BRR October ride

Today was the monthly Back Road Riders gravel seeking expedition and as per usual I was dead keen to go.  The weather forecast was not the best but when I left home to meet the other guys there was only the odd spit of rain and nothing to be worried about at all.

About eight of us met up at the Hiwinui school - nice and close to some local gravel roads.

We started out with a quick squirt through to Pohangina via Watershed, Zigzag and Finnis Roads.  As you can see a bit of rain might have been welcome...

From Pohangina we carried on up the valley some more and the roads while in good nick continued to be a little on the dusty side.  Check out the big fella at about 4 mins...

Pohangina Road eventually peters out and you arrive at Makoura Road which if you turn left takes you along some pretty good gravel to Apiti.  By now there was the odd bit of rain around which was turning the dust on my visor to mud.  The camera was getting a pasting too...

Next up was Main South road which starts off as a nice scenic ride on tarseal before once again turning to gravel.

At the end of Main South Road I followed Graeme along Te Parapara Road until it hit Rangawahia Road.  Here I was tasked with the corner man job to make sure that everyone took the correct turn so I parked up and waited...and waited.

With nobody showing up after a few minutes I decided (just a little sooner than Graeme) that something must be amiss so I turned around and back tracked to Main South Road.  On the corner Colin told me that someone had had a puncture and that they were fixing it up a bit further back up the road.  Seeing as I had my compressor with me I took off back to see if I could help.

By the time I found the others they had the wheel off, a new tube in the tyre and were already borrowing a farmer's compressor so mine wasn't needed.  A few minutes later I witnessed the fitting of a rear wheel to a R100GS and we were off again.

By now a damp sort of a drizzle was falling and I was starting to get a lot of visor fogging.  I had cleaned my visor prior to the ride and put anti-fog stuff on the inside but I guess the inside may have got dust on it and then some moisture making things less than the required see-thru.  I carried on for a bit but at the next gravel turn-off I decided to bail and let Colin know that I was heading home as I was having trouble seeing much of anything.

I took it pretty quietly riding through to Mangaweka as I did not want to rely on riding by braille and then turned South on SH1 to start on my way home.  Naturally now that I had bailed on the guys the weather started getting better and by the time I stopped in Hunterville it was almost sunny.

Lunch!

After a quick lunch I was back on the bike with clean glasses for the ride home via Halcombe and Feilding.  It was a real bummer to have to pull out of the ride - something I've never had to do before but at least I kept the bike on the road and got to have a reasonable 240km ride.  Looking forward to next month's ride...