James Deuce
19th April 2004, 07:03
Well I'm the kind of person who likes to go on group rides, because I like other people's company (it helps drown out the voices in my head, but that's another story), and since getting a bike a couple of years ago, some of my old riding buddies can be a little difficult to entice out for a ride.
I'd bumped into various people who had all bought bikes in the last couple of years, but hadn't really established a group or found many other people of a similar age who they were comfortable riding with. This gave me an idea, so I "organised" them into a ride. Our first ride was booked for Sunday 4/4/2004, and we formed up at the "usual" Wellington formation point, Caltex Rimutaka. Now the people at that Caltex station are a bit slow if you ask me. There's a giant vacant lot next door, and they get a couple of hundred riders meeting at their gas station - Ace Cafe anyone??
Excuse the digression! After the normal complaints about people who ruin other people's Sunday lie in and then turn up late we discussed the route, and I discovered that these folk had never seen any of the roads we were going on. The three guys I met up with are all older than 34, and have nice bikes. Malcolm has a 996, Eric, and GS1200ss, and Paul has a CBR600F3. I wanted to get an idea of how they rode so I set 3 stops in the first hour. The roadworks at Te Marua/Kaitoke can be a bit of a challenge, and the 2 or 3 inch high sharp rocks protruding from the road bed made me expect an early stop to proceedings due to slashed tyres. Didn't happen thank goodness.
Our first stop was set for the top of the Rimutakas and to cut a long story short I had had a challenging week to say the least. I was really looking forward to the ride, but I was carrying a much higher level of aggression than usual. I probably shouldn't have been riding if I had been sensible, but bugger "sensible" for a game of soldiers. Suffice to say I got to the top of the Rimutaka hill, and had time to remove helmet, get camera out and take pictures of everyone arriving. That sort of set the tone for the day.
I whistled down the other side of the hill, doing stuff that I'd always scowled at in other riders - overtaking 5 cars into 25km/hr corners, pulling gentle wheelies past annoyingly slow and blind cars and trucks (there's heaps of passing bays on the way down, and 6 ft deviation off line would make it easy for the average bike to pass - what is wrong with these people!!?) and generally being "anti-social". I stopped at the bottom in Featherston, and waited, and waited, ahhh there's Malcolm, and waited, and waited, ahhh Paul and Eric. I started up my bike which had cooled off so much it needed a bit of choke.
More to follow....
I'd bumped into various people who had all bought bikes in the last couple of years, but hadn't really established a group or found many other people of a similar age who they were comfortable riding with. This gave me an idea, so I "organised" them into a ride. Our first ride was booked for Sunday 4/4/2004, and we formed up at the "usual" Wellington formation point, Caltex Rimutaka. Now the people at that Caltex station are a bit slow if you ask me. There's a giant vacant lot next door, and they get a couple of hundred riders meeting at their gas station - Ace Cafe anyone??
Excuse the digression! After the normal complaints about people who ruin other people's Sunday lie in and then turn up late we discussed the route, and I discovered that these folk had never seen any of the roads we were going on. The three guys I met up with are all older than 34, and have nice bikes. Malcolm has a 996, Eric, and GS1200ss, and Paul has a CBR600F3. I wanted to get an idea of how they rode so I set 3 stops in the first hour. The roadworks at Te Marua/Kaitoke can be a bit of a challenge, and the 2 or 3 inch high sharp rocks protruding from the road bed made me expect an early stop to proceedings due to slashed tyres. Didn't happen thank goodness.
Our first stop was set for the top of the Rimutakas and to cut a long story short I had had a challenging week to say the least. I was really looking forward to the ride, but I was carrying a much higher level of aggression than usual. I probably shouldn't have been riding if I had been sensible, but bugger "sensible" for a game of soldiers. Suffice to say I got to the top of the Rimutaka hill, and had time to remove helmet, get camera out and take pictures of everyone arriving. That sort of set the tone for the day.
I whistled down the other side of the hill, doing stuff that I'd always scowled at in other riders - overtaking 5 cars into 25km/hr corners, pulling gentle wheelies past annoyingly slow and blind cars and trucks (there's heaps of passing bays on the way down, and 6 ft deviation off line would make it easy for the average bike to pass - what is wrong with these people!!?) and generally being "anti-social". I stopped at the bottom in Featherston, and waited, and waited, ahhh there's Malcolm, and waited, and waited, ahhh Paul and Eric. I started up my bike which had cooled off so much it needed a bit of choke.
More to follow....