Central N. Island Ride-Out
The lads at Whangamata: John Pritchard, Dave Easey, Richard Shannon & Geoff James.
Well, what a great weekend the 4th & 5th of March were! Allowed out to play for the WHOLE two days, although we suspect that there will be a quid pro quo in it for our wives somewhere down the line! John Pritchard, Dave Easey and I did both days and John Patterson and Richard Shannon one day apiece. The Suzuki (Mr. Patterson) and BMW (Mr. Shannon) riders were allowed to tag along as they clearly haven’t got many friends riding those makes, hehe.
On Saturday, we headed to the east coast mainly using back roads. Part of our journey took us down a public highway in the middle of a forest, which is mainly used as a logging truck route during the week. The principal feature is a 7km straight, which allowed us to test a fair percentage of our top speeds. It was a bit gusty and there was the odd car about, but getting an indicated 280 km/hr was pretty straightforward with a lot more to come, but our nerve gave out as the cops understandably hang about in this remote spot. Patterson pushed the envelope a bit more and was apparently showing just over 300 on his clock! After a nice lunch on the coast at Whakatane, we headed northward and called in at a vintage car and motorcycle museum at Te Puke, as some of the guys had never been there before – a really cool place.
John Patterson, Dave Easey & John Pritchard at the museum
After heading a bit further north, we nipped over the Kaimai mountain range to a popular biker pub. This part of the trip was VERY fast as Patterson was sick of our jibes about his ugly Bus, and decided to rub our noses in it. He did make it to the pub a few hundred metres ahead of us, but it wasn’t exactly a convincing drubbing. From there, it was back to Tokoroa where a birthday tea and a few cold ones were put on to celebrate Dave Easey’s 45th.
On Sunday, we headed north east to Whangamata on the eastern side of the Coromandel Peninsula . When we arrived at the Karangahake Gorge, there were 80 km/hr signs posted that hadn’t previously existed. One presumes that this was in response to bikers using it as their personal racetrack at weekends. Didn’t stop us though, although exceeding the posted limit by over 80 km/hr on the short straights would have earned us a long walk back to Tokoroa, had Plod nailed us. The remaining 30 km to Whangamata consisted of almost continuous twisties and there was a lot of boot-scraping on that leg, mainly from over-cooking some of the deceptive corners! John Pritchard and Dave Easey learned to their surprise just how fast a BMW R1100RS can go through the twisties, with Richard fair flying. A slightly malicious text message was sent to Mr. Cruse, saying we’d send photos of what we were up to. A great reply was received shortly afterwards saying that he was at home with Sue and he certainly WOULDN’T be sending photos!! After another pleasant lunch John and Dave headed back home to Auckland , with Richard going down the coast to Tauranga and me to Tokoroa, having covered around 800 km for the weekend.
(L) Matahina Dam with John Pritchard, Dave Easey, John Patterson & Geoff James and (R) Matamata with Richard, John & Dave
Biking with mates whom you trust implicitly over a challenging course (sorry, highway!) is truly good for the soul, although I’d have to admit that work seems more than a bit mundane today!
Geoff
Page Updated
28/06/2008 23:54