Confessions of an Ageing Motorcyclist

A nice run on 4 wheels

2012-01-21T11:20:00.000+13:00

Dontcha hate it when the weather refuses to play ball? Normally, the weather is pretty predictable in NZ from Xmas until the end of April with warm, settled weather. However, this year, the La Nina weather system has been hanging around the north island and has given us the odd few days of unpredicted rain and high winds when we least expect it.

We had to defer a planned fishing trip for a few days finally getting it in mid-week (with Jennie out-fishing me as normal) and yesterday, we finally managed to do a 420 km round trip to the lighthouse at the Manukau Harbour Heads on the Awhitu Peninsula . I'd been there with my riding partners over a year ago, enjoyed the run and had promised to take Jennie. Mind you, the day didn't start on a promising note as Jennie's cat Thomas was clearly unwell when I got up to feed him. Fortunately, the vet in Thames, some 50km down the coast was able to see him so we set off in Jennie's two-seater with Thomas perched on her lap in a cage. We left him there for diagnosis whilst we carried on to the lighthouse.

Awhitu Peninsula and the lighthouse location

The Awhitu Peninsula is sparsely populated despite being quite close to Auckland. It's also exposed to strong westerly winds and big seas coming across the Tasman Sea from Australia and many vessels have got into trouble on the bar at the harbour entrance. The next picture will give you some idea of the average wind speed in this area!

No mistaking the prevailing wind direction!

It wasn't blowing all that hard as we drove up the peninsula although there were some very dark clouds in the direction we were heading, despite an encouraging weather forecast. The roads are a motorcyclist's dream - continuous twisties all the way although you need to be on maximum alert on the narrow roads for the few sightseers on this route who inevitably have their brains in neutral. The last km before the lighthouse is hard-packed dirt with gravel on a downhill gradient. Fine on a road bike if you take your time and no sweat on 4 wheels.

It's a bit of a steep trek from the car park to the lighthouse and we were both fairly warm by the time we reached the top (err...... trying not to say too much to each other to hide the panting!).

A 100 metre climb from the car park!

By Awhitu Peninsula standards, it wasn't blowing all that hard and although we only felt a few spots of rain, it was really laying it down on the north side of the harbour, courtesy of a sudden summer squall. Pretty spectacular as long as you weren't out in it!

Moody shot of squall passing through

The CEO enjoying the spectacle

The lighthouse itself was restored in quite recent times, having originally been built to guide ships through the treacherous harbour entrance in the mid 1800's. The lack of bureaucracy is refreshing. It's open all day with no-one in attendance. Apart from very informative info on the history of the area, there is one sign politely asking you to close the lighthouse doors on the way out and another asking you put a donation in the coin box for upkeep if you've enjoyed it. Wonderful in this day and age! Oh, and not the slightest hint of vandalism anywhere - fantastic.

The Awhitu lighthouse

Harbour mouth - blue skies on the horizon

Apart from the odd sheltered area, plants don't grow very tall at the lighthouse but I was rather taken with the shrub in the foreground below which resembled an out-sized hedgehog with all its spines. Wonder if it would grow in our garden?

You wouldn't want to fall into this shrub!

On the sheltered eastern side of the Awhitu Peninsula, there are (apparently) lots of pretty beaches. Unfortunately, road signage isn't all that flash on the maze of tiny roads and even with a GPS, finding one was more by luck than good judgement. Graham's Beach below was virtually uninhabited and we must go back up that way do do some more exploring when we have a little more time (getting back to the vet's before they closed was in our minds).

Graham's Beach - where is everyone?

Arriving back at Thames, the vet announced that Thomas had a throat infection which antibiotics would clear up but there were some other treatable issues which older cats can get which would require attention in due course. (Vet-speak for saying that we'll be taking out a second mortgage in the coming weeks to pay for it!!). Still, animals are family so all we can do is grit our teeth and pay up. Nonetheless, a great day out together which we thoroughly enjoyed. The Street Triple is hopeless for 2-up riding but trips out in Jennie's sports car are great fun too.

Oh, and one other thing. Not that it's any big deal but this is the last blog post, at least for the foreseeable future. They say in retirement that you're busier than when you were in paid employment and that's certainly true in our case. Jennie and I are both voluntary computer tutors for Senior Net, a nationwide organisation to provide computer tuition and support for senior citizens. I've also recently been appointed national training co-ordinator for both the motorcycle and car divisions of IAM (Institute of Advanced Motorists). This will involve designing and running a database to ensure that members receive training in a timely manner. This will be the main focus for some time, so more than happy to put blogging at the bottom of the pile.

I'd like to wish my fellow moto-bloggers in particular every good wish, safe riding and thanks for such entertaining blogs. I've really enjoyed them, not only because of our shared love of two wheels, but also for the comradeship and a peek into lives in other parts of the world. We're not so very different are we, despite politicians trying to raise unecessary artificial barriers between our cultures. Take care and I'll try to make time to see what you're all up to on the odd occasion!

Michelin Pilot Road 3 tyres progress report

2012-01-10T11:05:00.000+13:00

This post is predominantly for my mate Jules in Australia. He's been nudging me along to write a progress report on how the PR3's are going on the Street Triple. Personally, I think he simply wants to sit back and watch the fur fly as everyone seems to hold strong opinions about tyres, even if there's bugger-all objective evidence for aforesaid opinions! The report is a bit nerdish (oh all right, anal!) so if you want to do something exciting like watching paint dry, it's ok by me :-)! Think yourself lucky - Jennie has to put up with this sort of behaviour all the time!

Background
Just to recap, I'm an Avon fan, having had them on my Blackbird and then the Street Triple. I fitted them to the ST after being a little disappointed with the Dunlop Qualifier sport OEM tyres. The Qualifiers gripped ok in the warmer weather, I was nervous about them in cooler, wet conditions and they also tended to tip into a bend rather than roll in smoothly. By 6000 km, they had lost most of their tread and also lost their shape. The replacement Avon Storm 2 sport-touring tyres did most things really well but were outstanding in the wet, which was not unexpected based on past experience. They were replaced at 10,000 km which was satisfactory, given that the ST gets used for its intended purpose although the front tyre triangulated a bit towards the end of its life. I would have happily used them again except that the NZ Avon importers had hiked the price significantly beyond that of competing brands. That was the spur to look around and the PR3's sport touring tyres were chosen. Photos of the Storms and PR3's when first fitted, together with some accompanying remarks can be found HERE.

The PR3's have now been on for nearly 6 months, so how have they gone so far? Before we get to that, let's have a think as to why opinions on tyres vary so much (a euphemism for unadulterated bullshit in most instances) . There are many variables which impact significantly on tyre performance (road surface and temperature, ratio of straights to curves, tyre pressures, bike weight and geometry, riding style to name but a few. Bike magazines which test normal road tyres round a test track for lap times don't replicate real world conditions either. In other words, we're not comparing apples with apples in most cases. I'm not going to offer up much in the way of hard science either BUT what is relevant is that the ST has been ridden by me over virtually identical road and weather conditions for a touch over 20,000 km using 3 different sets of tyres. At least this gives strong comparative indications, if not absolute ones.

First Impressions
The PR3 is similar to many modern road tyres in that it has dual compound construction - harder towards the centre to reduce wear when vertical and softer towards the edges for additional mechanical grip when leaned over. I have the higher load rating "B" specification on the rear. Carcass construction allegedly also increases the contact patch area when leaned over but other manufacturers make that claim too. Where the PR3 is significantly different is in the tread pattern. Michelin claim that they are the first to use the fine grooves (called sipes) which are a feature of some performance car tyres for clearing water at a higher rate than conventional rain grooves. Here's a picture of the front tyre when it was first fitted:

Pilot Road 3 front - brand new

After leaving the tyre fitting place, my first noticeable impression was at walking pace coming up to the first set of traffic lights. There appeared to be a slight vibration through the bars at around 5-10 km/hr. I actually wondered whether the transverse sipes were creating a harmonic at low speed. It wasn't enough to be worrying and it now seems to have gone away. Don't think I was imagining it! After taking it easy for 50 km or so, I started to explore the characteristics a bit more. Turn-in was similar to the Avons, in that it's a progressive roll rather than the more pronounced drop in of the Dunlop Qualifier. The reason may be due to a less crowned profile. I'm also of the view that the PR3 is fractionally slower steering than the Avon Storm 2, but not to the extent that it's an issue and feel perfectly at home on them. In fact, they were so reassuring that there were no chicken strips on the rear tyre at the end of the 160km trip home.

Experience to date
The tyres are just coming up to 7000km from new. Three characteristics are immediately noticeable.

The profile is perfectly even with little or no hint of squaring off on either tyre or "triangulation" on the front.

There is heaps of tread left. I regret not measuring the tread depth when new but there is still over 3mm in the centre of the rear hoop which suggests that 12000 km + will be easily attainable, even riding with enthusiasm.

I set the tyre pressures with a quality digital gauge (NEVER with a gas station inflator) and run them at 35-36 psi front and 39-40 psi rear, a little lower than in the Triumph manual.

Here are photos taken today, showing the tread and even wear profile.

Front

Rear

Front - worn nearly round to the edge and minimal tearing

As mentioned earlier, the PR3's were chosen over the Avons principally on price - NZ$600 fitted and balanced against $NZ650. If you factor in the clearly superior tyre life, then it makes the PR3's a really attractive economic proposition.

The third characteristic is performance. In the dry, they really grip. Job to say whether they're any better than the Avons because my mental bar is set lower than the limits of either brand of tyre but suffice to say, they're confidence-inspiring. However, in wet conditions, they're sensational. I thought Avon were great (and they are) but the PR3's are better. In my last post on riding Dr Andy West's Daytona 675, he enthused about their performance in the wet and has subsequently said that when the Supercorsas are worn out, he'll be replacing them with PR3's. Clearly, the Supercorsas are a superior tyre for continuous high speed work such as track days but for everyday road use where they don't reach the high operating temperatures required especially in the wet, grip is probably less than the PR3. They certainly didn't give me much feedback in damp conditions. Another interesting thing I noticed when Andy was riding my bike and I was following him in the wet was that the tyres were leaving a noticeable dry line behind them. Perhaps this is an indicator of good water-pumping ability. Must observe other bike tyres too.

Well, there we are - some impressions of the Michelin PR3 based on a comparison with other tyres fitted to the Street Triple and used in near-identical conditions - hope you think that it's been worthwhile. More to come at life end.

Are you still awake Jules??????

Triumph Daytona 675 ride impressions

2012-01-03T17:09:00.004+13:00

Ok, let's start with an introduction - the chap in the photo below with the beautiful Daytona 675 is Andy West. I think you know the disreputable old geezer on the right so the least said about him the better.

A pair of Triples (sounds odd...)

Being oh so terribly formal, Andy is Dr. Andrew West, a prominent figure in the world of science and commerce and is also Adjunct Professor of Agribusiness at Waikato University. At a far less formal level, he's a life-long bike nut and also has an early Triumph Trident and an immaculate '69 Triumph Bonneville in his man-cave at home. As I was also due to find out during the day, he's a really down to earth nice guy and a bloody quick and safe rider too.

Going back 6 months or so ago, Andy contacted me through the blog as he'd seen the link to my Street Triple review and asked for my views about its suitability for his wife as a post-learner machine. As well giving some opinions, I'd offered Andy the chance to ride it for himself and draw his own conclusions. Today was that day so rode down the coast to Thames to meet him, bring him home for lunch and then settle into the serious fun of trying out each others' bikes!

A few showers had passed through in the morning but the weather was brightening up, the roads were drying and the portents were good for using the bikes how they were meant to be used (in the name of thorough and objective road-testing, you understand).

Bike swapping - throw your keys in the middle and see what you get!

A quick walk-around
A preliminary perch on the Daytona showed it to be poles apart from the Street Triple. It may share the 675 power plant, by that's about as near as it gets! The Daytona is the closest thing to a pure race bike on the road as you're likely to encounter. The strongest (and slightly unnerving) impression which hit me when first climbing on board was the near-complete absence of anything in front of you! I always wanted to ride an Imperial Stormtroopers bike from Star Wars and this is the nearest thing to a terrestrial equivalent! The low screen and mirrors were way below the eye line and it felt like you were sticking right out in front of the bike. The clip-on bars also felt like they were vertically below my chin although amazingly, they felt perfectly comfortable.

The seat height is greater than the ST but the narrower seat allowed me to rest on the balls of my feet with complete confidence, also due to the bike's light weight at around 165 kg. Controls were identical to the ST, so they were instinctive.

Wossit go like, mister?
Andy had warned me that the Daytona has a very tall first gear and he was right! Cutting through dozy holiday traffic in Coromandel village required more concentration regarding road positioning than the ST. I never actually had to dip the clutch but the fingers were ready if required. The saving grace was the big torque spread of the motor and I'll come back to this later.

Getting onto the open road was initially unnerving. The lack of anything in front of the face and the head down, arse up riding position felt quite precarious and coupled with the narrow, low bars, I didn't feel all that confident about hustling through the bends. Probably no bad thing as the road was still slightly damp in places, the supersports-oriented Supercorsa tyres weren't up to high grip temperatures and there's not much in the way of rain grooves on them either. Steering was completely different from the higher, wide bars of the ST. Because of the race-style steering geometry, moving the body around the bike and weighting the pegs was all that was needed to change direction, with far less emphasis on heavy countersteering. The faster you went, the less conscious steering effort required!

Up in the hills south of Coromandel, we stopped briefly at a lookout to compare notes and both of us had huge grins on our faces! Andy was completely enthused about the grip from the Pilot Road 3 tyres fitted to the ST and I was blown away with the pin-point accuracy of the steering. The other thing which took me by surprise was the relative comfort of the Daytona. Even for my knees which have taken a hiding over the years, the high footpegs were surprisingly comfortable. The thin seat wasn't bad either but for longer hauls, it would definitely have an Airhawk pad fitted to it. One thing's for sure, you'd never suffer from a cold bum on this bike - heat transfer from the high level pipe and muffler through the thin seat is quite pronounced!

Now here's a thing which I'm sure that many riders have experienced. If you're not riding too well, often a short stop will make a world of difference and you feel transformed when you hop back on. So it was with riding Andy's bike. Even though our stop was less than 5 minutes, hopping back on the Daytona afterwards felt completely natural and my riding was much more assured.

On the run down the coast to Thames with the roads having dried out, we started to use a bit more throttle, particularly when passing small groups of slow-moving holidaymakers. Whilst the Street Triple is no slouch at all, the greater horsepower at the top end on the Daytona was very noticeable and pretty impressive. Whilst the top end was indeed impressive, it still compared very favourably with the ST at lower down in the rev range. This means that in normal on-road conditions particularly in making snap overtakes, it would completely outshine Japanese IL4's of similar capacity which need to build revs to develop power. The extremely slim fairing and screen were also more effective than you might imagine.

Is there a downside to the Daytona? Well yes and no. It has higher specification suspension than the ST and the setup is on the firm side. If I was to regularly use one on the Coromandel Peninsula roads, I'd want to knock off a whole lot of preload front and rear and rely more on the excellent rebound and compression damping to lower the tendency to jump about on the more uneven road surfaces. On sweepers with better finished sufaces or for trackdays, it would be nigh-on perfect as it was. The Daytona does have passenger pegs but anyone perched out back is in for a world of pain. It's that "fitness for purpose" thing though - you don't buy a Daytona for hauling a pillion or lots of luggage about.

On pulling up in Thames before Andy continued home, we were still genuinely smitten with each other's bikes and couldn't keep the smiles off our faces. As I write this quick review, I'd imagine that Andy is telling his wife for the 100th time that the Street Triple is the perfect bike for her. He can't really lose can he, with a Daytona AND an ST in the shed? I'd happily do the same except the only thing I'd lose would be my balls, courtesy of someone near and dear! It's easy to see why both machines have repeatedly won "Bike of the Year" titles in numerous international motorcycle journals. So there we are, two incredible machines with the Street Triple having a broader use and the Daytona being more highly focussed. With only being allowed to have one bike at a time byShe Who Must Be Obeyed, it has to be the ST for the conditions I ride in, but oh for a Lotto win to help with the case for both of them!

Thanks Andy for a fantastic day, both from the viewpoint of the company, your riding skill and letting me use your Daytona how it was meant to be used! Catch you for an even longer ride in due course!

Design elegance!

Social history in photos

2012-01-01T15:08:00.003+13:00

It's mid-afternoon on New Years' Day in NZ and everyone is chilling out in our household. I was inspired by fellow blogger Trobairitz' gorgeous photos from 2011, so spent the last hour rifling through one of our old photo boxes for stuff from years gone by. No particular reasons for choosing the ones I did except that in most cases, there was a bit of a story to go with them. Hope that you aren't bored witless!

Let's get the most embarrassing (groan, blush) one out of the way first. It was taken when I was 16, the year before getting my first motorcycle. I'd been into building model aircraft for years and this photo was taken at the national championships. We always used to wear some wacky clothing when competing but whatever possessed me to wear a leopard print shirt defies rational explanation - I hope you've kept your lunch down. The birds nest hair just adds to the appalling fashion statement. No wonder that girls steered well clear.....

OMG......

It's highly arguable whether my fashion sense got a lot better but you have to take the next photo in the context of the era - 1972. It was taken on our wedding day at a very old church in Kent, UK. Jennie looks a million dollars and her wedding dress wouldn't be out of place today. I wore a brown suit with matching waistcoat, flared trousers and wide, wide tie - totally in keeping with the Swinging 70's. I don't know what my Mother in Law had to complain about - I'd had a very substantial haircut for the occasion which should have been enough. However, I had the temerity to wear a cream shirt instead of a white one - something which she never forgave me for and still grumbled about over the decades which followed, sigh......

Meanwhile, 40 years later......

This picture was taken at Mallory Park in the UK in 1968. At first glance, it's just a race bike from that area. However, there were a number of innovative privateer bikes around that time which gave the factory-supported race bikes a real run for their money and this one was no exception. It was ridden by a chap called Peter Humber who stuck a 3 cylinder 2 stroke Crescent outboard boat engine in a special frame. Not only was it extremely fast but it sounded incredible. I don't know what happened to the development of it, but bikes like this enriched the racing scene in the late 60's.

Crescent 3 cylinder 2 stroke 500cc bike

Drag racing in the UK back in the 60's produced some interesting machinery and the car below was based on a Reliant Scimitar GTE with an unblown 427 powerplant - it was called Whistler. The Reliant Scimitar was manufactured by a company better known for a range of ghastly underpowered 3-wheelers and it was a real surprise when the Scimitar was released. Glass fibre body powered by a straight 6 Ford engine - looked great and performed well too. There's still a cult following in NZ with a Scimitar owner's club of around 150 cars. Amazing for a country with only 4M population.

Scimitar GTE drag car

1970 was the year in which my drag bike really started to perform, particularly over the longer distances. The photo below was taken at a standing start mile event which I was taking part in at Greenham Common. This was a USAF base in southern England with a 2 mile runway. The photo is of the doyen of motoring journalists at the time, Dennis Jenkinson. DSJ as he was known to most, had a phenomenal knowledge of anything to do with motorsport and was equally at home writing deep technical articles or lighter material. The consummate professional.

One further comment before we leave this photo. Greenham Common was a base where nuclear weapons were stored. It was in the days before terrorism and security was rudimentary to say the least. Our event was on their main runway and all I can remember about getting onto the base was rocking up at the guardhouse with my bike on a trailer behind the car and an entry acceptance form - incredible!

DSJ checking out a competitor's bike

The bike below is the one which got me back into bikes in the 1980's. It's the Japanese domestic market version of the internationally-sold Honda XBR 500 single. This particular version is the GB400 TT which was modelled on the classic British singles of the time - the Gold Star, Manx Norton and so on. The fairing is an aftermarket one based on a Yamaha RZ 350. The fairing looks like it was made for the bike and I loved it to bits. Photo taken in 1989.

1987 Honda GB400TT

Back in 1989, I was well into bikes again but still competing at a national level sailing catamarans. The photo below was taken on a lay-day at the national championships in Nelson, south island. I like it simply because it's a natural photo of our daughter Victoria and me chilling out together. Regular readers of this blog may remember that she became a professionally-registered psychologist last month. Where on earth did the time go???

Victoria and her soft-touch father

For part of 1996, I was attached to our parent company in the southern US. One weekend, I visited Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, home of the 8th Air Force's B52's. As per my experience at Greenham Common, security in those days was non-existent by today's standards. The only worrying thing as I recall was a guard barely out of his teens carrying a monstrous sidearm! They had an open air museum of memorabilia which was amazing and the photo below sets the scene. The fuselage below is from the Hustler supersonic bomber, IMHO, one of the loveliest aircraft ever built. This one was particularly interesting as it had been converted into a rocket sled which had been fired down the test track at Holloman AFB at some ungodly speed. Eagle-eyed observers in the background will note the business end of a Minuteman nuclear missile!

Hustler fuselage at Barksdale

The photo below was also taken at Barksdale. It's a Mitchell WW2 bomber which had been impeccably restored. It struck me how small it is compared with modern warplanes and how vulnerable the aircrew were. Deep respect.

