After another couple of quiet winter weeks, we broke the rides drought with a local poker run ride today. Don’s usual format for poker runs includes a bit of orienteering to find innocuous landmarks to obtain answers to trivia we should all know....if we’re drinkers of Tui!....which reminds me....did you know what Henry Wagstaff invented? Anyway, last week, after a short Rodeo practice session with a half dozen riders, I needed a blowout so I nipped over the hill to visit me mum. That was a pleasant ride and I was surprised at that time to still see a dusting of snow on the eastern hills then bloody great dirty berms of snow littered along the roadside on the rimutakas. The next day I had to fill the bike, so come this weekend I just had to clean it and I was ready to go for this morning. That meant I had a cruisy start to the day, not getting away from home until 0920, getting to Brown Owl at 0950 to find a good collection of bikes already there. After a short chat, I drew my first card (5 of Diamonds), then got a copy of the ride instructions and questions. I scanned the first few and saw we were to head into town, 1st stop the Central Exchange on Featherston St, so I mounted up and hit the road, first away with Dave just behind. That was easy, W Scott ‘laid the stone’, next was just down the road on Hunter Street, where we found an old style Lamp Post presented by Mayor Sam Brown in 1888...oddly enough, it seems he presented it for ‘lighting the City’...??? Then it was just around the corner and onto Harris St where I was surprised to see a monument advising that Yitzhak Rabin was awarded the , Nobel Peace Prize’ in 1994. From here we nipped out to Porirua and around to the Colonial Knob carpark on Raiha Street. Did you know that it takes ‘2-4 hours’ to walk to the summit and return and the speed limit in Camp Elsdon is ‘5kph’.....and of course, just down the road by Keneperu Dve, there is a Polynesian Kindergarden with a statue of a ‘Mother reading to her child’. Wow! From here we scooted around to the Pauatahanui Reserve ...which is in Pauatahanui and we discovered that the reserve occupies '4 hectares', having '4 walking tracks' and of course Dr Stout 'opened the cottage' in 1991. We now drew two more cards which netted me an Ace of Spades & 2 of Diamonds ...bloody marvelous. We were nearly finished now and just needed to pause at the corner of Moonshine Road to find that farmers used to pay '£30' to lease 205 hectares of land (back in the day), Alfred Judge came from 'Europe' and illicit whiskey was called 'Moonshine'!! After those little gems it was a short hop down to the Belmont Regional Park to discover that Dry Creek Forest is surrounded by 'Podcarps & other stuff' (unfortunately I called it Beech Forest), Boulder Hill is a Block Field and one can do Tramping, Mountain Biking adn Horse Riding' in the park. By the time we considered who the Minister of Labour was in 1986, what Henry Wagstaff did and who Henry Winkler was best known as, Trev had arrived on his ME109 and as a few others arrived, Dave and I decided to nip down to McDonalds at Silverstream for a coffee, while we waited. That was pleasant and by the time we got back, everyone but Trev had gone, so we went straight to Spyder’s for the ‘aftermatch’, which was a sausage sizzle and ogle at his personal museum. (He even started up the Henderson) Oh that’s right....and I picked my last two cards (which I was supposed to get at the Belmont Park)...9 of Diamonds and another 2 of Diamonds!...One bloody pair...but at least they were twins!!
I helped Cara scrutineer the card hands while Tania marked the quizzes, which resulted in 3 sets of 2 pairs, a heap of 1 pair and another heap of nothings. (What crap hands), and I think one person got all the answers right while a few of us got 2 wrong (so I got a $50 voucher from Motorad). That was cool, and a big ‘Well-Done’ to Don, Jude and their helpers for putting on a pleasant and well run ride. I’m not sure how many turned up but it must have been over 20. I did 155 Km for the day and the bike is now on 117664Km....and have $50 to spend on bike gear....pity Motorad don’t sell ST’s!!??
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