On how biking is like surfing, a track day at Ruapuna and amorous women wearing pumpkins

Riding motorcycles is a lot like mountaineering, skiing and surfing in that you not only get to be cold and wet, but you’re participating in a sport that carries some risk. The good thing about risk is that it can be managed - in other words you can lengthen the odds in your favour through making a few careful choices. There are basically two components to risk management: minimising the risk and minimising the impact.

Minimising risk requires specific skills, and the great thing about skill is that it can be learnt. Nobody is born a good rider - can you imagine changing a baby’s leathers? Doesn’t bear thinking about. Anyway, I digress. I regularly bang on about rider training and it’s importance, and am looking forward to my next day under the tutelage of the lads at Mainland. I know very, very
few riders that wouldn’t benefit from rider training, and I keep the Mainland course schedule on our event calendar on www.streetandsport.co.nz.

Minimising the impact means recognising that some accidents are unavoidable, and so you take the steps needed to ensure that when you do have an off the damage to you is minimised, and most of that comes down to wearing the right gear. This is a big subject and beyond the scope of this email, and in time I’ll have some information on our website, but in the short term the ACC funded website www.rideforever.co.nz has some good stuff.

There are also things that you can do once an accident is inevitable. For example, when a sleeping driver pulls out in front of you or does a U turn while you’re passing them and you know that you’re going to hit, stand up in the pegs, or better still jump. That increases the chance that you’ll fly over the top and bounce angrily along the road and minimises the risk that you’ll slam into the side of the car having first removed your lower regions on the handlebars. I’ve never tried it, and hope I never do, but apparently it works.

And on the subject of riding season, the days are getting longer and things will soon start warming up. That means rallies, races, runs and events will start winding up, and if you want to plan your life use our events calendar. I am going to do my best to get as many South Island events on it as possible, but I do need your help. If you know of something happening that isn’t on the calendar, please let me know.

Mods and Rockers is now 4 weeks away and things are hotting up. We’re using the event to fund raise for the NZ Spinal Trust and for you $20.00 registration fee you get a patch, go in the draw to win a $450.00 helmet and get to have fun while feeling nice and self-righteous, but you need to register before 15 August or you pay more and miss out on the patch and the helmet draw. You’ll also pay more ($30.00), which means you get to feel even more self righteous, so it’s not all bad. Visit our website to enroll online.

Finally, we sell a lot of Ixon clothing. It’s bloody good gear and well priced, but Ixon are a French company. There’s nothing wrong with that (we won’t talk about the Rainbow Warrior or a couple of Rugby World Cup games), but the French don’t speak English. Despite this handicap they seem to have done OK for themselves, but the names Ixon chose for some of their jackets caused me some amusement. For example, us blokes get to show our style in a Specious, a Diablo Fiction and an Esko (short for Eskimo?), while the ladies stay safe and warm in a Pumpkin, a Capricious or a Chimera. And for the woman who wants to improve her love life, there are the Amorous leather pants.