Anyone heading to Gladstone Trail Ride Sat 3rd Dec - Masterton

[nomnomnom]

Im more than likely heading over, being a Saturday is good for me, I like a days rest/recovery before heading back to work!

Keen on catching a ride with anyone heading over (will contribute to gas $ and conversation) but if I cant get a ride I’ll source a car to tow my trailer and will have room for someone to tag along with me. I live in Te Horo so lots of opportunity to pick someone up along the way.

Would be great to meet some new people from the site  and also have someone that can watch out for me and help scrape me up when I come off hahaha


Jess – 021 121 38893

[Pornstar]

hey there, jeez i wish but as i work weekend night shift....fail, darn. very cool to see your hungry to ride posts. go hard and enjoy.

[nomnomnom]

Cheers!

I wanna do desert storm next year so will def need a lot of practice to be good enough by then. hacking round the back paddock aint enough variation to teach me much...

[pete.ktm]

hey jess

im in wellington so a bit of a hike to pick you up in te horo then get to masterton but can possibly give you a lift for the otaki/levin/fielding rides.

'cept it looks like we'll be going to the tora ride this weekend and gladstone the next weekend and thats it until next year.

don't think we've ever done the gladstone ride before so not sure what the terrain is, the wairarapa rides tend to have a few more hills than the horowhenua rides but all pretty rideable.

[nomnomnom]

ooops double post!

[nomnomnom]

hey jess

can possibly give you a lift for the otaki/levin/fielding rides.

sounds good to me im up for any rides on weekends, im trying to stick to saturdays for now, as I need sundays to recover lol. i cant believe how sore im getting after riding! i guess that means my body is getting fitter and will get used to it??!!

even if your just going up my way/past to go out to a beach or random place somewhere, im keen i dont know many places close to home where ya can just go ride at anytime.

[nomnomnom]

no one goin?

[motor_mayhem]

Myself and a few other characters you're familiar with will probably go there.

[nomnomnom]

I saw ur message on fb Patrick, ill have to get onto transport there... dont really want to make the other half drive me all the way over and sit in the car while i ride bwahaha

[thecharmed01]

sounds good to me im up for any rides on weekends, im trying to stick to saturdays for now, as I need sundays to recover lol. i cant believe how sore im getting after riding! i guess that means my body is getting fitter and will get used to it??!!

Problem is, most of the good rides are on Sundays.
It's weird that this one is on a Saturday.

We'll be over there with Paddy. We go to almost all the rides and this is the last organised for the year, so not going to miss it.

We've not done this one before as there were always better rides on. The Wairarapa rides I've done so far haven't been all that great, although the recent Featherston ride was awesome so I'm hoping that this one might be good too.
The one's I've ridden have been all pretty bumpy and dry, but not overly hard, although one was a real pain as it was full of awesome long straights with nasty hazards at the bottoms. So screaming down the straights required good brakes and was just annoying.
It's been much wetter this year than the last couple of years which I hope will help with the bumps. I'd much rather ride mud than when the ground is rock hard with no grip!

[thecharmed01]

Didn't see you there Jess?

Was an okay ride... but it was tough going in the morning when the dew was out. Lots of up and downs and wet grass, made it entertaining playing "who's gonna slide out first" while idiots were flying past me, then assing off in front of me haha.
Once it dried out, it was pretty fun. Good climbs, crazy grass downs, bumpy dry clay tracks and only a few little mudholes.

I'm not sure we'll bother with it next year though as it was one of the most expensive rides to do and there was a lot about it that wasn't great.
It was badly organised and there were little or no directions on the flyer on Silverbullet. We spoke to several people at Rimutex who were actually heading to Martinborough (and to be honest, I'd done the same thing) as there are two of that road over the hill and if you didn't put Gladstone into Google Maps, you ended up thinking you were supposed to be about an hour south of where you were suppose to be! Lucky we chat to strangers, they were most grateful to be pointed in the right direction.
We were late, (so late we missed briefing) and we nearly missed the tiny red arrow in Carterton. Friends saw it and warned us in time though. Would have been nice if they had a proper sign directing people to the ride from town. The arrow was unexpected where it was as Google Maps told you to go a lot further before turning.
No one told us when we arrived that we'd missed briefing either. Thankfully one of the people parked near us gave us a heads up.
There were a lot of things about the organisation that were lacking also, as when we arrived, no one mentioned that lunch was a paid affair. There was nothing in the advertising to say that we would need to bring cash for lunch (and seriously, what riders bring spare money to a ride?!?!?!?!) and no one mentioned it when we were registering that we might need money for food/drinks. They didn't even provide water for free. So to turn up at lunchtime and find out it we had no cash on us and they were charging was a bit of a shock - moreso as it was a $30 ride to start with! False advertising much?
Then there were the advertised helicopter rides, which they had on the flyer, but didn't even have a chopper there and one of our group brought a wee girl up because of them who was really disappointed. She wasn't confident enough to ride the kids track which was pretty full on with steep downhills and grass taller than most of the little bikes, so she ended up having a crappy day sitting in the car.
I wasn't surprised that there were very few riders there compared to a lot of the rides we do and that by lunchtime, the carpark was half empty.
6 cars next to us had left before 12pm so we were a bit deserted. Some of our lot were gone before 2pm also which was most unusual.
The signage on the track was pretty bad too. Lots of people overshooting the exit and lots of people turning back having missed where the track went. There weren't anywhere near enough marshalls and even on the hazards that did have marshalls, they seemed to be pretty much standing around watching and not much else. They certainly weren't very helpful when asked questions by one of our group.

