Gremlin's Tall Stories

After countless days of waiting (Ok, about 53 days – it may as well have been an eternity) and a few phone calls, countless jibes from others saying the bike was on the Rena (yes, they all thought it was funny and they were the first to say it) I got the phone call from Ken mid Friday morning I had been waiting for.

Documents were being sent to him by the shipper, he would forward them to me, and I would take them to Mainfreight in Otahuhu, pay some fees and collect the lovely Jessica. ...

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Yeup, you read that right. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been on a bit of a bent about survival and rider training.

Ages ago GiJoe had mentioned first aid kits and that sort of thing and I had shrugged it off. Since preparing for the GC last year I have been thinking of it more, especially when I had a few close shaves with cars on some runs, or helping people broken down in the middle of nowhere. Then Katiepie had her incident and it was a further reminder that I really should ...

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Standing for the South Auckland Street Skills (http://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/sh...-Street-Skills), it’s about practising your skills safely in a car park. Nope, not wheelies and what not, it’s more slow speed handling and braking. Free to come along and enjoy the practising, it’s opposite the Manukau Central Police Station every Wednesday… check out the thread.

I’d been to the one two weeks previous, but it was cold and rain threatening, so we headed ...

Missed last week’s one, so wanted to go on this one, as I wanted to catch up with Toto, get some zip ties off him and talk about theTT2000.

Left work a little later than I was planning at 6pm and threaded my way through traffic into the city arriving shortly before 6.30pm, so not too late. Toto and the others shouted at me as I arrived, to avoid a pole when reversing… but everything was well in hand… can’t miss it and it’s not like it’s moving around aye? I believe some do like reversing ...

Yeah, fine, OK, so I’m dragging out the trip by one more blog. Look out for the book and souvenirs coming to a store near you. We’re gonna commercialise the hell of out of this. I can see the headlines now… “Harleys survive a trip with a BMW”.

Well, if you’re still reading my blogs, I’m impressed. By now you have read more than 98 pages of writing (I write the blogs in MS Word first), in excess of 64,500 words, and viewed more than 2,200 pictures. Originally, I wrote my blogs ...

The alarm rang at 7am, but I was actually already awake, waking with a start at 6.55am, thinking I might have slept in. I wanted to sleep however, so I snoozed the alarm twice. Fortunately, I didn’t sleep any more, getting up, having a remaining apple from a previous breakfast, for breakfast. I chucked all my gear into my combination of bags, as I needed to re-pack at the warehouse anyway.

I was down at the bike and ready to go by 8.15am and we left at 8.30am for the warehouse. ...

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The alarm rings at 7.30am. What was a good idea last night, to perhaps follow the group into LA is now a real bad idea. I reset the alarm for 8.30am. When it rings the 2nd time, I get up and have the complimentary breakfast in the office. It’s cereal, pastries, juice, the usual stuff.

Back to my room, I spend an hour and a half writing blogs. The extra effort is paying off, and I only have 2 days to write. I still need to post most of them however. I then pack, and taking advantage ...

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The alarm was set to ring at 7.30am to have the bag at the van before 8pm. Dave was up and about, opening the curtains, turning up the TV and generally making plenty of noise shortly after 7am, so sleep was out of the question. I turned off the alarm and took the bag down to the van, where plenty of discussion was taking place. It was a strange morning… there was seafog and it was… uh… what’s the word again? Cold, that’s right.

The bags for the San Francisco ...

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