Canterbury Scooter Club New Zealand
143 9kilometers, 3 nights and 4 days. What a highlight of the year!

By Bruce Pollock

Show Weekend is our annual regional holiday that’s based on the Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Show. To us, it’s just “Show Weekend”, or three days of scooter riding. This year we all took an extra day off work extending the weekend further. It seemed to take ages to arrive as all holiday and rallies seem to do. But finally departure day was eminent. To hasten it a long we had a pre-departure get together. A chance for old friends to reunite & organizers to issue the riders packs. This year we received some great prizes and sponsorship. The packs included a new commemorative T-shirt, pens, lollipops, a document on group riding etiquette and small first aid kits. These were just the right size for the glove box. Small and full of blood stopping skinned knuckle pressure pads. On Wednesday evening the pre flight briefing took place at my place. Cold beers, a sausage sizzle and regis¬trations for the scooterists. Stories of performance parts, extra horsepower, claims of speeds over and above the call of duty. Those 10 inch wheels and 40 years old suspensions let alone their riders to take it all.Well the early night of quick beers and a quiet “sausage sizzle” ended up a late and loud night. We had late arrivals from the Wellington scooter scene busting a gut to get to Christchurch in time. GS 160 from Wellington broke its At 8:30am the engine was split and on the driveway. A nice looking scoot, First up was shooting footage for the The day started per plan, the alarm went off, then chaos arrived. The rebuilt cruciform while still in my driveway all I saw was piston, crank and oil displayed but I had my doubts at 8:45am, with 15mins to blast off that it would make the make the would make the distance A quick couple of calls reorganizing the riders, then we shot down for breakfast and finally underway minus GS 160 who planned to join us later in the day. rap movie “Scooterboy” aka Adam was making The soundtrack was original and was miming . A hatchback car with a 16 scooters following the director and the Can Scoot group riding beside all the “bling” on the nifty fifty After three set of traffic lights the video clip was a rap and it’s was highway time. We took the scenic inland route to Geraldine beside the Southern Alps. As we approached Mt Hutt and the foothills of the Southern Alps the temperature hit single digits. As we returned to the coast at Geraldine 20 degrees registered on my GTS. A nice warm spring change.

It always amazes me the people you meet on these road trips. Like when Julian stopped for a nicotine stick in the middle of rural Canterbury. I stopped next to him then from nowhere out popped Mrs. Rub a Dub Dub, at least that’s what her T-shirt said. Before we knew it there were offers of coffee and muffins. After some introductions and a rain check on the coffee we did a ride by her husbands work site down the road. It turns out Mr Rub a Dub himself was a scooter collector. He took us to his steel shipping con¬tainer that revealed his Henkels, Puch, and Vespa collection. “The things you find and the people you meet on the journey”.

Underway again back on the highway and near disaster struck. The group was blissfully enjoying the scenery when one of Chaulkies gumboots (kiwi scooterists wet weather gear also know as wellies.) flew off the rear carrier of his PX. As you can imagine causing mayhem for the following scooterists. Well the gumboot was retrieved from the paddock none the worse for wear. The group reassembled down the road a few kilometers where an instant fine was issued. Chalky was fined for his insecure load! The gumboot was reunited to the unsuspecting Chaukly, “One gumboot full of Pinot Noir” was the fine payable that evening at Fleur’s restaurant. Probably not cheapest place to buy Pinot either!

The first night at Moeraki was excellent and Fluer served us her award winning food. At this stage the group had picked up some extras from other regions. 20 scooters now parked up on the boat ramp outside of Fleur’s. This brought out the punters and the locals alike. “Your going WHERE on those things?” It seems everybody was interested in these mad men’s machines and the Show Weekend ride. The late night antic’s revealed themselves in the day¬light, Jonathan’s sparkling PX200 hoisted up onto the dining room table! Fortunately the owners arrived after it’s removal. His high visibility vest was confiscated and not returned until the ride was complete it just didn’t fit the crazy scooter scene for some reason. Full of sensibility and maturity.

Start of day two and it was the time for the highway so helmets on and we are off for the next leg. Trotters Gorge was Pete’s call over to Palmerston. A great road obviously designed by a scooterist. Twists, rises, lumps and stunning scenery, the late spring flowers and clean air. Best of all, there was not a car in sight. Into town for breakfast and skate park riding. “I couldn’t figure out why it was revving so hard while I was airborne” This earned Toby the quote of the day. For some reason perfectly performing bikes are tinkered, re plugged, and rejected constantly on these trips. The boy’s on the twist and goes looked on in diminishing patience! The GTS, GTV’s and GT60’s all looked smug and shared comments of yester year are tinkering. I’m guilty of this myself so I understand. Still heading south back now on the main highway towards Dunedin. We turned off at Kariatane to take the coastal route. We stopped at Sea Cliff to visit the now defunct asylum, reborn as a backpackers. Next to this was the enchanted forest It is an old forgotten forest planted by the asylum workers 40-50 years ago A real secret hidden gem. A gem we thought we should explore. We coasted single file with engines off, down the many tracks enjoying the bush and old remains of buildings. The track seemed to morph into a mown paddock and distant shouts of abuse from some neighboring house made me think of the movie Shrek. He was yelling abuse at us, interrupting our serenity. It seemed we encroached on some hippies patch as we encountered an angry bloke, aka Shriek and his missus who started running after us It was funny though watching “Shrek” storm up to us only for us to all ride away leaving dust and memo¬ries to tease him. Unfortunately for us though, two rider’s broke down. Trapped in mid forest so we couldn’t make a clear quick break. Still what a site, the beautiful forest, an angry bloke and his missus “Some people have too much time on their hands”.

