KIWI RIDERS
end up with twenty different opinions and it doesn ’ t happen . You can ’ t have people in your group who can ’ t be followers . We all get along great , have a real interest in motorcycles and we like exploring . It ’ s the camaraderie . We always finish up the day with a few beers and laughs .”
How does it work ? “ I ’ ll do all the organising , sort all the accommodation and work out the cost , and the guys will pay it into my account . Then I ’ ll take care of the payments as we go along . As there ’ s usually around twenty of us we book well in advance and generally re-use the same places . There ’ s also other people that help out . We have a tail-end charlie so we know when we ’ re ready to move on and a foodie guy who organises the food and runs the kitty . We cook at the motels which works really well , rather than going out for dinner all the time . It cuts down on the expenses and is good for team building . The whole thing is quite involved but it works really well , and we ’ re at the point now that there ’ s more people who want to come than we ’ ve got room for .”
Where do you go in New Zealand ? “ We go away twice a year on adventure bikes . I ride my Yamaha XT660R . Spring Fling is in October when we go to the Greymouth Street Race via the adventure tracks , and Bike Week when we base ourselves in Cromwell . We adventure ride down , do three or four rides and then come back . In saying that , you can ’ t keep doing the same old rides every time , so you have to keep reinventing the wheel . On our last ride we had a spare day in Christchurch so we did a museum and garage tour . We try to mix it up a little bit by keeping the old favourites and adding new stuff to keep it different and alive . We also used to do a charity fundraiser road bike ride we called ‘ Coast to Coast ’. We ’ d done it for quite a few years and the boys wanted something different , so we did ‘ Coast to Coast Classic ‘ where we all rode classic bikes . It ’ s now progressed into ‘ Coast to Coast Farm Bike ’
54 KIWI RIDER