Having achieved the grand total of 70kms Wed-Fri (I know, I know) on my brand new purchase (swoon)..............
Where was I?
That's right! Mooch. Or Moocherini as he is sometimes called, given his penchant for Italian shi.., errrr stuff, is moving to the UK for a year to join his lovely wife who is already there teaching P&O HQ how to work like a Kiwi. This meant we needed one more "last" ride so we could remind him how unpoulated NZ is and how fantastic the scenery and roads are. Plus I get to put some kms on the R6. It's brand new you know (swoon)...........
R6 induced narcolepsy. That's a tad unforeseen.
The plan was to meet up at 9am at Caltex Upper Hutt so I could help finish off a few last minute things with Mooch's intra-planetary shift in the afternoon. Anyone who knows Mooch will know that getting him up before 9am on the weekend is fraught with peril.
I woke up at 5am. I think it was a combination of what I like to call "Christmas anxiety" and the pulsating pregnant belly of my lovely wife playing a tattoo in the small of my back. Whatever, I was up, wild eyed and staring, and assembling riding gear into a pile before I was truly awake.
I arrived at Caltex Upper Hutt at 8:40 am, having successfully posted Heather and the kids off to William's under-6 Rugby game at 8am and discovered a text message from Mangell6 on my phone. "Mooch has locked himself out. Will be late. Keys are still inside."
It really isn't worth trying to make the starting time before 10am on a Mooch ride. He's useless before 9am.
With a bit of re-shuffling we ended up getting our group together, and after a chat with a husband and wife team on a "proper" Triumph Trident we headed over the Hill to the legendary Flying Fish. The roadworks are proceeding apace, and one lane of the new road is now open. We've definitely lost a part of Wellington motorcycle culture, with many people, myself included, regarding the stretch from Te Marua to Kaitoke as the best and most technical part of the "Rimutaka" ride. The best bit was the overtaking lanes that was a left, right, left combination that started tight and opened out. It was also off camber in the last, very quick left-hander, so it was great for peg scraping, knee-down practice.
Back to the point though, we now have a section at the start and end of the day's ride where we will be able to put the log jams of cars behind us. Plus given the more open and forgiving nature of this section when it is complete, there is a chance that the traffic won't concertina quite so badly. Though there will probably be lots of accidents at the first corner at the bottom of the Rimutaka hill road now, as clueless car drivers sail into the first tight corner far too fast.
The R6 is sublime. Being limited to 5,500 rpm (redline 15,500 rpm!!) puts you back into 250 days where corner momentum is EVERYTHING. It's a great way to learn about the handling characteristics of a bike, and points at gaping wounds in technique where you've used torque or the stability of greater mass to paper over the cracks. Conclusion: I suck and I'm timid. The guys I was riding with (Mooch, et al, Mangell6) kindly let me ride point, and while it was an ultra-legal ride (5,500rpm is 100km/hr in top) I still managed to overtake stuff. Slingshot did give me a hell of a fright though!
By the time we reached Flying Fish, I was starting to get the idea that maybe the R6 could just fling itself round corners. 111kms done. Chicken strips reduced to still laughable, though less hilarious levels than the ones I had when I arrived at Caltex Upper Hutt. Head screwed. I can't ride for shiznit.
We met up with flyin, Bear, and Steve on his R1 at this point. I had a lovely 2nd breakfast at Te Ika, having devoured the first at 5:30am. Whilst 2nd breakfast was being consumed, mangell6 proceeded to demolish my now fragile ego, by regaling the traditional "massed bikers" of Martinborough, with how slow I was on the R6, and how embarrassing it was to watch me be overtaken by a truck. All lies of course, but it is better to play along with our little greying pixie, or the taunting becomes much worse.
I'm off for a ride. More later.
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Originally Posted by Storm
. Half way up the clay on the road meant we had to slow a lot. Slips from the heavy rain that have apparently destroyed the Castlepoint road were very much in evidence, and any cutting we passed through had distributed a fair old amount of mud on the road. This was now dry, but had set into lumps of concrete-like patty bricks all over the road, and the trail of clay dust up and down the road was a bit of a trial for the guys going faster than me. 
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