Day Seven ( Friday 26 November)

When writing this we are now at BP Dairy Flats waiting for the days ride to start. The White Ribbon Ride has officially ended. Many of the ones who were part of it are still taking part in todays ride and also in tomorrows one. But some of the guys have already ridden home. I was seriously considering that too. I miss my boys heaps and also my home with all where I know where it is. Have showers when I want, a beer, work on my stuff and just chill.

But I knew all this when I "signed up". And it has been and still is a awsum experience. I will after all this do a synopsy (I think it is called???) re all this and give my view and what I took out of it all. After all this is my blog re the ride and not an official one. So I can write what I want (and I do...)

Woke up at 7am at the Manukau Top 10 camp we were staying. Had a cuppa and packed and we were away at 8am.

This days ride will start at 11.30. One hour away, so I will update Thursday and Friday a little but will come back to them later today and also do spelling mistake corrections.

There is now approx 40 bikes here. From last years experience we are expecting all up approx 100. The White Ribbon Ride officially ended yesterday, but as we are riding the Bream Bay Ride tomorrow it has become a custom (if you can call 2 years that?) to have a "Transission" ride between the two. So as the ride has no real name lets come up with one. How bout "Ribbon Reflection Ride"...

We had a visitor... Don't think he planned this: Smitty the politician in his white "company" car! Will add the pic here later.

It is now 5.30pm and we are at the camp ( Marsden Christian Camp ) after having had one last visit to a meeting house ( Amokura, Family Violence Prevention Consortium) run by Phil Paikea an ex gang member who is working hard to make a difference in this small community of Ruakaka/Bream Bay/Marsden Point.

But sadly something else will overshadow all this. We have a rider down. A chap from up north came to ride in the last days ride and was collected by a tanker truck at the intersection of SH 1 and SH 12 at Brynderwyn. At this stage we do not know how badly he is injured, but it sounds bad. The ride had turned off to Maungaturoto and he was coming past a little after everyone else. Of some reason he went straight ahead and in to the tanker that was halfway across the crossing. I will not speculate on what happened but when we came back to carry on up SH1 we passed the accident and it did not look good. To tell tre truth it shook me badly. The tanker was still halfway through it's turn and the blue bike still lying where he smashed in to the tanker. Would have been a very instant stop.
UPDATE: The rider is in hospital and has a broken pelvis and will recover! That is good news!

Maungaturoto



On the ride up I had, together with a few others, passed some slow riders. We were told not to do this at the pre-brief. But as the main ride disappered up the road and we were held back, we passed and raced to catch up. We did so and then carried on with the ride. I can just imagine how this would have felt for the rider who, I realised later, was a old chap on a silver Gold Wing (I think?) clearly coming to show his support and enjoy the ride. I planned to go and apologise to him as I felt bad re the passing. But never got round to it. Obviously this did not have anything to do with the accident and neither he or the ones who passed him was in an accident. But it made me feel a little uncomfy to put him through this. And to then have the accident on top of this really took the wind out of me. I was for a while contemplating riding home as I had enough. I am someone who rides alone. This whole week I have been riding with others for the cause. And even if I can not fault the Patriots for the way they have handled it all, I still do not like the riding in a group. (In fact just before the accident I had pulled to the side and waited for all to pass and thne I followed the ride at a few hundred meters distance. There was an instant feeling of relief and ability to breathe. Yep, clearly I have had enough for a while of others close to me.

We arrived in a very sober moode at the Consortiums building and were greeted by Phil and his group. A determined bunch they are! They had been working hard for the community and working on their building. Then it burned down! But never give up, and now they have a brand new building with all modern comms including under floor heating and air conditioning.. Thou up here I wonder what you do with heating up here?

After the welcome and a cuppa some more drama: Raz was accused of causing the accident!! This was absurd as he and Willie rode past the accident place 30 seconds before it happened. This caused some stirr and Raz took off. Once all the missunderstanding was sorted a search party was sent out to get him back. They went towards Auckland... little did they know that Raz was on his way up to Cape Reinga. Somehow Wllie and Mahu figured that out and rode up and found him. They were back at the Christian camp where we are staying at approx 1am. Mahu had also managed to help a mum who had been kicked out from her house and was wandering the streets in bare feet and not much else. The police stopped as the boys did look suspicious and so she was handed over to them, but not before she had been given what change the boys had, some drink and chocolate bars.

We are staying at the Tree Point Christian Camp. The looong water slide was in full use by the riders. The food that the ladies prepared for us was first class (we even got oysters and pudding!), so the least we could do was to wash and drie all the dishes!

I also counted the bikes that were part of the ride. I came to 50. They were hoping for a little more, but as Saturday is the real Bream Bay ride I think that is when everyone will turn up.

Today was not a too tiresome day as we got started at 8am. So I have started to catch up on some sleep. I also went to bed at approx 11pm, so all well.

Today we did ride 250 KM's.