The last post

Santa Cruz Superlight

I had my last dry run on my fully loaded brevet bike last night. I took it down the Big Weta part of the Danzig track, which is getting pretty rutted out. It performed really well. The weight seems very well balanced this time. I weighed both my dry bags when I got home, 2kgs on the front, 2.6 kgs on the back. The front consists solely of an air mattress, a sleeping bag a bivvy, and two spare tubes. The rear is mostly spare clothes and toiletries, and two 6 hour Ayup batteries.

1 (sawn-off) toothbrush
with 5 days paste in a straw!
This will make a big difference
on the climbs.

I have the kind of stuff I think I will use regularly attached to the frame of the bike to keep life simple. Chain oil, sunscreen, water purification tabs, butt-paste, pump and tools. I have converted to tubeless tires and am running the Stans Raven tire on the back. I cant see how those tires work at all, but when climbing at least, their traction is incredible, maybe its the extra load on the rear coupled with the soft compound? Descending on the loose stuff will not be so confidence inspiring I am sure.

We have a full contingent staying at the Voo Doo Lounge for the friday and we will likely pick up some more riders on the return.

Lock ring remover, spare
drop-out etc etc

My fitness seems pretty good right now after some good results in the local Vets TT series which have been pulling close to 50 riders for each race. I managed to win 3 of the 4 I entered so I know I am good for at least 30 minutes !!! Ha ha. The "Big-boys" reps up Mt Climie that Matt and I did with Dave Sharpe nearly put an end to me but I managed to recover from the nasty saddle sore that resulted quickly.  Simon Kennett tells us the predicted wind is a Nor Easter for day one, which sounds perfect, but we know anything can happen. I am really looking forward to getting out into the wilderness, in particular the Waiuta, which although its very hard going, its also very beautiful.

Magic beans for Cleetus!

Hopefully all our technology hangs together and we get some of the "alleged" summer that NIWA promised us earlier on.

Will try to keep you in the loop with updates when cell coverage allows.

This is the last post via 'wifi", anything else comes via 3g and a phone . 

You can follow the live trackers on the official website.
http://kiwibrevet.blogspot.com/  or the Twitter feed
https://twitter.com/#!/KiwiBrevet

I will be trying to post updates to my site and blogs too.
http://jeffsbike.blogspot.com
https://twitter.com/#!/mrwhippy

You can also see stuff from Tweeted with the Kiwi Brevet hach-tag here:
http://hashtags.org/kiwibrevet

PS, You can see a list of profiles of all the riders here:
http://kiwibrevet.blogspot.com/p/rider-profiles-2012.html