Brass Monkey 2009 – a photolog

The reprobates meet for another Brass Monkey

Tying down the bikes in the Ferry

Glassy smooth crossing. A good sign – we could have forgone tying those bikes as well..

South of Blenheim – it was cold.

We live in a beautiful place

Posing cattle

Bliss

Kaikoura inland road

Hamner Springs – we stopped for the hot pools

En Route to Geraldine

Challenging mist nearing Fairlie.

Evidence that I was actually up at dawn. As were we all. We stayed in a house on a farm and the dawn say white mountains along with the usual rural scenes.

From an old small bulldozer?

Almost ready to set out to the Haka and Dansies

A chance encounter on the Hakataramea Pass

Top of the Hakataramea Pass

What it is all about

Lake Benmore – an excursion from the Hakataramea Pass

End of the Road at Lake Benmore

Emerging from Benmore

Off to the rest of the Hakataramea Pass

Traffic was a nightmare.

That’s Mod and Henry in the distance – on the closed road

Watch out ahead

Gravel, corners, mountains. What more is there?

Looking back over a bridge

The entire day was offroad, and with views like this

Top of the Danseys pass. No white stuff on the road though.

Top of the Danseys posing

The Danseys pub

The reward

Another Dansey’s bike. Plenty of road bikes went over the Danseys, but the Haka pass has some water hazards that keep most bikes out.

Official Class of 2009 photo

Monkey Saturday – and Nash poses in perfect weather. Again.

However he was soon riding into a sea of fog

Tour of the monkey area started at the Vulcan Hotel.

We were surrounded by fog

and suffered though some Monkey hardships

Random stretched bicycle later that day

The lake at the rally site

A wooden bike at the monkey

The wooden bike seemed to have less than total efficiency

Sunset at the rally

Ready for the fire. It was freezing cold – and could have been lit earlier.

Finally – flames and heat

An agglomeration of bikers after an epic run over the Hasst. It was the right route as everywhere else saw ice and snow.

Indeed it was a perfect day on the West Coast – while it snowed in Christchurch. And Wellington. and everywhere else.

The dam could break – with 1 to 2% probability per year. Encouraging.

Another one way bridge

Flat rocks at Punakaiki – the end of another wonderful day.

It’s off to the ferry – and yes that’s dawn over there.

An icy run through the Buller gorge. Actually the roads were perfect, though the air temperature hit minus 4.5 degrees Celsius.

Mod tries to evade the camera in perfect conditions –  as we near Blenheim.

On the Ferry home – a rough but fun crossing

What a welcome home to Wellington.