If anyone felt weary last night (I know I didn't need rocking when I got to sleep), that would be something to do with the heat and the distance.  My round trip door-to-door was 620 Kms, Richard and Barry live further south, so they would have done more.The day was a clear cut example of the theory that there is not too much wrong with our roads, the problem is the dickheads that are allowed to operate vehicles on them.  If anybody knows the driver of the little red Toyota hatch, CUK15, probably a Warkworth native, feel free to tell him he is a psychotic, anti-social, misanthropic, mono-browed, cave dwelling, bottom-feeding, scum-sucking waste of oxygen, and that a therapeutic abortion of him as a foetus would have done the human race a lotta flavours.  Don't need to be rude about it, but feel free to reprimand him in similarly genial terms to those I've used.  Three times over the double yellows between Puhoi and Warkworth is absolute stupidity, especially when you have to create another lane to come back into the gap - because there is no gap. And when you have passengers. I'm a luddite about cell phones generally, and bike to bike comms and GPS and so on, but would have been FANTASTIC to have had a cell phone piped into my helmet yesterday.  That said, apart from Bubba, or Cletis-LeRoy, or whatever his name was, the motoring public was pretty darn good.  We got a few racist comments from young locals at Omapere, but that's understandable when you live in a place that normally has a population of twelve or thirteen and every holiday your town is suddenly full of upjumps from Auckland: at the end of the weekend they will have their quiet corner of the Hokianga back, and we'll all be eating exhaust on the Southern Parking Lot Motorway.  I'm sure if they considered that, they wouldn't feel the need to trash mouth visitors, they could just laugh all the way to the bank with our money we have spent in their 'hood. I had expected to have about 4 people turn up, it being New Year's Day and an early start, but we had nine bikes and a total of twelve people.  The law were out in force, and clearly folk had taken the message to heart: I think it's the first time that Michael and his yellow eleven-hundy-ess have been (almost) on the same ride as the rest of us all day, normally they are out of sight in the first twenty minutes.  A (to me) surprising number of those present hadn't been through the Twin Bridges (Mangakahia Road), so we had a stop for them to demonstrate their Auckland Chaos Theory of Parking.

I led a search for the elusive potties in Kaikohe, and wound up going to Maccas, much to the relief of my pillion.  The pedestrian search party eventually located the public facility, and Rincewind (whose surgeon would frown on him riding a bike just yet, I'm sure, but Wizzards with two 'zeds' make their own rules) demonstrated the fine art of riding an 1150GS down the footpath to save limping to the po'.  Much relieved, we headed to Omapere for lunch.  After lunch we first detoured to the lookout on the Hokianga South Head, where we encountered the world's grumpiest oldfart Lions Club parking wallah, but even he couldn't spoil the view.  (What is it with people that belong to "service clubs"?  Who are they "serving" with attitudes?)  My pillion, a young South Auckland work colleague, was just about getting "overtoured" by this stage, but still managed to make a visual statement for our 'hood.  Onya, Ayla!

From there, via the compulsory stop at Tane Mahuta......

.......and a cuppa coffee in Dargaville  (where Michael left us to visit rellies in Whangarei), we headed back to Forty Flavours at Orewa for an after match ice cream.  We had run into the Warkworth Parking Lot back at the weigh station north of town, and I'd led a line of "filterers" through to the first set of lights, after which traffic freed up again.  We had all nearly finished our ice creams when the very well behaved Team Red Baron rolled up, having sat in the Parking Lot like model citizens, instead of filtering.  Perhaps Alex did that to atone for using the Ladies Thunderbox in Kaiwaka............. oops, wasn't s'posed to mention that.There were smiles all round at the end of the day, so we may have to plot a run for next New Year's.  Hopefully we will get some of the others' photos added soon.  Michael, Shah, Barry, David, Hilton, Richard, Alex, Paul (and little Bwucie) and their Beemers were all a great advert for responsible motorsickling.  Well done all.