I was half woken up early, my mate's wife getting ready to leave, and leaving to go home.

We were supposed to be going home today too, but at some point in the last few days my mate had mentioned that he had more days off next week, and as I'm a contractor, I don't have to be back at work until I want to be, so we decided to add a few days on to the trip, with a coupe of nights in Byron Bay.

I went back to sleep, and ended up getting up about 10am or something. I went to have a shower, but my mate was in there, so I just went and watched some tv and waited.

When he came out of the shower, I went and had one. While I was in there, my phone had rung, it was a guy from work, and my mate had answered it and spoken to him for a bit, and he said he'd call me back in a little while.

I finished in the shower, and got ready, and came downstairs, that was when my mate told me about the phone call.

I had some breakfast, and then my phone rang again, so I answered it, and spoke to the guy from work for a little while, explained to him about getting busted the other day, and exactly what was involved, just a ticket and a court summons, because apparently rumours had been getting around work that I'd been arrested or something.

I said that because I was suspended, I'd have to start living in the pub during the week, and only go home on the weekends.

When I got off the phone, the others were in watching the end of some cheesy horror movie, so I sat and watched that with them.

When it finished, my mate and I packed up all our crap, I put the ticket back in my bag, and then we loaded up our bikes, said our goodbyes, and took off going south.

We stopped near the Gold Coast airport, and went into the servo, and my mate bought a map of the NSW north coast, so we could find our way to Byron Bay. After that we went into Subway, and got some lunch, sat and chatted for a while.

I really wanted to get back over the border, into NSW, because I'm pretty sure that they can't do an online license check, and as long as I'm not doing anything really dumb, then they won't find out that my license is suspended if I get pulled over.

We jumped back on our bikes, and we were only about 10 minutes north of the border, I felt relieved as I went over the border back into NSW.

A couple of minutes later, some stupid truck changed lanes on top of me, and I had to race out between them and the road divider, and get in front of them, blasting my horn and then giving them the finger once I got in front of them. Dickheads.

We kept going south, and we took the Byron Bay exit off the highway, and started heading into Byron Bay.

As we got on that road, lots of cars coming the other way started flashing their lights at us, we slowed down.

I thought there had been an accident by the look of what I could see ahead, but when we got closer, it was just that someone had run off the left side of the road, and the arse of their car was blocking the left lane, so we had to go on the wrong side of the road around it.

We went just past it, and then my mate and I pulled over, there was a couple of people trying to help get the car back on the road, we decided that we'd see if they needed help.

When we put the stands down on our bikes, we just about went off the left side of the road too, the grass there was really dry or something, but really slippery, we both struggled to hold our bikes up, repositioned them, parked them, and then just as we started to walk back to help the guy get his car back on the road, they managed to.

In front of the car that had been off the side of the road, was a car with its bonnet up, so assumedly it had broken down, the guy had tried to pull in behind them to help them, and had gone off the road.

The two of us jumped back on our bikes, and continued into Byron Bay.

We went around a turn, and my mate spotted a cop car/speed trap ahead, we weren't speeding (since Byron Bay is all 50km/hr), but as we went past, the cop must have jumped in his car and followed us, because when I next looked in my mirror, there was a cop following me.

Oh crap.

I just continued following my mate, he was looking for the YHA backpackers, we were weaving all through back streets of Byron looking for it, and this cop was just sitting right on my ass.

I was being really careful not to speed, full stop at stop signs, indicating, head checks, everything properly, so he had no reason to pull me over, and then after about 5 minutes, we made another turn somewhere, and he didn't follow me. Thank Christ for that.

We found the YHA parked, and I asked my mate if he'd seen the cop car sitting on my ass, but he hadn't (another case of those useless mirrors). I was shaking, worried so much about getting pulled over.

We went into the YHA, and found out they were full. The woman told us of a few other YHAs down the road, so we decided to go and check them.

I didn't want to risk riding around anymore, it's not worth it here, so we decided to go for a walk, so I locked my bag on to my bike, we walked to the next one, they were full, and they told us the other one was too.

They suggested a couple of Motels, and gave us a map, we went across to one of them, but they only had a family suite left, which was $220/night, too much.

The woman in there suggested some Motel a bit down the road, saying that everything else was full, so we figured we'd have to go there, and we started walking back to our bikes.

On the way, we went past another place, the Bayside, I figured we'd ask in there, so I went in, they had 1 room left, with a 2 night minimum stay, it was $120/night.

Sounds great, so we booked in there. The room had an underground parking spot with it too, which suited me, so then I finished up paying for that, and we walked back to our bikes, and rode up and into the underground parking under the place we were staying.

We grabbed our bags and stuff, and went up to the room.

It was pretty groovy, double bed, 2 single bunks, sofa bed, kitchenette with stove/oven, balcony.

When my mate went in the bathroom, he found there was a washing machine and dryer too, cool, I can do some washing.

This is pretty dame good for $120/night.

I poured some bundy's, and we sat out on the balcony and relaxed for a while.

My mate found a brochure in the room for the Nimbin tour, that sounds good, I'd rather pay someone to drive us in there, so we can get pissed or whatever, and I don't have to worry about riding around when I'm not supposed to be, and on terrible roads.

