Riding!

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, ...

Better late than never they say... so I should probably take a little time out to write up my take on the 2009 Grand Challenge.

Last year, the KTM was 3 weeks old, with the run in and a few parts fitted in a rushed stressed fashion. GPS had been barely used, and it showed during route planning. Promises were made to myself to know this much better when the 09 came around.

True to my pedantic self, I had done more than 20,000km on the GPS since 2008 GC, and knew it muuuch ...