Annual Ride on the old girl - GT750

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MikeH1A
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Annual Ride on the old girl - GT750

Post by MikeH1A »

ImageBikes 1 by Mike McKinney, on Flickr
Burt Munro + John Britten + Kim Newcombe + Ivan Mauger = Kiwi Street Cred

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MikeH1A
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Re: Annual Ride on the old girl - GT750

Post by MikeH1A »

Just learning to use Flickr before I try to post the thread. Obviously, I need to resize the pics a bit :lol:
Burt Munro + John Britten + Kim Newcombe + Ivan Mauger = Kiwi Street Cred

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MikeH1A
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Re: Annual Ride on the old girl - GT750

Post by MikeH1A »

ImageMR-6 by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

Ok, that looks a bit better. I'll get my rambling underway in the near future. Six days of fun riding old Jappas around the South Island of New Zealand :up:
Burt Munro + John Britten + Kim Newcombe + Ivan Mauger = Kiwi Street Cred

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grumps
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Re: Annual Ride on the old girl - GT750

Post by grumps »

Fabulous picture. South Island is on my bucket list for sure. FlyHire being investigated for 2019
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Madbuffalo
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Re: Annual Ride on the old girl - GT750

Post by Madbuffalo »

The GT & backdrop look fantastic.
No really... it's supposed to smoke.

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MikeH1A
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Re: Annual Ride on the old girl - GT750

Post by MikeH1A »

Each November my classic Japanese bike group (cjmg.org.nz) head off for a few days of riding the old girls around our country. We are blessed with a minimal population still, which means that we can get some awesome roads and scenery pretty much to ourselves. There is an increasing scourge related to tourists driving campervans (rented motorhomes) who hail from the northern hemisphere - and tend to forget which side of the road to drive on :shock: but apart from that, not too many dangers in our neck of the woods. We had a group of six bikes (my GT750, an RD400, 2 x CBX1000, GSX750 and a GPZ900) head off for a trip that covered some 2700 Kms over six days. We were later joined by another couple of guys from the group for the final days (RE5 and another CBX1000). The weather threw up a mixed bag but there was plenty of fine dry roads amongst it all, so no one complained.

The poor old GSX gave up the ghost after only 150Kms or so. We limped the bike into the nearest town and left the owner to be picked up by family that night. He is a real trooper who trailered the bike home then fired up his Z900 a couple of days later and rode to rejoin us, along with the RE5. You can't keep a good biker down :up: Our route on day one took us alongside hydro storage lakes, down empty roads with just enough twist and turn to make it fun (I saw the speedo on the old GT hit the lovely 100 MPH mark that day 8) ) and then into a decent rain shower about 30 minutes form the day's destination - you know, just close enough to "home" that it isn't worth stopping to get the wet weather gear on. Anyhow, we all got soaked but this didn't affect anyone's spirits a bit. That night, we just turned the heating up in the motel rooms to high and woke to dry gear!

We also woke on to freakn snow (not a sign of it when we went to bed) upon the Lindis Pass - see pics below. Undaunted, we headed off for a day of sun, snow and rain. Along the way we came a cross multiple police cars screaming the other way and noticed chaps sitting in the back seats wearing black uniforms and headgear - the outfits of the Armed Offenders Squad. Apparently there was a disgruntled teenage farmer wandering around somewhere with a gun. We just figured there couldn't be many cops left in the southern part of NZ, so opened the throttles a bit further :lol: Destination that day was Invercargill (famously described in 1965 by the Rolling Stones as the "arsehole of the world". However, it is now the celebrated home of the World's Fastest Indian and old stomping ground of a Kiwi motorcycle icon Burt Munroe. A morning visit to the local hardware store was a treat and a half. It is a fully functioning store selling anything and everything the home handyman needs but it also has the genuine machines that Burt worked on and rode in the record breaking attempts. It also has a bunch of other bikes and cars to look at once you have your fill of washers and bolts. We also spent time at the Transport World, which has over 300 vehicles under cover - the majority are trucks from all ages and parts of the world. If you get bored with that, down the road is the motorcycle museum with half a dozen Brough Superiors amongst their displays! After lunch, we headed down the south western coast of the island and had to contend with the strongest winds I have ever encountered on a bike. Mile after mile (after mile) of strong winds coming across and then in front (but never behind) the bikes. Riding whilst leaning to the left for that length of time was a new experience for this fella.

The next day we rode into Milford Sound which is a tourist mecca in this part of the world - see the first pic of the GT above. It was an hour and a quarter's ride in and then we turned around and came back out. The road was awesome, with twists turns, straights, bends and up and down parts. Enough to bring a smile to the face of any jaded biker. The weirdest things was that on the beautiful day, going to such a popular destination we basically had the road to ourselves - who says there is no God? That night we were joined by the RE5 and 900 Kwaka. The next day dawned spectacularly fine for one of the best biking routes in the South Island - over the Haast Pass and up along the West Coast. Several hours of crazy scenery and roads to simply die for. (If you come down here - do this road if possible). It took us most of the day to zip along this route with a few stops for fuel, food and ice cream. We stayed in an old pub that night that was a pure West Coast experience - full of locals who had been there all day drinking up large and were getting ready to settle in for the night. Outside was a car with it's left rear window down and the rear half of a freshly killed deer propped up and leaning into the car :wth: Here we joined by the final CBX - dime a dozen those things! The final day was another great run along the sparsely populated West Coast roads and then up over Arthur's Pass back into our own neck of the woods.

