Our fearless ex-Great-White-Leader's new house is coming along slowly but surely.

The house is off the electricity grid and the new solar system is working well - it has it's own room containing all the complicated electronics, including a backup generator (which starts itself and runs for an hour or two each Sunday morning). It's nearly finished - the only thing remaining is to vent the exhaust from the diesel engine so the smoke and soot from the diesel engine can escape - in the meantime the door and window have to be open when the engine runs.

Now, Mr and Mrs-ex-Great-White-Leader felt they deserved a few days away on the boat, so off they went on Good Friday, all smiles, and armed with a great Easter forecast.

On the Sunday the generator was smart enough to start itself up and run for two hours, but sadly it wasn't smart enough to realise that the ex-Great-White-Leader had locked the door and window when he left.

Here's a pic looking through the door of the generator room at the scene which greeted them on their return. See the generator in there? ... and all the expensive electronics and battery mounted on the walls?

The Great White Leader has spent three years writing a book, and now, having finally finished it (after using five editors, and changing the title and the front cover dozens of times), has discovered that he needs someone to publish it.

Problem is – no-one seems to be interested.. He was commissioned to write the book - it's just that he failed to have a publisher in place before it was done.

One of the great cart before the horse stories!

The day after the 25th anniversary lunch, The Great White Leader presented himself to casualty at the Alfred with chest pain – he was having a heart attack and he knew it. Even Dr Google said he was.. The doctors at the Alfred spent all day doing all manner of tests on him and couldn’t find anything wrong with his heart – it actually took them half an hour to find that he had one.

Finally, they asked him to take off his shirt which revealed heaps of scrapes and bruises on his chest and ribs (see photo) – which he had incurred squirrelling into a rubbish bin the day before to retrieve a very expensive birthday cake which had been disposed of in the bin.

This story proves that self-imposed pain is the worst, and that the Great White Leader is indeed a “Hasbin”.

The Great White Leader is about to start building a new house at Foster, and it’s to be ‘off the grid’ (a bit like the man himself). He will have solar panels on the roof for electricity - they need lots of panels, so the whole north-facing part of the roof is to be covered with panels.

However, after the house design was finalised and went off to council, someone realised that …. there’s also a fireplace on that side of the house, and the chimney would shade the panels. The type of panels to be used require all panels to be getting equal sunlight, so if one panel is being shaded by the chimney, the whole roof goes out in sympathy

A whole re-design of the house was needed. It appears that Sabey is kept in the dark more ways than one…..

After riding bikes for more than 30 years, Sabey made the big announcement one day that he’d just noticed that the spokes on the chain ring side of his rear wheel (where the gears are) were almost vertical, and not on an angle like the ones on the left sidel, and asked “How long have they been like that?”

Really?

Foster and Buzz were out on Captain Sabey’s palatial gin palace boat to see the departure of Queen Mary 2 from Port Melbourne. Always one for a front-row-seat, Captain Sabey got too close to the monster ship and was immediately in trouble with the water police who were trying to protect their citizens by keeping small craft at a safe distance.

Instantly on the front foot, our man got very indignant and demanded to know the name and number of the police officer who was giving him a bad time because ... "I'm a famous radio broadcaster on the subject of sailing, and the rules for the riff-raff simply don't apply to me".

Foster and Buzz enjoyed the moment immensely.

If you were riding along the Yarra bike path, by yourself, and not being influenced by joggers, dogs or other riders, why would you run into a post at the side of the track? Impossible to explain, I know, but that's what happened.

Meanwhile the peleton rode blithely on and while Sabey was going off to the Alfred in an ambulance and having his head stitched up ... the rest of us were enjoying coffee at Laurent, cheerfully unconcerned.

Sabey was very proud of his latest and greatest, state of the art taillight that Gordo had just got into his shop. Foster, however, felt that a blue taillight should be illegal, and after much arguing the point about it with the Great White Leader, arranged for a cop to be waiting in Bourke Rd one Friday morning.

