Touring & The Bikes You Use

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 ...

I lay around for awhile, mentally running the day’s route through my mind and finally gave-up and got-up to shower and pack. As I went to drop the key at the office, there was Lance so we chatted for a bit before I went to check-in for the ride.

The first section was to Takaka and back and this was more unsampled road for me, from Mot’ onwards. I was a little slow getting ready so we were about 5 minutes late getting away, but then, others were still arriving to check-in. This proved ...

3 Strikes for the TT2000 and we were ‘In’!
Strike 1 – We got to do a 1,000Km ride
Strike 2 – We got to do 2 of them back to back
Strike 3 – It was in the South Island and we were due for a treat!

Sailings were organised and accommodation was booked for Christchurch and Nelson, tyres were good, the bike is always ready for a decent ride, we decided that a Bronze Flyer would suffice so we could approach the ride in a more relaxed manner and come Friday at 0725, ...

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, ...

Its been hellishly cold here for a few months so have decided I needed to think about something other than the harsh winter and lack of bike or riding weather - so I am sitting here in Prague planning on touring Europe in late May for several weeks. The first thing is the bike (which is to be purchased) and am leaning towards and FJR1300/GTR1400/ST1300 or similar at this stage as I will have the wife on the back. The rough plan is to head south from Czech Republic crossing a few borders meandering ...

The Catch up Coffee run

Well because I ended up doing this run on my own, the goal was to do this run in 2 days...

My route would take me through some of the most amazing motorcycling roads in the North Island, the run would be about the riding and not so much about sight seeing.

The morning broke fine the star fill sky filled with the promise of a great start to the day....

Honored and lucky enough to live in the Waikato, I was witness ...

It was an awesome June morning... but then I new it would be.... its my favorite time of the year on the bike.... crisp frosty mornings leading on to awesome riding days.

I had 1pm appointment in Reporoa so I wanted to be on the road by 10.30 so I had heaps of time.

I turned up at the Bank Managers place to pick up Aliesha (Ali) 19 and gorgeous the BM's daughter and get on the road.

As seems to be the way I spent the next 45 minutes waiting to leave... ...