scumdog
11th March 2007, 17:26
Well, finished nightshift at 5am-ish, got woken up by the phone at 10am by CB saying when she finished work we could go for a ride to Roxburgh or somewhere seeing as how the weather was so good AND I'd been given the day off (been working too many days without days off so the boss gave me today).
CB got home and on went the tassles, temperature was above 30 degrees so the infamous skull-mask got put into my shoulder bag along with cell-phone etc and I wore a bandana instead - heaps cooler but hoo-boy, not so good for stopping the impact of buzzard-sized bumble-bees.
We gassed-up, went to Milton for CB to drop off her work phone then off up SH8 and the Manuka Gorge - mmmm, twisty road, hot surface, minimal traffic - you had to be there! (Got road rash on my tassles).
Got to Lawrence and bumped into Chris on his bronze-coloured 'zuki, stopped and yarned with him, he was on his way back to Dunedin AFTER being to Te Anau that morning intending to head to Milford but found the weather getting too crappy.
On we went towards Roxburgh, saw heaps of bikes and hardly anybody waved - HDs, sprotbikes, jap cruisers, adventure bikes, the lot - (sheeit, just wait until the 'only HD riders don't wave' brigade read this! )
Stopped at Roxburgh and had a cuppa and large filled rye-bread roll, a local reckoned it was 'over 35 degrees', sent a birthday TXT to Dangerous and 1/2 an hour we headed off back down to Island Block where CB' son and his girlfriend run a water-ski training camp 'On Edge Waterski and Wakeboard School', stopped to watch the action for 20 minutes or so then off towards Riviera of the South via the Rongahere road from Beaumont - a magic road on a hot dry day - great scenery and enough corners to keep you interested BUT watch it if the road is wet - its got a lot of lichen on it due to being screened by the overhanging trees.
(Uncanny how you can ride through ice-cold pockets of air while riding through an area like this when the rest of the area is 30 + degrees)
And then we got home, all in all a great ride despite my eyes hanging out from tiredness.
Now sitting back having a red wine.
CB got home and on went the tassles, temperature was above 30 degrees so the infamous skull-mask got put into my shoulder bag along with cell-phone etc and I wore a bandana instead - heaps cooler but hoo-boy, not so good for stopping the impact of buzzard-sized bumble-bees.
We gassed-up, went to Milton for CB to drop off her work phone then off up SH8 and the Manuka Gorge - mmmm, twisty road, hot surface, minimal traffic - you had to be there! (Got road rash on my tassles).
Got to Lawrence and bumped into Chris on his bronze-coloured 'zuki, stopped and yarned with him, he was on his way back to Dunedin AFTER being to Te Anau that morning intending to head to Milford but found the weather getting too crappy.
On we went towards Roxburgh, saw heaps of bikes and hardly anybody waved - HDs, sprotbikes, jap cruisers, adventure bikes, the lot - (sheeit, just wait until the 'only HD riders don't wave' brigade read this! )
Stopped at Roxburgh and had a cuppa and large filled rye-bread roll, a local reckoned it was 'over 35 degrees', sent a birthday TXT to Dangerous and 1/2 an hour we headed off back down to Island Block where CB' son and his girlfriend run a water-ski training camp 'On Edge Waterski and Wakeboard School', stopped to watch the action for 20 minutes or so then off towards Riviera of the South via the Rongahere road from Beaumont - a magic road on a hot dry day - great scenery and enough corners to keep you interested BUT watch it if the road is wet - its got a lot of lichen on it due to being screened by the overhanging trees.
(Uncanny how you can ride through ice-cold pockets of air while riding through an area like this when the rest of the area is 30 + degrees)
And then we got home, all in all a great ride despite my eyes hanging out from tiredness.
Now sitting back having a red wine.