prime Minister”.

My personal favourite part of the track was probably Siberia, watching the bikes power up the hill before dropping back into the Hayshed. At this part of the circuit you can really appreciate the power of the MotoGP bikes. Even with incredibly sophisticated traction control trying to improve their behaviour the bikes buck and squirm around on the track, almost as if they are trying to throw the riders into the gravel.

Casey Stoner had a customised paint job featuring the Australian flag on his bike and a new set of matching leathers, which was a nice touch for his home GP. Despite the fact that he led from very early in the race Stoner was rarely far from Valentino Rossi. Each lap we’d see them coming over the hill from Siberia and try to judge the gap between them, then a few seconds later they’d blast past us on the hill at Lukey Heights giving us another glimpse of how close they were.

After Stoner clinched the win I took the opportunity to wander across the track and infield before leaving. One of the things that shocked me was the construction of the ripple strips, there was a step down of about an inch at the outside edge between each section, with the step becoming less pronounced towards the inside of the strip. Riding over this on a normal bike, while cornering would be fairly disconcerting, to do so on a MotoGP bike at over 200km/h is simply a frightening thought.

The following morning we left Phillip Island around 6am, and finally saw some sunlight. After stopping for breakfast at Healesville my riding companions headed towards the Hume Freeway, while I continued back the way we had come. It was a beautiful day, and one of those rides where everything just seemed to click, smooth and fast. The roads were filled with bikes returning from the GP, I’d follow along at the back of a group for a while before going my own way again. The ride was mostly uneventful, the only thing upsetting my trip was my luggage rack working its way out of the brackets that hold it onto the bike when I was about 70km from home. Thankfully, apart from a few scrapes on the outside of my bag, there wasn’t anything damaged.

A 900km round trip, my first visit to Philip Island and the MotoGP, it was all intensely satisfying. There is something very special about being out on a bike, even more so when you have the chance to travel with others. My Ducati is by no means a touring bike, no windscreen, an uncomfortable seat and no paniers are good clues to figuring that out, but that’s partly what makes it so much fun to take it on this sort of trip. Sadly Mrsdave doesn’t share my enthusiasm for discomfort and no luggage, so there will need to be a change or addition to the garage before she agrees to come along with me, I’m hoping for the latter.

The house we stayed in was an interesting exercise in seeing how many rooms could be shoved into an incredibly small space, outdone only by the bonus round where an attempt was made to fit as many beds as possible into the afore mentioned small rooms. The only consolation for me was that as the Dave from Albury Compound has the smallest bathroom outside of a Collins class submarine, I had no trouble with the tiny bathroom in the rental house. The most important thing about the house was its proximity to the track, and on that detail it scored quite well, but I did wonder why on earth anyone would stay there during the 49 weeks a year that there’s no big motorsport events on.

Friday morning gave me my first chance to see the track, and my first taste of Phillip Island weather. We got to the track a little after nine and the support classes were already buzzing around the track. The ground was sodden from the previous day’s downpour and I’d barely gone fifty metres beyond the main gate when I found that the walkway I was on wasn’t as solid as it looked, as it unhelpfully bowed underfoot leaving me and everyone else with wet shoes from the unseen puddle beneath. We walked along the main straight, where a familiar string of catering and merchandising tents were assembled, and on to the exhibition hall.

The exhibition hall, unlike the one at the Formula One, was jam packed full of stuff you’d like to buy. All of the major manufacturers had bikes on display and merchandise, and every other nook was stuffed with accessory manufacturers, tour operators and promo girls wearing leathers. Only the limited space in my bag and the fear of Mrsdave’s wrath stopped me from collecting a host of extra bits for my bike. I eventually settled for a GP stubbie holder, a Casey Stoner one and a Casey Stoner beanie. As it turned out, the beanie was an essential piece of gear over the weekend.

After looking over the varied bikes in the show and shine, and making a brief stop at the XXXX gold bar, we made our way around turns 12 and 11 and up the hill to Lukey Heights. The view was fantastic. One of the most appealing things about Phillip Island is that because of the way the track is laid out you can see half of the track from almost any point. From the Lukey Heights stand you could see the bikes coming out of Siberia and towards the Hayshed, where you lose them momentarily until they roar past you and down into MG. The bikes are visible again once they’re in turn 12 and then you can see them all the way through Southern Loop until they drop down hill towards turn 4. This is all against the backdrop of Bass Straight, a prettier race track you could not ask for.

It’d been over twelve months since I’d covered any serious distance on the bike, which, along with the damp roads we were riding on, led to a little bit of trepidation on my part. However, as we covered the familiar road to Beechworth, then Miliwa and Whitfield, my confidence returned, cornering felt more natural and I began to relax and enjoy myself. We stopped in Whitfield for breakfast and what had been drizzle turned into rain, so we broke out the wet weather gear and headed off for Mansfield.

The road between Whitfield and Mansfield is a wonderful mix of tight and fast corners through some beautiful scenery. We weren’t lucky enough to see that scenery because in addition to the rain, we had to contend with fog, or low cloud, that meant visibility rarely stretched to the next corner. There is something especially unnerving about seeing high voltage power lines appear right in front of you, at what appears to be head height, with no armco barrier between you, just a significant drop.

At Mansfield we stopped briefly for fuel, then headed to Alexandra and Healesville through country that had been hit hard by the bushfires last February. Riding through Taggerty and Buxton it was incredible to note how the smell of charcoal still lingered in the air, while behind the regrowth, the blackened tree trunks provided a stark reminder of just how much of this area had been affected.

