2018 1KC

I took the bike for a WoF on Thursday, went for a coffee while I waited and got back to find it was leaking fluid from the right fork ….bugger! No worries though, the guys at Boyles ordered new seals (overnight), gave me scooter to get back to work and all was good …well almost. I haven’t ridden a scooter before so I hopped on, started it up, gave it a bit of juice ….and nothing happened! I looked down and, as expected, there was no gear shift, so I gave it a bit of juice ….and nothing. Repeat, repeat, turned it off and went to ask. “Give it some juice” the man said, so went back, gave it some more juice and it finally started to move when it seemed to be nearly red-lining! Fifteen metres later I was coming to the giveway sign so I grabbed the clutch and found it was a bit ‘grabby’! … ie a handful of rear brake suddenly applied causes the back wheel to skip a bit sideways. Next thing I’m pootling along Karo Dve …which leads to the motorway and I thought, ‘oh shit, I shouldn’t be taking this thing on the motorway’, then figured, oh bugger it, I’m straight off again and continued. It was raining so I dropped it home and took the car back to work.
 
Next day I took the scooter to work and had to brave the even worse elements to pick up the ST. Scooters don’t do it for me!!
 
I let Steve know my plan for the day to see if he wanted to join me, then once I eventually got home, I did the usual stuff, tyres, packed, got the gear ready etc.
 
I got up just after 0500, scrubbed, kitted (fully with wets), farted around trying to get the new rear tyre pressure sensor to work, but couldn’t and was late getting away, so I didn’t arrive at Caltex Rimutaka until about 0605 and was surprised to see about 20 bikes there already, I filled, signed the disclaimer to say I wouldn’t blame myself if anything went wrong, took a few photos, then Steve and I were first away at 0617.

It was still wet with the occasional drizzle so we embarked at a semi-brisk pace and as we descended into the Wai’rapa there was no improvement, however, as we skipped along the Masterton bypass at 0700 some of the road was dry and I spotted the tiniest hint of blue off towards Woodville ….and now the fun began.
 
We still needed to leave plenty of margin for error, but these roads are pretty good so we slipped into GC mode, adopted a pace at the top end of the allowable limits and averaged 102kph through to the first checkpoint at Mauriceville, grabbed the pic and continued via Dreyers Rock Rd, through Alfredton and onto Pa Valley Rd to the next CP, being the road sign at the junction with Estcourt Rd.

It was still wet with the occasional drizzle so we embarked at a semi-brisk pace and as we descended into the Wai’rapa there was no improvement, however, as we skipped along the Masterton bypass at 0700 some of the road was dry and I spotted the tiniest hint of blue off towards Woodville ….and now the fun began.
 
We still needed to leave plenty of margin for error, but these roads are pretty good so we slipped into GC mode, adopted a pace at the top end of the allowable limits and averaged 102kph through to the first checkpoint at Mauriceville, grabbed the pic and continued via Dreyers Rock Rd, through Alfredton and onto Pa Valley Rd to the next CP, being the road sign at the junction with Estcourt Rd.

 
We were now back onto main roads up to Ashhurst, across via Colyton to Cheltenham, over Vinegar Hill to SH1 and up to Turangi for our first fuel stop. We were operating at the top end of the allowable limits and were making good time, but once we passed Waiouru, for some unknown reason, the pace lifted another notch, but our average through here wasn’t that great as there were queues of traffic to negotiate over roadworks. We did catch two of the Masterton boys through here and got caught by the third, but they all left Z Turangin before us and we never really saw them again. The roadworks were crappy too because they were wet, but where that usually offers a bit ‘sticktion’ between the bits of gravelly pieces, this stuff was sort of slushy, with cement mixed in (and my poor baby still hasn’t had a clean up).
 
We pulled into Z Turangi for fuel at 1013, having done 370km at a moving average of 96kph and we’d only paused for 4 minutes on the 3 CP’s, so we were doing OK and had a relaxed 13 minute fill, snack, drink, clean-the-visor (for Steve) and Colin arrived while we were there.
 
Back on the road we passed Phil at Tokaanu (who, it transpired, had paused to remove a bee from his helmet) and had Colin in tow as we crept (yeah right …at an avg of 104) over the saddles to Kuratau and up the western lake road. For some odd reason we seemed to carry our pace (and some) from the Desert Road over to this leg, so the average pace was a little higher than the allowable limits, but hey, the sun was shining, the roads were dry and the dogs had been couped-up for ages!!
 
Steve had to pause to fix something at Whakamaru, so I dropped to ‘putter’ mode and Colin gapped it (probably because he didn’t want the slow-pokes in front of him through the good bits), Steve caught up again and we embarked upon the choicy bits for the day by the Waipapa Dam. Once again, I wasn’t totally comfy through here but still managed to make quite good progress through to Ngaroma Hall, arriving as the Masterton boys departed, then leaving a minute later with Phil pulling in. (but that was all we saw of that lot for the rest of the day) PS. We’d ended up averaging 105kph for the 128km from Turangi.