Mitchell at Barksdale

The next photo is of my 1985 BMW K100RS which I bought in 1993. I was looking for something to replace the GB 400 and hadn't even contemplated a BMW. However, I wandered into an Auckland bike shop and there was the Beemer. It was being sold on behalf of a customer who had been working overseas for several years. It hadn't been used for 3 or 4 years and had only covered around 20,000 km. It was in near-flawless condition and to get it off their hands, I was offered it for a ridiculously low price, complete with new tyres and official BMW panniers. A true long distance sports tourer with elegant looks.

I loved that bike and with a couple of fairly minor exceptions, it served me reliably until I bought the Blackbird in 2001. The photo was taken in 1999 (I think) when my Godmother and two daughters visited from the UK. In fact, we recently received an email from Linda in the photo remembering one of the highlights of the visit when I took both of them on the back and did "The Ton", an old British phrase for cracking the 100 mph barrier. Happy days!

Linda on the K100RS

Moving right up to the present day, I took the photo below on Christmas Day. Regular readers may remember the post 6 months ago when a starving kitten 5 or 6 weeks old appeared in our garden and never went away. Little Orphan Annie has since grown into the most gorgeous, affectionate kitten who rules the household. Like the rest of our family, she over-ate on Xmas day and flaked out on our bed. Her tongue just poking out adds to the cuteness factor!

The ever-vigilant Annie

A happy and prosperous New Year to everyone!

Your pet hates about car drivers?

2011-12-24T14:55:00.002+13:00

Enough said

Just before Xmas, a British motorcycle website ran a survey to determine what were the pet hates among its readers with respect to car drivers and their annoying and dangerous habits, plus being on the roads in general. Some of the habits listed and their ranking surprised me a bit and I got to thinking that maybe, there are bad traits which vary according to where you are in the world and even regional differences within a given country.

I'm curious with respect to what other people think - if you're a blogger, would you like to list your 5 least-liked specific traits in descending order of importance with an explanation and put a link to your post in your Comment?

Here are mine.

1. Corner-cutting on narrow, twisty roads.

I live in a region of NZ which is a biker's paradise - hardly a straight bit of road anywhere. On just about every ride I do in the area, there's at least one dozy knuckle-dragger on a blind or obscured bend partially on my side of the road coming towards me. By the look of surprise on their faces, it's as if something coming the other way is the last thing they're expecting and I have no right to be there. If there's time, I point them back to their side with an explicit gesture to demonstrate disapproval. Laziness on their part? Failure to comprehend the potential consequences? Generally public antipathy towards setting good standards? Dunno, but it really makes my blood boil. It's not just oncoming traffic either - if you're setting up for an overtake, traffic in front of you will often drift over the centreline on a shallow bend or even on a straight. It's particularly noticeable at weekends and with the Coromandel Peninsula being a tourist area, I suspect that there's an element of people from other regions simply not knowing how to drive well on twisty roads. Morons!

Something else I've noticed round this way which is both amusing and tragic at the same time. Some of the worst corner-cutters are 4x4 drivers towing boats. But wait - there's more!!! If the driver is a solidly-built gentleman (oh all right, a fat bastard) wearing a baseball cap, a moustache and just a singlet or cutoff T shirt, you can bet your last cent he's going to be one of the worst offenders. N.Z riders - just keep your eyes peeled and see if I'm right!!!

To me, corner-cutting is the No 1 pet hate by an awfully large margin.

2. Poor situational awareness. (Graphic: Using Data.wordpress.com)
Ok, whilst this is a perfectly true annoyance, it's not a single specific fault so I'll plump for failure to observe the rear. By the number of dumb things people do when I'm closing on them from the rear, it's clear that on many occasions, they have no idea I'm there. I suppose that mirrors are for checking out how they look wearing the latest Oakleys rather than the intended purpose. However, with judicious positioning and having upgraded my headlight bulbs, I must admit that they see me a little earlier than they used to. Probably don't like the dazzle in their mirrors, even in daytime. Car drivers doing shoulder checks/lifesavers? Don't make me laugh, the incidence of drivers actually swivelling their heads to take a good look is as rare as rocking horse poo!

Truck drivers as a group are excluded. The ones round our way are extremely courteous and professional.

The other thing I've noticed is that I'm definitely spotted earlier when wearing a hi-viz jacket. I've got a theory that there's a moment's uncertainty by a driver as to whether I'm a motorcycle cop so they go into best behaviour mode for a nanosecond. Whatever the reason, I'm downright grateful! At present, the biggest percentage of riders don't wear hi-viz and I worry that if it's mandated at any stage whether other road users will become blind to them through over-use.

3. Failure to indicate intentions.

This might be more prevalent in the country areas than in major towns and cities where there would be utter carnage if people didn't stick to the rules most of the time. However, out in the country, the locals seem to regard the use of indicators as a waste of energy and cut across your bows or turn off in front of you without warning. The "relaxed" driving style is borne out by the number of country types who drive one-handed with the spare hand dangling out of the window or gripping the roof gutter. It's a fair bet that their thoughts aren't on driving well, more like looking forward to their next puff of weed or a cold beer at the pub. Most of these idiots fall into the "slow driver" category but it's reassuring to read that the police are giving slow, discourteous drivers special attention too.

4. People who pull out of side turnings in front of you.

I'm hyper-aware of the risk to bikers by this kind of retard and am usually ready for them. However, have you noticed that people who pull out normally proceed to dawdle along? Why is that?? Jennie also has a theory that people who pull out on you normally turn off soon afterwards and I'm beginning to think she's right now that she mentions it!

5. Angry drivers.

Actually, I'm thinking about one particular circumstance and I lied, it's a love, not a pet hate but it does involve angry drivers! We all know that bikes are great at filtering past queues of traffic. It seems that more drivers are objecting to bikes coming past when they're stuck in traffic jams, even though the practice is perfectly legal with certain parameters. Several times in the last year, I've been gently filtering past a queue of stationary vehicles and some clown in a car has displayed colourful mastery of the English language by yelling out "Wait your f*****g turn" or a variation thereof. Ignoring the abuse probably upsets them more than acknowledging it!

Don't let it influence your personal views, but here are the top 5 from Visordown, the British website:

Motorists not using their indicators correctly (53%)
Drivers flicking cigarette butts out of their window (21%)
Potholes or uneven road surfaces (11%)
Drivers overtaking unnecessarily in unsafe weather conditions (9%)
Ineffective use of mirrors, poor observations and general awareness by others on the road (6%)

Let's hear what gets up your nose!!

'twas the week before Christmas......

2011-12-21T21:26:00.000+13:00

Well, the best Christmas present came just under a week ago when our youngest son and daughter-in-law presented us with a baby granddaughter by the name of Georgia. Her parents are the most laid-back couple imaginable and I'm sure that their temperament has transferred to Georgia - she's such a good baby and they will be fabulous parents. I guess we'll be travelling to and from Auckland a lot during the hols!

Proud Dad and Georgia in the birthing suite

Grandma - who's the scary old guy taking photos of me?

The real world is soooo tiring!

Not many days left until Christmas and a pile of things to do before the family descends on us. However, Jennie and I decided to bunk off and go fishing this afternoon as the weather is so good. The fishing gods smiled on us with 8 big snapper in under 2 hours and a couple of broken lines, probably from big stingrays. Note to those who previously took the mickey out of my red shorts. The ones below are new and are henceforth known as my Lucky Russet Shorts. Yeah, I know they're red to a guy, but Jennie bought them and she assures me that the colour is Russet. Don't say you haven't been told! Back to Xmas preparations tomorrow though and probably won't be back on 2 wheels for a couple of weeks.

All that remains is to wish riders all round the world safe riding, Merry Christmas and a truly wonderful 2012. See you in a few weeks and take care out there!

Jennie usually out-fishes me but it was a tie today!

This snapper has every reason to look annoyed!

Nils and Marc's Excellent Adventure

2011-12-14T17:43:00.001+13:00

There's something very special about the motorcycling fraternity right round the globe. That special thing is that there's a better than 99% chance that you'll meet as comparative strangers and part as confirmed friends. And so it was for the last few days. Nils Poulsen is a bike enthusiast from NZ's capital, Wellington. Nils and I had never met but we'd been corresponding on all matter of things for some months and when he started talking about planning a road trip with his mate Dr Marc Lubbers; Jennie and I invited them to stop off for a day or two in Coromandel and explore if they fancied a trip north.

It didn't take long to nail down a date and on Sunday, I rode down to the southern end of the Coromandel Peninsula to meet them at the gold-mining town of Waihi.

Introducing Marc with his Ducati ST4 and Nils with his Honda VFR 800

After some relaxed banter over coffee, we rode a few hundred metres to have a look at the 500 ft deep gold mining operation. Not often that you find a working gold mine so close to the main street of town!

Waihi gold ore extraction pit - impressive up close

Everyone was getting a bit peckish so it was time to ride north to the small town of Tairua for lunch. Being the local yokel/tourist guide, I took the lead. There are always some trepidations about riding with strangers but it only took a few minutes to learn that these guys knew their business and we all fitted together perfectly, proceeding to carve up the almost continuous twisties to Tairua and it was great fun riding in their company. Nils' VFR 800 was whisper-quiet and in typical Ducati contrary fashion, I could hear Marc's bike booming away behind me on the over-run - nothing quite like that sound. Both great machines.

Parked up for a late lunch

After lunch, I went into tour guide mode as the guys wanted to specifically see the Hahei Cathedral Cove area and Hot Water Beach. It was fairly cloudy when the photo below was taken but on a clear day, the sea is a bright turquoise due to the white sand on the seabed - simply gorgeous.

Hahei Beach from the lookout

Hot Water Beach is just 5 km from Hahei. So-called because at low tide, you can dig a hole in the sand and geothermally-heated hot water comes bubbling up and fills the hole. Pretty decadent laying on the beach in your own private bath!

Hot Water Beach. Hot water bubbling up where the people are congregating

The other thing about the Coromandel Peninsula around Christmas time is that literally tens of thousands of Pohutukawa trees come into bloom all round the coast. Also commonly known as the NZ Christmas Tree, they provide a breathtaking backdrop to summer. Although pretty enough in its own right, the photo below doesn't do justice to just how bright the flowers are, partially because of the dull skies and my camera at a distance.

A fairly young Pohutukawa, Hot Water Beach

However, the close-up below shows the flowers in true colour so you'll get an inkling of just how spectacular the coastal regions are for a few weeks, especially as the older trees are massive!

Simply stunning!

Leaving the beach, we headed north and made a quick stop at the Coroglen pub for a photo shoot. The Coroglen pub is an icon for bikers on the Coromandel Loop road and serves up such delicacies as fresh scallop burgers - yumm!! During the summer, they also attract great international music bands who play in a natural amphitheatre behind the pub.

Nils and Marc at Coroglen

From Coroglen, it was a brisk ride up to Whitianga, where Nils and Marc had booked accommodation for the night and I departed for home ready to meet up with them again the next day. They duly arrived at our place next morning and checked in but unfortunately, the forecast wasn't promising so we elected to take the 4x4 out and do some touring about. First stop was to the tiny settlement of Colville north of Coromandel, where the sealed road ends. It's an area full of alternative lifestylers and communes set up in the early hippy days - I really like it up that way. The Colville store stocks an amazing range of stuff, including gas mantles, big tubs of every bean and grain known to mankind for vegetarian and macrobiotic diets - a seriously cool place!

Not really "banjo" territory but getting that way!

The utterly quaint and tiny Colville post office

Just down the road from Colville is Branch Creek Furniture which you access up a narrow track. The owner, Greg Taylor, is an old school craftsman who used to be a logger. He makes really solid, interesting-shaped furniture from indigenous and introduced timbers and we have several of his pieces.

Cool chair (and outstandingly comfortable)

Table and bench seat

We noticed Nils casting covetous looks at a gorgeous swamp kauri coffee table and in the end, he couldn't leave without buying it. There was a bit of spirited banter about what his wife would say but we're pretty sure that the " 'tis better to ask for forgiveness than permission" rule applied in this case! It's currently being couriered to his home in Wellington so we'll know soon enough!!!

On the way back home, we stopped off to see my mate Paul who's recent purchase of a classic 1951 Norton ES2 featured in a recent post. Paul is a complete Norton enthusiast and in addition to the ES2, has a racing 850cc Commando and a 750cc Commando road bike. Paul's now in his mid-50's and bought the 750 brand new when he was 17 - it's still in absolutely showroom condition!!

Paul's man-cave

The stunning 750 Commando

In the early evening, we all went along to a working gold stamper in Coromandel which dated back to the 1800's where gold-bearing rock is still crushed, treated and bullion (a gold/silver amalgam) extracted. It was a fascinating demonstration and really enjoyable.

The incredibly noisy stamper battery

1800's OSH-approved belts and open gears!

The retorting process for extracting precious metals

A bullion ingot worth US$3000!

After a pretty full-on day, it was back home for a BBQ, a few wines and some well-earned sleep. The following day, Nils and Marc took themselves into Coromandel village to do some shopping, presumably as quid pro quo for being allowed out on a boy's bike trip **sly grin**. In the afternoon, they went on the famous Driving Creek pottery railway, followed by yet more refreshment and locally-caught seafood.

Driving Creek pottery railway - the vision of a local potter

The weather forecast for the following few days was fairly dire so Nils and Marc decided to shorten the trip and head the 650-odd km directly home the following morning. We enjoyed their company immensely and new long-term friendships have been established through the love of motorcycles - now that's got to be good, hasn't it?

Hope you've enjoyed the trip round the Coromandel Peninsula and meeting fellow enthusiasts Nils, Marc and Paul. All that remains is to wish everyone a wonderful Xmas and a safe and prosperous 2012!

My Favourite Five

2011-12-10T19:43:00.001+13:00

Following my great mate Roger Fleming's challenge to post the 5 favourite photos of 2011 which I took, here they are; not in any particular order of importance:

As many regular visitors to this blog will remember, we spent 3 weeks in Vietnam earlier this year. All countries are special but for us, we left a bit of our hearts in this country. Wonderful, friendly and open people, fabulous food and stunning scenery. I love the picture below because it shows the sheer enterprise and energy of the Vietnamese. A pavement maintenance operation for servicing bicycles and motorbikes while you wait. They appeared to be extremely thorough - oil change and cable lube as part of this job and they even had a plastic chair for the customer. Innovation and capitalism in a (mildly) socialist country - right in the centre of Saigon!

The enterprise of glorious Vietnam!

This photo was taken at sunset close to our house, looking over the Firth of Thames. Not only does it reflect the sense of peace and tranquillity we get from living in Coromandel, it's also where Jennie and I spend time together fishing from our boat. The little dots in the water are commercial mussel farms and we moor the boat to them. The fishing here is fantastic (10 snapper and 1 trevally between us in a 2 hour spell last Thursday!) but even if we didn't catch anything, floating in those surroundings is medicine for the soul.

Coromandel sunset in winter

This is our granddaughter Molly at her christening last weekend. We were waiting for the ceremony to begin and I happened to notice that she was resting her head on the cathedral pew with a faraway look. And it makes me misty-eyed....

Our gorgeous granddaughter Molly

This is Annie. We found her in our garden as a tiny kitten which was very, very hungry, and very friendly. Despite our best efforts, we couldn't find her owners so we let her adopt us, despite already having 2 cats! As it happened, my older cat developed an infection which he didn't recover from only 2 weeks after Annie showed up. Annie immediately made it her business to take away as much of the hurt as she could. A special bond, with maybe a dash of Karma thrown in for good measure!

Little Orphan Annie

And last but far from least is the photo below. It's Philip McDaid, Chief Examiner of the NZ branch of the Institute of Advanced Motorists. He was just completing the report form on my first assessment ride back in April. His expression made me want a pee on the spot but it was more a case of "safe enough, but needs a hell of a lot of work". Being damned by faint praise was just the spur that was needed and I honestly can't remember when I'd worked so hard at anything. Eight months later, a test pass as a full member of IAM and now training to be an Observer. Oh yeah, this photo is special all right!!!

Eight months of reading, thinking and dreaming about that bloody test!

A motorcycle-free weekend!

2011-12-05T10:30:00.001+13:00

It was Jennie's birthday last Friday and our kids, bless 'em, wanted to share in it so we were away for a couple of nights enjoying their company. We're truly blessed in that not only do we have a fantastic relationship with our kids, their partners are wonderful people and great mates too.

Friday saw Jennie and I drive to Auckland via the scenic route, stopping for a lazy lunch in a little village and then exploring the waterfront east of Auckland city. Not only does the city itself have a beautiful, big harbour but you can get to some lightly populated beaches within a 40 minute or so drive.

Maraetai Beach, near Auckland

hardly a soul about!

Waiheke Island car ferry from Bucklands Beach Peninsula

We stayed with our younger son and daughter-in-law and on Saturday, Jennie took off for a marathon shopping session with our Auckland-based daughter (6 hours - a guy would be demented within the first 30 minutes, haha), whilst I headed into the city with our son and D-I-L to look at car baby seats for their imminent arrival. Enough of this domestic stuff, other than to say that crikey, there are some real high tech devices available in the baby market these days. Recaro, long-time manufacturers of internationally-renowned sports car and rally seats have tapped into the child restraint market. By the prices they charge, I'd imagine that the child market is their biggest profit centre!!!

The title of the post isn't 100% accurate as I needed to visit Auckland's premier motorcycle accessories store to pick up a new Pinlock anti-fog visor insert for my helmet. The old one had lasted for the best part of 4 years but was getting slightly scratched which caused a bit of starring at night. This was my first visit to the current location and I was impressed with their service and range of products. A bike on a display stand caught my eye - this is it:

The McIntosh Suzuki

Anyone around the world who has a strong interest in classic motorcycle racing will know the name of Kiwi engineer Ken McIntosh who is one of the world's top restorers of Manx Nortons. However, his talents were, and still are much broader than that. In the early 1980's he collaborated on a project with an extraordinary rider, Dr Rodger Freeth. Rodger Freeth was a senior lecturer in Astrophysics at university in Auckland who brought the rigours of science to the art of motorcycle riding and racing. The McIntosh Suzuki F1 superbike was the result of this collaboration and it's fair to say that it pretty much won every race it took part in for a few years. Its speed was devastating and in 1983 at Bathurst in Australia, it was clocked within a fraction of 300 km/hr! What a privilege to see it again after all this time.

After the shopping, it was time to drive to the Auckland waterfront for lunch. Driving through the suburb of Ponsonby, this old building took my eye. It looks like the odd wedge shape design was to deliberately fit into the tight intersection between two roads!

Lovely old building

Auckland City centre from Mission Bay

A long lunch at the waterfront suburb of St Heliers followed. Great service, great food and a favourite pastime of people-watching! The "hill" in the background of the photo below is Rangitoto, an extinct (we hope) island volcano in the outer harbour which was formed some 600 years ago. A bit recent for my liking!

Our younger son and daughter in law waiting for lunch

Jennie's Xmas "shop 'till you drop" trip was a spectacular success from her viewpoint inasmuch that the spoils wouldn't fit in her sports car for the trip home so it's a good job we'll be back in Auckland next weekend for another function with the 4x4! That evening, we all went out for a Chinese banquet in the suburb of Kingsland. A very ordinary, even slightly down at heel frontage with plain décor inside. However, the clue to the wonderful reputation of this place for authentic cooking was that most of the patronage was Chinese. Suffice to say that it was reasonably-priced, exquisite tasting and in quantities which defeated us. Special honours go to the Salt and Pepper Squid dish for anyone who is motivated to visit the Canton Cafe!

Sunday brought yet another special family occasion with a drive to the city of Hamilton to attend the baptism of our gorgeous grandchildren from our eldest son and partner . Four other families were taking part in the ceremony and it was an absolutely delightful occasion with all the children behaving impeccably!

All in all, a wonderful weekend and one largely without bikes too! As a fabulous postscript, our daughter sat her final examination this morning (oral in front of a high-powered panel) for professional registration as a clinical psychologist. She rang a short time ago and from her comments, it sounds like she aced it. Unbelievably proud parents!

How it all started

2011-12-01T10:02:00.001+13:00

In response to Gary's Flies In Your teeth post, I guess that my story is typical of many riders. Also like several other bloggers, my early posts are a chronicle of the early days but as many people won't have gone back to the late 2009 posts, I'll summarise the earliest here.

Here's a photo of the earliest remembered association with bikes when I was aged 5 or thereabouts. I hope that you appreciate the courage it took to post this!

Oh my God!!! Me on the right

In my early life, Dad spent a lot of time working overseas and kept a 2 stroke James (Appropriate given my surname!) in the shed for running around our Northamptonshire village on when he got home. If I was lucky, I'd be given short rides and I suppose I was hooked from then on. Mum was dead against them though as Dad had a serious accident, breaking his jaw.

My conscious memories of bikes surfaced again when I was about 15. At that time, the UK was heavily influenced by the American "biker rebel" culture and near where we lived was a cafe where the local bikers hung out on their Triumphs, Nortons and BSA's. As wannabe bikers, we used to go down on our bicycles, complete with ape-hangers and tassels hanging out the end of the bars (more groans of embarrassment!). The bikers used to put a 45 on the juke box and the challenge was to ride from the cafe, round the town centre and back again before the record finished. Never mind about antisocial and dangerous behaviour, we wanted to be just like them!

