Saturday, July 27, 2013

Shame about the finish

Another fairly nice day today - by winter's standards anyway - so we managed to round up 5 of us to take in the Apiti-Rangiwahia-Mangaweka-Vinegar Hill loop (ARMVHL?).


Mark had had a little pre-WOF issue earlier on and once that got sorted and he had his warrant we rode out to Ashhurst to meet up with Brian, Lloyd and Roscoe.  By 10:15 I was leading the guys out around the Pohangina Valley.

The riding was great but there was plenty of evidence of weather at work - slips on the road, dirt, mud and metal in places too.  There were also plenty of kamikaze magpies out and about too and I'm afraid one of them took on something a little bigger, faster and harder than it was...

At the top the hill we turned right onto Rangiwahia Road and made our way through to Mangaweka.  Once again there was plenty of road hazards to avoid but it is always a great ride through here.


Just South of Mangaweka we pulled into the Flat Hills cafe for an early lunch and the chance to yabber about the great ride we'd had so far.



After lunch it was time for the short ride home via Vinegar Hill.  This is where things went fairly badly wrong.  Brian, Lloyd, Mark and I were enjoying ourselves and ended up getting away on Roscoe.  We pulled up at a turn-off we had planned to take and set about waiting Roscoe.

While waiting I felt a vibrating in my pocket but didn't make before the call went to answerphone.  The message revealed the worst - Roscoe had come off, unhurt but not going anywhere.  We quickly remounted and started to retrace our steps.

We eventually found Roscoe near his poor wee GSX.  He had been avoiding a nasty patch in the road and ended up a fair bit too far left...once he was in some soft stuff he was just along for the ride...




Luckily he was fine but unfortunately the lovely little GSX was a bit worse for wear.  Brian and Lloyd took off home to fetch a trailer while the rest of us got the bike down off the hill to a flat area where it was a bit better for parking and loading the bike up.  An hour or so later Brian and Lloyd were back and we quickly had the bike loaded.

Mark and I ended up doing Vinegar Hill three times but the incident definitely put a damper on an otherwise great day out on the bikes.

The good news is that Roscoe is ok and not too down after the whoopsie and already there are plans on the first steps to get the bike sorted and back out on the road - good stuff!

9 comments:

  1. Glad to see that your mate was ok. His bike doesn't look to badly banged up. Hopefully he'll learn something out of that and become a better rider for it.

    The road in the video looks fantastic, no wonder you guys were having so much fun. I was turning my head from corner to corner like I was on the bike. I love those little one way bridges. They seem to be all over NZ.

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  2. Andrew,
    Rest assured I won't be able to retain your interesting acronym for this ride.....the map will stick with me much longer.

    Sorry to hear about Roscoe's meeting with pavement and hope the repairs are fast and easy.

    Winter riding....no snow and mostly bare roads....what temps are you riding in?

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    1. We've had a pretty mild winter this year so it's been great. It was probably around 12 degrees or so when we left but quite a bit warmer than that in the early afternoon. Got a bit cool waiting for the trailer to turn up though.

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  3. Bugger! Glad to hear Roscoe is ok. You can always replace the machine.

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  4. Sorry to hear of Roscoe's incident! If you can walk away from a crash with no broken bones or rides to the hospital, that's a good thing!! A busted up bike is still heart breaking though.

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  5. Glad Roscoe is okay. Those 'oh shit' moments are never fun.

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    Replies
    1. Not nice at all getting that call from him.

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  6. I hate those moments! It always sucks when there are bike owies. Glad your mate is ok!

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