Cossie Club and Sweep Rider Chris Power enjoying Breakfast
job of keeping the rain out, although some gear clearly worked better than others, but everyone had still had a great time. After a clean-up and showers, riders drifted back to the club for dinner and the prizegiving. Another good feed, with choices of steak, roast pork, or fish, and by then everybody had settled into proper storytelling mode. The prize giving included some sweet spot prizes supplied by Eurobike Wholesale, which was appreciated and helped round out the weekend nicely. By the end of it all, the KR350 had done exactly what a good adventure ride should do. It got people onto roads they’ d never normally see, challenged them just enough to keep things interesting, and gave a bunch of riders a really good weekend in some classic King Country backroads.
BACK TO THE FUTURE The modern KR350 Adventure Ride traces its roots back to the original Kiwi Rider 500 events, when adventure riding in New Zealand was still finding its feet. Back in those earlier days, Kiwi Rider magazine, led by Pete McPhee( the Old Bastard is still the publisher today) and former partner John Nicholson, established organised adventure riding as we know it in NZ today. Long before GPS units and phone navigation became common, riders followed manual route sheets loaded into homemade“ click-clack” route holders mounted on the handlebars. Riders would wind the paper route forward, direction by direction as they rode. These days things have changed considerably. Riders can choose between dedicated GPS units, tracking apps on smartphones, or in some cases, like the KR350, old-school paper route sheets are still an option. Some riders like following the moving line on a screen, while others still enjoy the more traditional style of navigating by written instructions and kilometre readings. For this event, I had all three systems ready to go— route sheet, GPS, and phone app backup— because I could. Unfortunately, the rain found its way into my old click-clack route holder fairly early in the ride. By about the
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