Tar surfing

Last weekend Colin and I had a little TT planning session and he mentioned that we had better go riding this weekend.  So, on Friday night he contacted me and said that he and his mate Carl were coming up for a scoot.

The eagles beemwaas landed at around 9 and after a bit of messing around in town we headed off to hit the track.  

From Pahiatua we crossed over onto Pahiatua-Pongaroa Road for the run through to Pongaroa.  The roadworks and little bit of metal I slid on a month ago were still there but I can't remember the hawk from last time - it was a real close one and he made me duck.  Very close to having to fight him off and pluck feathers/talons etc out of my jacket...

BMW's ruining an otherwise perfect shot...

They're at it again

From Pongaroa we slithered our way on slippery tar and unmarked new seal out to the Weber turn-off and hung a right for Wimbledon.  The road out was its normal roller coaster of humps, bumps and broken up surface.  I think it's getting worse every time I ride it and it can keep you on your toes - especially when heading into a shady spot where you can't see what's coming up...

Riding north from Wimbledon to Porangahau it was more of the same although the road does improve the further North you get.  In Porangahau we stopped for lunch because fish and chips...

After lunch Colin was keen to ride Middle Road again so I led us out to Blackhead Road to start the ride up to Waipuk and Waipawa.  You might be able to notice in the video that Blackhead Road has the odd bump too, but it's got nothing on the Weber-Wimbledon section of 52.

In Waipawa we turned off to ride through to Patangata and onto Middle Road.  Middle Road is a cracker - it was a good thing Colin was with me to make sure I didn't get too excited...

Rather than ride into Havelock North we crossed SH2 and made our way onto SH50 to start the trip home.  The video below has my favourite part but with the temperature at around 28 degrees the roads were melting and the tar very unpredictable.  It's a little hard to see in the video but on the top (normally beautiful) corners the entire surface was slippery looking and you could definitely smell the tar.  It tends to slow you down a bit...

Hitting Tiko my fuel light decided to come on so my fuel calculator started working overtime.  I'm pretty sure I would have made Dannevirke (just not by the route we eventually took) but decided to play it safe and duck into Onga Onga.  The others thought it wasn't a bad move as the shop had cold drinks too.

I had another devious plan in mind to avoid the main road but unfortunately for Carl, he had to do a disappearing act as he had something on - pretty sure he would have been late...

That left Colin and I to take a slightly different route back to SH2 before quickly abandoning it for more back roads through to Takapau and Ormonville.  We had another quick stop in Dannevirke before turning off at Oringi to take the "short-cut" to Pahiatua.  Another quick squirt in blustery conditions over the track had us back over the ranges and into calmer weather in Palmy.

A nice little 475km jaunt to hopefully get my butt into shape for a little ride happening soon...