My first bike came a couple of years later as a reward from my grandparents for passing all my national school exams - couldn't believe my luck! The fact that it was a Suzuki 50 with about 5 bhp and had the aerodynamics of a house thanks to the massive aftermarket windscreen they bought mattered not one jot - I was independently mobile! That little Suzuki carried me over several counties in company with close friends on a Lambretta scooter, a Triumph Tiger Cub and an Ariel Arrow. I'm pleased to say that I still stay in touch with most of those friends and one of them is still riding bikes.

The rest of my early biking history is in those early posts, but just thought I'd repost a photo of me and my Tiger 100 taken at the 1969 Isle of Man TT. The young lady is Anne McGregor from Glasgow, who was holidaying in the IOM at the time with a friend. Lovely girl and I hope she's had a wonderful life. (If any reader from Scotland thinks that they know her, her friend was called Rosemary Gilseanan). It was a source of amazement that she even bothered with me given that my dress in the photo was a green cardigan with a bright orange T shirt, brown cord jeans and suede ankle boots. I suppose I was the only person in the Isle of Man that thought I looked cool - aaarrgh!

Well at least Anne and the Tiger 100 looked good......

A bit of this, a bit of that

2011-11-27T16:31:00.001+13:00

Several things connected with motorcycling have reared their heads this week.

A BOOK
As TV the world over is 95% crap, I read a fair bit in the evenings. Our public library is superb, particularly for a village of 1500 and I'm always finding absolute gems. One of the librarians knows I ride and thrust the book below into my hands. Not to be confused with the Terry Pratchett Discworld novel of the same name, this one is very much grounded on Earth and real!

The front cover, funnily enough!

Nathan Millward is a 20-something English guy who has been working in Australia. Unfortunately, he's overlooked that his visa is expiring in 20 days! He can either fly home or, in a sudden flash of genius; ride Dorothy, his well-used Honda CT110 Postie bike . The CT110 is an institution in Australia and NZ. Used by Posties to deliver urban mail, it's also used by the public at large to undertake any insane feat imaginable because of its robust nature. Including a 30,000 km overland trip half way round the world!

The Ubiquitous Honda CT110 (file photo)

As you might expect, 20 days doesn't leave much time for planning so Nathan takes off with little or no safety clothing, minimal tools, minimal maps and other severe deficiencies which would make the average motorcyclist shudder! I'm not going to spoil things, but it's the most wonderful example of an unquenchable desire to succeed, not to mention astounding naivety overcoming some pretty severe challenges. His honesty in assessing his own feelings is completely disarming. Very early on in his ride, he's thinking of pulling out and ponders whether pulling out or continuing with the journey will take the greatest courage. For some reason, this struck a real chord.

His journey takes in such places as Indonesia, Thailand, Nepal and Kazakhstan along the way. He experiences humanity at its very worst and when all seems lost, he discovers people with virtually nothing save the shirts on their backs who go out of their way to help him. I couldn't help wondering what I'd do in some of the circumstances he found himself in.

I loved this inspiring book, particularly the clear message that if you want something badly enough, there's normally a way to make it happen.

ABC Books Australia, ISBN 978-0-7333-2806-0. Available through the Internet and as a Kindle download through Amazon.

A BIKE
The second motorcycling-related item this week was on Thursday afternoon when I was catching up on some emails and heard a motorcycle chugging up our steep drive. It was clearly a single cylinder and offhand, I couldn't think of anyone who owned one, save for a friend that I knew was travelling in the south island. When it hove into view, I immediately recognised Paul and Julie, friends of ours in Coromandel. They'd just bought themselves a restored 1951 Norton ES2 500 and boy, what a beauty! See what you think....

An adjustable spanner, pliers and a screwdriver is all you need!

Paul and Julie are real Norton enthusiasts. Paul still has a Fastback Commando which he bought new when he was 19 or 20 and it's in flawless condition. He also has an 850cc very special racing Commando for classic racing events. Some of the parts are eye-wateringly expensive and he clearly has a wife in a million (or hides purchases in the "household miscellaneous" part of their budget)!

Pauls's racing Commando on the starter rollers

A RIDE

Today is the last Sunday of the month when upper north island IAM members get together for a ride in the Auckland area. Up at 0530 for the trip to Auckland and joined by my mates Roger and Andy at the meeting venue, we weren't sure what the day would hold.

Th' Dudes - Roger and Andy. Matt on right

A number of other riders turned up including Matt who was due for his first assessment ride - exactly where I started 8 months ago (feels like 5 minutes)! Matt rides a Yamaha MT-01, a real torque monster and the first I've seen in the flesh. 1670cc with 150 Nm of torque at 3700 revs - it'd plough a field! It's one of those larger than life brutal bikes where you can't but help stare. The detail on it is first class.

Philip, IAM Chief Examiner checking the huge Yamaha

Philip allocates most of the group to another Observer for a semi-social ride and asks me to join him and Matt for the first part of my Observer training. Initially, Matt goes out front with Philip behind him and me at the rear, checking Matt's riding against the police rider's checklist which is used by IAM. It's a curious feeling observing someone else. Matt does well with just refinements required rather than serious errors and he's well pleased.

Mid-ride debrief for Matt

After the debrief, Philip asks me to take the lead to demonstrate to Matt extreme lane positioning for cornering. Taken completely by surprise but get through it with no stuff-ups! I then follow Matt and he picks it up without much difficulty. The trick is to practice until he gets it right 100% of the time. Lunch at Kumeu, a full debrief for Matt with a task list of a few things to work on before the first check ride with an assigned Observer to mentor him. He's got off to a great start and is really enthusiastic to commit to the hard work over the coming months - well done Matt and we'll catch you after Xmas. Really looking forward to watching someone new taking the IAM training path.

An excellent trip home in light Sunday traffic and sunny skies, arriving at 1500 having covered 460 km. It doesn't get much better than that!

Raising my riding skills - some reflections

2011-11-20T16:39:00.001+13:00

A study in contemplation!

When I started out on the journey to raising my ridingskills in April 2011, little did I know where it was going to lead and how I’dfeel at different stages along the way. I’ve made periodic posts since April about the on-going IAM training butthought it might be useful to condense the experiences and thoughts into asingle post in case it’s of use to others who are thinking of re-skilling orupskilling, but have yet to do anything about it!

It’s naturally a personal view, but I’ve tried toquantify the reasoning for choosing the particular path that I did. I hope it all makes sense.

HOW IT ALL STARTED

I’d written a couple of posts about motorcycle accidentsand how both regulatory authorities and many motorcyclists too, seemed to avoidthe root causes and propose solutions which would have limited impact onreducing accidents. I was 63 at thattime and the idea of upskilling seemed a good one but also like many riders,hadn’t actually done anything about it because I thought that I was an “ok”sort of rider after 40+ years in the saddle. Trouble is, "OK" is normally "Not OK" to an impartial observer. The majority of motorcycle riders might justifiably complain about the standard of the average car driver, but often do little to help themselves. Fair comment?

Eminent American motorcycle safety author David Hough hadseen one of my rants on motorcycle safety and in typically forthright fashion, sent an email askingwhat my plans were to ensure that I continued to ride safely as I aged. This was his opening salvo – the first ofsome wonderfully direct and productive correspondence:

Some of your words lead me to believe you've also beenthinking about how age is affecting your riding, and how it is likely to affectyour motorcycling in the future. So, I'd welcome your observations, both interms of how the aging of the body and mind affect someone like you or Iwho have been riding for many years, and also for the "return" riderswho have gotten back into motorcycling after years of raising the kids,building the house, etc.

David is an exceptionally astute guy and reading betweenthe lines, he almost certainly thought that I was saying the right things but mayhave been procrastinating about actually doing anything - and he wasright! Over a number of weeks,refreshing or raising skills was only one of many topics we discussed withrespect to ageing riders but he’d prodded my conscience – time to put my moneywhere my mouth was! Looking back, if it wasn’tfor David, I almost certainly wouldn’t have taken the route I did. Simply put, I owe him an awfullot .

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT TRAINING OPTIONS

As well discussions with David, I’d been having somecorrespondence around the same time with fellow Kiwi rider and blogger, Roger Fleming and Dylan Rogers; an advanced instructor living in the UK. Chewing the fat with these guys wasincredibly valuable as it helped to crystallise the direction which seemedappropriate for me. Also, it introduced me to people who started as strangersand are now cherished friends as is the way with motorcycling!

Any form of training has to be followed up with practicefor it to be effective. Not only do theskills have to be practised, they require periodically refreshing to stop theinevitable slide back into bad habits mainly because we lack discipline (errr…a polite way of saying we get lazy)! Theonly true way of stopping this slide from happening is to be periodicallyevaluated by an independent, qualified 3rd party. Potentially tough on the ego but great in terms of acquiring goodskills.

Whilst taking a series of one-off commercial advanced riding coursesover time was a viable option for me, the approach advocated by the Institute ofAdvanced Motorists (IAM) seemed to be the most appropriate one – genuine advancedtraining. This is a summary of the IAM approach.

There are formal, measurable, standards based on UK training ofpolice motorcyclists. Arguably one ofthe highest levels of riding skill available in terms of roadcraft, as opposed totrack skills which are rather different compared with advanced roadcraft. The training “bibles” used are available at avery modest cost to any member of the motorcycling community who wishes to buythem. They’re listed HERE and HERE.

The level of instruction, mentoring and testing isdelivered by people who consistently meet these standards and are trained toevaluate others. The instructors donatetheir time on an entirely voluntary basis.

It’s a progressive path, not a one-off so there islittle chance of letting the skills slip. It starts with an assessment ride where current skills (or lack of ‘emin my case) are assessed against the aforementioned criteria. A formal report is given to the trainee. The trainee practices to address any improvement areas, followed by a series of further observed rides and evaluationreports until the standards are consistently achieved, not just sometimes! That process can typically take up to twoyears depending upon commitment. Thetrainee then takes the demanding full membership test and if successful,becomes an IAM full member. It’s worthmentioning at this stage that the evaluation rides take two hours or so peroccasion in heavy city traffic, on motorways and narrow, twisty ruralroads. There’s no place to hide with somethingthat comprehensive and like any worthwhile endeavour, it’s darned hard work.

A full member may then elect to remain a full memberand attend monthly IAM rides or similar events to maintain skills. In many cases however, full members continuetheir training to become Observers (instructor/examiners) and voluntarily donate their time to raisethe skills of others.

The on-going nature of the training was particularlyappealing, as was the challenge of trying to consistently ride to measurablyhigh level standards. Also, beingretired, I had the time to put something back into motorcycling provided that Iwas good enough to go all the way.

IAM was the training path I finally chose.

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PROCESSES AND OUTCOMES

As mentioned earlier, the individual rides and tests havealready been detailed in previous posts but there’s much, much more than thatgoing on in the background and it’s worth summarising some of those things.

Actually committing yourself to start training is thehardest thing. Far easier to simplyprocrastinate and stay in your comfort zone. Unfortunately, that does nothing to reduce the risk of coming to seriousharm so just bite the bullet and get started!

Any worthwhile training is going to stretch the traineeand probably cause initial ego damage – it did to me! You soon shake that mindset off and regardany riding errors as an opportunity for improvement. I think that testosterone is a real inhibitorin admitting that your skills need some work and that women are likely to befar more honest in this respect!

You do need a bit of experience to get the best outof an advanced course. Some of thetechniques aren’t intuitive unless you can apply some judgement. Good commercial training is often a useful adjunct to IAM work.

Riding to a system and constantly revising your ridingplan caters for ever-changing road and traffic conditions. The process becomes completely automatic with practice.

In the early stages, my situational awareness(observational skills and consequential planning and execution of appropriateresponses) was lacking and it was oh so easy to be overwhelmed by all theinputs from external sources. Further onin the training, you become aware of just how much more information you areprocessing to make the correct judgement calls. Riding in challenging conditions becomes easier and more pleasurable.

The improvement process isn’t linear. There are times, particularly in the earlierstages when I struggled to implement the skills and apply them on a consistentbasis which was a bit depressing. This was normally as a result oftrying to apply too many new concepts at the same time and going intooverload. The enjoyment of ridingsuffered at these times and a bit of self-doubt crept in. It was solved by taking smaller bites at thecherry. Getting things right and lockingthem in place was a huge boost to confidence and even small gains opened thepossibility of going all the way. In theearly days of training, it was fear of failure which drove me on. Somewhere along the way, the motivatorswitched to wanting to execute a near-perfect ride. That difference might not look particularlyimportant in print, but the mental switch is a HUGE one.

Meeting other people doing the same training at end ofmonth rides makes you realise that you’re not alone in your doubts and fearsand there’s a huge amount of mutual support. The Observers and Examiners have all gone through the same or similarprocesses. They’re there as volunteersso they’re committed to great outcomes on your behalf.

Being followed by an IAM Observer/Examiner becomesprogressively less intimidating – they’re there because of your commitment toimprove. However, there’s absolutely nocompromise in the standard they set and like anything worthwhile, who wouldhave it any other way? Life for most ofus is generally comfortable and a true challenge is a great way to remind usthat we’re alive.

Passing through the various stages of IAM training is asource of quiet pride and a certain amount of relief rather than loudcelebration. People who simply want towave a certificate about probably won’t have the mindset to complete theincredibly demanding course.

I don’t ride anywhere nearly as fast as pre-IAMdays. The biggest thrill comes fromriding well, not breaking speed limits by a large margin. On the few occasions nowadays when ridingfast for a bit of fun, the IAM skills are always there to make good judgementcalls about how fast and where you do it.

The training makes you aware of the generally poorskills of the average road user. A bitscary in one respect but at least it allows you to identify and addresspotentially hazardous situations in a timely manner.

IAM training is available in very few countries. However, the general principles apply to all good motorcycle training, commercial or otherwise. The trick is to carefully research what is available in some detail, what suits your circumstances and only then, commit to training.

Whether you're a fast rider or slow rider, riding on the open road or in town, good training still applies. As a motorcyclist, you're vulnerable and greater awareness of your surroundings and the ability to identify and mitigate hazards are are critical for us all to survive.

As this is, and will continue to be a highly personaljourney after quite a bit of research and thought, I wouldn’t presume to adviseanyone else to follow suit. What I willsay however, is that if you’ve been considering raising your skills, don’t lookfor reasons to put it off – please, please find something that suits and getstuck in!

At 64 years of age, I passed my IAM full membership ridingtest last Friday. Eight months after starting the journey, the first stage has beencompleted. To put something back intomotorcycling and to prevent a slide in skills, the next stage is to qualify asan Observer (Instructor/Examiner). Not a bad outcome arising from a chance email sent by David Hough eh?

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one ofhis great surprises, is tofind he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do.

HenryFord

Best wishes and safe riding!

Pain and extreme pride

2011-11-19T09:18:00.001+13:00

I sent an email last evening to my friend in the UK, Dylan Rogers; who is an Institute of Advanced Motorists Observer (Instructor/Examiner). Dylan has offered much encouragement and advice, for which I'm eternally grateful. The first sentence contained an uncharacteristic profanity which was really an emotional outpouring of how I felt at that very moment. It said, "F**k me, I am sooo tired....."!

Earlier this week, the date for my IAM Full Membership advanced riding test was confirmed - the final step after 8 months of one of the most demanding things I've ever undertaken. The IAM Chief Examiner told me that my Examiner would be Simon, a serving motorcycle officer who qualified on both bikes and cars with the police in the UK. The UK police riding standards are used as the basis for IAM training so it's unquestionably tough with no concessions if you're just a little off your game. Anyone can have a bad day but having completed the Bay and Banjos Tour last weekend with my mates, I felt reasonably sharp, but not by any means over-confident. The arrangement was to meet Simon in central Auckland at Deus Ex Machina, the extraordinary motorcycle cafe which I've previously mentioned (more on Deus shortly).

We live in a reasonably remote part of NZ and it's 180 km from central Auckland before I even start the test. A real full-on day even before returning home! Leaving home just before 0700 gave me time to ride to Auckland, have breakfast at Deus and a relaxing quick look at some of their new bikes before Simon arrived. Over a coffee, Simon explained that we'd be doing dense traffic city work first, followed by urban work in the outer city, followed by both narrow, twisty back roads riding and open sweeping country roads where a whole range of different techniques are used. If that wasn't enough, we would then finish off with a spell of motorway riding - Auckland motorways on a Friday afternoon...... shudder! I'd not previously travelled on much of the planned route so that was a cause for additional stress. I just had to put all my faith in the IAM techniques and a good riding plan to see me through.

As our village has a population of 1500 on a good day, I'm not that used to riding in the centre of a city populated by close to a million lunatics and it didn't start well. The comms system which Simon kitted me out with was playing up and I was slowly becoming more paranoid in case I hadn't heard his directions properly. We had to stop twice to fiddle with it before the problem was solved - very unsettling!!! Oh yeah, then one side of my visor popped out of it's pivot - not a good sign! It only takes some minor incidents like this in a pressure situation to really stuff up your concentration! The 1.5 hours of town and urban work felt fairly comfortable and my past training enabled the processing of more information than I'd previously thought possible.

Moving out onto the narrow, twisty back roads of Scenic Drive to the north west of Auckland was hard work. Totally lined by trees and dense bush, most of the corners were blind and varied between 15 km/hr hairpins to 70 km/hr sweepers. To avoid the unnecessary use of brakes, good positioning, the right gear and reading the vanishing point was essential to avoid some real stuff-ups. Adding to the pressure were variations in the posted speed limit all the way along the Drive.

Simon's civilian V-Strom 1000 and my Street Triple

Over a quick lunch snack near the town of Kumeu, Simon said I'd done well and that the only things he'd noticed was that I could have set up position for 2 right hand corners a little earlier, but that they were still fine and that I could have made a little more progress at one stage (a euphemism for stepping the pace up, haha)! With no black marks, it was hugely encouraging to relax and have fun on the afternoon session.

We continued north on SH16 which is largely continuous open sweepers with some blind crests. Pretty much like last weekend's ride with the lads so that was fine and I felt perfectly at home, despite a very strong side-wind which was kicking the bike around. There were a couple of poor overtaking manoeuvres by a motorcycle and a 4x4 on the outskirts of a village on this route which must have made Simon wish that he was on official duty!

The trip east to the town of Warkworth was a mixture of tight bends, sweepers and a long stretch of fresh gravel which caused some consternation. It wasn't the gravel itself, but the posted 30 km/hr speed limit. There didn't appear to be a speed limit cancellation at the far end of the works and I was paranoid that I'd sped up whilst still in the restricted zone. However, Simon was pretty certain that there wasn't a sign either - what a relief! Only one other minor panic on this stretch - there was a one way bridge on a tight corner. My approach was a little too fast (my arse was certainly twitching a bit!) so rather than hitting the brakes and demonstrating an error of judgement, I block-changed down 2 gears to get increased engine braking and got away with it - phew! Shortly afterwards, Simon came on the radio and was complimentary about how I'd ridden that section which was wonderful to hear.

From Warkworth, it was back south down SH1 via Orewa and the Northern Motorway and demonstrating safe overtaking at speed in dense traffic - no worries at all and about 10 minutes riding time short of the Auckland Harbour Bridge, Simon called it quits and pulled me over. I'd passed first time with a pretty much clean sheet which was way, way beyond my wildest dreams and tangled my words of thanks, I was so overcome! The test lasted for a little over 4 hours and we covered close to 220 km which was a whole lot more than expected. I'd been away from home for 11.5 hours and covered just under 600 km - no wonder I was stressed, hurting and dog tired!

Simon and his victim

Earlier in this post, I said that this was the end of 8 months of hard work. Except it isn't of course. Those fantastically skilled IAM Observer/Examiners like Simon, Wayne, Duncan and Philip who volunteer their time at no cost for something which they're passionate about and deliver real results in terms of riding safely deserve every accolade known. The ideal means I can see of repaying them is to help as best I can, so my Observer training will start as soon as they're ready for me. Can't feel any elation at present as it's been such a hard road - just feel relief and more than a little quiet pride.

I'd also like to sincerely thank fellow blogger Raftnn (Roger) and my mate Andy who are following the same IAM path. Their unconditional support and leg-pulling has made the whole process so much more enjoyable for all of us through being able to share our experiences. Although I've never met him, thanks also to Nigel Bowers who's Advanced Biker videos on YouTube have been so good in reinforcing my training on wet days and dark nights!

In the next day or two, I'll be posting a few reflections on the whole concept of advanced motorcycle training as there have been some benefits which aren't immediately obvious and if it encourages anyone else to have a go, that would be simply wonderful.

As a light finale to the post, I thought I'd share photos of some of the bikes which took my fancy at Deus Ex Machina this time round.

The first was an old-school Triumph drag bike - a wonderful sight for this ex-drag racer. No supercharger though - note the big bottle of Nitrous Oxide on the side of the bike!

Brute horsepower - wonderful!

Legendary Honda CBX 6

They sound better with 6 pipes!

1920's Triumph - what a cool sidecar!

Gorgeous Indian

1938 Velocette MAC

Suzuki 500 2 stroke GP racebike

The paintwork on this scooter looks like a hologram in real life - unbelievably detailed paintwork

And I'm saving my personal favourite for last! It's an early Innocenti (Lambretta) scooter which I initially thought was due to be restored. However, looking at the string work on the carrier and the tyres which are in excellent condition, I'm more inclined to think that the important bits are in perfect working order and the bodywork etc has deliberately been left unrestored to create a sort of Mad Max or Steam Punk image. If this is the intent, it's brilliant and I'd love to shake the owner's hand! Hope that you like it too.

