Petrol station location between Masterton and Waipukurau

[Trudes]

hehe, yep definitely want to ride those roads sometime soon, just not today. I feel so used sometimes LOL

[NZsarge]

hehe, yep definitely want to ride those roads sometime soon, just not today. I feel so used sometimes LOL

Aww crap! you mean to say you're following in a car?! what the hell is the range on that Gixxer?

[Trudes]

Aww crap! you mean to say you're following in a car?! what the hell is the range on that Gixxer?

Nah, my bike is affectionately known as the petrol tanker/packhorse/shopping cart etc etc since he bought that totally impractical piece of bike.

[Taz]

Just bungee a 5 litre fuel container on the back and all will be sweet. There is no way I'd ever get another bike with a range less than 300km's.

[NZsarge]

Nah, my bike is affectionately known as the petrol tanker/packhorse/shopping cart etc etc since he bought that totally impractical piece of bike.

Ah that metropolitan sense of humour....

[banditrider]

Just bungee a 5 litre fuel container on the back and all will be sweet. There is no way I'd ever get another bike with a range less than 300km's.

Absofreekinlutely!

[wilber]

So what time are you departing kendog

[Kendog]

Thanks for all the advice folks.
Jim is right, small tank small range. But I should make 200k, just a little paranoid.

I will post in here tonight to let you know how I got on (especially as my fuel tanker is not coming with me )

[madmal64]

Thanks for all the advice folks.
Jim is right, small tank small range. But I should make 200k, just a little paranoid.

I will post in here tonight to let you know how I got on (especially as my fuel tanker is not coming with me )

So.... how did you get on?
Would have been a bloody good day for a ride over that part of the world but instead I had to mow the lawns, clean 2 cars and go to bloody open homes!

[Kendog]

So.... how did you get on?
Would have been a bloody good day for a ride over that part of the world but instead I had to mow the lawns, clean 2 cars and go to bloody open homes!

I was just thinking of writing a little ride report, but I am too tired (got home at 9.00pm) Will do that tomorrow.

205k done on one tank, 12.8L of my 15.5L tank so pretty close.

Great day, great ride, great company (Cheers Grub). More to follow tomorrow.

[chanceyy]

Good to see you made it safe & sound Nigel ..

great catching up with some of you welly KBers last nite .. cheers for the bed Trudie & Nigel .. had an awesome time .. great company, good laffs, fantastic view .. ahhhhh

[Grub]

I was just thinking of writing a little ride report, but I am too tired (got home at 9.00pm)

Me too@! I got into the garage and just sat on the bike trying to muster some more energy to get off it.

What a trip that is. The girls (who stayed at home in their suburban cuddly blankets) keep going on about how long it took us. ".... 10 hours, it took you 10 hours, what were you doing all that time ...". Well to tell you the truth, I have no idea. That's how long it took - we weren't nannering along but we weren't being stupid (or busting speed limits) either.

Our rendezvous was Rimutex at 11, I called in that I was running late, arrived at 11:15, Kendog made it at 11:35 thinking that since I was going to be really late, he'd practice taking his leathers on and off a few times

The Rimutakas were ok considering the Martinborough Wine & Food festival was on, I think we missed the rush – which was fine by us. Oh well, there was that time on the way down the other side where the large Maui Camper van with two flat tyres caused a back up of traffic and the Harley with the big fat guy on it banged into the back of a stationary vehicle just in front of us. He was ok, bashed his hand on the side of the vehicle he hit and lost his running board. Other than that, no dramas.

We stopped for lunch in Masterton which turned out to be leisurely with Kendog’s great company and you just wouldn’t have thought we had 500km to go. All good things must come to an end and so we finally gassed up and left Masterton at 1.25pm with 204km to go before the next gas station. Kendog’s GSXR usually goes onto reserve at about 180 so he was just a little anxious about gas. Me ‘n’ the mighty CBR go 260km before the light comes on – go Honda!

Purists of this trip, forgive me if I get the details just a little wrong, I was concentrating on the road – alright? Alfredton is just 45km up the valley from Masterton and starts as a great easy ride with long straights and gentle winding roads that get a little narrower but not hazardous. This road is well traveled and so the pea metal and other debris of the later parts of the route are not an issue here. The road gets nicely swept of that rubbish and allows a very comfortable touring speed.

This was Kendog’s ride and so it was his to lead and mine to follow. From my experience of this road in the Captial 1000k ride with a group, I know what it’s like to have bikes right on your tail. I personally don’t like it as you’re always worried about holding them up. So for this ride I was always was 10-20 car lengths back. This is perfect for both riders. He didn’t have to worry about me and because he is off the corner I’m riding into, his line is not mine, I can ride it as I see it, although having a pilot is rather nice. I felt smoother and safer doing that too. Kendog’s and my riding styles and speed are almost identical and so this was a great relaxed tour as we neither got too far apart nor bunched up – great stuff, most enjoyable.

