Gremlin's Tall Stories

Thursday was the final day of "leave", but no work was required. While the alarm went off at 0800, I didn't crawl out of bed until 0845, a good 12.5 hours sleep. Damn, I felt great, not a cloud in the sky, it was going to be a great day.

Careful not to waste any of it, I sought out the Turangi bakery for a late breakfast / early lunch. Chicken and vegetable pie, filled roll of avocado, chicken and relish, and an enormous piece of carrot cake at a bargain price, I wobbled out of Turangi about 11am.

Again, I stunned the petrol station lady in Tokaanu, she commented she had barely seen another bike fill with more than $25. $45-50 wasn't uncommon for me. Leaving Tokaanu, I stopped for a pic at the lookout where the view was stunning. Searching the GPS, I found my required road on the western side of Lake Taupo. Kakaho Rd, an initially sealed road quickly turning to gravel, but more importantly it led to the Pureora Forest.

Having already been into this forest once before, I had missed some of it due to time and gas constraints. This time, I wanted to explore the roads I hadn't done and also allow me to provide the tracks to the NZ Open GPS guys, as none of the roads were on the map. This went well... perhaps too well, as the photographs will show. Sometimes, its best to know your limits before you're in the thick of it, and when you're on road tyres and walking forward to see if the terrain is possible, its usually the point at which you should turn around. Ignoring road closure signs due to washouts, or ducking and bumping your way through bushes will only lead to turning around much later However... you still get to try the road until you have to turn around.

With several roads ridden through, and another section of the forest mapped out, time was again in short supply. Heading to the other side of the forest, aiming for Bennydale, I found yet more roads I have not yet done, so *sigh* it will necessitate at least one more trip *sigh* I love the road through to Te Kuiti, so I enjoyed this once more. Ignoring the GPS, I avoided SH1 until Ngaruawahia, satisfied that I had at least done a few more back roads.

Rest of the trip as they say, is history. Nothing to write about on SH1 is there?

All up, about 4400km covered in 8 days. About 2.5 days of that was spent working. Bike ticked over the 40k mark entering Manukau, all goals achieved, and on Friday I let my boss know I need to go to the South Island next year