This is just so cool!

Deliberately unrestored? You figure!

The Bay and Banjos Tour, day 3

2011-11-16T09:06:00.001+13:00

Approximately 470 km

After a pretty good nights' sleep, it's up fairly early to hose off all the mud accumulated from the dirt road section of the Forgotten World Highway. There must be at least a kilo of the stuff in the radiator alone and removing that is a priority. Before breakfast, time for a few photos of Whangamomona. Most of it shut down years ago but many of the buildings have been either well-maintained or restored.

Real wild west stuff!

Character buildings

Traffic congestion, Whangamomona style

Now before we get underway on the western half of the Forgotten World Highway, I'll come back to my earlier comment about a warning sign I'd seen at the eastern end of the highway when I passed through by car last year, but seems to have been removed in the intervening period. That sign said "Public Road - this is not a Race Track". Now, a sign like that must be like a red rag to a bull for certain sections of the community and there's a photo in the hotel bar which I've copied below. Some wag has sprayed over a few crucial words as you can see, with a Holden Monaro, Skyline GTR or similar going past at warp speed - absolutely priceless! I'd imagine that defacing the sign was a regular occurrence so it got removed by the authorities on a permanent basis. At least we now have a record of it!

Sheer hooligan genius!

After a light breakfast, I lead off heading for the western end of the Forgotten World Highway near Stratford. The road is as twisty and up and down as ever, but is in much better condition and mostly runs through farm country. It's a good job we're riding defensively as two cows are grazing contentedly on the edge of a road round a blind bend. That sort of hazard is pretty regular in rural NZ. We climb up over two saddles which are mini versions of those European pass roads which are constantly doubling back on themselves. This is where the light weight, high footpegs and big torque spread on the Street Triple really gives an advantage and the extra capacity of the following bikes offers no advantage at all - what an awesome run!

Strathmore Saddle with the Mt Taranaki volcano in the background

View from the Strathmore Saddle in the other direction

- lonely country

A quick refuel at Stratford, over the twisty and technical Mt Messenger section of road and then it's a quick trip up the coast to the village of Mokau for brunch. No photos of Mt Messenger or the stunningly beautiful coast as we are on a mission! It's whitebait season in NZ and everyone bar John is hanging out for this delicacy. The NZ whitebait is the juvenile form of a NZ native fish, just a few centimetres long and translucent. They're caught in things that look like big butterfly nets at river mouths. The traditional way of eating them is to mix them with a little beaten egg, pan fry them as an omelette and serve them with bread and butter and a lemon wedge. Absolutely divine. My wife can't stand them though - she thinks all those eyes staring up reproachfully at her is gross!

NZ delicacy - the whitebait fritter

John, Andy and Dave enjoying brunch

Andy notices a sign in the village butcher's shop that says fresh whitebait are for sale so pops over to buy some to take home. Its delicacy value is reflected in the $140/kg price - eek! Mind you, the 400g which Andy bought will make a good few fritters.

The next leg homewards is through the Awakino Gorge and on to our next fuel stop at the village of Piopio. The Awakino Gorge is another bike road made in heaven with fast sweepers, tight bends and a smooth, grippy surface. Dave volunteers to lead on his Blackbird, saying "I'm not going to lead as fast as you guys, I'm out of practice". Fine with us as the leader always sets the pace but as it happens, Dave just gets in the groove and provides us with a memorable tow which is incredibly smooth - everyone was fizzing at the next stop!

John takes over for the run up to the small town of Otorohanga where the Auckland contingent will take to the back roads north to get home and I'll cut across country to Coromandel. Exiting Te Kuiti, another bike joins onto the back of us and we all stare in our mirrors, trying to figure out what it is. As we park up in Otorohanga to say our goodbyes, the other bike parks up with us and WOW!!!! The owner, another nice guy who lives in New Plymouth back down the coast tells us that he's recently taken delivery of the first Aprilia Tuono V4 in NZ and he's on the way to Auckland for the first service. The powerplant originates from the Aprilia Superbike and is an absolutely wicked beast, with a lot of extras on it. Sounds amazing too with its little stubby exhaust can. Guess that if you can afford a bike like that, you can also afford the insurance and operating costs!

The wicked Aprilia Tuono V4

Cockpit view of the Aprilia V4

I bid a heartfelt goodbye to Andy, John and Dave. It's always hard to split from such good friends - you just want to keep riding forever as it's been such a wonderful 3 days... great company, great food, great riding with a permanent smile on the face. The lads head for Auckland with the Aprilia tagging along and I cut across country for the remaining 220 km home to Coromandel.

As well as reflecting on the last 3 days which has been such a great adventure, I'm also conscious that all the riding over challenging roads for that length of time has moved my skills up a notch. All the normal riding functions are being taken care of at a virtually subconscious level, leaving what seems to be heaps of real time dedicated to situational awareness and riding plans. I'm beginning to understand more of the book I reviewed in THIS recent post - must re-read it!

Thanks guys for a spectacular 3 days away - simply can't wait for the next one!!

The Bay and Banjos Tour, day 2

2011-11-15T14:50:00.001+13:00

Approximately 400km

Sunday morning dawned bright and clear. I have that delicious stomach-churning anticipation of a day of fast riding in sparsely populated and largely wild territory. A couple of the lads have stomach-churning due to overdoing it the previous evening and are looking forward to a big fried breakfast to settle things down (ewwww...).

Andy, praying for a hangover cure

Big John - makes the VStrom 1000 look like a toy!

We head off to the suburb of Taradale for gas and a pavement breakfast at a cafe. Eggs Benedict for me and plenty of water as the weather is scorching hot. Easy to get dehydrated on a long, hard ride in these conditions.

A lazy Sunday breakfast in the sun

The next part of the route is deceptively called Gentle Annie. The reason for its name isn't known to me, but it was probably named by an early settler with a perverse sense of humour! Gentle it is not. Approximately 150km of continuous bends through a bit of farmland but a fair percentage of it is through forests and native bush in really hilly country. The road itself was only completely tar sealed earlier this year and there are big altitude changes as it dives down to valley floors and then over ridges in the Kaweka Mountain range.

John leads off and sets a great pace as we climb away from the coast. The road consists of continuous sweepers with a smooth, coarse chip surface, perfect for taking any chicken strips off a rear tyre - this is motorcycling Paradise! Further up into the hills, the road surface is generally good but to maintain a decent pace in safety, good forward observation is critical to spot scatterings of gravel on the riding line and frost heaves in the high country. It's hard to think that on such a beautiful day, this road is regularly closed because of snow in the colder weather but even now, the temperature drop is quite pronounced at altitude.

Nearly 150 km of continuous twisties

Kaweka Range high country - lonely out here

We stop at a mountain river bridge to take some photos as the broom is in full flower and looks absolutely stunning. There are big trout down below in the crystal clear waters. After nearly an hour of riding, we've only seen a couple of vehicles and riding solo on this road with only patchy mobile phone coverage at best, having an accident or a breakdown becomes a serious matter; especially in marginal weather.

John, encouraging Andy to dive off the bridge and catch a trout!

Crystal clear mountain river

Richard takes over the lead for the second half of Gentle Annie and the countryside slowly turns into high country farms. The road is as twisty as ever and gravel patches diminish but everyone is still keeping a wary eye open for them. Reaching State Highway 1 and up to Waiouru for gas, everyone thinks it's one of the best biking roads in the north island, but requires huge concentration if it's going to be traversed at pace.

Tongariro National Park active volcanoes taken from Waiouru

It's quite cool here in the high country and we head north west towards Taumaranui with John picking up the lead. Everyone is on full alert as the Highway Patrol are pretty keen in this area and sure enough, the radar detector goes off and there's a cop a long way up the road booking a car driver. We stop shortly afterwards near National Park village for some photos of the volcanoes. Cloud cover is fairly well down, but that makes for a moody atmosphere.

Arty-farty shot of the volcanoes with red tussock grass

and an old cart in the foreground

A 3 metre high Kiwi made from gnarled branches - terrific!

We all refuel at Taumaranui and stop for a bit of rehydration. We say our goodbyes to Richard who has to return home for work tomorrow which is a real shame as he's great company and a darned good rider too. The next leg of the journey down the Lost World Highway needs full tanks as no fuel is available for the best part of 150 km. This stretch is rather different from Gentle Annie. The same tight bends but the road surface is more uneven, the road itself is at the bottom of a gorge and pretty narrow after the first 10km or so.

I lead off and we're immediately reminded that it's a road to be respected by the sign below. There used to be another sign saying "Public Road - This Is Not A Race Track" but it seems to have disappeared - more on that later.

A sobering reminder to take care

About an hour away from our stop for the night, it gets gloomy and light rain starts to fall. The gorge walls are clad in bush and tree ferns and it's eerily beautiful.

Andy singing in the rain

Remains of trees swept downstream during heavy rain

Rivers rise fast in hill country

Wild, steep country

We travel along in light rain which has turned the 10-odd km section of unsealed road into brown slush. All but one of the bikes are on sport touring tyres but there are no anxious moments. The bikes are totally covered in mud and look like they've had a day at the moto-X track! We're soon back onto tar seal and a bit further on, we stop at the Moki Tunnel which was built in the 1930's. An impressive bit of engineering.

The narrow Moki tunnel

At least you can see daylight!

A few minutes later, we're rolling into the tiny, isolated settlement of Whangamomona and our stop for the night at the iconic Whangamomona Hotel, having seen precisely 2 other vehicles down the whole length of the highway. Not a place to run into trouble. The Hotel is a mecca for bikers, car enthusiasts and intrepid travellers and maintains its old world charm. The current owners, Penny and Geoff Taylor are bike enthusiasts and currently own a brand new Super Tenere. Every year, they hold a number of special events including Republic Day with all sorts of events including elections. From memory, the last elected President of the Republic was a goat - I love it!!!!

The iconic Whangamomona Hotel

After being welcomed and shown our rooms, we have a well-earned locally crafted beer or two. Nearly 400 km of continuous twisties brings on a real thirst, not to mention being half-stuffed! We chat with a colourful local who gives us some interesting history of the people in the area and we tactfully don't ask about banjo ownership. The local has his well-used utility vehicle (called a ute in NZ and Australia) parked outside. It's clearly done stirling service for a couple of decades or so and is a perfect photographic subject in the remote surroundings.

A true country vehicle

Another patron rocks up on a gorgeous KTM 690 motard. I've never seen one up close before and the engineering is superb. Must be the perfect bike for a blast on these twisty roads. The owner is a really nice guy and as we chat, it turns out that he's the cousin of an old workmate and also worked for my old boss in another life. The thing about NZ and it's 4.5 million population is that virtually everyone knows someone in common!

Superb KTM 690

Arty-farty shot in KTM mirror

After another beer or two and a superb meal, the eyelids are beginning to droop and 4 keen bikers are tucked up and sound asleep by 10pm, dreaming of the next day!

Day 3 soon......

The Bay and Banjos Tour, day 1

2011-11-14T19:23:00.001+13:00

I'm privileged to have some great mates whom I've been riding with for a long time. We love each other's company and the wives and partners all get on really well too. Riding together is magic as we have identical styles and that total trust makes it just so easy whether riding at pace or just pootling along. Trouble is, getting everyone together at a single moment in time is like herding cats with all our differing commitments. However, the lads all try and get together for an outing once a year or thereabouts and the weekend just gone was it!

For this outing, we tried to choose as much territory as possible that we hadn't travelled on and one which would be both scenic and technically challenging whilst riding at a reasonable clip. I should mention at this stage in all sincerity that we don't ride like idiots and speeding tickets would not be a good look. The scary part would not be the encounter with the law, but having to front up to our better halves when we got home. Craven cowards, the lot of us! Consequently, the choice was to go for roads with a low (almost non-existent it turned out) vehicle density for the times when we did want to press on a bit.

The route chosen for the business end of the ride on Day 2 was from the City of Napier in Hawke's Bay, heading west over a road called Gentle Annie which was only fully sealed this year, then continuing west down the Forgotten World Highway to our accommodation that night. You might be wondering about the title of this post. It was brilliantly coined by Richard, one of our team. The "Bay" bit comes from Hawke's Bay. The "Banjos" bit stems from Gentle Annie and the Forgotten World Highway and anyone who remembers the movie "Deliverance" will know what is meant in terms of countryside and the famous banjo connotation. Not entirely sure about the locals themselves as they're few and far between!

Gentle Annie and Forgotten World Highway

Day 1 - approx 430km
I leave home in Coromandel around 0900 and ride about 50km down the coast to meet up with Aucklanders Andy (BMW K1200R), John (Suzuki VStrom 1000) and Dave (Honda Blackbird) at Kopu. I lead down the back roads to the town of Taupo to meet Richard (BMW 1200 GS) who has travelled from the south west of Hamilton. Refuelling in Tokoroa en route, we meet another rider (Pete) at the gas station who has been waiting in vain for a friend. With the no-show of his friend, he asks if he can tag along for the 200-odd km to Napier just for the fun of it, then turn round and head home again! This is something rarely seen outside of motorcyclists and isn't it just great ? All about the journey, not the destination! Pete's a really nice guy, very experienced and is very welcome.

Introducing Pete with his Beemer in the background

The township is on the edge of stunning Lake Taupo which is some 620 sq km in area. The lake is actually in the crater of a supervolcano which is now hopefully extinct! A great place to sit at a pavement cafe on the waterfront for lunch.

The lads - Andy, John, Richard, Pete and Dave

Pavement cafes are great for people-watching and whilst we are eating, a Honda Goldwing converted into a trike pulls up. A beautiful conversion, not my cup of tea but vive la difference! Love the personalised number plate....

Rear of Goldwing Trike

Next door to where we are eating is the inevitable McDonalds. This is a bit different from the normal sanitised, instantly recognisable everywhere McD premises. The difference is a DC3 as part of the restaurant, right in town! Here 'tis:

Will that be fries with your boarding pass sir?

Time to get underway and Andy takes the lead down to Napier. The road is very much one of two halves, long straights through farming country to start with, often inhabited by the Highway Patrol looking for people who are daft enough to succumb to excessive temptation! However, not a peep from our radar detectors on this stretch. Virtually no traffic and as we enter the first set of twisties cut through the ash of the volcanic plateau, it's a wonderful sight being at the back of the group to see all the bikes following identical lines at a nice pace - almost an art form!

As we climb into the mountain ranges to the west of Napier, down comes the rain and in places, the road is pretty slick with not much chip on top of the tar in places. Andy does his normal highly professional job, riding superb lines and doing smooth, well-planned overtakes to take the stress off the followers. Fortunately, the rain backs off for the final 20 minutes or so into Napier city and we say goodbye to Pete and check into our cabins in the Top 10 chain camping ground. Seriously nice accommodation at a very reasonable price.

Cool self-contained cabins

Nice interiors too

Chilling after a decent ride

Richard, Dave, Andy, John, me

Andy's parents live in Napier and have generously invited us round for dinner that evening, which is a lovely gesture and anticipating a few convivial glasses of wine, a taxi is ordered! They live on a hill overlooking the gorgeous Art Deco period buildings of town and have stunning views out to sea.

View from the deck - pity about the misty rain!

Andy's parents are wonderful hosts - a fabulous meal, great conversations, many laughs and we all turn in very happy and dog-tired from the day's activities. Tomorrow will be the big day with a fair bit of new territory to be explored!

Day 2 to follow shortly....

The 7 day challenge

2011-11-10T19:37:00.001+13:00

Rising to fellow(ess?) bike blogger Trobairitz' challenge to name a bike for each day of the week given a lotto win or similar, here are my picks. As befits a person of errr... mature years, some of the choices are from way back when. This isn't because I think they're better bikes than today. One of the main reasons was that as an impoverished student, and later as a mortgage-holder with a young family; they were out of reach in terms of price, so I'm allowed to indulge now!!

I'm not going to include the two best bikes I've ever owned, the Honda Blackbird and the Triumph Street Triple, simply because I've owned them!

Unsurprisingly (see my previous post), my Monday bike is a Tricati. Elegant, handles like a dream and despite being 4 decades old, still looks fantastic. The photo shown arrived today courtesy of a friend in Scotland. This one has the 250cc Ducati rolling chassis and although I'd prefer the 200cc Elite to stick a 500cc Triumph engine in. I wouldn't be complaining though, you understand!

The timeless Tricati - an enduring obsession

Tuesday sees me riding a 1969 Thruxton Bonneville (not a current pale imitation). I was at the 1969 Isle of Man TT when Triumph factory rider Malcolm Uphill averaged 100 mph in winning the race. Again, I was at an impressionable age and lusted after one!

Thruxton Bonneville photographed in Auckland, 2010

Wednesday sees the last of the "classic" bikes wheeled out, a Suzuki T500 Titan. I never owned a big, leery 2 stroke but have always wanted to. The T500 wasn't as hairy and impractical as the Kawasaki Triple, but could still shift along and the noise from one fitted with expansion chambers gave more pleasure to a young lad than a copy of Playboy!

Suzuki T500 (file photo)

Thursday wheels out one of Trobairitz' choices, the Harley Davidson XR 1200. Good for cruising and blasting and has looks inspired by the great flat-tracking days. Mean-looking and brilliantly executed.

True to its traditions (file photo)

Friday's child is the Benelli TNT 1130 cafe racer. Impossibly exotic, brutal as heck. A real street fighter that's a bit different from the rest. I love it!

Corrrr...... (file photo)

Saturday's mount is something pretty ordinary, but a brilliant all round bike, the Yamaha XJR 1300. Ohlins suspension as standard, uncluttered appearance and bulletproof. This one is owned by one of my IAM Examiners, Wayne Holden.

Wayne's lovely XJR 1300

Sunday and last, but by no means least (I bet you never saw this coming, did you???) is.... wait for it..... a Honda C70 cub!! "Why", I hear you asking incredulously! Well, as many regular bloggers know, I've completed the annual Grand Challenge 1000miles / 1600km in 24 hours 5 times on a number of different bikes. As long as you prepare properly, doing the distance in the required time isn't too bad. Confessions of An Ageing Motorcyclist time.... I still have a yearning to try and make it on a Honda Cub!!! Fit a long-range fuel tank to minimise stops and a couple of other mods and I reckon it's just about possible. Watch this space.........

The mighty C70

Special thanks to Trobairitz for the fun in putting this together!

The past catches up.....

2011-11-08T16:20:00.000+13:00

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll tell you a story...

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was little factory turning out motorcycles by the name of Triumph. The engines were indeed a Triumph apart from a few idiosyncrasies and oil leaks, but the frames were anything but a Triumph of engineering and appeared to be constructed of rubber. Owners who enjoyed a bit of spirited riding had more than their share of brown-trouser moments with their bikes trying to buck them off at the most inopportune time.

The author on his evil-handling Triumph, circa 1967
Slim, plenty of hair - is that really me???

Those were the days of real innovation and one of the ways of overcoming crap handling (a technical term) was to stick a Triumph engine in a Norton featherbed frame to make a Triton. Great-looking, superb handling and even today, they have a huge following among the cafe racer enthusiasts. However, there was an article in a mid-1960's copy of the UK magazine, Motorcycle Mechanics about a chap who had shoehorned a Triumph twin into a small Ducati frame. As an engineer in training, the concept of an ultra-lightweight bike with sublime handling really appealed and I never forgot that article by Mick Snaith - innovative engineering at its very best and almost certainly the first Tricati in the world!

In the early 1970's, I'd stopped competitive drag racing and remembering Mick's article again, set about putting the drag motor (minus supercharger) in a Ducati frame. That story is HERE in my blog.

Now a few days ago, one of those events happened which leaves you genuinely lost for words. A friend of Mick Snaith had seen my post, told Mick and he'd taken the trouble to get in touch 44 years after the article was published - simply incredible!

This is what he wrote:

Hi Geoff
I was the guy that built the first Tricati that was featured in Motorcycle Mechanic,( July 1967 from memory). I’ve still got a copy somewhere.
I did the same as you and inverted the swinging arm to swop the drive over. As I was serving an apprenticeship in a power station at the time I was able to make nearly all my own bits to fit and adapt the Triumph engine which I also tuned to beyond T100 spec. The rear sprocket was the only custom bought part, I made all the rest from raw material, mostly aluminium alloys. I drilled holes in all the plates/ brackets as a lightening measure as this would reduce the weight and hence increase performance. The original bike had a purpose built oil tank in the saddle made from fibreglass kits. This used to get warm which was nice in winter. I built a MK11 with the engine oil in the frame after boxing in the top and front tubes join area to increase the volume.
I actually raced one at Cadwell Park in an open road bike class and did quite well, the performance was pretty good by 1967 standards as it would do over 120mph with terrific acceleration due to the low weight. The handling was typical Ducati again pretty good in 67.
Mick Snaith

As you might expect, I was so excited and felt pretty privileged too. An exchange of emails followed and amazingly, Mick still had the original article which he scanned and sent. I've reproduced it below to show what a brilliant idea it was and how well the whole job was executed. This was way before the days of nipping down the the local bike shop and buying over the counter farkles, which really puts Mick's achievement in the context which it fully deserves. It's really worth looking at this article in detail for the very fine engineering so (hopefully), I've attached them in large scale so they can be clicked on to enlarge, then clicked on again to enlarge even more.

