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Not only is SR1 straight and boring, it was a three day weekend, so the traffic was horrendous, until we got a couple of hours away from Wellington. But still, boooooooooring. Shawn had left a couple of hours before us, and we caught up to him just in time to stop in Whanganui for lunch. After lunch a by-god real Irish pub, I'm talking bagpipe music here, we gave Shawn another head start and continued North. Now that the traffic was thinning out, Shawn never had a chance. We overtook him almost immediately, and headed for Stratford. I think we got into Stratford around two o'clock. We waited for Shawn and got gassed up and headed up into the hills on The Forgotten World Highway to our final destination for the day, The Whangamomona Hotel.
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Again we gave Shawn a head start, figuring that we would catch him before we actually got to where we were going. And we did. Right here.
So, there we are, in the middle of nowhere. And believe me, I know the middle of nowhere when I see it, I used to live there. We're in the middle of nowhere, and all we have to get Shawn's car out of the ditch is four motorcycles. We're fucked. As fate would have it a very handy man in a van came by and helped us get the car out of the ditch.
After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the Z was pulled from the ditch. The Z had, rather convincingly, lost is short, and intense, argument with the fence.
It ran, poorly. Luckily for Shawn, Grant, who had come along on the Ducati, is actually the handiest man in the known universe. We, and when I say we, I mean that I stood around taking pictures, had to rip quite a few parts of the front of the car that were rubbing on the front wheel when you tried to turn. You know the scene in "Armageddon" where the drilling guys are going over the rovers and pulling parts off and throwing them away? Yeah, like that. I was just impressed that Grant actually knew what the things he was pulling out from under the wheel well were.So we kind of slowed it down and shepherded Shawn and the mortally wounded Z the rest of the way to Whangomomona. It's just as well, right after where Shawn crashed, that road turns into a real motherfucker. I managed to only have one crap my pants moment, after which I thanked my rapidly fading 40 year old reflexes and promised myself that I would invite every last engineer from Honda that worked on the 600rr over to my house for a beer, because that bike is a god damn miracle of modern technology. Every time I think I've found out how far I can push that thing, I find out I'm wrong. So The Forgotten World Highway is a very technical ride and I'm either not as good a rider as I thought, or Reese, who came on his Harley, is batshit crazy, as he had no trouble keeping up with the sportbikes. Hopefully it's a little of both, either way, I was in awe. One turn leads to another and before you know it. We're in Whangomomona. Look at the pretty machines! If you look very close at the rear tire of my 600, you can see how far towards the rim that brand new Pirelli is scrubbed out. Woo-hoo.
Day one ended with everyone in one piece. A big meal, some rugby on the telly and a couple glasses of Laphoraig later (I'm not sure when I turned into a scotch drinker) it was time to call it a day, we did have to go back out the way we came the next day. And we still had to figure out what to do about the Z. Stay tuned. Same Z time, same Z channel
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