General Bike Ravings

Every now and then, even Long John enjoys a short social ride (that's apart from Slow Handling Rides) and on this occasion I had to endure a very sedate pootle around the Wellington Bays.

Since the last ride was just last weekend and this week has seen some rather cool and inclement weather, the usual pre-ride protocols weren't all followed in that yesterday, I glanced at the bike since it was in the way and I had to get around it on the way to the freezer in the garage, but it didn't ...

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Wednesday morning and up at 9am, except I think Toto was awake earlier. Breakfast will be grabbed when we’ve left the accommodation (allowing more sleeping of course) at the usual bakery. We pack up, or at least I pack up while Toto repairs the mechanism on his helmet that is protesting at the amount of dust. We’re slightly over-time again, receiving a reminder, but we’re already well on the way to getting out of the room.

Toto’s (race) helmet is protesting at this gravel stuff, so ...

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The Trumpy is most definitely dead. But that means I get to start again with something else and that's not a bad thing.

I've got something lined up and provided nothing earth shattering happens in the next week or two it's a done deal, and what a deal it is.

Looking forward to telling you more soon.

Today was a Dawn ride to watch the sun come up at Castlepoint. That event was scheduled for 0715, which meant an 0500 start from Brown Owl, which in turn meant an 0330 alarm!! Yuk!

Oh well, alarm went, I slid out of bed and into the shower, dried off, kitted up and hit the road by 0407 having already checked the tyres etc last night. It was “A Starry Starry Night” and therefore we were pretty much guaranteed a sunrise viewing, the temp was a pleasant 15°, there was little traffic ...

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The alarm went at 9am, but this time there was no rush to leave the accommodation. We had two nights in Hanmer Springs, allowing us to explore the Rainbow Rd and Station without the weight of all our luggage, and also more time to do things at our pace. I wanted to leave earlier, as I knew the Rainbow would be about 3 hours, if not more, we had to do it twice and some side tracks, but at the same time, it was our holiday and time to take it easier, sample the food, enjoy the scenery and so on. ...

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It’s 9am and the bloody alarm is going off. I had used the other bed in the room this time, which while still soft at least wasn’t like the other bed which did its best interpretation of water. I’d woken during the night cold, so had stolen the other thin blanket from the other bed (this time there was a pillow and blanket for both beds, not the one like my previous stay).

It was hard packing everything up already and I could have slept longer on a better bed, but we had more riding ...

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The alarm is going off at 4.30am, our pre-arranged time. I have some 1200km to cover before completing the TT2000, which I budget to be 14 moving hours, 16 hours all up (rough maths), plus a buffer of one hour for safety, so I want to be on the road at 5am. I send a txt to Toto to confirm he’s up (as our rooms are not near each other) which he confirms and I complete packing.

Most of my gear had already been packed where it needed to be, but there are always the final tweaks. Sticking ...

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Day 3 – Friday 24.02.12 – Preparing for the TT2000

It is an early morning wake up at 9am. The TT2000 official start is at 6pm and we have to get ready for the event. That includes get the bikes all packed, chains (ok my chain) lubricated, stock up on cereal bars and water etc. I had a slight suspicion that I had forgotten to get WOF done on the bike and more importantly the old one had expired. Further check on my part reveals that it had in fact expired about 20 days ago. Oops. That's ...