The world's first Tricati

Engineering details

As an amusing aside, Mick tells me that one of the early suggestions he received for naming it was a "Dumph" but wisely called it a Tricati, therefore preventing it from sinking into the realm of smutty jokes! He also has photos of his Mk 2 version lurking about somewhere and if these ever come to light, I'll post them up.

So what a wonderful conclusion to my original post in May last year and even more importantly, being able to give Mick the world-wide recognition he deserves through the internet, albeit over 40 years late. I take my hat off to you Mick!

Addendum:

A week after this post, I've had another delightful email from Mick with some notes and a photo of another development version of his Tricati in 1967. In this version and given the tight space behind the engine, he has the oil tank in the seat hump, which was innovative in itself. He writes:

"Hi Geoff,

We found a picture of my revised bike with oil tank in the saddle. Sadly the picture is not the sharpest on the right side ( my photography has improved a lot since then) but the scanner was good. I still think it looked great even now. Seeing these old pics has reminded me of some of the design details.

I had fitted racing cams and then flattened the followers radius to give even more valve overlap. I ground and smoothed all the valve gear to allow for the quicker movement of rods and rockers, and minimise valve bounce

I had worked out the best tuned length for the exhaust and fitted reverse cone megaphone 'silencers' the effect was give a real kick to the acceleration, and noise, when the revs got up but admittedly it was a bit noisy for a road bike. I only got away with it because in town it only had to be in gear at tickover and it was doing 30mph. My friend Paul reminded me I didn't get away with it at a race meeting where a scrutineer insisted it couldn't be road legal and would not believe it was standard on a Tricati! Despite me telling him I rode it to work like that every day I had to race it with some silencers borrowed off a friend's bike, They had something called baffles in them which took the edge off the performance slightly but it still easily kept up with a 1000cc Vincent. Those were the days."

Isn't it wonderful that we can share Mick's enthusiasm and craftsmanship decades further on and as he rightly says, it still looks great even now.

Mick's 1967 development Tricati

Mick's early Tricati, possibly at the Silverstone circuit

Nice bikes, nice people

2011-11-04T19:34:00.000+13:00

I got an email yesterday from my long-time riding partner, great mate and fellow IAM associate Andy. He and some fellow Auckland riders were going to finish the working week a day early and come for a "quickish" ride round the Coromandel Peninsula and would I like to join them? Hard choice actually as a trip out in the boat for a spot of fishing was also on the cards. However the ride won out and I met Andy and his friends a couple of km from home. I'm normally a bit wary about riding with people I don't know, but trusted Andy's judgement as always. Lord knows why, seeing as Andy's a respectable banker by working day and a complete hooligan on 2 wheels! Actually, he's a top class rider and exceptionally quick if he has the mind to boogie :-). Andy did the introductions and I felt immediately at home - really nice people.

Meet Andy and his brutal K1200R

Nice Ducati Multistrada kitted for touring

No good for me - I'd need a step ladder!

A Multistrada in tasteful black sir?

Nice KTM and BMW F800

Note the badges - more on this in a moment

After gassing up, we set off for the Eastern side of the Peninsula - great sweepers and twisties the whole way. Being the local yokel, I lead the first 40 km to Whitianga. Trying to set an acceptable pace for people you've never ridden with before isn't always easy but everything worked out fine at a "slightly" illegal pace, even if that phrase would have zero credibility with the boys in blue :-). It very quickly became apparent that the other riders were really smooth, very patient and extremely competent - a pleasure to ride with.

Andy took over up front for the leg from Whitianga to Tairua. His IAM training really showed through with great positioning and well-judged overtakes and everyone was enjoying his lead. Easy to make good progress when there's a really smooth rider up front taking the stress off everyone else. We all pulled into Tairua for refreshments and it was here that I learned that Jane on the F800 and her husband had ridden the length of South America last year. A really impressive feat but sadly, I didn't have the opportunity to quiz them on the adventure.

All to soon, it was time for me to turn north and head for home and for the others to head south, then back to Auckland. Yet another unexpected afternoon ride this week and just as enjoyable, albeit for different reasons to the one in the previous post.

Cheers Andy and thanks so much everyone for a wonderful afternoon!

A lovely afternoon on the road

2011-11-02T18:07:00.000+13:00

As regular readers will know, Jennie and I take turns to organise annual vacations to celebrate our wedding anniversary, keeping the destination a secret from each other for as long as possible - sometimes as late as the airport check-in desk which has led to the odd bit of merriment for one party and consternation for the other! Anyway, next year is our 40th anniversary, it's my turn and as procrastination is my middle name on these matters; I decided pull finger for a change and do a bit of early research on destinations. Having got as far as possible without expert advice, it was time to visit the nearest travel agent some 40 minutes from home.

Going on the bike was a perfect way of stopping the CEO inviting herself along, so with a "Going out for a practice run Honey", I was off to Whitianga! Actually, there was another errand I was keen to knock off too and it involved this:

Spare Street Triple key

Y'see, I'm down to my last Street Triple key. Lord knows where they go, but I'm blaming the Automotive Key Elves which are cousins of the Spectacles Elves, both of which live just out of sight in our house and come out at night to wreak havoc when we're asleep. Their malign influence would warrant a tale on its own, but back to the present.....

For some unfathomable reason, the Triumph spare key is a stunted affair without a handle to get a decent grip on. Trying to grip the ring through thick gloves to turn the ignition on whilst very bad words hang in the air is an everyday occurrence and my patience finally snapped last week. My friendly Triumph dealer mailed me a Triumph blank to get cut locally. In my humble opinion, it was outrageously expensive even with no security chip and I shudder to think what a Ducati or MV blank would have cost. The phrase "Got you by the short and curlies" comes to mind. There's no key-cutting service in our village that I know of so first stop was at a Mitre 10 hardware store which we've used before for house key spares. My heart sank when the lady said "That's a double-edged left-hand double DNA helix whatchamacallit". Actually, she didn't say that at all but it was something similar which meant that for some reason, she wasn't game to have a go despite their profiling machine looking pretty high tech. She was, however, anxious to help out and told me about a "real" locksmith who had a business in the next block.

Pulling up outside, I just knew that I was going to love the place! A converted home called Arlingham House with lavender bushes, a nice covered porch and glimpses of old clocks through the open door and windows - WOW, hints of an old-time craftsman! Here we are:

Arlingham House, complete with 1954 Dodge outside

There was an elderly gentleman sitting in a cane chair on the porch. He told me that the owner was away at lunch and he was just minding the place for him. Would I like to join him and wait? I would indeed and sat in the other cane chair to chew the fat with him. Turns out that he was the owner of the beautifully-restored Dodge saloon outside and had a classic British Ford at home too, both of them getting regular use and I listened to great tales of his trips in them. Now isn't that light years better than going to a modern hardware store and just doing the business? Simply no comparison!

View from outside down to the beautiful harbour

Lovely entrance to the premises

After 15 minutes or so, the business owner showed up and was only marginally younger than his "minder". Another absolute delight who had a 20 year old mind trapped inside an older body. It was certainly no effort for him to cut the blank in a matter of seconds. I didn't actually see him cutting the key as I was too busy gawping at the treasure trove of stuff inside. He graciously allowed me to take some photos which I'll share with you.....

Clocks and barometers of every shape and size

stuffed everywhere

Turns out that he sold clocks and barometers too and also did some restoration - what a joy to behold! He also had photos hanging on the walls from the gold rush and kauri tree logging days from NZ's history in the 1800's.

A gallery of social history

When he'd cut my key (the insanely low price of NZ$3), he asked me whether I'd like another "decent" spare with a handle as he thought he had a blank somewhere from aeons ago which might do the job. I simply couldn't resist taking the next photo as he grovelled among the thousands of boxes looking for it! Amazingly, he found it inside a minute and moments later, I had another key at 1/3 the price of the one with the Triumph logo on!

"Now I remember seeing a suitable key about 30 years ago...."

I was really sorry to leave these 2 delightful gentlemen and sincerely thanked them for making my day (making my week more like...) - don't encounters like this lift the soul?

After that, it was round to the travel agent and what might be described as a very productive meeting but that's all I'm going to say for now. Jennie doesn't read this blog but to spill the beans right now would be tempting fate!

Heading back on the coast road between Whitianga and Coromandel, some dark clouds due to afternoon heat build-up were forming and the chances were that I was going to get rained on at some stage. No worries though as I was wearing Gore-Tex rather than leather.

Uh-oh... a heavy dump coming this way!

Not much nicer in the other direction either

I did indeed get rained on for a wee while but it didn't even come close to wiping the grin off my face. An anniversary trip largely sorted, spare keys cut and what a wonderful way to get them made AND a genuine bit of practice for my next IAM test. Unplanned events like these really don't get much better, do they?

Don't panic, don't panic!!!!

2011-10-27T20:13:00.000+13:00

A couple of days ago, I received an email from Philip McDaid, IAM Chief Examiner; saying that it was time for my cross-check ride and what was I doing on Thursday? (today). The cross-check ride is virtually a mock run under a wide range of riding conditions of the IAM full membership test to ensure that I can consistently perform to the police rider standards which the IAM use as their baseline. Philip said he was happy to ride down my way from his Auckland base and I thought "Sweet - roads that I'm totally familiar with - that gets rid of a lot of stress"!

We arranged to meet in the historic gold-mining town of Thames 50-odd km down the coast for a pre-ride coffee and I set off this morning under sunny skies and in an excellent frame of mind, although under no illusions that it was going to be a relaxing ride. Incidentally, in the photo below, the large catamaran moored in the background looks like it has a VW Kombi for a cabin, particularly with the 2 tone paint!

Early morning on Coromandel Harbour

We live on the hill to the right

Philip and I met up in Thames and over coffee, my relaxed demeanour changed somewhat when Philip explained that in order to be examined over the wide range of conditions required, we would NOT be riding on local roads, but would in fact be riding back to the Auckland area, using a mix of 2 lane roads, the Southern Motorway itself and driving in high density traffic in one of Auckland's southern adjoining towns! I thought I took the news pretty calmly given that the anticipated ride had just turned to custard but must have had a stricken look on my face which explains Philip's triumphant grin! The shock of an alternate destination with some unknown roads must have caused me to mis-hear some of the route (my story and I'm sticking to it!) but more of that later.

Philip in Thames

How cool is this? Thames main street

Painted in Highway Patrol livery

The one-way route (re-traced to return home)

Approximately 370 km for the day

The run from Thames in moderate traffic was really enjoyable apart from part-way along the predominantly 2-lane State Highway 2 when we caught up with a fuel tanker doing about 10 km/hr below the national open road speed limit of 100 km/hr. This was where the mind games started!! "Hmmm... I'd really like to get past this but to do so quickly, I'll need to go over the speed limit. Will Philip ping me for speeding or will he ping me for failing to make progress if I don't - oh heck, what to do?" Well, he didn't ping me for passing in a brisk manner, but he did notice whilst I was looking ahead for an opportunity that I'd drifted a little closer than the 2 second following rule when there was no need to do so! Fortunately, I was out to one side of the tanker or the "gentle reminder" might have been a bit more forceful!

Traffic on the Southern Motorway was moderate and I felt completely comfortable with lane positioning, overtaking and situational awareness. Too comfortable as it happened as my brain had registered Papakura as our first destination, not Pukekohe. Consequently, I serenely sailed past the Pukekohe motorway off-ramp with not a care in the world until Philip came flying by and indicated to get off at the next junction. My stuff-up became painfully apparent when we stopped moments later to fit the radio comms ready for the part of the route I wasn't familiar with. Suffice to say that I felt a complete pillock when Philip said if I'd used my mirrors, I'd have seen him indicating at the Pukekohe turn. How abso-bloody-lutely humiliating!!! Philip also advised me to look out for "speed creep" on the motorway - easy to do when a fair percentage of the traffic is travelling above the speed limit!

Time for some dense traffic work around the town of Pukekohe which has narrow roads, made even narrower by parked cars. It also seemed that there were tight radius mini roundabouts at every intersection with traffic coming at you from all angles. However, all the recent city riding practice must have paid off as it was stress-free with no incidents. Road positioning well away from parked cars helped no end. From Pukekohe, it was off south on the narrow twisty rural back roads towards Ngaruawahia. The conditions are similar to my local roads and I love 'em! It must have been apparent to Philip too as after 20 km or so, he called a halt to proceedings and said I'd nailed it - YESSS!!!!

Absolutely over the moon, enormously proud and to be perfectly candid, more than a little surprised. It's really hard to maintain a sense of perspective when you're concentrating so hard and I thought that the fuel tanker incident and missing the motorway turn-off earlier in the day might have cost me dearly at this advanced level but Philip said that he could see that my overall skill level and riding plan was up to standard. Phew! Back to the Autobahn motorway service station for a late lunch and a debrief, Philip said that he'd be speaking to one of the other IAM Examiners to take me for the official full membership riding test in the very near future. So between now and then, It's practice, practice and even more practice!

Starving after all the stress!

Sooo..... 370 km for the day, including 2 1/2 hours of minutely observed riding by the Chief Examiner. Surprising how much it takes out of you and it's likely to be an early night! It's been seven months since starting out on this journey and it's hard to describe just how much the standard of my riding has improved. It certainly IS possible to teach an old dog new tricks! IAM is an amazing organisation where professionals such a commercial instructors, police riders and other people with unbelievable riding skills volunteer their time to help others raise their game - simply outstanding.

2 years with the Street Triple

2011-10-20T20:57:00.002+13:00

It's almost 2 years to the day since I bought the Street Triple and the comprehensive reviews earlier in this blog still stand good - it's a peach of a bike and I've loved every minute of owning it. Today was its 20,000 km service so I knew that my wallet would get a lot lighter but hey; it was a sunny, warm day and the 320 km round trip to the dealer down mainly country lanes should take away some of the sting!

I love visiting Hamilton Motorcycle Centre as Heath, the dealer Principal and his team are more like friends than a business entity and it's that high quality personal service delivered with a smile and accompanying leg-pulling which puts them at the very top of the tree.

Whilst Matt, the Chief Technician started tearing the bike down for the major service, I wandered into the parts and showroom area to grab a coffee and look at the bikes as there's always something new and interesting.

Some serious dismantling at 20,000 km

Mighty big holes for 3 - 225cc cylinders!

Let me share some of the nice stuff which the dealership currently has on the floor......

The first bike inside the door is a BSA trials bike, probably from the mid 60's. Compared with modern bikes, they look so elegantly simple, almost flimsy. I didn't bother to photograph the whole bike but was rather taken with the simple little muffler. It was one of those designs which just felt and looked "right", if you know what I mean.

What a neat bit of engineering

The next bike to catch my eye was the touring version of the Triumph Rocket 3. This was the first one I'd ever seen and it looked far more integrated than the roadster versions - I really liked it. Woe betide anyone who mistakes it for a conventional cruiser and tries to show it up on the road - there could be some red faces!

A wolf in sheep's clothing

Next bike to interest me was a new T100 Bonneville. Bonnies have always had that iconic aura but the paint job on this one was very similar indeed to the early Bonnies when they were arguably the fastest thing on the road. Triumph play the nostalgia card very well indeed.

Beautiful standard of finish

The Ducati brand really is sex on wheels and a row of them always makes a nice composition, as do the carbon Termignoni carbon end cans.

These get the hormones sloshing about!

..... and so do these, sigh.......

The next bike to catch my eye was the Triumph 800 adventure bike. The attention to detail is superb with more than a little artistry about the design. If I was being practical about replacing the Street Triple right now with something else, I think it would be one of these. It gave me that hard-to-describe emotional connection inside which a lot of other bikes don't, despite them being excellent bikes in their own right.

Horny triple pipes on the 800

Pilot's eye view on the 800

Elegant simplicity

A customer's Kawasaki H1 500 triple was on display. These bikes had a wicked reputation with the narrow powerband meaning that an incautious and heavy-handed rider was likely to need dental surgery when the front end came up and smacked him in the face. Comparing it with modern bikes, the forks are ludicrously skinny and no doubt contributed to poor handling. The narrow drum brake looks scarily inefficient!

Mountain bikes have stiffer forks than these!

Voted one of the top 10 motorcycle engines

of all time in an international poll

The Triumph Tiger is a bike which has been around for some time and for some unexplainable reason, I really didn't pay a lot of attention to it. That certainly changed seeing the one below. In hot orange with a deeply-sculpted seat and some of the nicest panniers I've ever seen on a bike, it looked simply stunning. Nicely done, Mr Triumph!

This is a seriously good-looking bike

That was the last of the photos I took in the shop but one of Heath's regular customers turned up on his Beemer R1200 and sidecar combination - something you don't see every day! With the 2 big alloy side cases, an alloy top box and space inside the sidecar, it looked like you could tour with self-sufficiency for a fair length of time.

For the serious enthusiast!

Whilst I was waiting for the Triple to be finished, Heath wandered over and said, "Would you like to take the Ducati Streetfighter for a spin?" This is the bike I showed in the 3rd and 4th photos of THIS recent post. Would I what!!!! However, experimentally cocking my leg over it, I was right on tip-toe and a nightmare vision of dropping an expensive piece of art at the traffic lights outside flashed before my eyes. Sadly, I thought it was better to decline..... at least until I've mentally prepared myself for it! Heath's generosity shows why he's so highly regarded in the industry.

Just before I left for home, I was having a chat with 2 biker gang members who proved to be really interesting as well as entertaining. One of them uttered a sentence I thought I'd never hear, "Man, Harleys are sh*t, don't know why we had them". They both had Rocket 3's; more effective for doing a runner on, that's for sure!

The ride home was glorious with warm temperatures and sparkling seas on the coast road. In the town of Thames, a Triumph 675 Daytona and what was possibly a Triumph Bonneville America pulled out of a gas station and followed me north up the twisty coast road. I wasn't going to get sucked into a dick-waving contest so more or less stuck to the speed limit and maintained high cornering speeds to see what happened. The Daytona rider stuck with me but made no attempt to pass and the guy on the cruiser got dropped off a bit. The convoy re-grouped when I got baulked by a car in the twisties for a few moments which I then overtook down a straight bit. The Daytona rider was content to sit on my tail at a sensible distance but the cruiser was hell-bent on getting past. Unfortunately, it took him most of the straight to do it and he entered the next bend far too hot for his ground clearance and basic suspension, dancing all over the road with sparks coming off his stand or footpegs - quite a sight! He must have been really close to filling his underpants as he slowed right up and waved me past.... what a hoot, but the consequences could have been much, much worse for him. Would imagine that he felt a complete dick.

All in all, one of those days which makes the soul sing and most car drivers simply couldn't begin to understand. Oh, and considering that I had a new air filter, oil and filter, new plugs, cam shim check, full diagnostics and a thorough check including a test ride; I thought that the charge of just over NZ$500 (US$400) was extremely reasonable!

Starting to join the dots....

2011-10-18T13:21:00.002+13:00

Unlike St Paul on the Road to Damascus, there has been no blinding light to set me on the road to more competent riding - I'm not smart enough for starters to pick up on anything quickly. It was simply a creeping realisation that were gaps in my riding ability which increased risk. Most regular readers will be well aware of the path I chose to correct this earlier in the year. When a fellow Kiwi bike enthusiast, Ron Prichard, recently lent me a motorcycle book I'd not heard of; I initially came close to mailing it back with a neutrally-worded note of thanks. (A euphemism for not initially understanding a bloody word of it for the first dozen or so pages). This is the book in question:

ISBN 978-1-884313-75-2

Dr. Berndt Spiegel is a psychologist, has lectured at university and has his own consulting company. It was his academic writing style about psychological theory which which initially put me off , but the fact that his personal blurb said that he was an enthusiastic motorcyclist persuaded me to persevere and I'm really glad that I did. It's not an easy read. Some of his chapters required a "once over lightly" approach to get the gist of it, followed by a slower, in-depth second go. This isn't a book review as such - it would be very difficult to review properly in such a short post. However, it's the first motorcycling book I've read which has succinctly explained the reasons behind comments about riding which a lot of bloggers have raised in their posts, including me. I suppose you could call it "joining the dots" of what we might have thought were unconnected observations about the way we ride, but in fact have a common root. What I'll do is give a few examples and see if it triggers anything - certainly did for me. The title of the book could well have been called "The Top Three Inches", referring to the impact of the human brain on riding skills.

Let's take that that phenomenon that I've always called "Zen riding", where a rider seems to be on rails and in an almost detached state. The normal thought is, "Why can't I ride a lot more frequently like this than I actually do?" Conversely, why is it that when you're super-eager to get out for a ride, you often end up riding quite poorly and stuffing things up? Dr Spiegel explains very clearly and in a lot of depth how some relatively repetitive tasks are much more effectively carried out at a subconscious level. By way of example, he cites the simultaneous tasks of balancing the throttle, changing gear, braking and other "routine" components of riding. Where it tends to go wrong is when these activities get brought into the conscious level where you think about them too much, i.e trying too hard or something suddenly going wrong and so on. Without going into detail here, quality practice and training is a great way of making sure that routine tasks stay buried in the subconscious level more than they would otherwise do. An interesting example given which is unconnected with motorcycling involves the great jazz trumpeter and singer Dizzy Gillespie. When asked about the transition between the trumpet solo and his vocals in a particular song, he was unable to answer the question because it was carried out at a completely subconscious level. We can all think of things we do which fall into that category.

