So, 17th May was a beautiful fine day, only problem was, at 8.15 am it was freaking cold – about 6 degrees Celsius.
I met Noel down at the local garage at 8.30, he was surprised to see me on my 1947 Triumph Speed Twin as he hadn’t seen it before. He was on his immaculate 1975 Kawasaki 500cc triple 2-stroke, a fantastic machine. We set off at 8.30ish and before long we hit the motorway and the cold really set in, I couldn’t cope with much more than 55 mph due to the coldness and wearing the open face helmet, my eyes were watering considerably making things a little tricky to see. The bumps and dips on the motorway feel a bit unnerving when you can’t actually see them! It was a good 20 minutes of this before the first opportunity came to leave the motorway which we took gratefully. We then stopped and made some dress changes to look a bit more dapper, the panniers on my bike came in really handy here to store my motorcycle jacket while I donned my tweed.
We arrived at the meeting point soon after to find we were one of the last to arrive. Our school friend Peter was there and snapped our photos as we arrived. We seemed to have an extended briefing this time before it was time to start. My Triumph started first kick and then died before I’d left the car park, I seem to have an issue with idling, not sure if the carb still requires cleaning or something else is causing this. It took quite a few kicks to get going again and then we were off, just myself and 400 other bikers!
We seemed to be following the standard route, until one of the group leaders overtook me and signaled for a bunch of us to turn off the main route and head towards the city center – this was very unusual. A few minutes up the road he signaled for us to wait at the lights and then about 100 fellow bikers came through the intersection in the opposite direction – I was confused. It then eventuated we needed to do a u-turn and follow them, good grief!
The ride then followed the same very scenic route as previous rides, along the waterfront, through the Auckland domain (circling the museum building), K’ Rd, Ponsonby Rd and then back to the viaduct. I was grateful to get through it without any near misses or scrapes. I watched a guy in a BMW K75 in front of me suddenly pull over to the side of the road and as he put the bike on it’s stand I could see oil gushing out the bottom of his engine! I find that sort of thing alarming when I know my bike is at least 40 years older than his.
After the ride we perused the other bikes, chatted to people we knew and didn’t know and then headed back home. We did spend quite some time trying to find our school friend Peter again, but missed him.
