Sunday 4th February - Where did you ride and what did you practise?

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[Rosie]

On Sunday Clint and I rode from Rotorua to Wharepapa South (South Waikato) and back. My two main focuses (foci?) were: Following distances, and smooth throttle use while changing gears.

First we went into town in Rotorua, to buy tickets for the Nathan Haines concert, except Ticketek doesn't do Sunday in Rotorua. I need to work on my parking technique - backing the bike into the park, and parking where I can see if there is any traffic coming (ie not behind a giant view-eclipsing van).
Rode over the Mamakus. Stopped to let a couple of people go past, but didn’t really see much traffic.

We stopped at Fitzgerald glade, our pre-decided first stopping point. We just got off the bikes for a couple of minutes, and Clint put his overtrousers on, because it looked like the weather was a bit showery up ahead. I wasn’t entirely sure where we were going, especially where to go through Putaruru, so Clint went ahead and I followed him. I found following someone through an unfamiliar area quite a challenge. I had to keep an eye on everything around me, and watch what Clint was doing (but not too much), and find an appropriate position on the road relative to him etc. I noticed that he was going much slower than I probably would have by myself, so I think I need to watch my speed in built up areas. I've told Clint that he is to tell me if he thinks I'm going too fast in a given situation.

Out of Putaruru I was riding in front again, but wasn't entirely sure where we were going. Some intersections had signs, some didn't, so we ended up taking the very scenic route, finding some interesting little roads. And evil gravel-strewn road works. And a stray bull calf.

My big focus for the day was using the throttle smoothly when changing gears. In general I did pretty well. This is leading into using the gears more, often I'm a bit lazy and will sit in a gear that is a bit too high when going up a hill or something, and the poor little bike doesn't have much pull at low revs. So to get the most out of the bike, I want to be doing lots of nice smooth gear changes.

Cornering (which was last week's focus) went well, even though I wasn't specifically focusing on it.

We stopped at the rock climbing Café in Wharepapa south for a bit to eat, and to buy me a new pair of climbing trousers (yes, the whole ride was just an elaborate cover to make Clint go shopping with me).

After lunch we went home via Mangakino, Atiamuri etc. It's a really nice ride through there, I had only been there once before in the car, about 3 years ago. And I managed my first extended stretch on SH 1. It was only about 5k's, and I was riding at the same speed as the cars around me, but I wasn't loving the whole straight, main highway thing, so I was pleased to turn onto SH 30, and to be on my way home. I was starting to get a little tired by this stage. All that concentration takes it out of you I guess. I was noticing a bit of vibration from the bars by this stage too which would add to fatigue, I might see about some weighted bar ends.

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