So what about the conscious self - what do you do with that? Well, one of the most important things is monitoring for external dangers.... what lies round that bend? How do I prepare for the unknown? It all makes sense, yet how many riders do we see who don't construct good mental pictures of potential hazards? Taking racing lines round blind corners, not moving out from the road edge when an entranceway with an obscured view is observed and so on. These monitoring and forward-thinking actions are what are commonly referred to as situational awareness.

What can't you see? A car cutting the corner perhaps? A mob of cattle?

What are you doing to prepare for any eventuality?

I particularly like that all this fits in with my current IAM training but more importantly, understanding WHY things happen is the best way for me personally to lock any learning into place. This book does it brilliantly.

Another topic which the book covers extremely well is how to become self-critical of your own riding. The author makes a valid point that downplaying self-criticism certainly soothes a rider's ego but it also throws away opportunities to reduce error and improve. The chapter covering this topic gives some very practical advice on how to raise your own self-awareness. It's only when you're honest in admitting to yourself that there are gaps in your riding skills AND being motivated to want to do something about it that any lasting progress will be made. Taking that first honest step is probably the most difficult of all - it certainly was for me. Dr Spiegel's chart below shows the improvement process rather nicely (click to enlarge)

The author gives a telling example of repetition and training which will be recognised by many of us. He says that he's always amazed at how well overall the British ride in the rain. Whilst riders in drier countries prefer to avoid those conditions, the British have little choice because of the frequency of wet weather so they are not intimidated by the conditions. Think about a long ride you've done in challenging conditions - you dial into it and gradually become more relaxed and proficient, don't you?

The book isn't all academic - Dr Spiegel gives eminently practical advice on how to apply the psychology of riding on an everyday basis. Overall, this is probably one of the most important books about riding well that I've ever come across. As already stated, it's not always an easy read and it's likely that if you haven't been riding all that long; the impact might not be as great as for a more experienced rider. It's definitely a book which can be read repeatedly and still learn a lot. Particularly good for those who are planning to become instructors themselves. For me, it's helped to join together observations about my riding which I thought were loosely connected at best. I've just ordered my own copy from Amazon!

Now that's got to be good for someone who is 64 today and trying to stay safe on 2 wheels for as long as possible eh?

NZ Classic Bike and Car Auction - Oct 19th

2011-10-13T13:36:00.000+13:00

Next week, Webb's Auctioneers in Auckland are auctioning classic cars, bikes and associated memorabilia. The auction is taking place at Deus Ex Machina and I've mentioned this magical place in a couple of previous posts. It still amazes me just how much classic automotive stuff is hidden away in this country with its 4 million population, but forever glad that this stuff is still about! I've seen some of them in the flesh at Deus Ex Machina and classic events round the country and they are literally in showroom new condition!

The on-line catalogue is HERE with 100 mouth-watering pages but just to whet your appetite, here are just a handful of pages from it. Oh to have a large disposable income, sigh.....

1915 Triumph with wickerwork sidecar

1928 Harley Davidson

1937 OK Supreme

1957 BSA Gold Star (dribble, dribble....)

1961 Mercedes Roadster

1968 Factory Bultaco

1970 Kawasaki H1 Triple

1975 Suzuki 500 GP bike

1982 Honda CX 650 Turbo

1976 Lotus Elite

Hope you've enjoyed some of these fabulous machines. Lots, lots more in the on-line catalogue!

An interesting day in the saddle!

2011-09-30T10:50:00.000+13:00

I had my latest IAM check ride today (Thursday) and the day didn't start well! The ride was to check my city skills in dense traffic so I made the 2 hour haul down to the city of Hamilton where my mentor, Wayne Holden lives. I've mentioned Wayne before - IAM Chief Examiner (cars), IAM Observer (bikes), ex-helicopter pilot and runs a highly successful driving and riding school. With all those qualifications, it could be intimidating riding with him if he wasn't such a darned nice guy - really puts you at your ease.

Beautiful day, first day of the season wearing my leathers instead of Cordura, so why didn't the day start well, I hear you ask? Well...... I committed the cardinal sin of fiddling about with something and not checking that it worked properly before an important occasion! To be specific, I downloaded a software update the previous evening to the GPS. I can ride to Hamilton with my eyes closed but needed the GPS to find the rendezvous with Wayne as knowledge of that particular suburb was virtually non-existant. Kit up, leap on the bike, turn the GPS on and.......... bugger, it doesn't show any roads, just waypoints/POI's on an otherwise bare screen - no actual roads! Darn it, will have to investigate when I get home. Didn't think it would be a big deal so set off for my first destination, the Triumph dealer in Hamilton where I bought the Triple from. At least I knew where that was! It's my birthday in mid-October and it was a good opportunity to look for a pair of new riding boots, which is my beloved's present to me (negotiated well in advance).

First up, it was a stroll round their showroom to see what new bike porn was on offer and boy, did they have some nice stuff! I'll share some of them with you right now. (Click to enlarge)

2006 Honda RC 51

The RC 51 is virtually Honda's old V twin Superbike on the road. Guzzles fuel like there's no tomorrow, will break the national speed limit in first gear, uncomfortable as hell and super-noisy carbon cans. It's a gloriously insane bit of kit for the road, totally impractical and I'd have one in the shed tomorrow as a second or third bike!

The wicked Kawasaki 1400 in Badass Black

How about this view in your mirror?

Ducati Streetfighter

Ducati Streetfighter - looks great in the flesh

Chrome and more chrome - Supersize Me, the Rocket 3

Impossibly beautiful - the new 675 Daytona. My personal favourite

After half an hour's drooling, attention turned to looking for a new pair of boots. My SIDI's are 8 years old and were totally waterproof until the final 3 hours of last year's 1000 miles in 24 hours ride when it was like standing in 2 small bowls of icy water. They've done sterling service but truly waterproof boots are an absolute must. Didn't realise just how different various well-known brands of boot varied for comfort, both in terms of fit and the ability to walk without the gait of a chimpanzee! Settled on a pair of Alpinestars specially made for Triumph with a nice embossed logo. They were actually brought in for another customer who had been notified 3 weeks earlier and still hadn't turned up so I was delighted to benefit from his slackness! Interesting though - I normally take an (NZ/UK size) 8 1/2 - 9 shoe or boot but the Alpinestars were a perfectly comfortable 9 1/2. A compelling reason for not buying boots on line.

Beautifully comfortable Alpinestar - better be waterproof!

After spending more time than planned in the Triumph shop, I had just over half an hour to get to the rendezvous with Wayne and grab a bite to eat. Four and a half km as the crow flies - dead easy right? Wrong!!!! In general, NZ cities aren't laid out in grid pattern and roads weave everywhere. There was a little triangle on the GPS which was me and the meeting waypoint 4.5 km away. I assumed it would be easy to simply point in the general direction of the waypoint and watch the distance close. Crikey, every road seemed to run at right angles to where I wanted to go and at one stage, found myself on the wrong side of the river which runs through the city with the nearest bridge some distance away. Made it with severely frayed nerves having covered over 10km with 5 minutes to go! Wolfed down a million calorie, cholesterol-laden gas station meat pie (tasted great though) and then Wayne turned up to begin the motorcycling equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition. Well, not quite but being observed can sometimes feel that way!

Wayne told me to head for the main street in the city and then basically weave down the side streets coming off it for a block, back onto the main street and so on. Boy, was Hamilton busy!! It's one of the main venues for the World Rugby Cup which is currently being held in NZ and the place is filled with flag-waving fans from round the world - looked fantastic but a bit of a nightmare to ride through! Pedestrians jaywalking everywhere, cars everywhere too and doing stupid stuff. On top of that, one road I wanted to turn down was blocked off by police and there was also a helicopter in attendance. Turned out to be a bomb scare at a nearby Institute of Technology annexe. So that'll be a student buying time to get an overdue paper in then!!

Now here's an interesting thing...... there was so much going on that a few months ago, I doubt that I'd have been able to process all the inputs sufficiently quickly to avoid making some stuff-ups which would have earned some red ink on the assessment sheet. However, I felt quite comfortable and after 90 minutes of riding in the central city area, Wayne went through the assessment sheet and I'd scored straight A's!!! There's no feeling quite like having tackled something which is genuinely demanding, having worked extremely hard to get a decent outcome and seeing confidence and skill levels improve..... fan-bloody-tastic! It's also great to be able to repay in some small way the IAM observers who put so much time and effort in on a voluntary basis. The final comment on Wayne's assessment sheet was "Go riding again with Philip McDaid (Chief Examiner) - all the best!" so I'm picking that the big one - the full membership test must be pretty close - eek!

Just to finish off, I heard a bit of scuttlebutt and because it hasn't been verified, it's all the more delicious to pass on. Regular readers will be aware that there's another Kiwi blogger who is following a similar training path. This particular blogger was due to attend an IAM ride last weekend but slept in because he forgot to put the clocks forward one hour!!! I reckon that ought to be good for a few beers all round, don't you? Especially as it doesn't seem to have been mentioned in his blog, haha!

Until next time.....

Life is not entirely about 2 wheels!

2011-09-25T13:36:00.000+13:00

About 10 years ago, Jennie and I sat down and mapped out our "sensible" retirement plan - single storey smallish house for moving about in comfortably as we aged, flat plot of land for ease of maintenance, close to a city for hospital facilities, going to concerts and shows etc. Funny how the heart sometimes over-rides common-sense on big decisions isn't it? What did we finally end up with? Living on the outskirts of a village with a population of 1500, a 2-storey house on a steep hill next to the harbour, a fairly large garden with an awful lot of bush to maintain and a 2 hour drive from the 3 nearest cities and an hour from the nearest hospital! Added to all this, the place was pretty run down when we bought it and required a fair bit of work to get it to a reasonable standard. And you know what? There's a place for heart over head because we've loved every minute, despite it being the complete opposite to a common-sense solution. Maybe one of life's lessons there!

Although Jennie would say that I'm obsessional about motorcycling, I don't think that's actually true. Passionate certainly, but I do have other interests. Gardening is one of them because it's amazingly therapeutic. Nothing like being outside on a spring evening pottering about under the critical supervision of our cats! I mentioned the hard work to get the house and garden straight. The garden in particular was a nightmare as it was completely overgrown with scruffy, native bush. We slashed and burned until there was space to plant some nice native plants, keeping the existing tree ferns and planting other non-native plants under and around them to provide a bit of colour throughout the year. Now spring is here, I thought we'd have a change from motorcycling and post a few photos of a few of the plants taken this week.

Native plant area of the garden with tree ferns

Bromeliad under a tree fern

Another Bromeliad with lethal spines on the leaves!

Early-flowering Tahitian Pohutukawa

Australian Bottlebrush

Scented orchid growing under a tree fern

Bird of Paradise plant

Azalea bush about 2 metres high

Native Cordyline and Pampas Grass

View from the deck through the bush approaching sunset

Hope that you've enjoyed the brief garden ramble - back to bikes next time!

A light-hearted book review....

2011-09-18T14:31:00.000+12:00

The cover of the book in question

Paul Carter is the stereotypical portrayal of an Aussie male - larger than life, a bit rough round the edges, absolutely up front, supremely resourceful and a wicked sense of humour. Could be Crocodile Dundee we're describing here apart from the fact that Paul is real! He spent what might be described as his formative years working on oil rigs round the world and during the process, was surprised to discover that he had a considerable literary talent. I've read his accounts of working on the oil rigs and the lunatics who worked with him and have literally come close to wetting myself in embarrassing locations. He's also a keen biker, although that doesn't receive a lot of coverage in those books.

Anticipating a wet weekend, I took myself off to the public library and was delighted to find a copy of his latest book - the cover of which is shown above. It's the story of his ride round Australia on a bike originally built by Adelaide University students for an alternative fuels challenge, consisting of a Cagiva adventure bike rolling chassis and a small single cylinder diesel pump engine running on used cooking oil to propel it along. With a top speed of 70km/hr and vibration on par with a road compactor, you just know this is going to be one heck of a tale! Oh, and the bike was prepared for the trip by the Australian main branch of Deus Ex Machina - you may have seen my 2 blog posts on the NZ branch of these extraordinary motorcycle builders.

Paul is one of those rare writers who describes things so well that it's easy to believe you're there too. His enthusiastic but unhinged approach to things marks him as a "man's man" whom guys will immediately identify with. Women will identify him as possessing the very worst, irritating and excessive traits of their partners! This isn't some tale of a mega-expensive Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman-type ride, it's done on a shoestring with some help from a few odd mates (the emphasis being on ODD) plus some family members.

The conclusion to an unbelievably funny incident!

Paul's self-deprecating writing style makes you immediately identify with the predicaments he continually finds himself in. In my case, it's usually the most embarrassing ones! I'm not going to spoil it for the potential reader but there's one incident in a hospital where Paul is stiff all over following a spill from the bike and moving about with the aid of a walking frame. Why is it that all medical staff seem obsessed with bowel movements?? He's been put on a diet of prunes for over 24 hours. Whole prunes, puréed prunes, prunes with a side dish of prunes - you get the picture! At a completely inopportune time, they start to work as intended and what happens next had me crying with snot running out of my nose and ribs hurting. One of the funniest and perfectly-painted mental pictures I've ever encountered and that's just one incident in this brilliant book.

The twists and turns in the book will probably awaken a deep-seated need to go and do something completely daft on two wheels so don't blame me if that happens - you've been warned!! If you enjoy it (and you'd have to have had a humour bypass not to), go and get the biographies of his oil rig days too - you won't be disappointed.

Is That Thing Diesel? by Paul Carter. ISBN 987-1-74175-702-6

Costs about US$11 from Amazon; a bit cheaper if downloaded as an e-book.

Rain, gales, sun, stress and fun

2011-09-13T13:44:00.000+12:00

Last week, Philip McDaid, Chief Examiner for IAM emailed me to organise another check ride and we settled on yesterday (Monday). As an aside, he mentioned that a member from Christchurch in the south island who had come north to pick up a new bike would be with us and we arranged to meet in the village of Clevedon, just to the south east of Auckland

A nice 370 km round trip from Coromandel

On Sunday, the weather in our area was appalling with torrential rain and gales. The forecast for Monday was for the high winds to remain but the rain should ease back to heavy showers. Heck, not the sort of conditions to be examined for precision riding but no point in trying to back out because riding well in adverse conditions is part of the whole point of raising your skills!

Wake up early and check the weather - everywhere is wet and it's heavily overcast but not raining at present. Have breakfast, wheel the bike out of the shed and bugger.....down comes the rain in buckets. Can hardly see the mountain range across the harbour from our house. Oh well, it will be a good test of my new Michelin Pilot Road 3 tyres.

Raindrops keep falling on my head, la la.....

On with full wet weather gear and set off down the coast road. A lot of vigilance is needed as all the rain from Sunday has washed a smear of clay off the cliffs onto the road in places. I can also see the rainbow colours of spilled diesel on some of the hills - probably an over-filled truck tank, but no dramas. It's a different story crossing the Kopu bridge just south of Thames. The ancient long bridge is a narrow single lane, uneven surface and currently wet with a strong, gusty crosswind. It's a bit hairy on 2 wheels and a relief to cross it without major incident and roll on the opening of the new bridge next year! Nerves are increasing with the prospect of a check ride in wet, slippery conditions.

The rain sets in with a vengeance but it's the crosswind which requires the most concentration. At least the visibility through the visor is good having applied a coating of Rain-X before setting out and it's really doing the business in dispersing the droplets. Up the western side of the Firth of Thames, the wind is more on the nose which is a relief and half way up at Kaiaua, the rain stops and a bit of blue sky appears - yayyy! No more rain for the day.

Bye bye, leaden sky - blue starting to appear

The remainder of the ride up to the Clevedon meeting point is on wet, twisty roads but mainly sunny skies which is heartening apart from a small rear end slide on one corner - no obvious cause but not particularly alarming either. Meeting with Philip in Clevedon, he introduces fellow IAM member Duncan Seed who is the proud owner of a new Buell XB12 Ulysses. This is the first one I've seen and it's a really attractive bike.

Philip then springs his surprise - Duncan is a qualified advanced instructor on cars and trucks and is also an IAM Observer on bikes. Furthermore, he'll be taking my check ride today and Philip will be observing us both. Actually, Philip did ask whether it was ok, but knowing what a great bunch of guys the Observers are and the fact that they donate their time for free, why would you say no?

After some refreshment, Philip equips both of us with radios. Reception is a bit patchy so he gives me general directions for the ride and as a fall-back, to watch for his indicators in my mirrors coming up to intersections if I don't hear the radio instructions. Oh no, I'll have enough on my plate without looking for Philip two bikes back, but he assures me that if I take a wrong turn, it's no big deal.

Philip and Duncan sorting out radio comms

I'm sure my keys are here somewhere......

The first leg from Clevedon through Maraetai is down narrow, winding country lanes not unlike the area in which I live. No nerves from being observed and feel pretty comfortable that I've done a decent job. As we approach the built-up suburbs near Howick with multiple roundabouts, I realise that the radio instructions are becoming very difficult to hear. The outcome is a bit of sensory overload, looking where to go next, managing the heavier traffic and I mis-indicate a couple of times which is embarrassing. Shortly afterwards, we pull in for the first debrief. Absolutely over the moon to hear that my rural riding was spot-on in all respects. The only comment was that in the built-up area with lots of parked cars on the roadside, I should move even further towards the road centreline to minimise risk from doors opening, cars suddenly pulling out etc. Absolutely fair comment.

Philip swaps batteries on the radio and suddenly, we have great reception! The next part of the journey towards the suburbs of Ellerslie and Penrose involves riding down a road with two, and sometimes three lanes in each direction. This is where my relative lack of experience of riding in big city traffic in unfamiliar territory shows up. I know that the 3rd lane in some places leads off to other suburbs and we need to go straight on. To make life a bit easier for myself, I stay in the outer "through" lane in some places where I should really be staying left as far as possible, but most of my focus is on not getting lost! I feel a real surge of pride when Philip comes on the radio to compliment me on a slow speed approach to stationary traffic at traffic signals which allows me to continue riding rather than come to a halt. Feedback like that is great because it cements the technique in place.

From Penrose, we head to McDonalds in the suburb of Greenlane for a coffee and the full debrief of the ride. Duncan reminds me of the near-centreline positioning in town traffic but says that my positioning after he'd mentioned it last time has been fine since then. The other thing I need to watch is the 2 second following distance rule. Although my positioning in city traffic relative to the vehicle in front was apparently good, I tended to close the gap a little on some occasions. Duncan also raises the need to use the left hand lane on dual carriageways more when appropriate - all excellent advice.

Both Philip and Duncan are really pleased with my riding and say that the items raised fall into the "nit-picking" category (their words, not mine!) but riding at a high level all the time is the expectation when you reach this standard. Philip then goes on to say that I'm pretty much ready for a cross-check by another observer prior to sitting my full membership test. In the meantime, I should take the opportunity to work on the items raised on rides with my mates Roger, Bob and Andy who are also undertaking advanced training.

Two hours to ride to Auckland, two hours being observed and two hours home - another magnificent and totally fulfilling day; if not just a touch mentally exhausting!

Just reflecting..... getting to full member status of the IAM, let alone reaching Observer is an incredibly demanding process where the bar is set very high and there are no short-cuts or concessions. In today's world with a preoccupation tending towards instant gratification and not particularly demanding standards, it's a real privilege to have found something which both stretches you and gives such huge benefits all at the same time. I might also add that it also makes the generally low driving (and riding) standards in this country rather more apparent. Even worse, it also highlights the low expectations of the authorities in terms of appallingly low requirements to get a licence. Maybe it's the same for much of the world but I'll reserve a decent rant on the topic for another time!

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Alvin Toffler

Something is in need of a couple of hours TLC after yesterday!

Spring in Coromandel

2011-09-06T19:34:00.001+12:00

Just a few days into spring, a gorgeous warm day, perfect for getting the Street Triple out - so did it happen? Nah, had promised Jennie that we'd go fishing so wasn't that disappointed!

The day didn't start out on a promising note though. Woke up with a prickling forearm and saw a purple area about 5mm diameter under the flesh. On closer inspection, there was stuff oozing through 2 tiny little holes. Bugger, almost certainly bitten during the night by one of these suckers:

The White Tail Spider (2x scale)

(source: Landcare Research NZ)

I HATE spiders unless they're practically microscopic. The White Tail isn't aggressive but will bite if it gets into clothes or in my case, it might have crawled onto the bed *shudder*. It isn't even a Kiwi spider but an import from our Aussie cousins across the pond. How is it that 90% of the fauna and marine life in Australia is hell-bent on killing the human inhabitants??? Anyway, it's generally thought the White Tail bite isn't poisonous to humans but the bacteria on its fangs can cause necrosis in a bad bite. I bit the bullet, gave the wound a good scrub with disinfectant, applied antihistamine cream and it hasn't got any worse - just aches a bit.

Anyway, on to the happier part of the day.......

There's a boat ramp at the end of our road which is perfect for launching in sheltered conditions although the sea was flat as a mill pond today. It's a well-oiled machine with me reversing into the water and Jennie unhooking everything.

