Gremlin's Tall Stories

Better late than never they say... so I should probably take a little time out to write up my take on the 2009 Grand Challenge.

Last year, the KTM was 3 weeks old, with the run in and a few parts fitted in a rushed stressed fashion. GPS had been barely used, and it showed during route planning. Promises were made to myself to know this much better when the 09 came around.

True to my pedantic self, I had done more than 20,000km on the GPS since 2008 GC, and knew it muuuch better.

Our planning started off great. Last year, Zapf and I had only left at 6.30pm, getting down to Turangi just before midnight, when we planned to leave at 5pm, and no later. This year we wanted to leave at 3pm since we had a newbie with us (red cbr600). We left just before 7pm.

Hell pizza for dinner in Taupo, then down to Turangi. On our way into the kitchen, Lee was on his way out, which panned out nicely, since we were bring our laptops in Shortly into the plotting, XP@ turns up, which meant we weren't last in like last year! The cheeky bugger wanted us to copy the route to him, but he wasn't using mapsource, I didn't have google earth etc... Zapf and I reckon we should be getting there at a proper time and selling the route in Garmin form

Finished around 2am and fell into bed.

Was woken by all the crazy early risers in the morning, a few rolls and I was back asleep. Got up late morning, staggered into the shower, bike check, check card etc, then talked shit, reviewed the route and adjusted a few points via Mapsource, as I felt that having fuel stations as waypoints when we weren't filling up could make it confusing when tired. Even met Hitcher for the first time in the kitchen having a late breakfast.

Eventually the briefing came around, everyone bolted for the last nervous toilet break and prepped. Dressed mostly for wet and waited for Group 5 (which didn't come... somehow we became Group 6). First leg past Kuratau was OK, passing a few bikes early on, but did the stop for extra wets like plenty of others.

TC at Te Uku was long enough to get names checked off as gas had already been taken on. Thankfully it was still dry, so we got to have a great play on the next leg to Huntly (cheers to those bikes that let us 3 lead off from Te Uku )

More bikes overtaken and stayed in the lead onto the Kopu straights. A wise decision, as I got very early warning of the cop when he was barely a set of headlights in the far off distance. I believe others did stop and chat tho

All in all, good time was made in the first half, with 950km put on in 12 hours. Knowing this, we took it a bit easier, with newbie in tow, we could afford longer stops. Met LBD in Whangamata, his bike made it easy. Before Te Kuiti, XP@ had joined on the tail, making it 4 bikes. Around 11.30pm, before reaching Te Kuiti, my low beam blew, pissing off Zapf using my +90% high beam Good on KTM for making it easy to change bulbs, I think I had it all done in under 10 min at Te Kuiti.

Said hello to Mystic13 for the first time (looks like I was being social on this ride) at Te Kuiti as well. The route from here was very slippery, having two slides mid corner when I got too close to the centreline on right handers, and hit tar snakes. The trip down to Wanganui hammered our moving average (before then, it had been sitting at 93+kph).

From Opunake to New Plymouth the weather got really bad, fighting strong winds and some incredible rain that reduced visibility at times to 10 odd metres. At least we weren't there when the lightning was (which we could see in the distance earlier).

At New Plymouth we'd already dropped XP@ and cbr600 and Zapf were really beginning to feel it. I was still really chirpy later on for an unscheduled toilet break around 7am. Come 9am... I hit the wall, struggling to keep my eyes open. 10am ish, it was pretty much over, but the others were still knackered. After that, I don't remember much, other than traffic getting to Paengaroa, and the cbr600 making Rotorua for gas (one of the longer legs at 230km).

Total time was 21.75 hours ish, with 3-4 hours of stopping at least I think (haven't pulled the data from the GPS yet). cbr600 crashed in his room after the Rusty's plate of food. I walked into ride control and cheekily declared to Lee: "Is that all you got?". Lee emphatically said no, he had plenty more for next year Zapf and I napped until 7pm, wanting dinner. Similar to us last year, cbr600 was out for the night, and even when offered food, a mumbled burger was accepted, but no more talking

Zapf and particulary I, with the amount of stopping (I have covered over 40,000km in the last year) felt fantastic after the ride. Could have done more riding except for the thought of clambering into the wet gear again. With the GPS, barely any deviations from route, and things ran very smoothly.

Monday, had to be up early (I'm not an early riser) around 8am to get the Rusty feed. After much faffing about and talking to people, we eventually got on the road at 11am... and got as far as Shell Turangi. Several phone calls later, some bloody road workers had taken a digger through an internet cable, cutting services to the office, affecting emails, and connections in the area (along with our hosted services).

Left Shell Turangi at midday, and spent a great 2 hours doing the back roads to Cambridge. Late lunch, then more back roads (repeated some of the GC) up to Kaiaua and more back roads home. Bit of work in the office, home around 10pm, and I guess I can consider the 2009 GC over

Forgot to mention... also met Wizards-Eugene... he took oh his first, unfortunately didn't complete, but he should be back next year to try again (just the spirit!). Haven't seen the stats posted... 84 took part, 73 finished. 1 had mechanical failure, 1 minor crash and 9 pulled out. Of significant note was that 1 was 1 of 2 who had done all previous 22 GC. Good on him for knowing his limits.