Overall, a fantastic few days of riding along great roads. The guys were brilliant company - what better than a group of like minded blokes doing what they love best? The bikes went darn well for a fleet of aging beauties. The final death toll was: 3 x speedos, 1 x tacho, 1 x clutch cable and 1 x main stand - oh, and a sad GSX but I am told it is back up and running sweetly already :clap:

Pics to be loaded in my next post. (I'm not really trying to build suspense, I'm just significantly technologically challenged and it takes me ages to do this sort of thing :wink: )
Burt Munro + John Britten + Kim Newcombe + Ivan Mauger = Kiwi Street Cred

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MikeH1A
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Re: Annual Ride on the old girl - GT750 Pics Posted

Post by MikeH1A »

Here's a few pics from the trip:

The Bikes

ImageBikes V by [url=https://flic.kr/p/227eHrp]ImageBikes D by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImageBikes 10 by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImageMR-7 by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

The Roads

ImageRoad S by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImageRoads E by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImageRoad T by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImageRoads H by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImageRoads G by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImageRoads F by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

The Places

ImagePlaces U by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImagePlaces 3 by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImagePlaces 1 by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImagePlaces E by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

The Cool Things

ImagePlaces I by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImagePlaces L by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImagePlaces K by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImageThings 1 by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImageMR-1 by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImageMR-4 by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

The Locals

ImageLocals 1 by Mike McKinney, on Flickr

ImageLocals 2 by Mike McKinney, on Flickr
Burt Munro + John Britten + Kim Newcombe + Ivan Mauger = Kiwi Street Cred

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grumps
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Re: Annual Ride on the old girl - GT750

Post by grumps »

Brilliant pics. Thanks. I recognise the museum from British TV shows - Burt Munro. That was a great film - The World's fastest Indian, just shown recently in the UK.

I am DEFINITELY going to do a fly/drive to NZ

Thanks for the inspiration.
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titan performance
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Re: Annual Ride on the old girl - GT750

Post by titan performance »

Thanks for sharing Mike......fabulous pictures. Stunning scenery.
Naked CBX probably my fave diesel of all time, had an identical one in the 80s. Also had a 900R and an RD400 too, had, and still have a Kettle, so it was great to see your picture of all 4 together. Looks like you had a great time.
We do a trip into the Belgian Ardennes every year, to watch classic racing at Chimay.....the scenery doesn't quite match yours in NZ, but it is still beautiful, and the roads are awesome, and empty....so I know where you are coming from.

PS. Did you post your pictures from a Flickr gallery?.......I have one of those, but never realised there was a forum posting option.
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Re: Annual Ride on the old girl - GT750

Post by Suzsmokeyallan »

Thanks for posting up your trip Mike, it looks like you had a great time. Photos are outstanding as well.
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MikeH1A
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Re: Annual Ride on the old girl - GT750

Post by MikeH1A »

Thanks for the positive comments guys. Hope you all had an enjoyable and safe Christmas with your families. I think getting away on the bikes is such fun and they tend to do the job well, if one remains sensible with expectations. There's always a bit of tinkering to do on the return home but hey, that's still a sort of fun (I think). I really look forward to our yearly rides - generally 4-6 days. As a group we can talk old Jappas all day and night and kid ourselves that the year's expenditure was indeed a sound investment :up:

Grumps - Good to hear you are considering coming down under. I'm sure you will find plenty of fun and interesting stuff to do here. It's a small place but we pack plenty in - and there still ain't too many people here. A bonus is that just about any currency exchanges at a very favourable rate when you change to our banana republic coinage :lol:

Titan, Yes you can post from the Flickr account. Find the photo you want, double click on it to enlarge and bring it to the fore. From there look down to the bottom right of the screen and you will see a stylised arrow the bends to the right - this is the share function. Hit that and several options come up. Click on the BBCode and the code will come up in a box just underneath, copy that and you can paste it into the forum message - voila. You will see that under the box with the code there is a resizing box with multiple options for you to select before copying. Notice my first picture came about before I cottoned on to that :oops:

Allan, how are you going Sir? I haven't seen too many posts from you for a while. Have you been hibernating or busy fettling your machines? I'm developing a love for my wee Savage and have been taking her out on the loose stuff with several friends who have old trail bikes as well. I'm going to post a few pics of our recent ride in the off-road section.

Mike
Burt Munro + John Britten + Kim Newcombe + Ivan Mauger = Kiwi Street Cred

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grumps
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Re: Annual Ride on the old girl - GT750

Post by grumps »

Thanks Mike. Looking forward to it.
If money can't buy happiness - explain motorcycles and beer!
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