Getting organised by the ramp

Here we go...... tide still coming in

The big fish don't start moving inshore for a week or so yet and we normally only fish a couple of km out from our house among the commercial mussel beds which are convenient to hitch up to without dropping anchor. Pickings might be a bit lean but most of the pleasure is simply being out there.

Leaving the harbour, we passed our neighbours Brian and Mary in their U.S-designed Bristol Channel Cutter keelboat. Not enough wind to fill the sails, but perfect for a bit of motoring. Regular readers may remember this post I made on the stained glass windows Brian made for our house. Brian is a true Renaissance Man. Not only did he build the boat, but the woodwork inside is exquisitely carved and he even cast the bronze fittings on the boat!

Our neighbours in their keel boat

Heading out of Coromandel Harbour to the mussel beds

The first hour out there was dire in terms of catching fish but unbeatable in terms of location. Warm, no-one else around and magnificent scenery. The water was so clear and still that you could see down several metres.

Jennie - a study in concentration (with no success, hehe)

Commercial mussels growing on ropes - beautiful clear water

After an hour, we shifted location. The fish finder showed a few swimming about, but they weren't biting. No big deal, a great time to just chill out.......

It doesn't get much better than this

(although pink Crocs might have lured the fish)

Just 10 minutes from packing up for the day, a modest-sized snapper took pity on me and offered itself as a meal - whoopee! All in all, one of those truly great days when one is at peace with the world, although we could have done without the spider.

Just enough for a meal.....

Sincere (almost) apologies to those who had to be at work today. Your time will come :-)

Electric bikes (pushbikes, that is!)

2011-09-01T11:57:00.001+12:00

With fellow blogger Bobscoot recently posting about his first foray onto electric bicycles HERE, I thought I'd throw a cool Kiwi electric bike into the mix. Forget bikes that look like conventional pushbikes, this is THE bike if you want to make a statement!

It's called the Yikebike and the images below are from their website.

Cool, or what?

Cornering? No problem!

And folds up for the commute!

Their website is HERE and prices start at US$2000 for an alloy and composite version or US$3800 for a carbon fibre jobbie. Mr Bobscoot - you're a great collector of expensive farkles like Corvettes and cameras ;-) - getting one of these will really confirm your status. Buy one for your wife too - no need to thank me :-).

There's a great demo on YouTube HERE

Bike Porn and an IAM ride

2011-08-29T13:38:00.000+12:00

As Roger mentions in his post, we turned up for the monthly ride with the Institute of Advanced Motorists riding group. My 170 km ride to central Auckland was a bit of a mixed bag weatherwise. Up at 0530 and on the road by 0645, it wasn't long before I encountered very wet fog and even a spot of rain but once I hit the Auckland Southern Motorway, the weather turned hot and sunny.

Arriving at the IAM meeting point, an hour before kick-off so that I could enjoy a leisurely coffee and breakfast, Roger and my 1000 miles in 24 hours riding partner Andy were already there. As fellow blogger Sonja remarked, there's no problem in getting up early when a ride is involved!

I don't intend to cover the ride details as Roger has done a great job of that. With a shortage of official observers this time due to their competing priorities, I was quite happy to follow Roger and Simon, the Observer; as it was still possible to learn a lot from watching them. Being a country boy, riding the narrow and twisty country lanes is something I do almost every day so was quite relaxed about that. However, my experience of riding densely-populated motorways full of idiot cagers in a hurry is something I'm not so experienced with. Watching Roger and Simon position themselves assertively (most certainly not aggressively) to create a safety bubble round themselves was great to see and I took a lot from that.

As a serving police officer, Simon must find his blood pressure going sky high when riding his personal bike off duty. Some of the behaviours in terms of lane discipline, following distances etc defy belief! Bikes aren't immune from stupid behaviour either. At one motorway on-ramp where there is a 70 km/hr restriction, an R1 (I think) rider came screaming down the ramp at very high speed into the dense traffic, diving in and out with no great skill - an accident waiting to happen.

Anyway, enough about the ride. Regular readers will remember the recent post I did on Deus Ex Machina, the rendezvous point for IAM monthly rides, up-market cafe and builders of extraordinary motorcycles. Getting there early gave time to wander round and as their bikes are constantly changing, it's a good opportunity to post a few more pictures of some of the machines currently on the premises. Here's a selection:

Magnificent Indian on one of the tabletops

Close-up detail

Gold Star lookalike with Yamaha single engine

Hand-made alloy bikini fairing

Flawless RD350 Yamaha - I want it!!!

Old custom Harley (I assume) - nice!

Ariel Square Four - how rare is that???

Flawless Douglas fore and aft twin

Kawasaki W650-engined Bobber - love the pipes!

Covered over 400 km for the day, rode with great friends and continued to learn great riding techniques - really doesn't get much better than that, does it? Actually, it does! Because I missed out on a check ride this time, the IAM Chief Examiner is going to take me for a one-on-one ride soon. All this and Spring just a few days round the corner. **contented grin**

Do you believe in Serendipity?

2011-08-28T17:08:00.000+12:00

This post has nothing to do with bikes but it's such a cool little story that it's worth sharing!

Our eldest son Lyndon studied for his first degree in the 1990's at Otago University, Dunedin, in NZ's south island. Dunedin has a strong Scottish influence from the first settlers. Although Lyndon subsequently went on to further study in Auckland after graduation, Otago had a special place in his heart. Knox College, where he resided for his first 2 years has traditions similar to Oxford and Cambridge - dressing for dinner, college balls in full evening dress and so on. There was even a cast iron antique bath in the quadrangle filled with old green rainwater and unmentionable substances which students got hurled into for various misdemeanours and birthdays, but that's another story which ended up with us being called "The Parents From Hell", hehe

Knox College, University of Otago

Surprisingly for a lad from the provinces, he lapped up the atmosphere and ceremony. After the first 2 years in college accommodation, Lyndon went flatting. Students at Otago are known as Scarfies (after the blue and gold scarves they wear). Scarfie accommodation outside the colleges are often dire, unsanitary old weatherboard-clad rental houses which everyone but students wisely steer well clear of. Nonetheless, they add a certain charm to the city.

A tidy(ish) example of student flats

Social life revolved around sport, the opposite sex and beer, not necessarily in that order. The local Speights brewery ensures that the Scarfies get to enjoy themselves for very modest prices thanks to generous sponsorship of events involving the consumption of vast amounts of alcoholic beverages. One of the favourite hang-outs was the (in)famous Gardies student pub - not the sort of place you go for a quiet sip of chardonnay and an exquisite meal. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the evening clean-up by bar staff involved high pressure hoses and industrial-strength disinfectant. The 3-dimensional sign outside was a giant can of Speights Gold Medal Ale on a pole.

The late-lamented Gardies Pub

The Scottish influence extended to architecture and the university Registry Building is a delight in heavy, dark stone. They even have a statue of Scotland's great poet Robbie Burns in the centre of town.

Lyndon outside the Registry Building

Fast forward to 2006 when Lyndon was building a good career and with his birthday approaching, we asked him whether there was anything he'd particularly like as a present. He said that he'd like a nice framed print of Dunedin as a reminder of those great days which showed some of the landmarks (like his college and the pub!) he was intimately associated with. He wasn't interested in a photo collage, but would like something like a cartoon-style art sketch in vibrant colours. He even went as far as giving us a (very rough) sketch to show what he meant. Try as we may, we simply couldn't find anything suitable and we ended up giving him something else. We never entirely forgot about it, but had more or less given up hope of ever finding anything in the style he was looking for.

Jumping forward to around Easter this year.... I was cleaning out a whole load of old emails and I found one from Lyndon back in 2006 which had a copy of his sketch attached. This pricked my conscience and I Googled "sketches of Dunedin". Still no joy as expected but it did throw up a blog of excellent sketches done around NZ's capital, Wellington. As I flicked through them, there was an acrylic on canvas sketch of Oriental Parade on Wellington's waterfront. I was transfixed - it was in exactly the style which Lyndon was looking for!!!

Oriental Parade, Wellington

There was virtually no information on the blog about the person who had sketched it, save for an email address. Showed Jennie, she thought that it was worth following up so I sent an exploratory email off with a bit of background, wondering whether a commission might be possible.A few days later, a reply arrived from Fiona Ryan. Not only was she interested, she was currently holidaying within half an hour of where we lived and she'd be happy to meet up for a coffee and a chat - how good is that for a serendipitous sign??We organised a meeting at a cafe near where she was staying and I rode over on the bike as Jennie was on a girl's "shop 'till you drop" expedition out of town. Fiona is a graphic designer from Wellington who was on her honeymoon in our area. Felt a bit guilty dragging her away from her new husband and family, but she suggested it! We hit it off straight away and Fiona said that she just sketched for fun and this would be her first commission - fantastic!! She suggested that she produce a quick composition to see if it was what we had in mind and we could take it from there.A couple of weeks later, a working sketch arrived by email, partially coloured in to indicate the finished effect. It was better than we could have ever hoped for - a perfect match for our mental image! She'd nailed it first time up from the photos we'd given her. We particularly loved the little touches like the chairs in the student accommodation yards, the little birds and animals and even an Otago rugby team shirt on a washing line - pure class!

Moving forward, Fiona completed the acrylic on canvas painting and couriered it up to us. What a beauty - we were over the moon and the little touches like "borrowed" road marker cones in the student garden and outside the pub are outstanding and so typical of students everywhere. Old chairs and settees in the garden are also a feature of Dunedin student flats! Here's the finished painting - compare it with the "essence"of the photos near the top of the blog to see how well Fiona captured the spirit of the place:

Student life in Dunedin

I'm sub-zero when it comes to artistic talent but love good art of any kind. It might be a personal thing but this style of painting seems particularly effective in evoking memories of a place which you've known intimately, as opposed to a painting, print or photo in a more formal style. Somehow, it captures the essence of a particular time and place in your life as it triggers the memories buried inside your head.

Yesterday, we visited Lyndon as it's his birthday this week and his jaw just dropped. Isn't it lovely to see such a reaction of pleasure when someone is caught out totally unaware? As we thought, he imagined that we hadn't been successful but had never considered that he'd ever receive an original piece of art.As a parting item, here's the artist, Fiona Ryan seen finishing off the picture.

The hugely talented Fiona

If anyone wants to see the lovely evocative sketches done for her own pleasure, predominantly of the Wellington NZ area, click HERE. Her email address is on the website if anyone is keen to talk to her about a commission, particularly Kiwi Wellingtonians!

Serendipity? Probably as close as makes no difference!

New tyres - difficult replacement choices

2011-08-23T17:14:00.003+12:00

The Street Triple came equipped with Dunlop Qualifiersport tyres. In overall terms, grip wasprobably more than my riding habits would require excepting unforeseenevents. However, by 6000 km, the rearhadn’t got much tread left and both tyres had lost their original profile to asignificant degree. It was noticeablethat under hard cornering, the bike tended to drop in rather than progressivelyroll in. My earlier musings on tyres is HERE.

Because some decent distances were planned to be covered inthe following 6 months, I replaced them with a set of Avon Storm 2 Ultra sport touring tyres. As mentioned in a couple of previous posts, I’ve been anAvon fan for years. The dry weather gripis probably on par with many other good quality makes of tyre but what has beenoutstanding for me is wet weather performance. Even with standing water on the tar seal, they hang on exceptionallywell and don't suddenly let go. The other feature I’ve reallyliked is that they retain their profile through a large percentage of theirtotal lifespan, meaning that you don’t have to replace them early because handling has been adversely affected.

I've just covered a shade over 10000 km on these tyres and the rear is down to the minimum depth wear bar in the centre of the tread. Note in the picture though how even the profile across the tyre is - no big flat in the centre to upset the handling. The tyre is dual compound with a harder centre and softer sides. Although it wasn't really noticeable when new, the harder compound in the centre can clearly be seen now although the transition can barely be felt with a fingernail. Sooo... verdict on the rear tyre - extremely satisfied with the performance. Good grip in the dry, outstanding grip in the wet, turn-in is very progressive and profile remains pretty constant over its total life. Not a bad tyre life overall considering the conditions of its use on predominantly twisty roads with coarse chip.

Avon Storm Ultra rear @10000 km
Harder compound in centre

The front tyre probably has at least a further 2000-3000km of life in terms of centre tread depth but it's developed significant flats on the side of the tyre. The flats are clearly visible in the photo below. Whilst the handling doesn't feel compromised at present, it certainly will before long. The root causes of the side wear are hard to determine. I'm paranoid about accurate tyre pressures and am inclined to think that the wear is probably normal given that the roads I mainly ride on are twisty with coarse chip. Fairly stiff suspension, budget suspension damping and vigorous countersteering won't help either. Verdict: Excellent tyre in terms of wet and dry weather grip but uneven profile wear well before reaching minimum tread depth.

Avon Storm Ultra front @10000 km

Where to from here?
I don't want to go back to pure sport tyres and replace them at least twice a year, so sport-touring tyres will fill the bill for longer life, but still provide grip for enthusiastic cornering. I've done a lot of reading and Pirelli Angel ST's, Dunlop Roadsmarts and Michelin Pilot Road 3's all seem to fit the bill, although I've read a few reports detailing the odd issue with all of them. Realistically, will they offer any more in terms of performance and "feel" than the Avon Storms? Is there a case for taking a chance on something else at present? Is there a significant price differential between brands - enough to influence the final choice?

My thinking was to simply replace the rear tyre with an identical one. For the front, I was tempted to go for the sportier Avon VP2 Sport for even more grip (they're compatible). I don't mind the odd rear wheel slide but the couple of front end slides I've had in years gone by are a bit unnerving. I got 7000 km from the front VP2 on my Blackbird and the lighter weight and more aggressive steering geometry of the Triple should give significantly more life, still allowing both tyres to be changed at the same time. It's pointless skimping on tyres when their role in keeping you upright is so important.

Meanwhile, a few days later.....

After a little more research on the 'net, the new Michelin PR3's looked an interesting proposition but maybe not enough to sway me. However, after a call to our nearest decent tyre depot, I was surprised to find that there is indeed a significant price differential. The full Avon set is NZ$650, balanced and fitted whereas the pair of Michelins is a nice round NZ$600. The price advantage and performance research has been sufficient to convince me to buy a set and it will be interesting to compare their performance with the Avons. Doubt that I'll be buying a lemon as some of the early reports are pretty encouraging.

Tuesday.......

Rode to the Drury Performance Centre in South Auckland to get the new tyres fitted. I hadn't been there before and was extremely impressed with their professionalism so have no difficulty in giving them a well-deserved plug!

Drury Performance Centre

After greeting me and double-checking the tyres I'd ordered, I was given a voucher for a coffee at a cafe across the road. Actually, it wasn't really a cafe as such, it was Roma Coffee Roasters and I was able to sit and have a superb cup of Macciato whilst watching beans being roasted on a commercial scale behind the counter!

Meanwhile, the guys had started to replace the tyres and I strolled round having a look at some of the tyres in stock. The 300-section tyre shown below was pretty impressive - presumably for an outrageous chopper or something like a Rocket 3. You'd need a healthy bank balance to replace that!

Serious rubber!

There was a gorgeous early (1980's) GSX-R 1100 parked inside which caught my eye. It had aftermarket Ohlins suspension and Yoshimura cans but the rest of it looked pretty stock standard. It was in beautiful condition, not show pony good, but good as in someone who loves his bike, rides it regularly and hard and loves it to bits. I mentally raised my hat to the owner.

Gorgeous early Gixxer

The Michelin Pilot road 3's are a pretty new tyre and replace the hugely popular PR 2's. The 3's have very fine grooves (sipes) as part of the tread pattern to apparently hugely increase wet weather performance. These are rare on motorcycles but as an aside, I found out sipes were first invented in the 1920's to increase the grip of rubber shoes in wet slaughterhouses - nothing new under the sun eh?

Rear PR3

Front PR3

Here's where things took a bizarre turn! I was sitting in the customer reception area waiting for the fitting to be completed and was flicking through the NZ Magazine Motorcycle Trader (Aug 2011 edition). It had an interesting article on tyres and I noticed that there was a photo of a Street Triple. See propped-up magazine in the photo below - bottom photo in magazine. (Click to enlarge).

A sudden realisation.....

It suddenly dawned on me that it was was MY Street Triple and the photo was taken from my blog post from 21st February this year! It shows the laser wheel alignment rig I'd originally built for the Blackbird. I'm not annoyed - surprised more like at seeing it but I don't think an email to Motorcycle Trader will go amiss to find out a bit more.

Taking the normal care with new tyres, I headed home down some twisty back roads to scrub them in. Normally with new tyres, they feel quite flighty in comparison with the old ones but I'd have to say that these didn't feel significantly different to the Avons which they replaced. I think that this is testimony to how well the Avons held their profile over the complete life of the tyre. Once on the coast road up to Coromandel, I felt confident enough to press on a bit and when I got home, the rear was scrubbed in right to the edges. Initial impressions are very favourable and really looking forward to evaluating them over a longer period and in a whole range of conditions. I'll certainly be going back to Drury Performance Centre, really nice guys with a great service ethic.

ADDENDUM: I followed up the matter of my photo appearing and whilst they didn't directly stealing my photo from the blog, they did offer a carabiner-type helmet lock and fancy wire strop as a "goodwill gesture", plus a free subscription to their magazine. I was quite happy with the outcome - they got the message and I got some goodies!

Tugging at the heartstrings

2011-08-19T20:38:00.000+12:00

I've always considered myself a fairly unemotional and controlled guy (picture Jennie nodding in agreement and rolling her eyes) but when it comes to animals, I'm a complete sook! You may remember an addendum to a recent post about a tiny, gorgeous and very hungry stray kitten which turned up in our garden a few days before we headed to Thailand. We fed it and let it stay whilst we tried to track down the owners. No success at all in finding a home and all the local cat rescue places were full, so what to do?

A neighbour was feeding our cats whilst we were away and she offered to feed the kitten too if we wanted to take the risk of leaving it with our two big males and we could sort out what to do when we got back. We didn't have a lot of choice short of the unthinkable so we took her to the vet for a check-over and a vaccination just to be on the safe side. The Vet pronounced it a "her" and said she was in superb condition and around 8 weeks old. (You can see where this is going, can't you?)

On getting home, our neighbour said that the kitten had taken complete control of our other two cats (including Jennie's alpha male, Thomas), and had been no trouble at all, even accompanying Thomas on his rounds visiting all the neighbours! We'd studiously avoided discussing keeping it whilst on holiday, much less talking about names but after being greeted so enthusiastically at the front door, it was done and dusted in ohhhhh..... less than 2 minutes so I'd like to introduce Annie to the world:

Little Orphan Annie

(and her toy mouse)

Sooo cute!

We'd both forgtten how hard work kittens are - chewed book edges, hands with bite and scratch marks and Jennie's large Peace Lily in the lounge has been virtually destroyed! Oh yeah, and she steals anything that can be carried from our bedroom dressing tables and they pop up all over the house.

On a more sober note, I thought that today was going to be a day when a lot of tears were shed. On Wednesday evening, we got back from our weekly pub quiz and my cat, Henry, was walking oddly and it was clear that he was in a lot of pain. Checked him over, couldn't see anything but it looked like his stomach was the problem. Left him overnight and in the morning, we found he'd pooped runny stuff in our sun room. We thought he'd either eaten something bad or maybe even poison. Yesterday, he just slept a lot but didn't seem in any discomfort. This morning, he was in pain again so I rang the vet who doesn't come to Coromandel on a Friday so we legged it 50 km down the coast to Thames. Henry and I have been great mates for nearly 12 years and I was anticipating the worst so you'll appreciate that I shed the odd tear on the way down. Little buggers have a way of getting under your skin, don't they? The vet examined him and almost a miracle - he had a blocked urethra and couldn't pee, apparently not uncommon on older male cats. I'd be in pain too if I hadn't had a pee for 3 days! We left him with the vet and got a call this afternoon that they'd fixed the problem and that we'll be able to pick him up in a couple of days when he is fully recovered. Repair cost is going to be between $400-$700 but what do you do with family? Crikey, I should have trained as a vet to beat the economic outlook, but simply overjoyed to have him still with us. Big, badass biker image in tatters!

Henry loves a wheelbarrow ride!

Burt Munro - Kiwi Legend

2011-08-13T19:31:00.001+12:00

Fellow blogger Roger Fleming recently both staggered and delighted me by giving me an outstanding book on the life of New Zealander Burt Munro. Rog mate, that was a real act of generosity - you're a star! If there is actually someone on the planet who doesn't immediately recognise the name, Burt was immortalised in the movie "The World's Fastest Indian" and portrayed by Sir Anthony Hopkins.

Front of the book

This book, running to nigh on 300 pages of A4 format high quality art paper is without doubt the definitive book on Burt Munro. In fact it's bloody terrific (a technical term). Roger Donaldson, the movie director was given access to all the Munro family memorabilia right from Burt's early days - Photos, letters, certificates - the whole 9 yards and they're all in the book. In addition, he has included transcripts of interviews with a heap of Burt's fellow competitors at Bonneville, plus family friends, newspaper interviews and so on.

Offerings to the God of Speed - prototypes and failed components

in his shed

Pushing the boundaries!

One of Burt's Bonneville certificates

This isn't just an interesting and enjoyable coffee table book, it's far, far more than that on so many different levels. It's an object lesson in what can be achieved with single-mindedness (bloody-mindedness more like!), sheer persistence and hard work against all odds and scant resources; no matter in what sphere of endeavour. It's an inspiration to us all and in fact, a number of successful Kiwis in all sorts of fields have cited Burt Munro as having inspired them to "have a go".

