Hey hey, well it's been a pretty frantic couple of weeks. Moved to my new town, flew to Sydney and went to the Barry Sheene Classic at Eastern Creek, landed back in Auckland drove Dave Cullen and myself back to Tauranga and then jumped on the Diavel and did a quick 3700 K's around the South Island and attended the Warbirds of Wanaka and had 'The long lunch' with a whole bunch of mates. It was a pretty epic trip and got to meet a lot of old friends and make some new too, so a bonus all around. I've included some photos at the end of the blog, but the first one below is the table with the warbirds going on in the background. We managed to raise some money for Alex Phillis so win win for everyone. Life has kind of returning to normal, still unsure of where I stand on the face of this earth, but I have some fantastic friends here to help me along. My first Ducati cafe project is nearly ready for sale, so keep an eye out for that too.
So here's the blog for you all to enjoy.
The Long Lunch about to commence, what a great day, even our All Black captain Ritchie McCaw joined us.
I appreciate great work and attention to detail, look no further then this Porsche.
Wish I still had mine
An exercise in packing everything in close and low.
Love big fast and loud two strokes
Don't ask I've no idea, it muat have made a god awful noise when it happened
Cruising on a Sunday afetrnoon
That's a bit different
Looks nice all in black
Go Pro in the sixties
My 84 year old father rides a bike very similar to this.
I spent some time with a guy at Eastern Creek that had engine number 0000 of this. Not 0001 but 0000!
Kind of ironic really
I'm not sad
Two quite special Hondas.
What goes on under a Paris Dakar front fairing
Loving the split seat design, well done that man.
Not the prettiest, but they have something about them that's for sure.
A slightly different Diavel
Just ordered a seat like this for my GT project
Now that's my kind of cargo.
well packed and ready to ride
I don't really like handguns, but I do love the quality of the engineering
Oozing quality
At Eastern Creek we saw about 5-6 of these in the bike park, they are a very nice piece of kit. Not my style but they all looked beautiful and well maintained.
Cool!!!!
Respect to this guy, that's for sure.
Colin and Dermit before CAD.
Bob rode a Triumph
They do look pretty
Tag Monaco. Say nah more.
Road food at it's best
I love my trout fishing and I love good kit, this is good kit
What a great image
As a bit of a bonus, I've downloaded some images from my phone of the Barry Sheene Classic at Eastern Creek and of our ride just done.
Me and Steve Parrish, nice guy.
You don't normally get up close and personal with bikes like this everyday, when they all started up the air was full of noise, two stroke smoke and action became very intense and the memories of two stroke racing motorcycles came flooding back in. Great to see not only the bikes but the guys who actually worked on them during the 500cc world championship era. It was epic. That's Mike Sinclair and Paul Treacy in this image.
RG honey pots nestled in there
There were some pretty cool race bikes elsewhere too.
Gregs bikes all lined up, the history just in this image is amazing
Stu Avant warming up Barry's old bike.
Just beautiful work.
This is a replica with an RZ500 in it. It was put beside an original and you could not tell them apart. The tank started as a CB400. The guy told us he spent 4 weeks making the presses to get the swage lines in the frame and made the frame parts in about 2 minutes. It was perfect, I believe that for a bit there it even fooled one of the mechanics who actually worked on the original.
Barry's bike
Hasst bridge on the way down the South Island
The Diavel went well, but now needs new tyres, brakes, and an oil change
Freddie's triple was there too, and he rode it so well.
Apologies for the blurry image, it was late at night and we had just rocked in Queenstown. We did Hasst to Wanaka 150 kilometers in 1 hour 15 a 13-15 bike freight train through the pass and around the lakes.
Your choice, either the above or below, go get one, you deserve it.
So there you have it, sorry the blogs are a bit disjointed time wise at the moment, as I said it's been pretty busy, and I will get it back to normal as soon as I can. Ride Safe people.
