Geoff returns to "The Shed", we turn our noses into the wind and head north.
The Ryan-come-Pritchard Rd. combo straddles some district borders, hence the name-change. Travel is pretty speccy along the spines of those hills...
A quick look at the western end of Stanforth Rd. shows only a farm gate and a couple of faint, grassy tracks....maybe next time, or leave that one to Geoff and his mates.
Half a km away, across the ridges....GOTCHA!
A couple of quick doglegs (Baldrock Rd. is all sealed now :-( ) and we squeeze past the Fonterra dairy factory onto Doctors Hill and the Golden Stair gravel, leading back up onto the ridges. Dropping towards the coast on the Finlayson Brook Rd., the narrow gravel hides a nasty surprise:
Some pale-faced, big-eyed local jockey in a dented, rusty old shitbox screaming through the corners sideways nearly wipes me out, missing by a bee's dick.
Ant behind me watches the whole thing and we pull up, shaking.
The others should only be a few seconds behind.....:bang:
Doubling back after a 3 minute wait and some growing gut-ache, the righthander 2 bends back shows what we were dreading:
Tim copped it, the dope-head did a hit+run, Doug and Faz chasing him after leaving the rego-number with Derek and Tim.
A check with the 000 operator reveals the plates belonging to a truck, not an early '90s beige Mazda3/ Corolla.
Figures....
Tim's stunned and shaking... it's been ever so close! :bang:
We rope the semi-buried DR to the tail of an XT to pull the bugger back out of the bushes, the DR has virtually no damage at all and fires straight up (ahhh, Suzukis!! )...same for Tim, who seems to have gotten away with a decent bruise as he went over the bars even deeper into those Pampas-bushes. We re-jig the bars and wait for Faz + Doug to return with the last piece of filthy skin of the f^%#wit (they never caught up, though ) ....and we're off down the coast for an extended lunch and a long breather.
The little shop in Waipu Cove reckon's it's Xmas when 6 of us waltz through the door all at once.
"I'll have a piece of that Hunki-Dori....anyone else?"
The Ryan-come-Pritchard Rd. combo straddles some district borders, hence the name-change. Travel is pretty speccy along the spines of those hills...
A quick look at the western end of Stanforth Rd. shows only a farm gate and a couple of faint, grassy tracks....maybe next time, or leave that one to Geoff and his mates.
Half a km away, across the ridges....GOTCHA!
A couple of quick doglegs (Baldrock Rd. is all sealed now :-( ) and we squeeze past the Fonterra dairy factory onto Doctors Hill and the Golden Stair gravel, leading back up onto the ridges. Dropping towards the coast on the Finlayson Brook Rd., the narrow gravel hides a nasty surprise:
Some pale-faced, big-eyed local jockey in a dented, rusty old shitbox screaming through the corners sideways nearly wipes me out, missing by a bee's dick.
Ant behind me watches the whole thing and we pull up, shaking.
The others should only be a few seconds behind.....:bang:
Doubling back after a 3 minute wait and some growing gut-ache, the righthander 2 bends back shows what we were dreading:
Tim copped it, the dope-head did a hit+run, Doug and Faz chasing him after leaving the rego-number with Derek and Tim.
A check with the 000 operator reveals the plates belonging to a truck, not an early '90s beige Mazda3/ Corolla.
Figures....
Tim's stunned and shaking... it's been ever so close! :bang:
We rope the semi-buried DR to the tail of an XT to pull the bugger back out of the bushes, the DR has virtually no damage at all and fires straight up (ahhh, Suzukis!! )...same for Tim, who seems to have gotten away with a decent bruise as he went over the bars even deeper into those Pampas-bushes. We re-jig the bars and wait for Faz + Doug to return with the last piece of filthy skin of the f^%#wit (they never caught up, though ) ....and we're off down the coast for an extended lunch and a long breather.
The little shop in Waipu Cove reckon's it's Xmas when 6 of us waltz through the door all at once.
"I'll have a piece of that Hunki-Dori....anyone else?"