Two weeks on and the Grand Challenge is now just another memorable ride that resulted in a clean-up job for the bike that took about 2½ hours, thanks to the incessant rain and wet roads. Since then I haven’t done much riding. Just a wee jaunt around the bays last week, I attended the ACC protest rally at parliament yesterday and today we had a Ulysses social (short) ride. For a low key, last minute event, there must have been 400-500 and maybe more at parliament, so that would have to rate as a success, but time will tell if and when the government do a u-turn on the proposed changes to the Motor Cycle ACC levies. Today’s ride was quite pleasant with 18 bikes turning out. The program just specified ‘Martinborough’ for lunch, so a quick conflab with Kennif and we had an interesting route planned that took us over the Western roads around Carterton then back to Toppys via Ponatahi Rd. With the temp at 11° this morning I wondered if I might need a scivvy since I’ve removed my jacket liner….(again)…but I persisted and the day turned out rather pleasant with the temp settling at around 14° and eventually peaking at 20°. I departed from Brown Owl at shortly after 1000 at TEC and the combination of double yellow lines, some cars and some newer riders meant a sedate pace over the hill and an economy of 19.8K/Ltr when I arrived in Featherston After a regrouping and a short stop we continued through Greytown to Matarawa Rd, we had a short stop along Moffat Rd where I took over as lead to go around through Carrington, then regroup again at East Taratahi before finishing of with a pootle along the middle road to Martinborough where there were already many bikes lining the streets.
After a coffee, pie and chat, Ken, James and myself continued on to Gladstone for a drink then, when they left for home, I carried on to Masterton to visit my mum and drop some items off for next weeks 1000Km ride. I eventually had a brisk solo ride back to Welly, getting a relatively clean ride over the hill and doing 309Kms for the day with the bike now having 79306Kms on it.
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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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