George didn’t realise until it was too late, his remote beach paradise turned into a grass circuit as 20 odd scooters did the mandatory circuit of his coastal paradise. Dog’s, chickens, clothes line all went into “dodge me please” mode as we burned up his unsuspecting lawn then departed equally as quickly. He is probably still coming to terms with the sudden wasp invasion. Bet he never invites us back, but oh, that’s right, he never invited us to visit in the first place.

Port Chalmers brought out the shop keepers and shoppers alike with similar facial expressions “What the hell?” 20 scooters attract a lot of attention in these small sleepy towns! Next stop was to the steepest street in the world. Baldwin Street in Dunedin claimed many victims, both up and down. Toby had to put a new brake level on the T5 after the skate pack incident earlier that day. A word of advice here, Brakes are justifiably required to be in peak condition for this street. The concrete ramps had claimed his rear brake lever.

Time to push on, it was already early afternoon and there was miles of road ahead. We took the coastal route to the Tairai River mouth south of Dunedin. A bit of cloud and a lot of scooter dicing. PX draughting PX, the old vs. the new. The piped GTS nailing them all! Further along the highway it was time for a coffee break in Milton. Well coffee in Milton ended up as a big wait in Milton. We lost our sole Vespa SS rider. Brent broke down, it seems he had an electrical fault. After a hunt around the Milton auto electric stores he secured replacement parts. With the scoot on the trailer, Brent pillion on Pete’s GT60 we headed inland towards central

Otago. Darkening clouds brought out all the PVC and fetish rainwear and thunder dampened the scene. Five kilometers inland the sun was out and the clouds had disap¬peared. The temperatures was on the rise and so were we as the road takes a slow long climb to the Alps Through another gorge then Roxbough and Alexandra. The land¬scape looked more like the moon, it was obviously a very dry part of the country and you can see and feel the reason for all the red grapes, dry and hot A quick gas stop in Alex, then another 21km’s to our 2nd night’s destination “The Workshop” in Clyde was the name of the place. A house arranged over the phone and owned and habited by a long haired hippie, ex Sydney sider and his iconic blue heeler dog “Bess”. After settling in and igniting the barbecue dinner was served, along with a few cold ales, wines, burnt sau¬sages and steaks.

Dawn arrived to soon for most and we left Clyde and headed to Arrowtown for breakfast.“Joe’s Garage” was the call, a fine one as well as the T5 needed major work. The rear hub had collected a stone which made using the rear brake a hit a miss affair. The cafe/garage was perfect for mid ride repairs. While taking in the morn-ing caffeine hit we heard there was a Vespa small frameon auction, and what scooterist would want to miss a potential bargain at a rural auction. A few of us stopped for a gander, hoping it was going for a song. Well it had a seized engine and went for the whole opera, seems even rural folk understand the value of an old original. Next stop was lunch at theCardrona pub. What a ride, over the Crown Range with switch backs, hairpins and over taking lots of four wheel drives. Always fun baiting the silver slugs. One stretch of the road was a new piece of hot mix tarmac. Smooth as a racetrack, it was also down hill off the range and it proved to be a very fast section

Into Wanaka and time for lake front poses with bikes and a swim for one, then off again. Destination was New Zealands highest mountain. Mt Cook 200kms away and it was already late afternoon. We meet up with one of our club members who couldnt make the ride as he was working. Driving a tour bus his Japanese clients, the happy snappy brigade were delighted to ride in convoy with us. The Temperature had risen to 32 degree’s and the countryside was showing signs of the extreme heat. At the main highway turn off towards Mt.Cook to me it signalled the last leg and the last night of our trip. By now every one was pretty tired, we had arrived too late for the gymkana event with the last scooters ar¬riving at about 7.30pm. Hungry and tired it was time to full the belly with beer and burgers. Each year we have a presentation and regailing of highway stories. This year was no different, plenty of laughs and a great thankyou from all who attended Presentations made, prizes awards given out and everyone went away shattered. The movie tells only part of the story memories and smiles make up the rest.
I guess you had to be there!

143 9kilometers, 3 nights and 4 days. What a highlight of the year!