2020 Coast to Coast

Last Saturday was the 28th Coast to Coast charity ride and I believe my 21st.  This time around I had enticed Colin up with the suggestion that we just ride the first half of the ride to Woodville and then disappear in search of gravel after the lunch break.

On the way out to the beach the S10 was blown all over the place in some pretty windy conditions and at the Himitangi intersection I managed to pick up a wee-strom with the rider turning out to by Adi. 

At the beach we signed up and wandered around checking out bikes and chatting with others.  I caught up with a few people I knew including Doug and Kirsty who I had met at the opening of our new Yamaha dealership.  Naturally, they ride a quality motorcycle:

A thorn between two roses...

Eventually it was time for the quick briefing and then we were off via some backroads to Foxton and then Shannon.  It was nice to have the wind mostly behind us and we hung back, just cruising along with everyone else until we hit the Pahiatua Track where we may have let a few more horses out.

Just before crossing the Manawatu River we had a bit of a regroup so that we could all enter Woodville together and become the starring attractions of their Xmas parade.

In Woodville it was time for a quick bite before our afternoon escapade.

That damn thorn again...

Rob still loves his H2 and reckons he'll never sell it

Leaving Woodville, we made our way through to Pahiatua and attempted to fill up at the BP but the pumps were dead.  I did a quick calculation and decided that we should all be able to make Pongaroa (there is a card pump there now) so we remounted and vamoosed.

We took seal across to Route 52 and then turned North before hitting the gravel of Waihoki Valley Road to take one of our favourite routes to Pongaroa.

The gravel through here was pretty good and not even that dusty so Colin and I made reasonable progress with the new Adventure rider following along behind.

Spur Road gets a bit narrower and rougher in places and as we nearly hit the summit Colin gave me a toot and immediately turned around.  It turned out that we had a Wee-strom down.  Nothing serious, but Adi had not quite gone right enough into a corner and had gone off into ditch and dropped the bike.

We soon had it upright and there wasn't much harm done.  A bit of support and a few revs got it back out onto the road and then up to the summit for some photos.

Dropping down the hill, Colin got ahead of us and unbeknownst to us he may have missed a turn...

After a great ride through to Coast Road, I dropped then hammer (surprising Doug and Kirty coming the other way) for Pongaroa only to find no Colin...

Adi and I wandered around a bit looking for him amongst all the Coast to Coast riders who had stopped for a drink and eventually saw him filling up.  It turned out that he had discovered a dead end that I knew about but hadn't been keen on visiting...

After a cold drink and some snacks we left the Coast to Coasters to it again and headed up over the hill towards Makuri.  Along the way I started to get a bit worried as the Tenere was very sluggish, taking harley-esk lumps of time to accelerate and not really wanting to give me more than 4,000 revs.  Most weird and just a little scary...

A quick stop in Makuri quickly discovered the issue.  The super-glue holding my RHS hot-grip on had given up and the grip had rotated enough that it was not allowing me very much throttle travel.  I got the grip back into position and secured it temporarily with a couple of cable-ties and she was back in action.

Taking a right on Coonoor Road we got back onto the gravel and this time around things were a bit more hairy for Adi.  There was plenty of new deep gravel and plenty of slipping and sliding to be had.  But all was good and everyone got through to the intersection with Towai Road Ok.

Next up we took a little diversion up to the start of the Makairo Track for a looksee - the WR's will need to take a trip through there at some stage...

Then it was a quick double-back before our last section of gravel on Waitahora Road followed by some smoother tarmac back into Dannevirke for fuel.

Our route back to Ashhurst and Palmy was via some of the sealed backroads to Woodville and a trip over the Saddle.  In Ashhurst we said our see-yas and the other two headed South to home while I made for Palmy and home base.