When planning the current rides, we couldn’t think of anything for today so decided to leave it to the fates and announced a Coin Toss Ride, whereby the toss would decide the direction and therefore destination. In preparation I created a flowchart, which listed a range of route options and junctions at which the route would be determined and scraped together a selection of coins, being an American quarter, a 2 Euro, a Mexican 10 Pesos and an Aussy 50 cent. With not expecting a long ride I prepared the bike yesterday and filled up when I was out and about looking at the new Shoei Qwest helmet (which appears to be a marked improvement on the Raid II I am currently using. Not having to stop for gas made for more time this morning, which was convenient as I had forgotten to charge the mobile and MP3. Today dawned a pearler, (although still only 10º when I left home) and when I turned up at Brown Owl at 0935 there were only 2 bikes there, but by departure time at 1000, we had 20 bikes ready to go when Ken carried out the briefing and used his own lucky coin to send us over the hill rather than to Paekak’. I was almost last away and soon surprised at the volume of traffic on the hill which made for a sedate ride and although the temp was only 13º when we left, with a quick rise to 15º I determined to finally remove the liner from my jacket when I got to Featherston. At this point a further two coin tosses avoided the Western side of Lake Wairarapa and the road to Martinborough, keeping us on SH2 until the next choice at Swamp Road. From here we headed around Dalfield Rd and the next decision to head left or right on SH2, although both options would get us to the Ponatahi Hall and another left or right decision, which would see us heading for Martinborough or Gladstone…and Gladstone it was. This would have to be the first time we’ve ridden past the Gladstone Pub without stopping in but at the end of the road, another left / right decision had us heading for the Mobil Nth End in Masterton. Our last two coin tosses saw us heading out of Masterton to Te Ore Ore and on to Dreyers Rock, then around through Hastwell to Eketahuna for lunch, getting there a bit after 1230. The greasy shop wasn’t open so we settled at one of the cafes for lunch and a chat before heading for home. I settled in behind Dougie at a brisk pace down SH2 and across the bypass, turning off at Renall St to visit mum, but she wasn’t home so I continued on. I was now by myself but maintained the brisk pace and enjoyed a good fang over the Hill, passing a few of the other riders that had been on the ride and finally re-caught Dougie and Dennis on River Rd.
It was one of the better rides we’ve had in recent times, thanks to the weather which also led to a good turnout. There were heaps of other groups out enjoying the conditions so lots of waving was done throughout the day and I finally got home around 1520 after doing 333.5Kms for the day at 17.7K/Ltr (it had been up to 18.5K/Ltr but the brisk ride home put paid to that) and the bike now has 96,353 Kms on it. I wonder if I get to leave the liner out of the jacket?
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Old Blog?
These blogs were posted on the KiwiBiker forum but I decided it was time for a change. Archives
January 2017
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