enough that the 75km / h winds forecast for Saturday next night pushed us to de-camp and make our way into the relative shelter of the valley. That turned out to be the making of our rally. We pitched up behind the Brown Brothers’ trailer and went to say hello. That was it, the rest of the weekend Charlie and Glenn welcomed us into their tight group, lent us their dirt bikes, roped us into the Tug of War and drank bourbons with us in the marquee until late. And that seemed to be a common story. Asking around, there were a surprising number of first time rally-goers like us, also saying how they’ d been welcomed into a group next to them at the campsite. Peer pressure is a funny thing. I had no intention of entering the dirt hill climb on my old GS, but … it sure did look like fun. From Charlie making the three increasing difficulty climbs look easy aboard his GSX-R600-powered dirt bike, then with a pillion, then with two, it wasn’ t going to take much needling from Doug until I gave in. I went and got the GS and trickled down to the hillclimb start and signed up, letting the old girl warm up before the action. The first attempt barely got me past the start gate, the back wheel just spinning in the soft ground- barely able to get 230kg of bike moving on the soft, damp grass. I spun around, then went back through the gate with a bit of a run-up, which got me about halfway up before we came to a halt. An awkward stop and turn could have gone wrong if Doug hadn’ t run over and steadied the bike. Back to the bottom and a rethink. I pulled out an Allen key and let most of the air out of the back tyre- if this didn’ t work nothing would. Another run-up … powering through the start gate with the old air-cooled motor singing, we found some grip and sailed through the earlier failure point. We were going to make it! A bit of spinning near the top and
KIWI RIDER 29