We had a Uly meeting this week and it was mentioned that Charlie, our Rides man, was in hospital, so I figured I needed to come up with a ride and stand-in as Ride Lead. Steve and myself have done quite a lot of this so I figured it wouldn’t be hard, I pulled my list of local rides and ended up coming up with a short ride (that wasn’t on the list), sent it to Jim to fire out on the branch kumara vine, and that was my Sunday sorted. I guess I wouldn’t be working for a change. Tyres checked, various battery driven devices and power packs charged, kitted up with the old ride-crew hi-vis with large big-nose patch on the back, I left work a bit after 0900, scooted to Caltex Rimutaka for a fill and got to Brown Owl at about 0940. By the time I did the briefing at 1000, there were twelve bikes, although two were pulling at Masterton to carry on through to Palmy and we hit the road. I was surprised at the volume of traffic on the hill, although it turned out it was compounded by a group of 5 or 6 camper vans. Most traffic these days are really good at sliding across and making room …that is ….until they’re in a convoy and then they can’t dare to spend time on a glance in their mirrors, or use a slow bay in case other cars pass them as well …..*sigh*!! The worst for this today was when a camper pulled into the slow lane near the top of the hill for the Maxima in front of me to pass, which she did so …but screw the bikes queued behind her! That elicited a burst from the Nautilus Air Horn as I ventured …..almost ventured onto the yellow! We regrouped in Featherston then scooted across to Martinborough, took Ponatahi Rd and Carters Line to emerge just before Masterton, flicked onto South Belt and Manaia Rd past the airport, slipped off on Lees Pakaraka rd to get to Stronvar Rd and took that to the Deep Gorge Bridges at Ngaumu. This has an ancient old disused wooden bridge next to a 1984 vintage new bridge over a 100 ft plus gorge with some slow moving water at the bottom. It’s not too special but several of the riders hadn’t been there before, we loitered about for a bit and had a photo-op on the old bridge then continued via the Water Towers road to the Gladstone Pub for Lunch, arriving at 1223. That was quite good, there weren’t too many people, we were fed, chatted and left at 1352. Nobody seemed to want to take the lead, so I did, and came directly home, bypassing Carterton, then once again, making quite good progress over the hill and got home at 1503 having done 277Km for the day.
I think I’ll be doing a few more of these this year.
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Bring on 2019, the man said …yeah right! What a sad Sack, 2½ months in, some pretty damn good riding weather and I’ve only had two short rides ….and I haven’t even made time to blog about it. In late January our friend Fliss dropped by. She had stayed with us for a couple of weeks when she moved to Wellington and advised she was heading back to Auckland (go figure!!) so I made an offer to take her for a ride to see a bit of the local area and on the 27th, that happened. She wanted to go to Castlepoint, but the weather in Wellington wasn’t that great so we started off by going through Karori and over to Makara, had a brief stop at the beach, continued on to Johnsonville then out to Whitby, around the Pauatahanui Inlet and up the Paekak’ Hill for a Photo Op’. It’s a great view from the lookout, along the coastline and with Kapiti Island in the background ….*sigh* …at least it would have been if we weren’t in the clouds! “Oh well”, I said, “lets go to the Wairarapa.” So we went back down the hill and over to Haywards, where the skies were crystal clear. When we embarked on the Rimutaka Hill it was 18°, by the time we got to the summit, it was 24°, as we entered Featherston at the bottom it was 29° and another 13km down the road, before Greytown the temp peaked at 33°! I always consider 20 - 25° to be optimal riding conditions and at 33 I was opening all my jacket vents and picking lines that ensured I wouldn’t be slip-sliding about on the melting tar slicks and when we arrived in Masterton we decided to pause for a cool drink. 20 minutes later we were back on the road, 40 minutes after that we were at Castlepoint, after another 30 minutes paused we were back on our way and 2 hours later (including a fuel stop) we were home, having done 400km for the day. It was just a pity we didn’t go straight to the Wairarapa and do a bit more exploring, but Fliss seemed to enjoy the outing. The other ride was a Ulysses Club ride on the 03 March. It was a short ride to Lake Ferry, which was convenient, the weather was OK and the day before I had worn myself out mowing lawns and trimming trees, so a wee outing was welcome. After doing the usual tyre checks etc, I had to swing by the office and got away from there at 0920, refueled at the BP on the Self-Serve Hutt Rd, as I was a bit behind time and that would be quicker. I got to Brown Owl at 0950, then we departed at 1005 and I had an uninhibited ride getting away first, so I had quite a good fang over the hill, considering there was a bit of traffic on the way down to Featherston. After regrouping, I took a position in the middle of the group of 9 bikes as we scooted down the western lake and down through Pirinoa for a pause at the Lake Ferry Pub. We were supposed to go back to Pirinoa for lunch, but because there seemed to be quite a lot of people there, we decided to lunch at the Pub, after which some planned to take an extended ride home, while others just headed straight back. I was one of those as I needed to go to Harvey Normans to shop for a new washer and dryer because the washing machine had shit itself the day before and the dryer was still functioning OK, but has been on the blink for a while.
Once again I made very good progress through the traffic on the hill and didn’t see any sign of the couple of other riders I was with once we were out of Featherston. It was another good blowout and now that I have been joined by two new partners at the office, hopefully I’ll see more road time this year. |
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