Bloopers

It seems that it's time for another Blog challenge.  Chillertek wants to see photo failures where the the ignorant camera operator inadvertently snaps a piccy of themselves or stuffs up in some other way.

Well, as a GoPro owner I have to say, "Too easy".  The GoPro is a really neat camera but with the display screen on the front it's pretty easy to snap pics of yourself - especially if you're wanting to check if the damn thing is running.  I need to by a remote for mine...

Merry Xmas from Banditrider from Banditrider on Vimeo.

Hunting Season

Yes, with the recent arrival of some better weather there has been a little action on the tag hunting front.  After a massive 195 days my old tag finally got nabbed.

World's hardest to find tag

Pegasus was the successful hunter and here's her new tag:

I knew where it was straight away so thought that a quick pootle after work was in order.

And then I turned around to head back to where I'd noticed something pretty cool for the next tag:

I then headed home pronto to do some uploading only to discover this on the tagorama thread:

Foiled!

But much worse than this I also found this:

So no tag hunting on the DL for a little while!

But I bet even my favourite international readers know where the tag is currently...

2012 Coast to Coast

Yesterday was the 20th running of the Woodville Lions Coast to Coast and as I've been to over half of them I thought that I'd better make an appearance.

At around 9, Mark, Brian and I made our way out to the ride start at Himatangi.  Once there we signed on and got our badges and by the time we got back to the bikes we'd been joined by Meanie, Monie and Cowboyz.

Himatangi

The ride finally hit the road at around 10:15 and 3-400 bikes starting making their way to the East Coast.  We started with a short boring stint up SH1 to Sanson and then turned off to ride through Fielding and across to Ashhurst.  Riding along Ashhurst Road I managed to be quick enough to get the GoPro running to catch the Rescue Helicopter filming the long line of bikes.

In Ashhurst we pulled out of the line to fuel up.  This avoided the mad rush for gas at Woodville and meant we wouldn't need any more fuel for the rest of the day.  When we hit Woodville we ran into the tail end of the run as they were making their way into town for the lunch stop.

After grabbing our lunch we caught up with Pete and Dan who had decided to join us for the run over to the Coast.  As this was Dan's first ride on these slightly dodgy roads we decided to leave well before the bunch and take our time.  Here's me trying to catch the mighty Keeway in the Makuri Gorge.

I just manage to catch him and then lead the guys up over the hill:

Eventually we hit Route 52 in Pongaroa and after a short squirt we turned off onto River Road to take us into Akitio and the ride end.

Pete

Fastest Keeway in the West

Akitio

As we were amongst the first to the beach we had plenty of time for a drink and something to eat as we watched the rest of the bikes roll in.  Once again we didn't want to be riding in the big group so left early before the prize giving and headed for Danniverke.

Along the way we had a bit of drizzle and some wet, slippery roads to deal with but by the time we were on the Weber road we were in the dry once more.  Here three of us got away a little and after parking up in Danniverke were surprised to see the other two turn up riding each other's bikes.  I'm pretty sure Dan found the GSX-R1100 a little different to the Super Shadow...

Now all we had to do was get home and while Dan and Pete took the main road, Brian, Mark and I just had to take in a few more back roads and the Saddle to make the ride more interesting.

View Larger Map

Bummer!

This morning I went out to the shed to get the DL out for the ride to work and made  a disappointing discovery.  The bike was difficult to wheel around so straight away I new that I'd picked up a puncture somewhere - perhaps some of those sharp rocks on the tracks up to the dams.

After I got home tonight I had a quick look at the tyre and besides a few nicks here and there I couldn't seem to find the cause of the puncture.  So I fired up the compressor and blew the tyre up to about 60 psi.  After turning the compressor and the radio off I could hear a pretty good hiss from the tyre...

So five minutes later the shed looked like this:

And I was then able to give the wheel a decent scrub before throwing it in the car for tomorrow's trip to the bike shop and repairs.

Incidentally, the tyre now has just under 4,000km of hard riding on it so it looks like it's lasting as advertised - fingers crossed!

Dam Elevations!

If offended, check title again ;)

Just as a matter of interest I had a wee look at the GPS track and checked out the elevations we climbed to when visiting the dams.  We didn't really get up that high - maybe that fog made it look like we were mountain climbing.

With a bit of mucking around I managed to work out roughly where the dams are and as you can see the picture shows both our trip in and out giving a rough mirror image.

Oh, and lookee what I found on NZ Topo Maps:

View Larger Topographic Map

Incidentally the summit of Whariti is at 920m and we managed to climb to 217m according to the GPS - I wonder how windy it was at the top!

View Larger Topographic Map

Bored yet?