Southern gold mining

Here’s a sneaky update of a bit of dirty south island SR action from last Thursday when Anton and I went for a short trip out of town to visit an Aladdin’s cave of random bikes and bits. When I say Aladdin’s cave I actually am talking about a room in a house and 7 separate sheds of organised and categorised bikes, frames, wheels, forks, handlebars and anything else in between – I love being shown this kind of collection and this guy, and his wife and 6year old kid, knew the history of each thing hanging or stacked around. There wasn’t all that much track stuff but we did manage to walk away with a new project each, which was cool because the guy talked with so much passion about each thing he had we were cagey about even asking if he would part with a used tire let alone a frame. After the 1 and a half hour grand tour we were given freshly baked chocolate muffins and gracefully departed with our new treasure and rolled back to town in the hope we could catch up with the other guys skidding up the spots.

more random snapps!

More riding shots next time, keeping the South in the loop!!

Simon

A well organised workshop

Extreme Bike for sand or snow used - I WANT ONE!!

Uncle chop chops shed

Wheels in the roof, frames in the windows

Anton in Extreme action

I love the smell of old steel in the evening...

Harbourside

Officially over the winter buzz now. It’s going to be good when Spring comes along and days are longer. Right now the weather is bad and Justin and I have to take off soon to the snow for loads of snow events in the South Island. Borton Open is next week and I’ve got to do a reccy flight into deep dark Fiordland for a couple of projects there. Should be fun!

My shots of Alex’s Fuji are pretty blurry so he sent me a couple of clearer ones:

Westhaven Wheelies

Here are some more shots – and most notably Mr Mike Lawrence and his wonderful track unicycle wheelie trick.

And seconds later:

Shots from the Weekend in the City of Snails…..I mean Sails

We had to dive into carparks to avoid rain but ended up getting a solid ride in each day on the weekend and got to see some faces out there too. Hey – dya like my arty lens flarey shadow shots with the harbour in the background?

And afterwards we went to see Mike Davies at the tattoo shop gett8ihng some work done and headed out to ride to a couple of pubs with the booze cruisers:

And we ended up at Sakinaya for some japanese food. Justin and I took some wet hill bombing later on was fun as hell but a tad sketchy.

Hooked up with Jeff and Mike Davies and Alex the next day for a ride around. We got a few dry periods in the day and the wind dried up the roads pretty quick in between downpours and hail. Alex had his nice new Fuji Track Pro all decked out. Black Sugino Messengers, the whole thing is really nice.

Mike Davies was rippping it – he’s getting a phantom new Masi real soon, I’ll miss his skittles bike!

Justin put some drops on his Concept and was much happier riding it. Hopefully we get some good weather for Tankfarm Tuesday this week but it looks doubtful. Some of the crew are out riding tonight at Vector with Jeff. I’m still at work dropping blogs in between work.

Saturday Booze Cruise

That’s right — the drinking club with a bike problem rolls out again.

Meet up at The Winchester Tavern on Saturday at 5pm for a couple of quiets then a ride.

ALL BIKES WELCOME. Weird bikes encouraged.

Tim White and Mike Davies from www.SkullBikeClub.com are getting a non-weekday cruise going. Could make for a dusty Sunday.

Hopfully the evil weather of death allows us some riding time on the weekend.

If not I’m keen to meet up in a carpark downtown on Saturday for some spiral circuits and trickery.

The Thursday Hustle happened last night but I wasn’t on it. Hope everyone had a good ride.

Anyone got any ideas for a ride? If it’s wet we could link a bunch of carpark buildings. Have a skidathon at the TF at Unitec? If it dries up we should bomb some hills en masse. The forecast is looking really crap Saturday and Sunday though. It’s taking it’s toll, I’m dry on photos stories and vids to post. It’s a bleak !

 

 

Good turnout last night

3 block wheelies and 12 games of footdown

Tankfarm Tuesday went pretty well last night. Around 16 people turned up – it was great considering some of the main troops were out of action. Shaun came along on his Vivalo. Was good to spin some pedals and have a natter with everyone. All the Solejammers were killing it.  Hieu took a nasty over the bars tumble on the main road, a bit of a leg graze was all that eventuated, frame and trispoke intact. We ended back up at the Vodafone building which we found out has a convenience store which stocks beer. So much trickery and talking ensued and then a massive footdown 12 game championship where Mike Lawrence emerged the victor, closely challenged by ’smash derby’ Terry Clines. Ken managed to bend his forks wallriding – it was Adam’s Ken Evans Olympic frameset. His front wheel wouldn’t event spin. Frank came to the rescue with his 650c spinergy and did a wheel swap so everyone could ride home. Pepe was also killing it in footdown weaving between everyone. Good times.

I rode alongside Mike while he was doing a massive wheelie, check it out on the clip- it was 3 blocks and 45 full pedal strokes long, and he stopped because the lights went red. I need to send that one to Trackasaurus!

And here is one of the footdown sessions – both clips pretty dark but you get the idea.

Here is Adam’s titanium beast, and Shauns Vivalo.

Adam\

 

Shaun\

Thanks to everyone who turned up.

Hopefully see you next Tuesday and maybe this Thursday for the Hustle – if pack pacer Jeff is back on his steed again post bird-flu.

Frostbite Anyone?

Well Justin and Jeff are slowly recovering from some Chinese bird influenza strain from Chinese Dragon hell, the healthy may consider riding in freezing-nuts-off conditions tonight.

Anyone keen for a blat around the tankfarm and maybe some gloved and jacketed trickery at Vodafone? Frank is in, I’m meeting him at 6:30 and Alister is coming down, Mike will be there a bit after 6:30. It sounds like Adam is coming on his first TFT = SICK! The Solejam site had some activity today . It won’t be a long one but it’ll be fun!

I dropped a Colony BMX stem onto my Stormin Norman rig last night. The vintage Cinelli stem was a crotch stabber and Al has been skidding around on it giving him self plum like bruises on his plums.

Ice from the Sky

The weather was indeed crap on the weekend but Sunday cleared up enough to blat around town and the waterfront for a few hours. Alister came down for a ride and we saw Brendon out stretching his legs. We have some soldiers down; Justin and Jeff are suffering some virus flu ebola disease and have been bed ridden all weekend and don’t seem to be getting better. Get well soon lads. better you were in bed – it was 5 degrees all day on Saturday and the hailstorms were gnarly.

The wind yesterday was gusting 30 knots SW and laps of the tankfarm against the headwind were purely harrowing, chilled to the bone. We ended up meeting up with Frank and Mike at the TF to ride and trick around and drink more Hater beer. Frank was wheelie barspin killing it. Mike was holding onto his front wheel for long periods of time mid-wheelie. And I got some drifting leg over bar skids on camera.

Lets hope it gets better for Tankfarm Tuesday.

Sunday Shennanigans?

Weather looks pretty ratshit this weekend again but we might get a chance to ride on Sunday afternoon.

If anyone is keen I’m guessing we might start downtown and move from there. I’ll send out some texts to see what everyone is up to. Keen to get out and shoot some footy too.