Woodville Lions Coast to Coast

I got up early on Saturday morning keen to walk the dog and do a few things around the house before heading out to Himatangi for the start of the Coast to Coast. Trouble was the weather was not being very friendly - we'd had some overnight rain and there was a bit of light drizzle falling.

I gave Brian a quick ring to see if he was coming and he said that he was flagging it due to the weather and him still getting the hang of his new 14.

Mark was next on the list for a call and I knew he was coming - he'd taken the day off work especially for the ride. So after a brief discussion on meeting times etc I hung up, geared up and headed out to meet him at his place. By the time I got out there the roads were dry and the weather was looking ok - maybe we'd get a dry ride.

Pulling up early at Himatangi we went and signed in and then caught up with quite a few familiar faces while waiting for the kick off. Oh, and Brian & Linda turned up too...

After the briefing we hit the road and headed on into Foxton and then through to Shannon. We both quickly grabbed some fuel here as we knew that there'd be a mad rush for it at Woodville and that we'd be able to easily get back to Danniverke afterwards.

Leaving Shannon we easily merged with riders still coming in from Foxton and made our way up through Linton, out Old West Road and finally to the Pahiatua track. Had a wee play on the track but with wet patches and a lot of slower bikes it wasn't really worth going silly.

Heading through Balance we came across a couple of guys who must have have left their brains at home as they'd gone off on a pretty easy bend. A quiet potter on into Woodville where we parked up and went to check out the new 'Busa and B-King before grabbing our lunch and waiting to head off again.

Then disaster! Heading back to the bike after taking a pitstop a came across a group of people waiting around my bike. The story goes (and I'm still not 100% certain it's true) that the bike rolled backwards on it's stand, then fell over to it's right and onto Mark's bike and then his onto the next one. It looks like mine was the only one to completely fall over and it's been nicely hucked up by the asphalt. To say I was annoyed is a bit of an understatement!

Luckily all the damage is just cosmetic - nothing broken but I'm still annoyed and will be for some time...Mark was a lot luckier - you can't even see where my bike hit his and there are no marks on his bike except for the handle bar weight which has a scratch and the bolt is bent.

Anyway after fuming and venting for a while we were finally back on the road and on the way to Pongaroa. Not far on up the road the weather decided that it was it's turn to spoil things by raining on all the nice bikers out doing their bit for charity. We made a quick stop at Pongaroa to stick our wet weather gear on over our wet riding gear and then kept on plowing our way out to the beach.

Once at the beach we had a quick coffee with KoroJ and chatted to some others before bailing on the prize giving (knowing my luck I probably had my name drawn...) and heading home. We turned off route 52 at Weber and headed on into Danniverke so we could gas up if required. Before we got into Danniverke the rain finally stopped and we could enjoy the roads.

In the end neither of us needed gas so we just cruised it back home to Palmy, relived a bit of a pretty crappy day at my place before Mark headed home and I put my poor horse to bad.

Another Coast to Coast to forget...