KoroJ's Blog

Shucks, another space of just over two months between blogs!! It has been Summer and early Autumn, so I have been riding but I guess I'm getting lazy and there hasn't really been any rides that have merited a blog?

We did continue doing the Capital Coast Coneheads thing on Wednesday evenings through to the end of daylight savings and that was quite good, although, after Christmas, there weren't a lot of punters turning up....and in fact on the last evening, it was just me until AndrewT turned up just as I was finishing the Winged Wheel layout. That's about a half hour of effort so it wouldn't surprise me if he was hiding around the corner waiting!?

It was good though as I wouldn't have taken that time to setup if anyone else had been there and it did highlight an issue I have been struggling with, which is the use of rear brake to control my speed. It amazes me how one can know what they are doing wrong, be told what they are doing wrong, but it can take ages or something small before the penny drops. In this case, I ended up watching a Motorman video and suddenly all was clear and obvious.

I did do a Uly club ride in early March which was the dawn ride to Castlepoint and that should have merited a blog???....but who knows? It was quite sedate, it's always good to do the odd bit of night riding, the clouds obscured any sort of spectacular appearance of the glowing orb on the horizon but I did manage a couple of ok pix within the couple of secs that there was any glow and we returned to The Wild Oats in Carterton for breakfast....and I would have been home by 1300.

Easter weekend, six of us did marshalling duties for a cycle tour in the Hutt on the Sunday and Monday. They had two legs in Martinborough on the Saturday but didn't need us for that. We did Leg 3 around the southern part of Whitemans Valley (up from Wallaceville and down Mangaroa) on Sunday morning, then a Kermess around closed roads in the Upper Hutt city in the afternoon, then Leg 5 was around around the northern part of Whitemans Valley (Up Blue Mountains and down Wallaceville). That was good fun and I managed over 500km. Those cyclists are bloody machines!

A couple of weeks back I rode up to Palmy and back as a few of us were doing a recce to try out the Daytona Indoor Raceway as a venue for our annual go karting event in June. The karts and the track are quite good but one of the reasons the event came about was to not have to worry about the weather turning off a mid-winter ride and on this occasion, I left home about 0930, travelled up SH1 to get there half an hour early, then came back throught he Wai'rapa after a cafe stop and didn't get home until 1700....so it was just too big a day. We'll stick to leaving home at 1100 for the Elsdon track (in car or on bike depending on the weather) and be home by 1500 after the cafe stop.

Today I went for a ride over the Hill as an initial assessment ride for IAM (after making enquiries about 3 years ago). It was a very nice day with not too much traffic so quite pleasant and the results probably pretty much as expected with not enough head-checks or use of indicators (and that's all he pointed out but there was obviously a shit load of other errors and ommissions) so what will be will be on that front?!

I've also spent a bit of time recently considering the purchase of a toy. In particular, a small motard for Coneheads on the basis that it will be easy to throw around having good ground clearance and tight lock, without having too much bite and is easy to manage, but will go fast enough to safely ride to carparks via the motorway. I was keen on an XR230, but $4K+ for a toy that has 40,000km on it was a bit hard to extract from my tightarse!

In the meantime, plans are underway for this year's North Island 1600 (Oct) and 1,000 km Cruise (Nov), ( www.distanceriders.org.nz ). The route will be set for the 1600 in a week or so and this year will see 1,000 km rides out of Wellington and Hamilton in an effort to offer endurance rides to more of NZ...and the routes for those are pretty much settled.

We're off to Phuket on Friday (to see how riding an elephant compares to riding an ST) and then there will be the grind of winter rides?!