Cape Reinga Ride Report and Photos

[Japtwin]

Nice one, sounds like you had heaps of fun, adventures and BIG ups for not ditching on the tyre blowout, scary! go you.

[Badger8]

Nice, were you carrying a disproportionally large back pack?

Yeah, that was him. Was funny watching a backpack with legs and a helmet riding around
Where you perchance on the bus that he had a big tank slapper right in front of on the gravel?

I meant to ask you sinister, where did your backpack go? i'm sure i saw you riding without it on the last day...

Yip, too fast for the camera. Those floral vests work really well

Gotta love the hi-vis superman cape

[TOTO]

... Any ideas of next location and when ?

Most probably East Cape, not sure exactly when but should not be too far away.

Just prey for a good weather.

[TOTO]

Badger , great photos brother. Love the view photos. I didnt make any like that. Big thanks.

[Badger8]

Badger , great photos brother. Love the view photos. I didnt make any like that. Big thanks.

No worries mate. Be sure to let me know when the next tour is on!

[TOTO]

No worries mate. Be sure to let me know when the next tour is on!

just had a taught and a look at my planner with public hollidays - I see that anzac day is coming up ....so

[Macstar]

just had a taught and a look at my planner with public hollidays - I see that anzac day is coming up ....so

Fri 25th April right? Hmm sounds good, and that also gives us a month to save for Gizzy / East Cape!

[TOTO]

Fri 25th April right? Hmm sounds good, and that also gives us a month to save for Gizzy / East Cape!

Exactly what I was thinking

Should be good

[glice]

yea boy I'm a keen bean for another tour. thats the first ride I've been on and I think I'm hooked now.

more great photos guys, chur.

[Choco]

Yip, too fast for the camera. Those floral vests work really well

Floral

[gijoe1313]

Well reading this thread was most excellent! Turns out I could have made this ride ... but I ended up going to Hamitron with Donor to go to Quasi's on Friday.

Bought some kevlar jeans and ... rode to Wellington ... had dinner there and watched Canterbury burn the Waratahs in the Hog's Breath cafe, texted Colapop and the Kendogs.

Turns out Colapop was in Tauranga visiting DMNTD!

So he invites me to ride that way! Being the pootler I am, who was I to stop my nature! So around 4am I get to Tauranga, talk to him and Unit till 6am and I grab a couple of hours sleep.

Go out for a little ride around to Waihi and then back to Tauranga and then back home! Think I must have been practising for the 1000 mile challenge ... 1800km in less than two days

I should have kept riding back up to Cape Reinga and see if I could find those gloves left behind!

Good work guys, and oh yeah, you can ride to Cape Reinga and back in one day So next time I will see if I can catch up!

[EJK]

18: New avatar methinks

Btw, awesome pics! Lovely weather too lol

lucky bastards! lol

[Choco]

Btw, awesome pics! Lovely weather too lol

lucky bastards! lol

You're coming with us next time EJ; even if I have to pillion you the whole way!!!

[sinister^]

I meant to ask you sinister, where did your backpack go? i'm sure i saw you riding without it on the last day...

I left it at my holiday home at Mangawhai, how long were you guys waiting at Wellsford for me (if you were waiting).

[Nagash]

Alright, this is my ride report from what i remember.


Day 1

Woke up first thing Friday morning and boosted it down to Westgate Shell station. Already 4 or 5 people there and I thought I was early, as time went on the 4 or 5 grew into 20 people!

Give briefing over giving the basics and off we went.. into bloody heavy fog. Literally could not see 4 metres infront of you, Steven (seamus) mentioning he had a bloody great caravan, somewhere, infront of him. This fog was awful, rode visor up and evnetually glasses up too. Came out of it absolutely soaked to the core. I think Rory mentioned he was about ready to turn around while in that fog, and fair enough. Wa sa bitch. But we made it!

Went through a few nice twisties and met up with Luke (Sinister ((Apt. Name)). Jacko chatted to a few of the locals and off we shot again. After that we had a few nice twisties up to Dargaville, Isaac lost his license plate on the way and had to pull over to re-attach it.. Leading in one of them missing one of the turn offs. (Memories a bit fuzzy here) 'Someone' went to catch up to him and he thought it was a race.. Leaving Steven standing at another one of the turn off points for a good 20 minutes.

Fuelled up at Subway where the majority of photos seems to of been taken, and already Douschebag (Drider) was tightning up his bike at fear it was about to fall to pieces. And I think it was somewhere about here that the legendary 'bit of wood' was come across. The most over exxagerated thing i've ever seen.. it was maybe 20 cm's long and about 15 cm's wide. It was tiny.. wee bit thick and right in the middle of the road on a one way bridge. One or two people hit it without incident.

After Dargaville we headed to the forest.. my god.. B-E-A-utiful. Tight, slow twisties weaving in and out from the trees, dodging stray campervans and passing traffic and some dodgey oppourtunities (Or was that just me?). Came round a bend to see a whole line of cars and buses thinking there was some sort of accident ahead but it was just some big tree.. had a smoke and a few leaks and off we shot again. Down even better twisties! Huge corners and massive sweeping cambers going up and down and left and right, just like a roller coaster ride. Going round some of those corners in the high 90's feeling the force of the huge cambers keeping yo uon the road was amazing.

Stopped at the top with Kyle (Pocketcracker) showing us how wheelies were neither big nor clever, but fairly impressive. Got a few waves from the ladies driving past aswell, always a laugh.

After that I don't think there were any more major incidents on the way to Kaitaia, I hit a Sparrow, Tod hit an Eagle (endangered species) and it was a laugh to see Steven ducking in and out of butterflies.