The copper was a friend of a friend and when told the story by Foster was only too pleased to help him win the argument.

Anyway, the cop pulled Sabey over because he had a blue flashing taillight and only the police were allowed to have that.

The gallant and brave Great White Leader immediately dobbed in Gordo who had sold it to him … before learning that the whole thing was a setup.

A bucket of water was balanced on the top of the door at a motel in Lorne (we can now reveal the prankster Foster had set it up in the spirit of fun). Sabey came through the door and copped the full bucket all over him.

He then spent the rest of the weekend trying unsuccessfully to find out who had done it. He even went around checking to see who’s kettle was still wet in order to track down the culprit - burning himself several times in the process. (Why would you stick your hand in a kettle to see if it was wet?)

We had a day’s ride which finished at Inverloch. The Great White Leader had clearly pushed himself that day so went to his room and promptly fell asleep and missed the dinner meeting time.

The group did discuss the merits of waking Sabes but after much discussion decided that it was much more fun to leave him sleeping.

The rest of the team went off to dinner – Sabey stuck his head in the restaurant door a couple of hours later looking mighty shitty, and went off and had dinner on his own mumbling something about a bunch of bastards he once knew. Ah – such happy memories…..

The first entry on the prangs page is Sabey going over the handlebars in Walmer St. He claimed the whole thing was the fault of the manufacturer of his headlight because he was fiddling with it as he rode down Walmer St, and braked – too hard and went right over the front.

Spectacular prang, but the dumbest part of the whole thing is expecting his mates to believe the headlight maker was responsible, especially when the instructions that came with the lights say “Don’t adjust your lights while the bicycle is in motion.”

The Great White Leader once wrote a book on the history of the Brownlow medal. Unfortunately he omitted to ask the AFL if it was OK – and it wasn’t. He printed 50,000 copies (got no idea how many, really, but it seems like a nice round number), started marketing them, and everything was fine until the writ arrived from the AFL.

Luckily he knew Leon Daphne (boss of Nissan at the time, and also president of Richmond FC), who was able to convince the AFL to be satisfied with destroying all the books, rather than proceeding to court and bankrupting Sabey. The first foray in an illustrious publishing career.

During one of the great Marauder Weekends, the group rode up around the Grampians and Sabey arranged for us to have a wine tasting at a terrible winery near Halls Gap. It was horrible. We all took one sip and left with stomach cramps.

Sabey was a bit embarrassed and ordered a case of the wine to make the people feel a bit better following the early departure of a boisterous bunch of cyclists.

The next day we rode to Cathcart Ridge Estate and had a terrific barbecue lunch there. After the lunch, the scheming Sabey sneaked into the bottling room at Cathcart to pinch a dozen labels, his plan was to soak off the labels of the terrible Halls Gap wine and stick on the Carthcart labels and then give to wine to his mates as Christmas presents.

The whole plan was good … except that he got caught pinching the labels – even the boss of Cathcart declared him a dickhead

We had dinner in the pub at Beechworth one night after a ride. Sabey studiously perused the wine list and ordered the exclusive $12/bottle of red, and then spent the rest of the night complaining to anyone who would listen (and a few who wouldn’t) that it wasn’t any good.

He still managed to get good and pissed on it, of course, which did nothing to improve his relationship with the staff who were trying to keep him quiet

In the end, with a stomach full of Dutch courage, he refused to pay, saying the wine just wasn’t up to scratch. Really?

We were in Lilydale for the start of a ride to Warburton (or somewhere). Sabey announced that coffee was required, so we stopped at a pleasant local café run by a sweet and demure young lady.

Our man 'cracked it' about the coffee, and spent half an hour behind the counter instructing the poor girl on his version of how to make coffee - despite the fact that he knew nothing about this particular machine.

All this took place not long after he'd published the first edition of the Melbourne Café Guide and had declared himself an expert in making coffee - the rest of us not so sure.