The Ultimate V-twin

Okay, so I'm now a twin owner and I love it but there's been a lot of great twins. What's your favourite?

Boxing Day Races

Spent a great day getting sunburned at Wanganui watching the bike racing. The day started off with a great ride through Halcombe, Martin and the Turakina valley before joining the throngs heading for the Cemetery Circuit.

Watched some great racing and had a lot of fun trying to get some decent photos. Great to see the the Britten out on the track even if it was just idling around the course. Particularly enjoyed the motards and the classic side cars - plenty of action there. A great way to spend Boxing Day!

Early Xmas present

I've been looking at GPS units for a while now and initially wasn't going to go the whole Zumo hog due to the cost. I priced up other units and waterproof mounting options etc but then a Zumo came up for sale on Kiwi Biker at a good price - about the same as the other options + mounts that I'd been looking at. I couldn't pass it up and so here it is.

At the moment I'm using the handle bar mount which came with the unit and which is supposed to be on the left hand side but as my heated grips controller is there then they had to go on the right hand side. It's not in too bad a position and is not quite as "in your face" as it looks in the pictures - when riding you have to look down to see the screen. I still think that I'll end up with a different mount more centrally located to get it more out of the way.

I'm really looking forward to putting it to the test on a decent ride (next year's Southern Cross for one) and it should be great for rides like the Grand Challenge.

It's a hard life

26,000km's of hauling up the Connie and the front pads have had enough. Lately there's been a little noise coming from them and after a quick check I decided that it was time to change them. The job itself was a piece of cake and a quick potter up the road confirmed that yes they work. Must try to make the next set last a bit longer...

Friday Night Ride

I hadn't planned on getting to tonight's Friday night ride as there was Xmas shopping to be done but in the end I managed to knock that out pretty quickly. After a quick feed I decided to get the Honda out and head off to see if I could catch up with everyone.

They had a one and a half hour head start and I had no idea where they were going so the chances of actually catching them were reasonably slim but I did know where they were intending on finishing up. As it was only just after 7:30pm, I figured that they would still be riding rather than parked up at the Ashhurst Cafe so I decided to hit the track, run through Balance and then the gorge before trying the Cafe.

I had a great ride over the track and through Balance but when I rolled into Ashhurst there was still no sign of them so I headed for town to check out a couple of other possible spots where they may have stopped instead. On the way into town I only saw one other bike and it was a certain green Kwaka heading home - nobody else in tow.

After a quick lap around town checking out a few watering holes I finally gave up and headed home. A nice little ride to wind up the week and probably the only chance I'll get to go out on the bike this side of Christmas.