Next stop was the Otohina farm and we had to negotiate 53km of sweet tighty-witey stuff to get there ….primo Waikato roads that were built when the gents driving the graders knew how to do it and when the Ministry of Works boys weren’t leaning on their shovels, they laid a good base. Bloody sweet and the best part was that having a GPS that knew where it was going, I could just focus on the ride …..and we arrived as Nathan was leaving. (I guessed it was Nathan since the tail of his bike looked very ST’ish!)
 
Once again, the stop was barely more than 35 secs before we were moving again and with the next CP only being about 10km away at the Rangitoto Hall, we were there in 7 minutes, stopped for 50 secs this time and I was surprised that we didn’t see Nathan again, but we did catch him on the run into Te Kuiti and he pulled aside to let us pass. (Go figure?) That was a waste of time on his part though as I was day-dreaming on the way into the town limits and nearly missed the turn, but Steve must have been up my date and all I heard was, “I’ll take the next one!”, but when I got to the rail crossing on main road there was no Steve and I had to wait, so Nathan slipped back on past.
 
We followed him out of town and he gradually pulled away (because we are good little law-abiding characters!?), but as happens, depending on traffic and corners, we would sometimes catch him, then passed him and led to our next fuel stop at BP Taumarunui.
 
Once again, we had a fairly relaxed stop here, taking 11 minutes, in which time Ken (from Masterton) and Nathan left and we were surprised to see Colin roll in a) because he was on a GSA and had fuelled in Turangi; and b) he’d bolted on Waipapa Rd and we expected him to be closer to National Park than Taumarunui at this point, but it transpired that he had missed a turn and enjoyed more of those Waikato / King Country backroads than he was supposed to.
 
Anyway, by the time we got back on the road, we were 660km into the ride and had a moving average of 96.7kph with a stopped time of 31 minutes …and now we had one more CP to get at Upok and were homeward bound on a favourite road ….so we gave it some juice!! ….but not too much ….and we did get slowed down following some dude in a red car with blue and yellow patches on it as we approached National Park.
 
So anyway (again) we scooted along and managed to average 108kph to Raetihi ….and then our last bit of fun began.
 
Nth to Sth on the Para’s is a downhill run and the ST is a bike that doesn’t have a lot of engine braking so it tends to carry speed into corners when you’re on a roll-on – roll-off run, which is how Steve and I tend to ride. By this time in the day (700+ km) and with the finish looming, I was feeling in the groove and felt like we were making really good progress. On top of that, there was a bit of traffic, but we seemed to be catching it all at the right time, whereby we just flowed past them, rarely getting held up. The GPS told a different story but!
 
I have found in the past that even when ‘pushing the pace’, one is lucky to pick-up just a few minutes over the Para’s, but on this occasion, we were well along and I happened to check the GPS and commented to Steve, “Bloody hell mate, I thought we’ve been going well through here, but we’ve lost three minutes on our ETA!!” Steve agreed that it felt like a nice pace and that we were in the groove …and sure enough, when I checked the Track Log on Sunday, we’d averaged 103kph! It was a bloody nice ride!

, Last checkpoint was another 30 second job at 1508 and we were now down to the last 200km to Sanson, then down SH1. The traffic was moving pretty well and we were riding ‘assertively’, maintaining an average just under 100kph to Levin, but between the lights and traffic we started to lose time from there on in. We were passing shitloads of traffic though and as we approached the new expressway, I spotted another bike in the traffic ahead …it had to be Nathan.
 
We were reeling him in through the traffic, but once he got to the expressway he took off and we dropped behind again, but once he got back into the traffic after Mackays Crossing, he sat where he was while we continued to pick up a car here and another there, closing to within a dozen cars of him before we got to the WRB along the coast, then half a doz cars as we came out of Pukerua Bay …and then the bastard hit the double lanes and took off again!
 
He was probably half a km ahead by the time he pulled up behind several cars at the roundabout …and he’d pulled up very close to a car in the centre of the right lane ….so he wasn’t going anywhere! But I on the other hand was in full ‘assertive’ mode (read that as aggressive or arsehole if you wish, 'cos I had a big grin), hitting the queue as the front cars started to move and I just cruised down the channel, powered out of the roundabout, then hit the lights as they turned orange …and caught all the lights through to the Paremata roundabout, as well as the Police College ones …so I was now out of range of Steve’s Sena (ie more than 2 km ahead) …so I slotted behind a car at 80-90kph for the next few km until the boys caught up.
 
We finished by taking the Murphy St exit, went down to Kate Sheppard Pl, then accidently turned up the one way to get to the Backbencher, to find that Ken had just pulled in too. I grabbed the camera, went inside and was a bit surprised to find that the four of us were first home, because we were expecting the other Masterton boys to be ahead of us and probably others, but apparently we had passed them at Te Kuiti. It was a pretty damn good ride with us completing the last leg in the Saturday traffic at 92kph and the 1,013km at a moving average of 96.5kph in 11:03 with 33mins of stopped time.
 
We had a coffee, a beer and a snack and I settled down with Graeme to see the rest of the riders in and listen to some of the stories and it was good to hear that all seemed to enjoy the day as much as Steve and I had.
 
I was a bit worse for wear when I had to work on Sunday, but it was bloody marvellous to have had such a fine time whilst raising over $1,000 for the kiddies with Muscular Dystrophy.

Below are the routes out of Wellington & Hamilton (Click for full view)