Yes well, another one gone and another one gone and another one bites the dust! The plan for 2012 was to do the Awakino Gorge and around the mountain (ie Mt Egmont/Taranaki), so that's what we did with a few diversions via Mauriceville, Halcombe-Stanway and Aria thrown in for good measure and to provide the 'road-less-travelled' requirement into our mix. The lead-up for me was to resurrect and check the route out of the archives, since it was an option drawn up 2-3 ...
This year's C1KC (or Capital 1000Km Cruise) actually started for me about 2 to 3 years ago when playing with Google Maps &/or MapSource to come up with some options for a nice wee pootle. With the Awakino Gorge probably rating in my top 5 rides in the country, I thought, “that would be nice!” and set about seeing how it could be done within the prescribed Km's …without being predominantly a horrid boring grind up and back on SH1 & SH3. Well that can't be avoided really, but we did OK. Anyway, the ...
Sunday Up at 0700, no-one had really discussed what time we should be getting up in our room, but it seemed everyone liked the time and ran with it. I had a breakfast of Countdown supplies and most of us were ready to go before Qkkid had even surfaced… slow bugger! He tried revising what time he had said, but none of us were having it. Before heading out I headed around the corner to get gas then returned and everyone was ready to go. Mplant was joining us for the day’s ...
Saturday Last year I’d had to skip the Gathering as I was mid prep for my USA Trip and my bike was somewhere on the ocean anyway. This year there were no such problems, so why not catch up with a few folk I don’t often see. We met at the BP Papakura Autobahn… for once, I was actually early, around 0815, with barely a soul in sight. GiJoe came out of hiding in the shops, but declared he only had a daytime leave pass, so would return to Auckland some time during the day. ...
Sunday I’d initially decided to have a reasonably early start around 0800 or something, but couldn’t be arsed getting out of bed so took my time, eventually slouching through to the main diner area for some breakfast of cereal and fruit. Having got the day off to the right start I left the Diner shortly after 1000, popped into Taupo for the day’s gas and got into the country around 1030, heading along SH5. First stop was a gravel dead end into the Kaimanawa Forest Park ...
Thursday My 4th trip since I started blogging, involving riding for work, she’s a hard life indeed. The usual drill that the boss was prepared to fly me down and that budget would be spent on riding down instead. Having a biker for a boss certainly makes it easy. This trip was to sort out the move of a client’s branch office and install some VOIP phones for future development work, so what also made this trip easier was the capacity of the luggage to take several IP ...
An alarm at 0730… man I could have slept another couple of hours but it’s not an option if I want to do more adventure riding. This time I packed everything up, chucked the panniers back on the bike, returned the key and headed into Taupo to re-fill the tank and have a quick breakfast. There was no cute chickie smashing her car into the pole this time (I reckon the 2 pumps are perfect for bikers) but an older guy in his nice shiny Merc was keen to give it a go. I guided him ...
The ride had technically begun shortly after 9pm the previous evening, after finishing work and heading home to pack. A quick dinner, packing (really should have done it the previous night, to give me some extra time) and I was heading out of Auckland shortly after 9pm with an ETA of 0015. I got a real surprise while still passing through suburbia to see a guy in a camera van hunched over his equipment, with my lights showing every little detail. The usual route south was reasonably ...
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