That time of year again so let's have BBQ.....nah!!! We had a slow ride and subsidised meal at the PWMC (Petone Working Mens Club) instead. I guess one could say, “the Christmas BBQ you have when you're not actually BBQ'ing!” The Christmas BBQ is normally held at Kaitoki....which is somewhere near Rivendel, and we slip down to the somewhat tranquil setting for a feed. But last year we managed to combine a BBQ with a slow handling event at Karori West School. On enquiry, we learnt that this year the school tennis courts were either being built on, or had building materials on them, so we needed a new venue. Unfortunately, most carparks don't have dunnies or running water, so some bright spark thought to ask the PWMC if we could use their carpark......and they said sure....so we thought, “That was nice of them!” but of course, it wouldn't be too PC to trundle up with a Barbie and our own meat, so we figured it would be quite good of the Sheriff to spend some of his ill-gotten loot.....well ill-gotten and erroneous when it collected from me, but some of those rat bags in the Wgtn Uly Branch really do deserve to get nabbed and fined!? Anyway, instead of a BBQ we had a subsidised meal. Oddly enough, a 'Christmas Subsidised Meal' just doesn't sound right so the event was still branded as the Christmas BBQ.....but there wasn't an once of gas, charcoal, wood, steak or sausy in sight! In preparation, Dave and I went down last week to check-out the carpark dimensions to work out what we could actually do and the result was to set up the new Basic Handling Skills Test (which takes up 30x10 mtrs...plus a buffer area) plus the carpark was big enough to have four basic slow courses that included cone weaving, looping and a slalom) and each of these required 25x13.75 mtrs. We also decided that one course would be timed, so Ron put a battery in his stop-watch, I made up some time sheets and bought prizes. In the past, we have had up to 30 turn up for a slow ride, but maybe only a dozen wanting to risk dropping their bikes, so another innovation was to arrange for a couple of 250cc Trail Bikes ….so the punters could risk dropping someone else’s bike! This week I fitted the tip-over bars to the ST and this morning I loaded about 300 tennis cones (half tennis balls), some tape measures etc and got to the carpark at about 0815, along with Jim and Dave, with Ron turning up a few minutes later and we were all set by 0900...so we had a wee practice, and the punters were arriving before 1000.
After a quick briefing we got into it and I was just puttering around in the corner when I heard a bit of a rev, took no notice, then was alerted that there had been an off....a somewhat spectacular one for a slow carpark event, so that provided a bit of a diversion for a bit, then we slowly got back into it. In the end, there were only four punters game to get timed and a interesting battle ensued when Steve managed to equal John Medlin’s time of 1:08.12 (1 minute 8.12 seconds), which inspired John to get back on the bike and scorch out a 1:04.84. However, he needn't have bothered because being a PC world, everyone got a mini crunchie, snickers, moro or biscuit&berry prize when we retired to the PWMC for a feed. It was a bloody goody day and I managed about 134Km....after a quick fang over the hill and back before coming home.
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These blogs were posted on the KiwiBiker forum but I decided it was time for a change. Archives
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