Report From Dr. Khoo of NZ, 13 Jan 2000
Hello knights,
I am envious of the many activites that I get to read about but cannot physically participate but I am glad that you guys are so active and buubling with enthusiasm . The KOTRTS is sure gaining ground in fame and alot of the credit goes to you Alan and the rest esp ST and Azmi not mentioning Kar hong too. Keep it up and i will be there amongst you guys when the time comes !! Meanwhile , i wish you knights all the best in your up and coming ride to camerons . keep this page filled man , !
This is your lonely Knight here in kiwiland reporting that I have managed to ride three rides with the Wednesday Knights . this bunch is a group of working adults ( but do they behave like adults ???...really questionable !!! ) ha ha and they meet ...yes on each wednesday w/o fail at 6pm at one of the pre selected location ...all contacted by phone on the day itself ...before 4pm !!! Sounds alot like what we were doing before doesnt it ? hey ! The guys are Shane and another called Tony . Any of you coming over to New Zealand ? I will be glad to ensure your holiday here will not be without any rides and only make sure you bring your bike !
Yesterday's ride was at a popular site called the Riverhead , which is a pine forested logging area . the area is very big and crisscrossed with many logging tracks and within the forest are single tracks made by the infamous mountain bikes !!!! Now these tracks are plenty and it is easy to get lost in them but as you know there arent any real dangerous predators in new zealand , like tigers or any snakes it is safe to bump anywhere in to the bushes so long as it is not a tree trunk !!!! ha ha ha .
Now also I know why certain parks ( almost all the parks within the city limits ) prohibit mtbiking because in this region the soil is of a certain type of softgrey clay / soil and tyres like even our mtbikes can cut into the earth too and make deep tracks !! I was led into the deep interior of many of such single tracks and i could see the amount of "damage " our mtb tyres did but one of the guys conveniently blamed it on the trampers !!! ( hikers) but frankly i didnt even see one yesterday but 32 mtbikes though !!! ha ha ha . Yes there were 32 bikes in this group besides other smaller groups!!
Ok the riders are almost all on dual susp bikes and they have good reasons to ...they are devils on the downhill .....and i saw how crazy these kiwis were and were waiting for every chance to downhill ...!!! some of the downhills were aptly called drop offs !!!! there was one in particular that was something like perpendicular...well almost !!! some of these guys went up and down again !!!
So Alan , it appears that the full susp bikes might be very well the sign of things to come and they performed extremely well on such tracks ( comments invited ) . I was on a rigid and i was in the front uphill but downhill i almost lost sight of them if not for the few newbies on their full susp bikes . Here MARIN stands out as being popular for the full susp !! and all sorts of long travle forks are "in " . The longer it is the better for them !!!
The ride normally ends at around 9 pm since it is now summer and the sun sets at abt 8.45 pm ! But still at about 8 or so it tends ot be dark inside the forest and half the time we just bash through and so accounts for a tree trunk against my right temple but luckily my helmet saved the day !!! ha ha . None the worse for it and so here is an account of a Malaysian KNIGHT in the midst of KIWI knights !!
So Alan , i am sorry i cannot send photos through the email as yet since i dont have a scanner but the moment i do ,,trust me for you shall have them . Meanwhile all i have to say is keep on bikin ...
Hope your biking continually be enjoyable !!!
Dr. Francis Khoo, KOTRT from NZ