When in Kaitaia the backpackers was amazing, well recommended. Let us all park in their Marae! I'm sure someone was offended.. but the Maori gods kept our bikes safe. We then went on a hunt to find anywhere that offered beer on good friday, second we stepped outside Steven smelt the hops in the air and headed staight over the rode to a pub that would sell us beer if we bought food. (1 plate of wedges, 3 or 4 beers. Sounds good) Talk of burning down the establishment to get us more beer were discussed..

Day 2
Right so, day 2. Up to the Cape! Starting off having breakfast in a cafe, Kyle chatting up the waitress but only gettign as far as finding out her name.. Shanelle was it?? Brian (JustBeginning) enjoyed his Tea and toast.. Back to the ride.

Nice road heading out to the Cape, quite straight but you could see all up the road so some of us were having a bit of a muck around on the opposite side of the road and going round corners using the entire width of the road. Kept things interesting. Kyle was busting a nut being TEC on such straight roads with the GN's maxxing it at 120 but it keeps him legal.. We re-grouped at Waitaki Landing to see some bastard kid getting taken down by a sheep. That was fucking awsome.

Then off we went, hit the gravel bits and at first it weren't all that bad, pretty small gravel and some patches of solid mud made riding pretty easy. Then there was a sign on the side "Lime Wash - Due to Lime Splashes please wash your vehicle today". And this lime was.. bloody horrible. The gravel was literally the size of golf balls! It was insane, we all went through it at about 30-40. My handle bars locked over to the left once creating my first "Oh Shit" moment on the road but I kept it upright. I thought was doing alright until I saw Mark (Chocolatewheels) rip it past me with ease. Not even breaking a sweat. Bastard... At long last I made it to the top and took a good rest. One by one everyone turned up.. cept Douschebag.. We waited a good 20 minutes, probably more until we finally saw him round a bend with Kyle following him. Cheers all round and we had all made it.

Then came trying to get to the Lighthouse.. we had heard that GIJoe took his bike there so we thought we could do the same, cept there had been loads of construction and the car park had been pushed 500m's back or so. Luke went straight to it with Tod ripping down safety barriers and riding straight up only to turn around a few minutes later discovering it was a dead end.. Too many people to ride on the footpath so we decided to walk. And man was it a hot walk.. Atleast Kyle made an effort to point out every hot chick on the way down.

Took a few photos, chatted up a few girls and then back to the bikes we went. The route back, I decided to go down first with Steven behind me, the pace was alot faster on the way down with everyone's confidence on gravel increased greatly and I went from first down to maybe 4 or 5th. We had a long wait at Waitiki Landing in which I heard that Luke had lost his chain doing a burn out and that Dousche had bailed.. We all knew it would happen I think, just a question of when. He was still in high spirits and no damage worth mentioning though I reckon Kyle had a good bit of fun rubbing every inch of it in his face. Something about if you drive on the right hand side of the road you have no right to complain about those bloody buses not moving out your way... Anyway, all good and fun and everyone made it with beaming smiles. And we met up with a CBR 600 and a brand new Ninja 250 and had a chat with them, Mark having his proudest moment of the day by passing the 600 down the gravel.

Off we went, down to the Twin Bridges. A supposedly amazing road full of high speed twisties and beautiful sites. And it was, potentially on eof my favourite bits of road of the ride until we hit heavy gravel... just like the lime on the Cape. The front 5 of us slowly negotiated our way through it, I was at the back. Had a car behind us, some Maori guy doing wheel spins and donuts right behind me having a great ol' time on the gravel. Now, not many people on the ride actually noticed but I bailed on this bit of gravel.. got flicked by some rocks by the cager and lost my concentration. Bike did a full 180 and I was down on the ground. Frodo (Glice) turned back to help me up. No damage to me or the bike.. just a bit of a bent clutch handle, no big deal. Maori guy just drove on stopping to mention how awsome me bailing was.. Dick.

This was right at the end of the gravel so we all met up on one of the twin bridges and waited for the rest, and waited.. and waited some more..

Started to get somewhat worried so we asked a passing by cager what was up, apparently Dousche had bailed again! He mentioned he was alright and that he had driven Isaac back to Dousche's bike so he road it back and gave Dousche a ride so we were happy. Good man he was. They finally came round and off we went again, stuck behind an unmarked cop car for a fair distance. Then back to open road so we got into a nice little flow, atleast Frodo, Steven and I did. Passing each other at times and really ripping it round. Got to a tight corner that went up hill, down down hill just at the bend so you couldn't actually see how tight it was, I had to slap on the anchors to get around it and Frodo managed to shoot straight off the edge! Slowed down in a very handy gravel car park and made it round no problem. At this point, Kyle and Luke had shot on ahead of us as we had waited at twin bridges and as we rounded a corner there they were, apparently had been waiting for us for 45 minutes and decided to come look for us. Glad to know they care. We all rolled into Whangerai into the creepiest backpackers I have ever seen.. the owner threatened to murder a few people, Isaac got told to fuck off back to Auckland, and I swear when he offered us to go take a shower it was as innocent as he was suggesting.. Ontop of describing the species of his cat in great detail and playing creepy music on his organ at 7 in the morning, I don't think i'll ever be going there again.

Most of us went into the Whangarai township for a few drinks, got completely lost and all split up so we went into our two seperate groups. One group (the 3 Irish boys, Isaac, Tod, Frodo, myself and a couple of others) got lost and just stopped at the first Irish pub we saw. Had a few drinks, Kyle turned up and then the fun began. Those bunnies were nice to look at.. And the girl in the white dress! What an angel. The prosty got rejected which was a bit of a laugh to.. Not gonna go into too much detail what happened that night. But it wasn't anything too bad, though the Irish boys went to a Western bar to drink some more.. and didn't speak much of what they got up to so god knows. What happens on tour stays on tour I s'pose..

Day 3 on the next post..