Greetings to you all. It would seem that my post of last week concerning road and rider safety struck a bit of a cord with you all. I've just come back from another week in Wellington, and have had plenty of time to contemplate this, all the while being subjected to our pitiful roads and the works being done to them. The first thing I noticed was a stretch of road just north of Taupo, that was being completely redesigned with new camber, a slight deviation over the past route of the road, and of course brand new seal. That was 5 months ago. Already this piece of road now has 15 patches on it, you know the sort, the base road is fairly coarse, then the patches mid corner are shiny tar seal, the ones that get your bikes sliding mid corner without any warning. The second is the works to the middle of the Desert Road, 6 months they have been working on this, and it is getting no better. The entire trip to Wellington was interspersed with 30 kph road works, literally everywhere, and most it would seem are without warning signs, and or any indication that there is fine pea gravel on the road. I know that the councils and the crews have to get rid of this years budgets, so that they can more next year, but there seems to be no rational to the works and certainly no safety taken into mind. All these bring about situations like last weekend where we lost 4 motorcyclists. And all the while, the likes of the AA ( how do they get to discuss this issue) and the do gooders all jump up and down and complain that, it is untrained motorcyclists, and we need more training, we need to ban them, we need to make having a motorcycle as hard as possible, adinfinitum the debates go on. Well the very first thing to do, is fix our bloody roads, they are a disgrace, and certainly rank right down there as safety is concerned. I've been on better roads in places like Egypt, Nepal, and war ravaged Yugoslavia, than here in our so called 'civilized' country. So perhaps it is time to raise awareness with your councils, with your MP's and tell them all that if our roads were better and not the ad hoc patched poor excuses for what we have now, then perhaps the road toll would come down. Our authorities even tell us by raising the road speed to 110 in certain areas, that they admit, if the roads were all like those ( the express ways through and around Hamilton) then we could go faster and be safer. Countries like Germany have been displaying this for years, good roads, great networks, good seal, faster speeds allowed, and really low road tolls, so take a moment and write to your councils, write to your MP's and let them know that we have had enough of being badgered, we have had enough of our mates dying, and that if they got off of their collective arses and actually did something, then just then we might see the toll come down, and we might see safer roads.
Anyways enough of this rambling, on with the blog, enjoy and ride safe out there.
So there you go, another one closer to Christmas. we've got a lot going on in the motorcycling scene at the moment, if you can make it to The Mike Pero classic in Timaru, go!!!! It is an amazing scene, and run so well, you won't regret it. Lots of classic two stroke racing machines, and lots of characters. I cant make it this year due to commitments elsewhere, but more on that later. So have a great week, ride safe and fast. Enjoy your buddies, and enjoy this beautiful country and what it has to offer.
Ciao.