After the Ulysses event a couple of weeks ago, Jason was keen to do more so we agreed to get together and today was our first session. We met at the the car park by the Petone Rec' on Udy Street at 0900 and fortunately we were that early because I've been out of the kiddy sports scene for some years and had forgotten that it would be busy.
No worries....we were cheeky enough to cone off about 15 metres across the bottom and started by setting up the 'Black Rum' course as I had converted it to a square measure for the Uly event but it didn't look right so I wanted to check the measurements. That didn't take long and since it was set-up, we started on that one. The amazing thing about the Slow Riding / Police Rodeo / Gymkhana (call it what you will) is that you can do it one week and nail it, then try the same thing a week later and be utter crap....and so was the case today. I was whistling through Black Rum the other week, but today I just couldn't get it....at first. Try as I might, I just got more frustrated as I watched Jason nail it time after time, and then the light came on and I had the ST sliding through the cones and just managing to stay within the perimeter of cones....and all it took was the confidence to up the pace a little!! That done, we decided to try 'The Shield'. This is one of my preferred options as it is quick and easy to set up but very challenging and one tends to get fatigued before getting bored. Jason was doing really well so we took the bull by the horns and went straight to the standard size layout. I don't think I've ever gone below 10% over on this one so it was a real challenge for me and once again I was in for a good dose of struggle and frustration!!.....*sigh* I did 'sort of' manage to get around the course but I was never really happy with my performance as I found that at times I would really cruise through parts but I couldn't string all the good parts together on any one run. It was after midday before we were starting to get fatigued and decided to call it quits for the day. The second aim for the day was to get some more experimentation in for the Go Pro and this time, I had decided to try mounting the camera on the front of the bike below the screen. This worked out quite well and I did get some good video and pix. After we'd packed up I continued with my road testing by heading up to the Blue Mountains Rd to record it as one of Wellington's Curvy Roads. Because mounting the Suction cup on the front of the bike means removing a couple of extension links, the footage is much more stable, plus I have the advantage of being able to see the red record light at the back of the unit so I know when it's operating. All in all, it was another good day and even though I've been doing lot's of riding lately but no Km's...the bike has over 33,000 on the clock. I'm looking forward to some good weather and a good romp though, and hopefully that will happen next Sunday when we are programmed to meet up with the Hawkes Bay Branch at the Balance Cafe.
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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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