My ride with the group today didn't start too well. In fact I arrived at the start point too late and the group had gone. Apparently it was Jim's fault. He said “let's go before Rob gets here” (according to Tony). With no gingerbread crumbs to follow  I headed off south and zig-zagged around the North Waikato back-roads hoping to bump into the group. I tried to get myself inside Tony's mind to figure out where he might lead them, but instead of road names I kept getting stuff like  ..”That is a load of right wing crap”  ……  and …. “it's just another part of the right wing conspiracy”  ..  which I assumed meant that I should keep turning left. I found a few roads I had never been on before, and had quite an enjoyable time on my solo ride. I had a turn being RIC, and then TEC and I even stopped and marked a couple of corners. As it turned out I wasn't too far off the mark regarding the route, but I was 10 or 15 minutes behind the group. By the time I arrived at the Power House Cafe, the rest of the group were comfortably seated and awaiting their lunch. The staff did a pretty good job considering the cafe was quite busy and there were about 12 in our group, plus Bwucie who arrived shivering from from the Area Rep's meeting in Ohakune. The food and coffee was good and Jim passed his eggs. After lunch some of the group headed off home directly from Karapiro and the rest of us followed Tony for a few more hours of exploring some great Waikato roads. There were a few chilly showers around and the roads were wet most of the way in the afternoon, but we had some great riding and Tony set a cracking pace on his F650GS with knobbly tires. Jason's new bike started leaking again. In fact it leaked so much that at times I was getting it all over my visor and it covered the road. Luckily Alex spotted the problem and all was well. We ended up at the Pokeno ice-cream shops and we didn't have too much trouble with the ice-cream melting today. Thanks Tony for leading today and planning such an interesting route. I did around 470 kms door to door today so a good length run and great fun.