Upcoming Events

You know summers not to far away when the forth coming weekends in your calendar are full of motorcycle events. The first one out of the blocks at Labour Weekend is the Barry Sheene Oceania Challenge at Hampton Downs. This is fast becoming one of the biggest motorcycle events on the calendar and its great to see Alan De Lautour heading up with his RG500 for a spin around the track and a few of the other lads heading up as spectators on a variety of bikes. Fingers crossed for no rain this year.More information here

The following weekend 1st - 3rd November sees the Manawatu Classic Motorcycle Club hold its biennial rally at Camp Rangi Woods up the Pohangina Valley. This is always a great event and the lads run an excellent program starting on the Friday through to the Sunday. You can download an entry form here.

Its going to be very difficult for those of us who are of the Japanese Motorcycle persuasion as just up the road the VJMC have the annual Gumboot Rally on in Taihape. The lads from Hawkes Bay organise this and everyone has a great time. You get to see all sorts of bikes and meet some great people. More information here

Chasing the Sunshine

It has certainly been a very wet spring this year which has meant a lack of activity on the Sunday rides front. It got so bad a couple of weeks ago a special Sunday meeting was held at the Stage Door Cafe. This lack of DRY riding opportunities was probably one reason why last weekend we had a pretty good turnout for one of our 'non scheduled' rides. The return to 9:00 am departures might have been a plus as well with daylight saving signalling the beginning of the riding season. The forecast was for fine weather in the east so plans were made to head over the track to do the Rongomai loop. As can be seen from the photos, along with the regulars (Ian, Paul, Alan, Kim, Bruce and myself) we had Steve on his Japanese/Italian hybrid Cagiva! He is a two smoker from way back with a liking for Suzuki GT500s and muttered something about tracking one down! Our arrival at the top of the Pahiatua track saw us peering out through some drizzle to the east. After a quick reappraisal of our planned route we decided to continue on and as we reached the bottom of the track things began to clear. Mangamaire had us looking at blue sky in the distance so we continued on through a gradually warming morning. The Rongomai turnoff had us swinging through some of our favourite back roads. No traffic and a nice mix of wide open corners and well cambered tighter sections saw us arriving into the back of Pahiatua with some broad smiles. After a regroup we then headed off through some more great back roads to the Ballance Bridge Cafe. Whilst having a chat a genleman pulled up on his Honda GL500 and it transpired he was off to Feilding to have have a look at a car museum with the Masterton Ulysses group. Bruce and Alan swapped bikes with Bruce enjoying the delights of the H2 Widow Maker and Alan enjoying the beautiful growl of a well tuned and great sounding FZR1000 grunting out of the corners. The cafe chat for the two of them was Alan wondering how long hislicence would last if he owned an FZR and Bruce rather surprised at the descent handling of the H2. After some great coffees and snacks we retraced our steps back over the track and arrived back in town with plenty of the day left to do other things! A great way to start a Sunday