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My Coast to Coast.

This was going to be a ride to photograph the sunrise off the east coast, then photograph the sun setting off the west coast at the end of the day. The end didn’t work out quite that way for reasons I’ll explain later.
I had wanted to do a night ride on the scooter, and as I had to be on the east coast before dawn this worked out for me.
At midnight I pushed Buggsy out the front gate and we were off. First the back road to Lemmington, then up Maungatautari rd to hit SH1 at Piarere. Only met two vehicles between there and Tirau. There, the tin dog building was lit up by lights that changed colour so I took my first picture of this creation.





It doesn’t appeal to me at all but it is something different. After Tirau came the Mamaku hills. I was only wearing a thermal top, and heavy shirt under my riding jacket. The inner thermal lining had been removed a few weeks ago. I should have put it back for this trip. The temperture was a few degrees lower over the Mamaku’s. Chilly but the moon, clouds and the stars made a perfect night vista. One truck was all I saw untill I got to Rotorua. Filled Buggsy up at the BP on Fairy Springs road, a couple of hot sauages to warm the insides and we made our way down to the lake front. I had a stretch and took the 2nd photo.





After waiting for the locals to turn up and start a fight, rob us or do whatever tourists get done to while in Rotovegas, we headed out of town, Infact, there was no one out anywhere. Lots of resealing from Te Nae road and on SH30 through the Rotoma’s. I tried for a photo of the lake with the moon reflecting off it during a rest by lake Rotoiti, but the night scenery mode on the camera is crap, so I flagged that idea. A couple of trucks went past but through out this night, the traffic was quite sparse.

The lights on the scooter are surprisingly good and for the speed I ride at ( 75 – 80 kph ) give a reasonable spread and distance. One annoying feature in the name of safety are the warning signs. My understanding is that sometime ago the clowns decided to double the reflective coatings of the road signs. As a result, some of the yellow signs indicating corners are so bright that seeing past the sign to follow the actual road is bloody hard. Other than that, the Rotomas’ were a ball.
The day before this ride, I had a new rear tyre fitted, but I stuffed up the size when ordering and so finished up with a lower profile tyre than the original size. ( down from 90 to a 70 profile ). As a result the top speed is a bit slower, but the pulling power is better. Tight corners and a light quick scooter makes for lots of grins and makes up for the lose of open road performance of bigger bikes.
We turned off sh30 into Grieves road, and took a number of roads untill we reached the Westbank road. This ended at the Thornton beach car park. I could hear the surf just out of sight, so tried to get some shuteye on the ground and wait for the dawn. Couldn’t nap so poured a lukewarm cup of tea from my ‘made in China’ thermos. And had a snack.
Eventually shades of light started to appear so I got the camera sorted and waited for the sun to spring up from beyond the sea. The bastards that taught me the sun rises from the east and sets in the west were talking crap! The sun rises from behind Whakatane. Here’s the photo to prove it.




This is looking across the Rangitaiki river mouth towards Whakatane. I took a number of photos so have included a couple more. As the sun came up I got this one looking back along the Rangitaiki river to Mt Edgecumbe otherwise known as Putauaki.





Among the photos I found three I tried to make a panarama of. The programme didn’t do a great job, but I have included it anyway.





My last photo is of a decent size bit of driftwood. If this is just part of a a tree covered by sand, it must have been here for a while.






About 7 oclock I was ready to start my trip back across the island. This isn’t the widest part of the north island but it was where I had decided to start from.