DougieNZ
17th February 2009, 10:13
Myself and Aly have just completed the TT2000 last weekend. What a ride!
I heard about this rally earlier in the year. One look at the web site www.tt2000.org (http://www.tt2000.org) gave me the indication that this was going to be a well organised rally. We put plently of plannig work before the ride and decided we would see how weather conditions were and how we felt before committing to do any extensions. We decided to be at the checkpoint at 0600 both days to give ourselves the best possible chance of completing the entire run including extensions.
The gist of the ride was that you rode 1000km each day with optional clips ons that would result in riding up to 1300km each day for a "flyer" trophy. To prove you have been at the various locations, then each rider has to collect a receipt (printed) showing the place, time and date. You had to check receipts carefully, as "Joes Bakery" instead of "Joes Bakery Runanga" would not qualify as valid. We got a GST and EFTPOS receipt at each place to ensure we had it right.
We stayed in central Christchurch and were at the checkpoint in Carmen Road at 0545hrs. Here we collected our day 1 start ticket and were on the way right on 0600. The trip was pretty uneventful apart from the fact that some dickhead road worker had decided to leave ankle deep thick gravel at some roadworks just north of Geraldine. I hit iit at 30 and still very nearly came off. This would qualify as the worse set of roadworks I had ever encountered in my 27 years riding. We exited the other end wondering if anyone would come to grief later in the day here... Geraldine wasa our first receipt stop. There were compulsory stops at specific loactions to get a printed till receipt that showed the location, date and time. It was certainly a chilly morning - 4 degrees as we passed through Burkes Pass on the way through to Tekapo for Aly's first fuel stop. I decided that we might as well fuel at the same time even gievn the ST's 29ltr tank. Alyson was getting about 340km out of a tank on the bandit. We got to the turn off for Mt Cook and the first extension. Decision time. Do we head for Mt Cook? One look at the beautiful blue waters of Lake Pukaki and the snow covered mountains and we were off! On the way there we heard/saw our first mufti traffic car. 55km later and we were in the Heritage Hotel for another receipt. Noticable at this stage was a lot of enforcement activity in the Tekapo - Tarras area. I later found out that there were 8 officers based here doing a blitz! I did think later that it was strange to see a mufti on the Mt Cook road. Luckily they were all playing the game and not using "stealth mode" too much! The furtherest away I got an alert was about 5km in the still clear air of the South Island. All I can say (and I said it many times during the trip) is: Thank you Mr X50 Escort! And thanks Shafty for the good purchase advice!
After Mt Cook it was onwards omarama (fuel stop/receipt). You have to love that Lindis pass on a nice day. Those lovely scenic views and sweeping corners. Some roads are just made for motorcyclists. Then Cromwell for the next clip on recipt then a stop in Wanaka for lunch. We decided to have a decent 20 minute stop here at Subway, and would look at whether we could fit the last clip-on in a Runanga later. It was generally just a simple job of keeping an eye on the odometer and time. You would then calculate the average you have achieved so far and apply it to the remaining km and this would generally give you a reasonable idea of timings.
By lunchtime we were not quite halfway, but were reasonably on budget time wise. I knew we would have to keep pushing to keep on budget though. So it was off again on another beautiful road around Lake Wanaka and onwards to Haast - another of the top 5 roads in our beautiful country in my opinion. I got Aly to top up with fuel at Wanaka so we would be able to bypass the extreme pricing at Haast. After Haast we started to push the pace on a little and I saw the timing calculations starting to ease a little in our favour. Going past the 1/2 way point at Haast always makes things a little better mentally. Unsurprisingly, Aly was starting to get a little tired now, and we decided after fuelling at Fox, that we would take a 5 minute break every hour. That worked reasonbly well to keep the tiredness at bay. We got to Kumara Junction and had a decision to make. Do we go for that final clip on or not? The organisers had been quite canny, and made it so that once you made to decision to go there was really no turning back. I did the calcs and decided that we could do it OK even with our 5 minute stops, but there wouldn't be a lot of time to spare. one also had to account for the fact that if an encounter was had with the enforcement authorities then all could be lost. The basic requirement is to be at that checkpoint by 10.00pm. Otherwise, you had wasted your day - and in fact your whole weekend! So it was off to Runanga for that final receipt and a bite to eat. After tea we back tracked to Kumara again and it was off over the Arthur's Pass. Another great road, but by this time it was starting to get a little colder and darkness was starting to envelop us. A quick 5 minute stiop at Arthur's Pass to put some more gear on and it was a quiet and uneventful trip back to Hornby from there. We arrived at 9pm, so pretty much maintained that contingency/repair hour I had calculated that whole way. We picked up a finish ticket and headed back to the hotel after a quick chat. The only really noticeble soreness for us both was the wrists. Those 1000's of gear changes during the day had really taken their toll... Not that we noticed much zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I heard about this rally earlier in the year. One look at the web site www.tt2000.org (http://www.tt2000.org) gave me the indication that this was going to be a well organised rally. We put plently of plannig work before the ride and decided we would see how weather conditions were and how we felt before committing to do any extensions. We decided to be at the checkpoint at 0600 both days to give ourselves the best possible chance of completing the entire run including extensions.