As we approached the Black Spur the rain became heavier again, not letting up until we reached Healesville for another fuel stop. It was at this point that I realised how drenched I really was. My gloves and glove liners were completely sodden, as were my boots and socks. I wrung the excess water out of the gloves, tossed the liners in my bag and we hit the road again, hoping that the rain would hold off.

The rain held off until the exact moment that we turned off the Bass Highway and onto Phillip Island Road. This was rain like I’d never experienced while riding before, accompanied by gusts of wind that pushed the bikes around in their lane. At the bridge to the island at San Remo the rain was so heavy we couldn’t see across it, but just as we entered Cowes we were bathed in sunlight which remained just long enough for us to get to our house in Ventnor, put the bikes in the garage and drag our gear inside.

We’d covered four hundred and fifty kilometres through appalling weather, without a single patch of dry road the entire time, we were wet and so was a lot of our gear, but the day was intensely satisfying. Hot showers and cold beer fixed most of the niggles, while our wet gear ended up near the heater. I wouldn’t have swapped the day for anything.

Although I’ve gone to the Formula One Grand Prix in Melbourne semi-regularly since 1999 this will be my first trip to the MotoGP. It was an impromptu arrangement as a spare slot became available in someone else’s party, so I’ve never actually met any of my travelling companions. The good thing is that there is a type of bond that instantly forms between people who own motorbikes, a shared experience that sets us a little bit apart from most people, so I have no doubt this’ll be a chance to make some new friends.

The other thing that I’m excited about is that compared to the Formula One, where unless you’re a V8 Supercar fan there’s very little worth watching other than the F1 sessions, at the MotoGP there are enough classes racing to ensure that there are almost constantly bikes on the circuit.

On the down side, the weather is looking particularly nasty this weekend. Unsurprisingly, southerly winds at Phillip Island are notorious for chilling you to the bone. This makes the challenge of packing one small bag even more difficult.

I’m hoping to see Casey Stoner take out his third Australian Grand Prix in a row, it would be a fantastic way to silence the doubters who claimed that his mid season hiatus spelt the end of his career. Most of all though, I’m just excited to be going, to share the camaraderie and to finally hear those MotoGP bikes with my own ears.

I support the Saints.

There’s every chance that I’ll be in very deep trouble no matter who wins today.

I’ve decided to condition Mrsdave by showing her videos of Brendan Fevola to reinforce my credentials as a good husband, in the hope that I’ll be allowed in the house after the game is over.

Saints by 13

This year, lucky GP Advantage ticket holders have received a cap and a commemorative pin.

It seems that lime green is in at the GP this year.

The photo really can’t give you a full understanding of how cheap and nasty this stuff is. I described it earlier as a cap a ball boy at the tennis would be ashamed of and a pin that an exchange student would reject, I don’t have much to add.

However, after years of seeing people at the track wearing the dodgy caps given to them as part of their Qantas Holidays GP package, I have no doubt that we’ll see plenty of these caps at Albert Park this March. With that in mind I’ve devised a game.

You get one point for spotting a pair of people walking or sitting together wearing the cap, you get to double your points for every extra person in a row with the cap on. eg. Three people with the dodgy cap, two points. Four people with the dodgy cap, four points.

If you can spot the pin anywhere you get five points and if you see the Holy Grail,  the pin attached to the cap, you get a whopping 25 points. The multiplier rule also applies to pins, so if you can spot four pins on hats in a row you may as well take the trophy home right there.

The best thing about this game is you can play it anywhere in Melbourne on GP weekend, you don’t even need to be at the GP. With that in mind I’m going to make up half a dozen score sheets for the Save Albert Park protesters so each of them has something to do all weekend.

Jeff Kennett, presently the President of the Hawthorn Football Club, was speaking to the ABC about how he felt seeing his team in the AFL Grand Final.

Bogon? Bogon? Yeah, Jeff’s a man who’d fit right in with the cheer squad on the boundary.

It seems to me that Princes Park perfectly fits the description of a ’boutique stadium’ that could hold a smaller number of games than Docklands and the MCG and I have no doubt that it would cost far less to put light towers up there rather than building an entirely new stadium on another site. I suspect, however, that having spent so much energy disparaging Princes Park in the past, the AFL won’t seriously even consider returning to this suburban ground.

So it’s time for Victorian taxpayers to subsidise the AFL yet again. The chances of the AFL actually paying for a new stadium are close to zero, they won’t pay for the land, they’ll get any number of Government grants to help fund the construction and then, no doubt, force a team or two to relocate so that the ground has a bit of a crowd turn up. Don’t forget that these two expansion teams are to be based in New South Wales and Queensland, meaning that Victoria will be subsidising other states purely for the economic benefit of the AFL.

I guess that the State Government figures that more footy is a cheaper way to shut people up than building adequate infrastructure.

Kevan has expressed dismay about this turn of events because he believes that,

“It has dented my reputation quite seriously.”

Sorry Kevan, but that’s pretty hard to swallow. After your involvement with the IOC bribes scandals, then stitching up Phil Coles for behaving much like yourself, ensuring that your daughter was the first Australian to carry the Torch in the lead-up to the Sydney games, displacing another young woman, and your defence of the Chinese government’s torch relay goon squad, no-one really places much stock in your reputation Kevan. The only people left who want to deal with you are the equally dubious members of the Olympic ‘family’ who are jostling for their turn at the trough.