My mate rang up and booked us both into the tour, they person who took the bookings told us that there were 5 other people from this place going on the tour tomorrow.

We decided to go for a bit of a wander, and got some food, and perhaps buy some thongs, because neither of us had brought any.

I'd got changed into shorts again, because it was pretty warm, and didn't want to wear my boots with them, because it looked dumb, so I ended up wearing my sneakers out, which were still soaked through.

We walked up the road to Woolworths, and grabbed a ton of stuff in there, a bbq chicken, bread, bacon, coke, juice, washing powder, cheese, crackers, and other junk we needed (or figured we needed :-).

We finished in there, and started wandering back to the place we were staying, on the way we looked in a surf shop for some thongs.. what a joke, there's thongs in here for like $100. WTF?

We got back to the room, and sat out on the balcony and ate the chicken, and drank Bundy and coke.

It doesn't get much better than this.

We just bummed around in the room for a couple of hours, watching some tv, eating, drinking, relaxing.

We decided to go out to get some dinner and go to some clubs, so I went and had a shower, and got ready.

We started wandering up the road, my mate knew about this place, Cheeky Monkey's, that he'd gone to when he was here last time, so we tried to find that.

We asked some stoned chick, first my mate asked her if "she was a local", and she started rooting around in her bag, I was a bit worried that she was looking for pepper spray or something, but then she offered my mate a lighter, and he said "no, I asked if you were a local, not for a lighter", and then asked if she knew where Cheeky Monkey's was, and she said she thought it was up that way motioning up the street.

We went the way she'd said, even though my mate thought it was the wrong way, we only went a little way, and then there was a guy standing on the corner handing out dinner discount things.. at Cheeky Monkey's.. so we asked him where it was, and he told us.

We walked down the road, and found it, there was a bit of a line out the front, so we got on the end and waited.

We started chatting to the chicks in the line in front of us, but they didn't seem too interested in having a conversation.

On the wall behind my mate there was a sign saying "Please sit on the rail", which I thought was a bit strange, and when I looked around a bit more, I saw another couple of them, saying "Please don't sit on the rail", so some smartass had removed the "don't" from that sign.

We eventually got in the door, and ordered our dinner, and then went in to wait.

It's an interesting way of doing things.. you order your meal at the door, and pay, they give you the slip with your order on it, and a ticket with the number on it.

You go in, take the order slip to the kitchen, and then wait for your number to come up on the serving counter, and collect your food.

When we got inside, the place was packed out.

We eventually found a seat on the table right at the front, this place is pretty groovy, they've got stainless steel sheets on the tabletops, so you can dance on the tables.

We had a couple of drinks, and then our meals where ready, we sat and ate them, and didn't hang around much longer, because it was too packed, and too noisy, you couldn't chat to anyone, and it was too hard to move around in there.

We headed back up the street, and on the way there was a tattoo shop, so I went in and started looking through the books of designs, there were quite a few really cool celtic designs.

We kept wandering from there, going into different pubs, but it was quiet as, we'd go into pubs, and there'd be about 3 or 4 people in there, or no one, I've not seen anything like it.

Very strange, considering all the backpacker accomodation is full.. where the hell are they all?

We kept dragging around the pubs, finding the same thing everywhere.. no one.

We kept wandering around the streets, we went back up where we'd been heading earlier in the night, before finding out it was the wrong way, there was a guy up here doing fake tattoos.

I thought about having another go, not one quite so tasteless as the one my mate had picked for me yesterday.

I looked through all the designs the guy had, he had a couple of celtic designs, but none were as good as the ones I'd seen in the proper tattoo place earlier.

My mate sat down and got one done, a black streak above and below his left eye. I chatted to the guy, and said that I liked the celtic stuff, but that he didn't have the designs I liked, so he said he could draw them up, but I'd have to pay for that.

He went on to say that the proper tattoo shops will sell templates for him to do fake tats from, so I said I'd see about that.

When we'd come back from Cheeky Monkey's, we'd seen a few people in the Railway Hotel, so we decided to go there, even though it seemed like it was rough as guts, oh well, it can't be much worse than the Grand Junction near work.

We got a couple of drinks in there, and then my mate was telling me to go and chat to some chicks that were in there, I went to the bar to get another drink, and that took ages, and when I got my drink and was heading over to talk to the chicks, they left.

D'oh.

I went back and sat with my mate, there was some guy chatting to him, he was a Danish backpacker, so we chatted to him for a bit, he said that all his mates that he was travelling with were back in the backpackers, because they'd been going all week, and wanted a quiet night.

It seems the same all around the place, everyone just wants a quiet night.

He took off, and then we finished our drinks, and decided to go back to the room.

We got back there, and I was sitting with my mate on the balcony while he smoked. He went inside, and I just sat outside.

A little while later, these 5 American chicks wandered through the car park below our balcony, being loud and obnoxious, and sounding like Valley Girls.

I went in and told my mate, and then we heard them (we aren't deaf :-) come up the stairs, and they were outside our room, so my mate opened the door and started chatting to them, and they said they were going on the Nimbin tour in the morning.

He finished chatting to them, and shut the door again, and then we went to bed.