so me and my brother paulo were out for a curry one evening a few weeks back, driving along napiers carlyle street when pauls says 'shit, turn around i just saw a bunch of young longhaired guys with shitty old bikes! so i did just that, and there parked in the countdown carpark were five guys on old bftp machinery long hair, beards, studded leather punk style jackets etc etc you get the picture anyway one look at the and i thought they were from a norwegian death metal band and expected them to have thick european accents, but turns out they were from christchurch and were on the homeward stretch of a tour around the north island..theyd gone up the west side all the way to cape reinga, then down the east coast to napier where we met them, there was initially six of them, but one was back in gisborne hospital with a broken thumb and busted elbow after a but of an off on his (apparantly seriously scruffy) gs750 suzuki, the rest of the bikes by their own admission were all without reg or wof and were all rough as guts, bits missing, bogus bits added, semi cafe'd and generally loaded to the gunnels with their gear (old frame packs,tents,army ammo cases tied on with twine etc) this luxury lineup included a honda gl400 with vetter styled bikini fairing affixed bought one day before the trip began by owner 'sonny' cos his old tx500 was playing up. a gb500 owned by sam and bought two days before the trip, was his first bike and first ever real ride a gpz900 ninja minus fairing owned by axle (mattblack helmet with no visor) which he said had some serios headshake problems hehe then there was maddog on his heavily cafe'd suzuki gs450, airbox,dash and rear gaurd/tail light/numberplate setup all removed, a set of super low clipons attached and a mountaibike digital speedo fitted. he also had bought the bike just days before embarking because his sidecar'd r100 bmw was playing up lastly was a young guy on the vfr750 with broken and flappy fairings and a butter knife for a clutch lever! anyway after a bit of a chat, they asked directions to anywhere in napier they could setup camp aparantly theyd slept rough every night on the trip, under a tent fly which they draped over the bikes and slept on the ground under/inbetween. on everything from sand to gravel and grass, eaten by mossies at goat island, in an old abandoned building at waitangi (where they swam early in the morning whilst ceremonial waka were being launched alongside.all their cooking was camp style. so i said come and camp in my backyard, they were stoked and came over with beers and red wine (cask of course!) and we all had a good chinwag about bikes and their trip sofar, music etc (they were all in bands,punk and heavy metal etc) i played 'terra circa' for them a dr350 epic tour of europe and they loved that and vowed to do something similar one day a couple of them crashed on my foldout couch and the rest of them on the floor in my backflat which was vacant at the time. next day they cleaned up there dishes and bottles etc and were all grateful for the hospitality etc, then they headed off, vowing to stop in next year to see if i wanted to join them (four of them had done the same trip the year before) what got me the most about these guys is that they were getting maximum enjoyment out of life and opitimised the essence of youth,freedom and motorcycling they all had jobs to return home to..and were all aged between 20 and 23 years oh, and the name of their little bike club? THE RUNGAS ROADWARRIORS! they were deadset keen on the madmax movies...i told them they should look up bftp!
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Good on 'em. Nice to see some fun things have not been stamped out. PS: Add a lot of grey hair and cries of "Ooh, me poor old back" and you could have a BFTP outing...
At first glance I thought it was photo from the 80's..... good to see some guys slumming the dream..... I wonder if their parents ride old Brit bikes and drive Kombis....
yeah funny when i saw them at the supermarket i they looked like a post apocalyptic vision from the 80's must admit my backyard lends to the 80s theme too, valiant charger rims etc
as for parents..the guy on the vfr750 said his mum rides an xl125 on the road, and he himself has a roadlegal '76 xl250 which was his first bike