The leg from Alfredton to Pongaroa (45km also) is a different story. The road gets narrow and windy. Perfect you may say … well yes, but the surface is a worry. Pretty much from here to Waipuk, the road surface has all sorts of surprises in what is on the surface. Small stones, pea metal, cow shit, subsidences all abound. There’s less traffic on the road and so it doesn’t get swept clean. I enjoy the road but not the surface. We stopped here for a drink right on 3pm when the shop was shutting. We met three other tourers who were waiting for the called-out “gas man” to arrive. God knows what that cost them, I guess that’s the price you pay for riding a cruiser.

Pongaroa to Weber (25.6km) is a better road, it opens out a little with a few less surprises. One of the issues on this whole trip is that the road is narrowish, there are trees close to the road and therefore shadows across the road at all times of the day. You are constantly going from bright sun into black holes, worse if you are wearing a tinted visor. In the dark areas you can’t see the road surface … and seeing the surface is everything on this trip. That’s where the gravel is, the bumps and hollows and the little subsidences in the road surface that catch you out all live. This section of the ride however was better. Not good, better.

Weber to Porangahau (42km) is back to more of the same. Beautiful countryside, stunning New Zealand rural countryside, the envy of the world and a challenge for motorcyclists. The challenge is that on all of these roads, you cannot look through a corner because just down in front of you are all the hazards mentioned above. One of KoruJ’s suggestions for this road, and one I adopted, is to not ride my usual “classic racing line” but ride the wheel tracks. As he pointed out, the racing line of wide-apex-wide just uses too much road which puts you out where all the crap is. On this stretch of road there’s lots of ‘new’ seal which is probably a year old at least. It’s just that there’s not much traffic this way. So the coarse chip seal is still coarse and there’s still just a little pea metal between the wheel tracks. Also on this leg, there are !HUGE! warning signs about uneven surface. Well they’ve sort of been filled in – but with raw tar of the carpet bitumen type. This has a very fine sandy like residue. It wasn’t a problem after a few K’s so I stopped being cautious – aha! Round a corner looking through it and ignoring the big black patch in the middle of it (in shadow of course – no detail) the front hit this sandy stuff and I lost it, fortunately the back then did the same so the whole nbike drifted sideways until both tyres found grip. Scarily, the front caught first resulting in a bit of a fishtail at about 90 and still in the lean. Yep, it could have been worse – so all good.

I took Nigel into Porangahau which he was very puzzled about because I left him at the Porangahau/Waipuk intersection looking at all the signs, then going to the other side and looking at all of those signs too. He finally decided that I had gone the wrong way and came to tell me so He was right, but how can you go all that way and not divert the 500m down to the township – just to say you’ve been there. It’s pretty too. I’d like to have the time to stop at the pub one day.

Porangahau to Waipukurau is brilliant and a great way to finish the trip. 45kms of typical first class NZ country roads. All top gear sweeping corners and no dramas to be had anywhere. Everyone I’ve done that with has arrived in Waipuk all smiles as the tension of the twisties and gravel just falls away. According to my fuel receipt, we arrived there at 16:47 which makes it 3hrs 22mins of a brilliant roadtrip.

Last leg was Waipuk to Home This is not the trip you want to do into the sun at the end of a long day. Instead of a mindless drone to the bottom of the Takas, you have to peer through visor scratches and accumulated bugs to see where you’re going. There was the little stop at Eketahuna while I checked why my bars were left-hand-forward. The number 1 eyeball confirmed that the back was out of alignment. I’m hoping that the sprocket side forward was just the product of 650km of settling in since my new tyre was fitted and not an (yet another) example of sloppy spannering. If it was the later, I am fast losing faith in the blind reliance I have put on Welly’s bike shops.

Great trip, great experience, a few demons put to rest from my last experience on that road – am looking forward to touring it like tourists with Nasty.

Thanks Kendog.

[madmal64]

Great write up there Grub. Bloody well written.
Now that should get a few appetites going for a good days riding!

[blacksheep]

The shops is open till two but I don't think the pumps are. You can ring my Aunty Carol at the Pongaroa Pub and ask if you like, also they have great meals there if you wanna pit stop. Just ask for Carol and John and tell them you know Jody and they will sort you out.

pub looked shut yesterday

[Fatjim]

Reminds me of the old days before the 24 hour in Masterton. Doing the Palmerston North loop we got stuck on the pahiatua track at about 3am on a bloody windy cold night when my mates ER185 ran out of gas. We had to syphon gas out of my cx into my other mates xr500 tank (plastic one that came off as it didn't have any bolts in I think), and then into the ER. We left UH at midnight and got back at 6 in the morning.

But we did snag the Eketahuna sign on the way!