Biker culture, politics and general issues.
Hmmm....7 weeks between blogs is just about getting as bad as Gremlin! ...and what's worse is, I can't say I've really been for a ride! I have been doing some big hours at work with weekends required to keep up and a few weeks ago I could feel myself getting twitchy, so a ride was needed, but with time being at a premium and because I couldn't be bothered doing the 30+Km to get to the Rimutakas for a fang.....I just settled for a liesurely scoot over to Makara, then back and around ...
I wasn't planning to ride this weekend as I'm flying solo at work for the next three months and figured I'd have plenty to do, but when I saw the weather was to be brilliant all weekend, I just couldn't help myself. The programmed Ulysses ride was a short/social jobby starting from Plimmerton, up to Foxton for lunch and on to Himatangi Wines, which isn't really much of a ride but one does always have to get home I guess!? With the late decision to go, I didn't get a ...
I had a couple of ride options for today with there being rides for IAM and Ulysses, but since the Uly ride was a decent one up to Dannevirke, I went for that one. Having fitted a Pilot Road 4 GT to the rear a couple of weeks back, this would be a good day to test it as I've only managed a bit of round-town riding, so I checked the tyres (needed 6psi in the rear) and washed the bike yesterday, as well as cleaning up and programming the GPS. I got up at 0815, scrubbed, ...
What a dry patch! My last blog and therefore my last ride was the TT2000 at the end of Feb. Not to say that the bike has been sitting in the garage all that time as there has been a bit of round-town stuff and of course there was the Capital Coast Conehead sessions on Wednesday nights through to Daylight savings. That was great fun, especially when Andrew would bring the GN125 along for us to practice for the Grand Ginny Challenge (Gymkhana event aimed to sort the men from the girls ...
I ended up arising around 0500 in order to give myself plenty of time to repack my panniers and set up for the day. It had really pissed down during the night but was back to an intermittent drizzly, dismal day with the temp at about 16º (when it would finally become day), ….and a few more hours kip would have been very nice thank you. We finally got on the road at 0607 and within a few minutes, my trusty GPS was telling me that I had arrived at Boddytown…..but alas there was no Doc ...
With the New Zealand endurance riding scene down to just two real rides, (The Chatto Creek 1,000 miler and the TT2000 – 2000Km in 48 hours) since I haven't sampled the CC, it's pretty easy for me to say I've just completed the best endurance ride on the NZ riding calendar!! That's not to say that it was the best ride I've been on and definitely not the best TT I've done, but as always with this type of riding, it was different, it was challenging, I rode a shitload of new roads for ...
Another quicky done and dusted! In terms of Forest Gump’s Mum’s Life’s-Like-a-Box-of-Chocolates Theory, I think this year’s box had more of those fudgy, truffly, cherry-ripey yukky ones rather than the Turkish-delighty, strawberry-creamy, chewy-chewy-caramelly Mmmmmm ones. For starters, it can’t have been a very good year because I’ve only managed to do 15-16,000Km ….pfft, how bad is that?! Both of Ann’s parents died this year so that’s been pretty tough, ...
Today was a huge relief for me because over the last month or two, things have been pretty hectic both at work and on the motorcycling scene for me and today, after the running of the Wellington Ulysses Christmas Gymkhana, I'm freed up again. It was bloody great fun but the lead in has been a bit rushed because first I had to get the C1KC, then two MDA rides out of the way so this week, I had to do the prep work of sorting the plan for the course layout, then practice the setup for ...