Gremlin's Tall Stories

After what can only be described as the ultimate procrastination I finally got around to installing the replacement LED strips on my BMW.

GiJoe and I had tried to fit them last year and ended up with blown/broken LEDs all round. We presumed somehow the controller failed so I had to order new strips. They arrived earlier in the year but I had been doing other things so they sat waiting.

Of course such an install requires some extra spannering hands, so off to GiJoe again ...

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The ride started at 9am on Saturday in Taupo, so a Friday evening trip down was required as I’m probably not the earliest of risers. I’d managed to tempt Devil into doing the adventure ride, but he was so keen he left Auckland at 1530, already packed and fuelled. I was not so lucky, with a day of work to pile through, so left work at 1700 (still early for an average day) and headed home. I hadn’t packed the previous night, so still had all that to do.

During the day Devil and I had ...

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The alarm rings at 8am and I'm not exactly jumping to my feet. Not feeling particularly excited either, but nevertheless, after snoozing the alarm for 10 minutes I got up and had some breakfast and got ready. Out the door just after 9am in slightly questionable conditions I made my way out to Westgate.

Following on from my blog about having a session with Tricia at Roadcraft School of Motoring, it was now time to start the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) course: http://www.nz-iam.org.nz/ ...

Ah, another day of hapless mechanicing on my poor bike. If you thought the mods were over, you’d be well wrong. I have plenty of ideas left yet!

Of course, I shouldn’t really be left to my own devices so GiJoe was drafted in (probably somewhat reluctantly – and yet it’s like a train wreck to him, he simply can’t resist watching).

In today’s episode, it’s a new bash plate and a toolbox specific to the GSA luggage racks. After burning my leg during the Poronui weekend ...

A blast from the past required an alarm 0630. Yep… public holiday and up at some crazy time. NinjaNanna had organised a ride that had seen an excellent uptake from the old crew, most of which I hadn’t ridden with for years, so as the popularity grew, it became more obvious that ya simply had to be there!

I tried to get Zapf along, almost successful bar his girlfriend’s neck playing up on the morning, so he was a non-starter and GiJoe never seemed interested enough. I left home just ...

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Sunday

I’d initially decided to have a reasonably early start around 0800 or something, but couldn’t be arsed getting out of bed so took my time, eventually slouching through to the main diner area for some breakfast of cereal and fruit.

Having got the day off to the right start I left the Diner shortly after 1000, popped into Taupo for the day’s gas and got into the country around 1030, heading along SH5. First stop was a gravel dead end into the Kaimanawa Forest Park ...

Thursday

My 4th trip since I started blogging, involving riding for work, she’s a hard life indeed. The usual drill that the boss was prepared to fly me down and that budget would be spent on riding down instead. Having a biker for a boss certainly makes it easy.

This trip was to sort out the move of a client’s branch office and install some VOIP phones for future development work, so what also made this trip easier was the capacity of the luggage to take several IP ...

An alarm at 0730… man I could have slept another couple of hours but it’s not an option if I want to do more adventure riding. This time I packed everything up, chucked the panniers back on the bike, returned the key and headed into Taupo to re-fill the tank and have a quick breakfast. There was no cute chickie smashing her car into the pole this time (I reckon the 2 pumps are perfect for bikers) but an older guy in his nice shiny Merc was keen to give it a go.

I guided him ...

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