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General Bike Ravings

Biker culture, politics and general issues.

  1. HMCC Putoline Winter Series Round 3 @ Taupo

    Racing motorbikes you get to learn a lot about yourself. Things you didn't think you could do you find are possible. Fears you thought were you couldn't beat are overcome. Often we overcome physical, emotional and financial problems to do things we never thought we could do. Equally as important is recognising when you shouldn't be riding.

    The weather forecast for the day wasn't looking good. It was going to be wet all day with little chance of drying out. However, the forecast for ...
  2. out from under the tin, ... again.

    After 5 years of no bike I was asked to help pick up an Indian for a friend. I had to pillion on his other 2014 Indian Chief to go get it. took 5 mins before i was silently screaming in my lid. oh yeah. then i rode a Cheif. Having never ridden a "cruiser", it was the easiest bike I have ever ridden. A nice 50 min ride on the incredible torque machine back home had wanting more.
    about two months later.
    Wifey insisted I get another bike for sanity. so I got a 2007 ...
  3. The Half

    24/09/16

    After much planning to produce ‘the half’, it was finally time to ride it. ‘The half’ being the ‘North Island 800’, an NZ Distance Riders offering to ride 800km in 12 hours, which is being run in conjunction with the North Island 1600 24 hour event, although for some reason, I’ve never heard that referred to as ‘the Full’.

    The event isn’t scheduled until 08 October, but as one of the organisers, I had decided to ride it early to get the checkpoint photos for ...
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  4. There and Back Again - Another Hobbit's Tail

    From: 19-20/03/16

    Things have been pretty busy lately, both at work and on the biking front, doing prep work for this year’s Nth Island 1600 in October. My big job in that area right now has been fine-tuning a route, then preparing the Rider’s Guide, which was all but done except for the sample checkpoint photos, (although it did have streetview photos in there for now)… So a plan evolved.

    I decided to have a big weekend away, riding both the NI1600 and the NI800 back ...
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  5. HMCC Putoline Winter Series Round 2 @ Taupo








    Usually over winter I’ve tended to ride the odd track day and do the occasional race day. However, after the operation to remove the plate on my clavicle I’d missed everything at the start of winter. Also, with all the changes at Hampton Downs, the Winter Series has moved to Taupo and Play Day are no longer able to run there. The MotoHD days aren’t too badly priced but with the amount of rain we had over winter I had little motivation to get ...
  6. A Mayday Ride

    Cagers!! …It is so easy for us motorcyclists to use this (generally derogatory) term for the other motorists with whom we share the roads.

    I’ve tended not to use the term (or at least tried not to use it) ever since reading the book Mind Over Motorcycle by Kevin Williams, because as he put it, “Such use of language as a metaphor is more than a turn of speech, it really does affect our conceptual systems and thought processes, influencing how we perceive others, and in some cases, ...
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  7. Virgin Sux!

    This blog is in two parts. The first was written but not posted in December 2014.


    Pt 1 - Virgin Sucks!
    written 14/12/14

    We went to the Gold Coast the other week and booked via Air New Zealand but ended up flying on Virgin Airlines....partners sharing and all that jazz.

    The trip started out as a weekend in Brisbane to see the Lion King, but it seemed like a waste to go all that way for two days so we made it a week on the GC and were joined ...
  8. The Long and the Short of it!

    It’s odd really, I don’t feel like I’ve done much riding this summer, but the fact is, I’ve done one 1,000 km ride and three 1,000 milers since October and a bit of Conehead stuff since just before Christmas. On top of that there was the 1300km MDA ride before Christmas and the wee scoot up to and around Hamilton then back between Christmas and New Year… and then yesterday, a 900’ish km out and return to Rotorua to attend a funeral …all in all, over 15,000 km.

    I guess it’s because ...
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