Touring & The Bikes You Use

Another weekend, another ride. Thinking of a route during the week, I didn't know what to choose. Reading the wandering comrades threads about his new bike, I thought doing some of that might appeal, but couldn't be bothered going to Wellington. I did think him suffering through snow, hail, rain etc was typical of him, but then, the weather wasn't that surprising.

Reading MSTRS thread late on Friday night gave me the hatchings of a better plan, and an excuse to pop over the Napier ...

I've been telling myself I need to get back into riding. As usual with winter, the weather is crappy so not exactly appealing, and there's always some sort of work to do, so you let the riding slide. Problem is, I enjoy the long rides (600-800km, or more), so there is an element of riding fitness. Stop that sort of riding, and your fitness drops away. I don't drive, but around town riding for work or odd tasks doesn't compensate.

The weekend of 22 August rolls around, and I start ...

Thursday was the final day of "leave", but no work was required. While the alarm went off at 0800, I didn't crawl out of bed until 0845, a good 12.5 hours sleep. Damn, I felt great, not a cloud in the sky, it was going to be a great day.

Careful not to waste any of it, I sought out the Turangi bakery for a late breakfast / early lunch. Chicken and vegetable pie, filled roll of avocado, chicken and relish, and an enormous piece of carrot cake at a bargain price, I wobbled out of Turangi ...

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Tuesday...

Early alarms were an old joke by now, but 0500 still wasn't an easy rise. This time, it was a ferry at 0630, check in at 0530. The owners had kindly left the complimentary breakfast out for us, knowing we were leaving early. Hastily consumed, gear packed, the other two bikers staying at the backpackers had already left several minutes prior.

They didn't get far ahead... one vehicle in front of us in Lane 9. No chains out again on the ferry, so a bit of fiddling ...

Finally... an alarm that sounds after the sun has risen and the birds have started chirping. Set the alarm for about 0830 if I remember rightly, but we probably only got up around 9am. Finally able to take our sweet time getting ready, we did just that, away from the accommodation around 11am.

Toto was once again doing the long route to Picton (such is the luxury of not having to work), so... fingers crossed, he was going to make it to Picton. In reality, he would probably make it ...

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Cursed alarms... 0500... this was hard work, but at least my back felt a lot better than the previous night... These rides are hard work at pace on a naked, but hey, they were great in corners, which is what I wanted.

Doing the maths last night, I had decided that with being more tired on the 2nd day, getting 2800 points in the bag on the first day, it would be extremely unwise to push for the remainder of the required 7000 points to get a gold award, and scaled back my ride for Sunday ...

The alarms came at 0430, much too early for my liking but no choice to be had and after half a year of waiting (I didn't do the first as the bike was in the shop being repaired) the 2010 TT2000 was finally here.

Showered in the freezing cold... damn toilet block was separate and breezy. Gear was put on and packed into the luggage with the noise of bikes constantly going past and we headed the 7km down the road filling up our tanks and grabbing some drinks for later in the day. At ...

Thursday morning, we packed and set off. Toto proudly claiming on MSN he had barely looked at the website, had just finished planning his routes and generally giving the impression that he was following me, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. (There would be a recurring theme that Toto barely ever knew where he was, didn’t know any town names, and couldn’t remember any from the discussion we had had for the past 5 minutes).

Set off from the BP Autobahn on Thursday at 10am (a bit late, ...