The track itself was average. 18km loops which was good. I'm usually a big fan of the shorter loops but nothing on the track was overly outstanding.
It wasn't super tough, although by the morning behaviour you would have thought it was really hard! Several times I was stuck in queues wondering what was going on, only to get annoyed and just go past people to find the places with queues were pretty easy! It was very weird. Yes it was slippery grass, but I'm on a little 4-stroke and I just cruised on up with little effort - just had to take it steady to keep traction. Not scary at all and I'm not even that good a rider.
It was a LOT of grass, and pretty wet and dewy in the morning, so it was slow going on the first loop, but by the second it had dried out considerably.
I got kinda over it though by three loops as even once it dried out, the track just got kinda less interesting.
At least with the wet, there was more going on. Once it dried out it turned into lots of dust... lots of super bumpy overdry clay with off camber corners and grassy downhills and it wasn't an overly fast course.
Lot's of up and down, but the sections were so short, that you couldn't get up a lot of speed before you had to slow for nasty corners with bogs or other hazards. I saw a few 2-strokes changing plugs because probably half the track was steep downhills and they were gunging them.
The fastest part was the last section of grassy rolling hills.
Also saw a LOT of people crashing... mostly sliding out and laying down the bikes, but man I've not seen that many people eat dirt in one ride. Only one serious injury that I heard about though. Hopefully there weren't many more.

I did think the ride was okay, I've done way worse, but I didn't think it was worth $30 PLUS having to pay for a separate lunch.
Our group won't be doing any more of the Gladstone rides as the last one we did was horrible too and we'd not remembered till we checked the ride log that the last one was terribly disorganised and overpriced also!

Just my 2c though.......

[pete.ktm]

bad review from the thecharmed01, lol

sort of agree with everything she said but still enjoyed the ride. first loop was a slippery bitch, was going to put my new tyres on over christmas - bad mistake. next 4 loops were pretty sweet, track got better every loop.

forgot about the advertised heli rides, that would have been a bummer for anyone wanting to go for a fly.

and if we're paying for lunch at least chuck some meat patties on, this year i've had 20 weekends of sausages for lunch - bit over them

some pics @ http://www.kaseus.net/gallery/gladst...il-ride-111203

[crfchick]

Thanks for the link to the photos Pete - depicts the ride really well! (apart from that slippery uphill looks super easy and flat in one of the pics and it totally wasn't on the 1st lap!). And I totally agree with you about sticking to dirt bikes after also witnessing the road bike crash, not very nice at all.

[thecharmed01]

bad review from the thecharmed01, lol

sort of agree with everything she said but still enjoyed the ride. first loop was a slippery bitch, was going to put my new tyres on over christmas - bad mistake. next 4 loops were pretty sweet, track got better every loop.

forgot about the advertised heli rides, that would have been a bummer for anyone wanting to go for a fly.

and if we're paying for lunch at least chuck some meat patties on, this year i've had 20 weekends of sausages for lunch - bit over them

some pics @ http://www.kaseus.net/gallery/gladst...il-ride-111203

LOL yeah I was surprised myself to see only sausies when they wanted you to pay to eat but meh... I guess with that, they are pretty hard to screw up so you can get anyone to man the BBQ with just the basics... :P
I am so over sausies myself, but when I'm riding I'll eat near anything you give me LOL

Great pics! I so need a P&S for xmas! The DSLR is way too chunky to get out when I'm riding.

Pic 12.. man I have NO idea why they were all backed up there. It wasn't all that hard even first thing, you just had to NOT go hard at it. If you put too much power on you slid out, but steady power and the hill was easy. I waited for ages cause people told me not to go, thinking it was gonna be crazy hard, but I cruised up it piece of cake once I finally got too bored waiting and just quietly passed all the people sitting there doing nothing.

Pic 18.. is crazy how that doesn't look all that steep, but in the morning I had 5 guys nail themselves in front of me going down there hahaha
Tryin to go toooooo fast!

Pic 30 is kinda sad... shows how many people there "weren't" on the ride. Was like a ghost town!

Pic 34... BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA look it's my butt :P

You got some wicked photo's dude! I enjoyed checking them out!

[pete.ktm]

And I totally agree with you about sticking to dirt bikes after also witnessing the road bike crash, not very nice at all.

you see the big two car smash at upper hutt?

felt good to get home in one piece.