I'm English by birth although I've lived in NZ since 1975. Looking from the outside in for a moment, people like Burt Munro and Sir Ed Hillary, the first man to scale Mt.Everest; typify for me the archetypal New Zealander - modest, friendly, doesn't regard anything as impossible and still has the pioneering spirit of their forefathers.

The movie is an amalgamation of Burt's various visits to the salt, all of which you'll find in the book and much more besides. It's interesting that when the movie was first shown in NZ, the appeal was far broader than just motorcycle fans. It was pretty universal and the DVD is in an awful lot of homes over here AND watched repeatedly too.

If you're interested in getting a copy, here's the library code: ISBN 978-1-86979-207-7. There's also a 2hour DVD tucked in the back flap of the book covering all manner of things associated with Burt's life and the making of the movie. Go on..... you know you want one!!

Burt Munro - the icon

Travels in Thailand, part 5

2011-08-10T13:05:00.002+12:00

The last noteworthy part of our trip wasn't scheduled to happen but like a lot of unplanned events, turned out to be memorable. Jennie had booked and paid for the trip and we weren't far off leaving when Thai Airlines contacted her and said they'd cancelled the return flight on our chosen day. They gave her the choice of returning a day earlier, or extending the trip for a day and putting us up in a Bangkok hotel, meeting all our accommodation and food bills. Naturally, Jennie chose the latter!

Flying into Bangkok from Phuket in the late afternoon, we were met at the airport and ferried to the Novotel a few minutes distant. This is a seriously nice hotel and far beyond what we thought we'd be staying in. For starters, the atrium must be 60 metres long, 40 metres wide and maybe 30 metres high, all covered in marble! The quality carried through to the bedrooms, which were huge and beautifully-appointed. We dined in that night and all that needs to be said is that the buffet was exquisite. By way of example, there was a block of Roquefort cheese sitting on the cheese stand which must have weighed a couple of kg and at the price of that stuff....!!!! Suffice to say that we over-ate!

Because our flight didn't leave until early the following evening, we consulted the concierge and arranged a tour of the Bangkok waterways . Did you know it's locally known as the Venice of the East? We didn't but it has literally hundreds of canals all over the city coming off the main Chao Phraya river and as part of our honeymoon 39 years ago was spent in Venice, there was a nice symmetry to it.

We ambled down to the atrium in the morning to meet our young tour guide and he asked us to wait a moment whilst he phoned for our vehicle to take us the 50-odd minutes into central Bangkok. All we (well, me) could do was gape because we thought there'd been a terrible (and expensive) mistake!! See the picture below.

Oh heck - who's made a blunder???

When a beautiful Jaguar with dark tint windows and a white-gloved chauffeur turns up, the phrase "this must be for us" is not something which immediately springs to mind! Jennie, who has infinitely more class than me swept straight into the back of the Jag like she does it every day, whilst I stood there grinning like an idiot and taking photos. Jennie thought that I'd let the side down somewhat but at least, dear reader, you can see what I was grinning about. I guess it's expected by the tour company that Airport Novotel guests always travel that way. All part of the very reasonably-priced tour though.

That ain't workin', that's the way you do it, la la.....

The trip to town on the excellent toll road was interesting as we imperiously exceeded the speed limit all the way with the engine quietly purring away whilst we sipped cold drinks in the back - could get used to this lifestyle very easily!

Big-scale advertising on hotel block

Waiting for the water taxi

Now let me explain something about the longboat water taxis as they are pretty impressive. Only 2 metres wide at the maximum point and maybe 15 or 20 metres long, they look like oversized canoes.

Front of our water taxi down a narrow canal

That's where the similarity with canoes ends as the propulsion system is pretty impressive. The motors are turbocharged truck engines beautifully counterbalanced with a long prop shaft so that they swivel like an outboard. The skipper steers the whole thing with a long pole attached to the front of the engine - see the 2 photos below. Those suckers are seriously fast and the spray and rooster tail from the shallow prop were impressive. Even more so as there were just the skipper, the guide and Jennie and me on board!

Turbo'd power plant - nothing like a few gee-gees

Showing the counterbalance arrangement

Cruising through the canals was a fascinating experience which gives you the chance to see "everyday life" in a city and we wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Rustic waterside house - complete with satellite dish

Canal supermarket - don't drop your groceries!

Waterside temple

The photo below is interesting. The little boat was a mobile floating snack bar and the driver stopped to buy some bananas which were fried on the spot in a charcoal-fired wok! There were also little boats which were mobile supermarkets.

Stop me and buy one.....

Suspended fishing net makes a cool picture

I doubt that any of the canal-dwellers would ever starve as the waterways are teeming with catfish. We lobbed a bit of bread on the water surface and this is what happened:

No over-fishing of resources here then!

Interesting mailbox

Waterside orchid farm

The Royal Palace

Making Chrysanthemum garlands at the market

Just a few chillies!

Local taxi - the 2 stroke tuk-tuk

What a fantastic bonus to have toured Bangkok by water and really added to our enjoyment of Thailand. The Thais are genuinely nice people and go out of their way to give visitors real value in terms of their experiences. We probably won't return as there are so many new places to be explored but for anyone who is thinking of going there for a bit of fun, you'll absolutely love it!

Hey ho, back in New Zealand trying to get into a routine - having to cook for yourself is the biggest pain!!!

Hope you've enjoyed seeing another part of the world......

Travels in Thailand, part 4

2011-08-09T13:58:00.001+12:00

One of the activities we'd booked was an elephant ride through bush tracks on a mountain range. Not only did it include the ride itself but some other cultural things like tapping rubber trees for their latex and making sheet rubber, preparing a Thai curry from scratch with the spices in their original form - roots, leaves etc and a few other things besides. The day was to finish with an evening cruise and dinner on Chalong Bay in a gorgeous old traditional boat.

Unlike the short elephant ride we did bareback in Vietnam which was a bit painful on the nether regions (certainly for a guy!), this one involved decent seats and was perfectly comfortable. Boarding the elephant from a ramp was pretty easy too. The ride is smooth until steep downhill sections when you go down in a series of lurches which has you hanging on tightly!

The comfort of a decent seat!

Fantastic view from high in the forest

Trying to pick my pocket for goodies!

We had a short trip in a cart pulled by a water buffalo. My goodness, they are seriously big and the size of their horns defies belief. This one was a big old softie but I'd hate to meet one that was ticked off!

A seriously big animal

Rubber tree tapping

Thailand still seems to have huge rubber tree plantations whereas when we were in Malaysia, the planting of Palm Oil forests seemed endemic. I have no idea of the planting of palm oil vs. rubber in terms of long-term economics but palm oil plantations are quite poor for supporting biodiversity under the canopy. No magic bullet, that's for sure.

After yet another humid day of activity, it was a perfect end to go for a buffet dinner cruise on Chalong Bay as the sun began to set - sheer magic!

Our boat at the wharf

Cruising past a tropical island

Sunset over the mainland - Big Buddha on the highest hill

Next day, it was another day of great activity in the shape of ATV riding and we were collected from the hotel and taken to a forest area on the east coast where it was all due to take place. We knew that there would be big mud holes and streams as well as forest trails so a change of clothes was prudently packed. Like all of the activities we'd been on so far, the Thais deserve every accolade for their timing and organisation, without it being overdone. On arriving at the ATV base, we were plied with cold drinks to prevent dehydration and given a comprehensive run-down on riding the ATV's. This was followed by an easy circuit of the base camp to let people get used to them. The ATV's were 400cc 4 strokes so there was the potential to cause some grief if not handled with a bit of respect. Two of the riders looked downright incompetent and seemed to be having trouble co-ordinating the lever-operated throttle and brakes, so they had guides on the pillion to watch over them. Was still wary of going anywhere near them though!

ATV Central, although only about 10 people on our trip

Forced smile before setting off.

Arty shot of Jennie - she's clearly not impressed!

The terrain through the forest was fantastic, with steep up and downhill grades, mud holes, streams, fast forest tracks and even in sand and sea through the mangroves! Both Jennie and I had no problems with the terrain as we'd ridden racing 2 stroke ATV's in NZ's south island a few years ago (Jennie had actually given me a complete riding lesson on one part of that day!) but some of the other riders were finding it a bit tough. One of the riders kept following me too closely and actually ran into the back on one downhill grade, fortunately with no damage. I feel a bit guilty now, but solved the problem by deliberately banging open the throttle at the next mud hole, getting wheelspin and dumping several kilos of exceedingly sloppy mud over the driver. He kept his distance after that!

A bow wave of mud and water

Half way through the day, we looped back to base for a lunch of fresh tropical fruit and more liquids to keep up energy levels and hydration. Jennie's right thumb had nearly seized up due to the throttle adjustment on her ATV so I suggested that she double up with me for the second half of the ride. Some of the mud holes were deep and the tyres got a bit floaty so the extra weight would help although you'll understand that I was exceedingly careful in the phrasing of this to avoid a swift kick where it hurts most.

The second half of the day was equally huge fun although the driving standards of some of the people hadn't shown much improvement. On one tricky section, we heard a scream from behind followed by a glancing blow and the sound of foliage being rent asunder. When we stopped and looked round, there was an ATV half-buried in a bush with the rider totally inside it and the guide/instructor completely in the open on the pillion giving a broad grin and a wink. It was clear that the rider had got badly out of shape and had panicked, so the instructor simply reached forward, grabbed the bars and steered them into the bush. What a hoot!!

Hmmmm.... can we get through that?

Yours truly among the mangroves and sea

We had yet another fantastic day, we were completely knackered and slept pretty darned well that night.

Final episode to come.......

Travels in Thailand, part 3

2011-08-08T12:59:00.002+12:00

After the unplanned expenditure mentioned in part 2, I decided to get something for myself; albeit rather more modest. We'd heard about a men's and women's tailoring enterprise at Patong Beach called Tom's International Collection. Being retired and having hung up my business gear, tee shirts and jeans or shorts tend to be my everyday clothing. From time to time, Jennie and our daughter Victoria "encourage" me (an understatement) to look a bit tidier so the plan was to get some nice casual "dress" shirts made. I don't want to drag this out, but what a great experience! The standard of service, choice of materials, patterns and professionalism couldn't be faulted and we'd be hard-pressed to find an equivalent service in the West unless it was at the very top end of the market. Loved the little touches like a different pattern lining in the collars and cuffs. From first measurement to final collection of 3 superb shirts in less than 2 days was great, at a price that was substantially less than off-the-peg poorer fitting and lower quality garments in NZ. Also, now that they have my measurements, I can mail order more at any time. Just to conclude the tale, Jennie had a pure silk evening top made and it's a stunner so we were both happy. So there you are... if you ever find yourself at Patong Beach, go to Tom's and ask for Ali - you won't be disappointed.

Saw this nice Honda cruiser near the tailors with the Grim Reaper airbrushed into the tank and rear guard - paint looked an inch thick!

Cool paint job

That evening, we decided on a bit of entertainment and trotted along to a show just north of Patong Beach called "Fantasea". We knew that you got a feed and the show involved elephants but that was about it. The location was superb and the organisation faultless. The huge grounds were set up like an old-fashioned carnival and shops but with modern decor so that you could amuse yourself after eating and before and after the show. The evening meal area was a buffet of beautiful foods and could cater for 4000 people at a time! Organisation was excellent and it didn't feel at all cramped or rushed in the dining area.

Entrance to dining area

A small section of the dining area

After the meal, we took part in some of the carnival/funfair attractions, one of them being on the pistol range. I hadn't fired a handgun for over 30 years and was simply amazed (so were the attendants!) to score all inners and bulls, winning a lovely stuffed elephant toy which will be going to our granddaughter.

The stage show itself was spectacular. The storyline was an old Thai story about a prince combating evil, but using modern sets, laser light, fireworks, elephants and other performing animals - incredibly well done. We weren't allowed to take photos from the show but here's a selection of shots outside taken in the grounds.

A neon-lit bar

Entrance to the show

2 metre long catfish in the lake - yup...2 metres!

The following day was time for a bit of action - kayaking off the north east coast of Phuket Island. A boat took us to an area which was a little reminiscent of our March visit to Halong Bay in Vietnam, and let us loose on inflatable kayaks at several particularly beautiful islands. One of them was "James Bond Island" where part of The Man With the Golden Gun was filmed many moons ago. Another island was riddled with caves and a central lagoon. To get to the lagoon, some of the caves were so narrow that you had to lie down in the kayak and push on the walls with the paddle!

Crab fishermen in the bay

Some of the limestone islands

Yours truly off for a paddle

Some nice toys

James Bond Island - a few hundred metres wide

Market stalls on James Bond Island

Massive fault in the cliff - maybe 80 metres high

Entering the cave system on an island

Big Water Monitor lizard at cave entrance

Jennie and I laying flat to get through a narrow squeeze

Entering the island's inner lagoon

Part of the inner lagoon

Old-looking monkey on the lagoon walls

On the way home, we noticed the following sign near a beach. Wondered if it meant that you were only safe from tsunamis at an altitude of 300 metres vertically above the sign!!!

Not a reassuring sign......

What a fun time! More to come.......

Travels in Thailand, part 2

2011-08-07T19:22:00.000+12:00

Our first sightseeing trip out was a drive round the southern part of Phuket island, basically to see something of the countryside and to get a feel for the place away from the westernised Patong Beach. On the road south down the west coast, we were tickled to see an elephant road warning sign, followed shortly after by elephants which looked like they were clearing logs from a rubber tree plantation - really cool!

Not your everyday road sign!

Garaging for the Thai equivalent of D7 bulldozers!

There were many spectacular views from hills all round the southern part of the island and the height seemed to accentuate the cloud formations.

Magnificent cloudscape

We stopped at a shrine where it was apparent how much the elephant is part of Thai culture, with literally hundreds of elephant effigies of all sizes draped with garlands of flowers.

Elephant Central

Next stop was to look at the Big Buddha statue at one of the highest points in the south of the island and boy, was it impressive! Close to 50 metres high, made from concrete and was in the process of being covered entirely with marble tiles about 150 mm square and 15mm thick - that's one heck of a lot of marble and one heck of a cost. Clever fund-raising though. For 100 baht (about US$3), you could buy a tile, put your name on it with a felt tip pen and it would be cemented in place, name side down!

Big Buddha from a distance

Close-up, showing the individual tiles

Sticking on the tiles - what's OSH?

Next stop was Wat Chalong, a large temple complex which was maintained in impeccable condition and the ornate architecture was a joy to look at.

Main temple building

Colourful interior

Amazing carving

Standing in the direct sun for long without a hat was inviting trouble. Jennie may have packed the kitchen sink when leaving NZ, but her sun hat was one notable omission. No worries though, a quick visit to a local market stall and parting with the equivalent of a couple of bucks or so solved that problem! It's probably the right time to mention a really appealing trait of the Thai people - their great courtesy and politeness. Stall holders and shopkeepers might ask you to buy something but if you say no thanks, that's the end of the matter and they'll still happily pass the time of day with you. Contrast that with Bali for instance where you're continually hassled. The Thais are lovely people, with a great sense of humour.

Hats, bags and anything else you care to mention at rock bottom prices

Here's where the day started to get expensive! Before we headed back to the hotel, Jennie wanted to have a look at a renowned manufacturing jeweller in Phuket town. Thailand mines its own precious gems and with the high levels of craftsmanship and low wage rates, the implications were that real bargains were to be had here. Now I don't know how other members of the male sex would have handled the situation, but I'm a craven coward and also loving my better half to bits; had an inkling how this was going to end up.

The manufacturing side of the process was really interesting, right from cutting and polishing the stones, through to making the finished piece, be it a ring, brooch, necklace or whatever. Entering the showroom was another story entirely, trying to look casual whilst trying to stop eyes watering at some of the price tags. Question: How does a guy counter the argument that similar pieces would be hugely more expensive in the West? Answer: not a clue and neatly backed into a corner by the female of the species. Inevitably, Jennie found a bracelet in white gold set with sapphires and diamonds which she fell totally in love with. In an attempt to cut a deal, I suggested that it should be an advanced present for our 40th anniversary next year to which she readily agreed (with me having a mental picture of all the bike goodies I could eventually buy for an equivalent price). The speed of the agreement lead me to conclude that the brownie points amassed by yours truly for this transaction will have probably evaporated well before I can get any bike gear. Have other guys noticed the extremely short shelf life of "guy points"? Sigh........

Nice, but not as nice as new leathers, boots, replacement helmet........

Less expensive adventures in Thailand to follow........

Travels in Thailand, part 1

2011-08-06T15:41:00.000+12:00

As regular readers of this blog will probably be aware, Jennie and I take turns in organising a trip somewhere to celebrate our wedding anniversary, keeping it a secret from each other for as long as possible by outright lies, misdirection and other subterfuge. This year has been our 39th anniversary and Jennie's turn to arrange the destination. The only clue given was to pack something light (which could have been misdirection in itself, knowing Jennie's wicked sense of humour!).

All was revealed just a few minutes short of Auckland International airport, where it was finally revealed that we were heading for Phuket Island in Thailand, some 14 hours flying time away, including a plane change in Bangkok. That length of time being stuck in a plane isn't much fun but the lure of warm weather to escape our winter was pretty compelling. Also, Phuket is a major "fun activity" area of Thailand so in the normal Kiwi way, we were looking forward to getting stuck into all sorts of activities as opposed to lazing around on the beach and drinking too much alcohol! Perhaps the title of the blog should really have been "Pottering Around in Phuket"!

Arriving at Phuket airport around 2am, all we wanted was shuteye, but the 40 minute trip to the hotel woke us up. Oh dearie me, the driver of the Toyota Altezza sport saloon who met us clearly relished the lack of traffic at that early hour and used the occasion for Formula One practice. Speed limits seem merely advisory and Jennie's tanned knuckles had taken on a distinctly white hue! It has to be said though that the driver seemed pretty competent despite the ummm.... brisk pace.

The hotel was classy and we don't know whether their staff had been warned by our travel agent friend that it was our anniversary but the monster bed was beautifully decorated with fresh orchid flowers and petals. (click to enlarge photos)

Awwww......

They'd also left a plate of fresh local fruits in case we felt like a snack but all we wanted at that stage was oblivion! Here's a photo for our fellow bike blogging food lovers.

Where do you start?

Early next morning, the temperature was well into the 30's C with humidity through the roof so it was time to check out one of the hotel pools to freshen up. Lovely setting with Bougainvillea plants and palms round the edge to provide additional shade.

Not exactly slumming it!

Sheer bliss!

After organising activities for every day of our stay, we wandered into town and along the waterfront to get our bearings. Jennie had her eyes fixed on shop prices which were very low by western standards whilst I tried to get an impression of the local motorcycle scene, only distracted from the task by (discreetly) staring at the absolutely stunning Thai girls. However, as acidly pointed out by Jennie, some of them may well have been the renowned Thai ladyboys. The only way of finding out is when it's far, far too late so we'll never know!

Early morning Phuket street scene

As per our Vietnam holiday in March, the majority of 2-wheeled transport were scooters and small-capacity motorcycles used as cheap, everyday transport by the locals. However, the choice of rental bikes on just about every street corner was truly amazing with everything from small and large capacity scooters through to big bore sports bikes. All pretty cheap to rent too. However, why anyone would want to rent a Yamaha R1 or similar sports bike in those temperatures and traffic congestion is beyond me - the renters must have suffered from "little dick syndrome"! Here's a photo of a line of rental vehicles, starting with a smart Mugen-prepared Honda Jazz car, then a Fireblade (I think) and other big-capacity machinery.

Spoiled for choice

Choice is a very personal thing but for the conditions in Phuket, my choice would have been a motard - great all-round vision, ergonomically comfortable and very manoeuvreable. Motards of 500cc or less were very popular and the one shown in the photo below looked to be about 3/4 scale compared with the bigger ones in NZ. Don't think they're available in NZ but would be great for city use.

Cool 3/4 scale motard

Although there are conventional gas stations scattered about on the outskirts of town, we were delighted to see that transport of the 2-wheeled kind were catered for on just about every street by local entrepreneurs! The refuelling stations appeared to be a small roadside rack of empty bottles of alcohol, refilled with petrol. Not sure about accurate measurement of quantity or health and safety considerations come to that but guess they'd be handy if you wanted Molotov cocktails as ammo for a riot!

Hi-tech gas station

As fellow Kiwi bike blogger Nick has mentioned in his posts on Thailand, after dark is when Phuket really kicks off; maybe partly because of the slight drop in temperatures but everywhere simply turns into Party Central with the restaurants and bars doing a roaring trade. It was a great cosmopolitan atmosphere with Russians, Aussies, Kiwis and British being particularly in evidence; although it's fair to say that most of the world's nations were represented there.

There was a great open-air bar not far from our hotel which served drinks and food at ridiculously cheap prices. Even better, the Thai food was awesome and a whole lot more appealing than the McCrap, Burger King and other western outlets represented on the waterfront. Isn't part of the purpose of travelling overseas to escape that junk, especially when the local food is cheaper, tastier and better for you?

Our colourful local bar/restaurant

Calamari with Thai Basil - divine

Prawn, chilli and cilantro soup - yummmm