End of summer ride...

Rode up to Wellington with Chris and Grant last week. They were heading up to the 'Old School Nationals' at Manfield with a bunch of old cars as well. In hindsight I shoulda' gone with them, at least for the Friday night, it sounds like they had a pretty choice time.

I took the Norton and spent hours (HOURS!!!) last week working on it getting it ready for its first decent long ride in about 3 years. I'm happy to be able to report it fucking made it too! Did a bit over 1000kms and didn't miss a beat. The speedo fucked about a bit, but I fixed that for the ride back down, oh and the steering lock totally fell to pieces in Martinborough. Rode up there with Mattie from Wellington on the Saturday – in the rain for a bit, although it mostly stopped after we got over the Rimutakas (the photos below are taken then). Stayed in Martinborough to avoid more pissing rain and got pissed ourselves. Rode to Masterton and then back to Wellington the next day in nice bright sun but with pretty bad hangovers...

Left Wellington on the ferry on Monday. Originally we were supposed to be on a ferry that wouldn't get us into Picton until 11pm, luckily we managed to get onto an earlier sailing and got into Picton a bit after 6pm. I bought new strops to tie down my bike after one had snapped on the ferry on the way over (big thanks to Grant for being in the way of my bike falling over! don't think he got hurt too bad!?)...

It was pretty much dark anyway after we got off the boat in Picton. Our concern being Chris's total lack of lights and my old Lucas one being much like a candle with a mirror behind it. However Grant's light (on his dad's Kawasaki Z750 that he'd borrowed cause his bike still wasn't sorted) was pretty good, so we put him in front and me at the back and had a good headlight and taillight between the three of us. I think we freaked a few people out when they'd realise all of a sudden that there were 3 bikes! Chris's CB had something go wrong with the key barrel in Kaikoura and had to be hotwired to keep going. Little bit of drama in the middle of the night was good to keep the cold away.

Chris's bike wouldn't start again when we made our last stop for gas in Amberly. Managed to get him going with some fairly vigorous push-starting, and he made sure not to stop again til he got home.

Despite the cold this was an amazing ride and made me think I should do night rides more often. It's such a different vibe to the daytime, and much less traffic obviously. Although there were some pretty nutty truckers going flat stick through tight corners and blinding us with their lights. I tried taking photos from the bike at night but they didn't come out, which sucks 'cause it was quite a sort of surreal experience. Probably photo wouldn't have done it any justice anyway...