This year’s Allied Group Conference was held in Rotorua again, so I took the opportunity to have a ride, albeit in crap weather. During the week before the ride I kept a close eye on the weather forecast to help decide my route but it didn’t help much so come Wednesday morning I decided to hit the road and wing it. I filled with gas and checked the tyres on the way to work, then got away about 1100, heading straight up SH1 fully kitted with wets. I didn’t need to be in Rotorua until 1830 so I decided an economy run would be the order of the day and set off at a rather sedate pace with the temp at 13° keeping an eye out for options and deviations. The weather didn’t look too bad towards Woodville but I figured I was likely to ride back into the tail of the last front and decided against it just taking a wee long-cut around Levin heading along SH57 and back in on Kaputaroa Road. The next option was straight up from Sanson to cut around through Halcombe, but in this instance it I figured I’d get more draughting assistance along SH1 so stuck with that, but despite there not being much traffic at all, I had my economy up to 21.7 K/Ltr but the time I got to Hunterville. The weather wasn’t too bad with scattered showers, but by the time I got to Waiouru, it was looking really dark and cold ahead, so I stopped to swap the Spidis for the liners, Darbys and rain-off gloves. As it turned out, apart from the temp dropping to 3° on the Central Plateau, the rain didn’t get too bad and as I descended the Northern side it was looking much clearer ahead so I decided to divert up the Western Side of the lake, cutting across the Arapuni Dam for Putaruru and SH5, coming into Rotorua from the West. I got into town a bit before 1700, having done 550Kms and just onto the last bar on the gauge with the economy still reading 20.7 K/Ltr, so the economy run was pretty successful achieving my best results yet. I reckon if I was patient enough, I could get close to 600Kms out of a tank. The conference was good and it was great to spend some time with my kids and Moko’ but the weather for the trip home wasn’t going to get much better so the plan was for the most direct route home down SH1. I got away at 0745, once again fully kitted in ‘wets’, with the temp at 8° and the plan to average 100kph. There was next to no traffic until Sanson and the trip was pretty uneventful. Even the temp only got down to 4° and although the roads were wet all the way, I only struck a few showers until I got to the Kapiti Coast and it pissed down.
I was surprised when it cleared after Paekak’ and I got home dry but a little cool (8°), having done the 450Kms in 4hours 32minutes, having lost a few minutes in the traffic and at the lights because by the time I got to Sanson, I was about 7 minutes ahead of schedule. Oh well, I guess I should have allowed for that. Any ride’s a good ride and by setting targets for economy or time, even SH1 is bearable. The biked clicked over 70,000Kms on the way home, having done 1,038 Kms for the return trip.
0 Comments
|
Old Blog?
These blogs were posted on the KiwiBiker forum but I decided it was time for a change. Archives
January 2017
Categories
All
|