Kyle wrote:First time I've turned on strava all winter. Only dissapointment was the seals didn't get riled up and chase off the dude trying to get close for a photo.

I found the seals all kinds of disappointing when it came to dumb tourists.

Couldn't have picked a better day to ride!

St. James This weekend, Infinitely variable scenery, infinitely variable weather

Saturday was near perfect riding conditions. Sunny, 24degrees, gentle breeze. Spin around Living Springs. Oh and getting handed a cold beer at the top of Dyers Pass.

and getting handed a cold beer at the top of Dyers Pass.

that's very nice of someone!

I know right. There was a whole bunch of AirNZ folk on a pub crawl, complete with chilly bid ladened support truck. Who where happy to spare a few bottles in exchange for a voluntary donation.

I don't want to sound like a bike snob, but their rules for the day appeared to be you had to do it on the bike not costing more than $99. Never have I seen so many wildly inappropriate Repco bikes piloted by questionably cognitive riders hurdling down Dyers Pass Road. One had a drivechain making so much noise it sounded like a motorbike.

I wondered what the deal was with that. Some people were downright dangerous on the road. Props to the person on the horse bike though

Choice ride yesterday:
Left Raglan at 6:30 and cruised past Whale and Manu bay (which were, by the way, going off!) and around to Ruapuke. Then mosied through Te Mata and around the head of Aotea harbour and down to Kawhia for lunch. Turned around and headed back to Raglan via the closed (its not closed!) Kawhia road. Checked out Bridal Veil waterfall on the way back and was back at Raglan at about 3:30 for a swim and some bombs off the bridge.

About 130ish km of gloriously quiet gravel roads and epic views on a bluebird day!

Sweet little jaunt around the Wither Hills bike park in Blenheim this morning.
Nice wee trail network in there, and given that where I stay while in town is a stones throw from the park entrance I'm glad I brought my bike over.

https://www.strava.com/activities/80963 ... 1482521339

Gonna hit up Whites Bay?

Hopefully - off to Nelson for a week of camping on boxing day and then kicking around here for a bit again so trying to wrangle some more ride time around kid stuff.

Did a training ride at Whareroa this morning. One of the local Kapiti groups the Coastal Crew put up a tree each year. This years tree has turned into a memorial for one of their group Pete who died in the Akatarawa forest last week on their longest day ride.

I'd only spoken to him a couple of times on the train home but he was a mate of a mate and a pretty hard endurance rider by all accounts. We got kicked off the train once at Porirua due to some reason one night. I rang the wife to come collect me and he politely told me to htfu and ride home!

Anyway here's the tree.

Got a cheeky skid in at roto between various family activities - https://www.relive.cc/view/813353457

As usual whenever I'm up there these days, never enough time to ride all the stuff that I want, and dropped my chain twice N/W ring obviously getting worn.

That new Tumeke trail off direct road is pretty sick though

Finally feeling better so a slow cruise over the 309 road between Coromandel and nearly the way to Hot Water Beach before catching up with the family.

Nice piece of the country.

dwgknz wrote:Finally feeling better so a slow cruise over the 309 road between Coromandel and nearly the way to Hot Water Beach before catching up with the family.

Nice piece of the country.

Sweet! 309 is cool eh? If you are around that neck of the woods and liked the 309, the Coroglen to Tapu Road is worth a pedal too.

Just got back from a 500k 4 day pedal through some incredible country:
Kawhia to Piopio
Piopio to Whangamomona
Whangamomona to Awakino (via the intrepid Jensen Shortcut!)
Awakino to Kawhia

It was an amazing ride through a mind blowing part of the country....more dets to follow......