Blenheim Adv Rides

**Underground** · 17th April 2009, 22:43

I'll be lying down somewhere quiet staring at the insides of my eyelids and trying to recover from an epic social occasion on sat night

**buggsubique** · 19th April 2009, 15:58

Well the day dawned warm and clear so off we went down Northbank Rd at about 8.30 this morning. Then as we hit the Wairau Bridge it was like being back in the Waikato, riding through chilly, damp, crappy fog for most of the way to the Mt Patriarch turn off. All part of it though.

T'was only the 3rd time taking the Africa Twin into gravel with its new dual purpose tyres. Pretty floaty / skittery on the proper roads, mostly owing to the fact I'm running cheap Vee Rubber & Kenda tyres, ha.

Was impressed though, she seemed to bite in fine once I gave it a bit of wrist action and threw her around a bit heading up towards Lake Chalice. Topo and zeRax were giving it snot too and soon left me behind while I got comfortable treating the XRV like a thumper. Found the power was awesome around 5-6.5k rpm in the uphills, otherwise it was equally alive, just more sedate chugging away down at 3-4k rpm.

Anyways, a few photo stops along the way and smoked salmon on toast at the top made it a pretty chilled out ride. Great country up there.

Got a bit of video on the in-law's flash-as handy cam wot I stole (and later got bailed up by the Mrs when I showed her the vids

). Will post another couple up once my lame XNet upload speed gets around to it!

Topo left us after Mt P as Z Meister and I headed to Onamalutu to offer the Africa Twin to the Hillclimb gods. Wish I had filmed the other two we did - was jsut awesome - hell of a rush!

Didn't have the kahunas to put it up my favourite firebreak (visions of shettered plastics, dented tank, twisted wheels) but I was stoked with how well it hauled its arse up some pretty steep access tracks, and when we ran out of tracks we just made one - right up the side of a hill to the main track above. Honestly, it rides like a f*cken big trailbike! Very impressed by it...20 years old, full of breakable fairings etc etc, but yeah, a very solid performer!

Chucked it though a mudbog too - wouldn't want to get it stuck (thought I had for abour 2 secs) but it pulled through piece of piss.

So now I just need to sort out why my front cylinder is running so rich and giving such poor fuel economy...

More vids to follow!

Buggs

**zeRax** · 19th April 2009, 16:18

freakin good ride today, ive just had a pretty major nap. it was, in the true sense of the word AWESOME to see the big africa twin roaring up sides of hills, track or no

truely cool to see !
very impressive and matt is just the person to shake her up.

very blessed with the epic places we can go to just out the door
good riding with ya topo, rarely get to chase ktm's around here

cheers fullas