The weather was fine and not to hot so it was ideal for spending some time in Whanganui watching the final round of the Suzuki Tri Series. Whanganui is one of the few street circuits still operating as health, safety and liability insurance make the running of these events more difficult as time goes by. A group of us gathered at Manawatu Motorcycles for the ride over with a stop over at The Church Cafe where some got a breakfast and others a coffee. It was quite a gathering at the cafe with some wonderful bikes amongst our group and even more parading past us. Great to see Stuarts Waterbus in the flesh and he has certainly done a great restoration on it with Bruce's help. Brent brought his Trident out for a play (for a while anyway) and John M had his Titan out for a run as well. PC brought his GT550 out for a spin and great to see Janet out on her Kawasaki ER6. Warren M brought out his immaculate XJ900 which certainly puts yours truly's XJ750 to shame! Bruce C brought his Bandit out for a play and good to see Barry's H2 back on the road. Jamie was on his jewel like Honda NC30, Rich on his Vstrom and Bruce S on his Ducati 748. We then headed off to Whanganui kerb hugging our way through a long line of cars at Bulls. They were heading off either to the races or off on there Christmas Holidays and once through Bulls the traffic thinned out nicely. After parking up we were greeted with that wonderful sound of motorcycle engines using the upper part of there rev range.
We were soon at the track and enjoying the close proximity to racing only street tracks offer and health and safety people cringe about. It was great to see many of the usual riders out on the track alongside a few internationals who come down to the antipodes in the off season for a 'holiday'. Great to see the likes of the Rees lads and others holding their own with Richard Cooper the current British Superbike champion. Also great to see some of our local lads out there doing the business with Tim on his ever reliable CBR600 and Chris Sales showing everyone how far you can push a Honda XL500 if you have the engineering and riding talent. Also excellent seeing the Suzuki Gixxer 150 series with its mixture of newbies and oldies. Certainly good for the future of road racing in New Zealand.
Wandering around the pits is also an important part of the experience as you get to see and hear a very different part of the spectacle. A couple of gems were a siamesed RD400/800 side car and also a another rig with drum brake/disc front end. All to soon the day came to end and it was time to pack up and head home. A few popped around to Kims for a sausage and coffee and Barry managed to find a friend of the furry kind. Long may we have such events that provide some of the colour to our motorcycling interests and passions!
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