The gist of the ride was that you rode 1000km each day with optional clips ons that would result in riding up to 1300km each day for a "flyer" trophy. To prove you have been at the various locations, then each rider has to collect a receipt (printed) showing the place, time and date. You had to check receipts carefully, as "Joes Bakery" instead of "Joes Bakery Runanga" would not qualify as valid. We got a GST and EFTPOS receipt at each place to ensure we had it right.
We stayed in central Christchurch and were at the checkpoint in Carmen Road at 0545hrs. Here we collected our day 1 start ticket and were on the way right on 0600. The trip was pretty uneventful apart from the fact that some dickhead road worker had decided to leave ankle deep thick gravel at some roadworks just north of Geraldine. I hit iit at 30 and still very nearly came off. This would qualify as the worse set of roadworks I had ever encountered in my 27 years riding. We exited the other end wondering if anyone would come to grief later in the day here... Geraldine wasa our first receipt stop. There were compulsory stops at specific loactions to get a printed till receipt that showed the location, date and time. It was certainly a chilly morning - 4 degrees as we passed through Burkes Pass on the way through to Tekapo for Aly's first fuel stop. I decided that we might as well fuel at the same time even gievn the ST's 29ltr tank. Alyson was getting about 340km out of a tank on the bandit. We got to the turn off for Mt Cook and the first extension. Decision time. Do we head for Mt Cook? One look at the beautiful blue waters of Lake Pukaki and the snow covered mountains and we were off! On the way there we heard/saw our first mufti traffic car. 55km later and we were in the Heritage Hotel for another receipt. Noticable at this stage was a lot of enforcement activity in the Tekapo - Tarras area. I later found out that there were 8 officers based here doing a blitz! I did think later that it was strange to see a mufti on the Mt Cook road. Luckily they were all playing the game and not using "stealth mode" too much! The furtherest away I got an alert was about 5km in the still clear air of the South Island. All I can say (and I said it many times during the trip) is: Thank you Mr X50 Escort! And thanks Shafty for the good purchase advice!
After Mt Cook it was onwards omarama (fuel stop/receipt). You have to love that Lindis pass on a nice day. Those lovely scenic views and sweeping corners. Some roads are just made for motorcyclists. Then Cromwell for the next clip on recipt then a stop in Wanaka for lunch. We decided to have a decent 20 minute stop here at Subway, and would look at whether we could fit the last clip-on in a Runanga later. It was generally just a simple job of keeping an eye on the odometer and time. You would then calculate the average you have achieved so far and apply it to the remaining km and this would generally give you a reasonable idea of timings.
By lunchtime we were not quite halfway, but were reasonably on budget time wise. I knew we would have to keep pushing to keep on budget though. So it was off again on another beautiful road around Lake Wanaka and onwards to Haast - another of the top 5 roads in our beautiful country in my opinion. I got Aly to top up with fuel at Wanaka so we would be able to bypass the extreme pricing at Haast. After Haast we started to push the pace on a little and I saw the timing calculations starting to ease a little in our favour. Going past the 1/2 way point at Haast always makes things a little better mentally. Unsurprisingly, Aly was starting to get a little tired now, and we decided after fuelling at Fox, that we would take a 5 minute break every hour. That worked reasonbly well to keep the tiredness at bay. We got to Kumara Junction and had a decision to make. Do we go for that final clip on or not? The organisers had been quite canny, and made it so that once you made to decision to go there was really no turning back. I did the calcs and decided that we could do it OK even with our 5 minute stops, but there wouldn't be a lot of time to spare. one also had to account for the fact that if an encounter was had with the enforcement authorities then all could be lost. The basic requirement is to be at that checkpoint by 10.00pm. Otherwise, you had wasted your day - and in fact your whole weekend! So it was off to Runanga for that final receipt and a bite to eat. After tea we back tracked to Kumara again and it was off over the Arthur's Pass. Another great road, but by this time it was starting to get a little colder and darkness was starting to envelop us. A quick 5 minute stiop at Arthur's Pass to put some more gear on and it was a quiet and uneventful trip back to Hornby from there. We arrived at 9pm, so pretty much maintained that contingency/repair hour I had calculated that whole way. We picked up a finish ticket and headed back to the hotel after a quick chat. The only really noticeble soreness for us both was the wrists. Those 1000's of gear changes during the day had really taken their toll... Not that we noticed much zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz