Some days it just ain't happening. I woke up at dawns crack this morning, the sun was in the sky, not a breath of wind and a new bike sat patiently in the Garage..what would you do? Darn straight, time for a scoot.
I've got my tyres all nicely scrub a dubbed so I'm thinking I'll go and have a smoko atop Strathmore saddle on the forgotten highway, some serious bends out that way and on a good clear day, such as Today, you can see all the way from Mount Taranaki on the west coast, to the snow dusted Rupert payoo in the east.
Half a boring hours journey to Stratford and I had already endured 18, count them,18, separate 30k zones full of gravel , mud, dust and shit, there is even an old section of road that is shortly to be surplus to requirements as it's being replaced by a spanky new straight bit, so what do they do..facking tar and gravel the old bit as well just to add to the bloody mayhem.
Away onto the Forgotten highway now and all is coming right with the world, the bikes taking some textbook lines, sticky tyres , lean angles, and brakes you could only dream of when I were a lad...yum.
Had a quick smoko in one of the most picturesque spots in NZ, surrounded by chip wrappers and bottle tops and far too soon it was time to head home.
Que Rant!..... Cows, WTF is that about then, city boy speaking here, I know you can eat them and for some reason they provide us with delicious milky treats but that's about the sum total of my Cow Knowledge. Given that I'm a self acknowledged dumb ass in the Farm animal department, you won't be surprised to read that I was a little bemused to find a dozen of the buggers running loose, just around a very tight right hand bend.
Whatdya do? If I stopped they stopped, if I eased forward, they did the same, if I sped up they galloped all over the bleedin road. After a few hundred metres or so of this decidedly unfunny cat and mouse malarky, I was left with no choice but to pull over, shut the engines down and kick a rock or two, these Burgers on the hoof were absolutely not gonna play ball.
In the fullness of time a random Farmer type turned up and said "What the fuck is occurring" or something similar in kiwi. I explained the situation and being a bit more clued up than I, he suggested we heard them into a nearby field. It seemed like a plan, anybody's field was better than wandering aimlessly on the road between two blind bends.
In the distance a group of Harleys approached, you can always hear them before you see them and this fact wasn't lost on the cows that bolted up the only bolt-hole available to them, a driveway, seconds before the Harley folks came blatting round the bend. Them guys will never know how close they came to absolute carnage.
The cows however were not so lucky, as I said, they stampeded up a driveway and Barged their way across a cattle grid. Cattle grids! what the fack are they about, are they supposed to be a mental barrier where a cow saunters up and takes a look and goes "Nah don't like the look of that bastard". Or a physical barrier where a few tentative hooves probe the the gaps and find it too complimecated to cross.
Either way, It failed, some made it across by luck, three or four went down hard and one poor soul got well jammed, trying to wrench the wayward leg from out between the iron rails with all it's might. You can perhaps imagine the rest, it turned my stomach, poor fugger.
I've prattled on too long I guess, I'm just glad it's not a multi biker down thread because it came reeaall close to being just that, I got lucky because I'd only just started off from my smoko and had been adjusting position and stretching leathered legs and stuff, I was only doing 40-50ks when I came across the eye fillet units.
What's the lesson? I dunno, just be very aware that every bend on every road can hide a whole world of shit behind it, expect it and tune in to every second of every ride.
Ride safe peeps and spare a thought for our random roaming beefies
So, how did your sunny Sunday rides go.........
Bookmarks