Save big $$$$'s on your NZ vacation - The NZ$ takes a big dive against the US$

If you're touring New Zealand with us this year, or if you're thinking of touring New Zealand with us this year, pay attention! There's a silver lining to every cloud...

The ructions going on in the financial markets have caused the NZ$ to drop dramatically against the US$. In early October 2008, the NZ$ was worth US$0.67... (or to put it the other way around, US$1.00 bought NZ$1.49. Today, on Oct 8th, US$1.00 buys NZ$1.69. That's a change of 14% in the favour of the US$.

If you are thinking of booking a vacation in New Zealand, or you are booked to come and tour with us and have paid a deposit, it really would be worth considering paying the full amount now and taking advantage of the drop in the value of the NZ Dollar. By way of example, if you and your partner are booked on one of our 14 days Best of The Best Guided Tours, the saving is equivalent to the cost of a free return international flight from the US to NZ for one person.

Get that mouse clicking... :-)

Cheers for now. Safe riding..

John

GoTourNZ video on YouTube

If you've attended any of our seminars on Touring New Zealand at some of the US motorcycle rallies that we exhibit at each year, you may have already seen this video - if you haven't you're in for a treat. It's a 12 minute video clip with sound showcasing a guided tour of New Zealand's South Island with us, GoTourNZ.com. Get yourself a beer, wine, coffee... turn up the volume, and enjoy.. :-) (Drop us a line if you'd like a hi-res DVD version.
Cheers,
John, Ian and Ian Jnr

Now you can tour New Zealand with GoTourNZ.com on BMW's new 800GS twin

For the upcoming 2008-09 touring season we've added BMW's new capable middleweight twins, the 800cc 2008 F650GS and F800GS models. The F800 has received great reviews by the motorcycling press, and we were impressed with them when we saw them at the 2008 BMWMOA Rally in Gillette, Wyoming. We were particularly impressed with the low seat height on the low frame F650GS model(remember this is still an 800cc model). Even if you have Duck's Disease like me (I'm only 5'6") you'll be able to get both feet down easily. Demand is strong for these new models so be quick and book if you want to tour on one. Get your skates on..

See you DownUnder...

John

A busy season ahead!!

As the new tour season in New Zealand shapes up, it looks like beiing a busy one, even if all the talk of high fuel prices is on everyones lips!-
Many of our tours already have heavy bookings and if you are thinking of coming, which is hard to do when it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, then you need to get some plans in place soon-
Our "Special 10 day packages" are closing on July 31, so if you have your sights set on one of those fantastic priced tours, you only have a few days left, dont forget special conditions apply to those few tours....
We hope we will see some of you at the BMWMOA rally at Gillette in Wyoming in July - we will be there as usual and have two free tours to give away for anyone attending the seminars at the rally.
Please email me with any questions you have about our tour packages, I am always online
Ian

Which shall I choose - a Self-Guided or a Guided tour?

The 2008/2009 season is shaping up to be another very busy year for tourism in New Zealand - our Guided tour packages are proving to be very popular with many clients booking now for the coming season.

I regularly am answering questions from people planning to visit New Zealand about whether a Guided tour can offer them what they want, or if they should choose our Self-Guided option....or even just go for a straight rental.

Many people have a misconception about what a Guided tour really means or offers, and it often conjures up pictures in their minds of a coach tour with hoards of people, an over-bearing guide, and being herded around like sheep with people they may not really like...

We can understand this being a worry, and we would like to put any fears to rest. Our Guided tours are vastly different from the picture above. Through feedback from our clients we have created a Guided tour package that is light in structure, small groups ( around 10 people) and guided by us unobtrusively but attentively. In fact many of our clients tell us to stop referring to these packages as " Guided" as they feel this steers people away from what they experience as the holiday of a lifetime and richly rewarding. Te energy and friendships that are generated on these tours is incredible - and quite a surprise to people when they realise their tours is far more than just a motorcycle tour.

The Self-Guided package offers flexibility and many options, and for people who just want to go it alone, this is an excellent alternative. However, you must be a self-starter and able to follow our detailed guide booklet so your tour unfolds seamlessly...and be able to pack for your journey in the panniers the bike provides! ( some people are just not able to do this..)

If you haven't been to New Zealand before, and are considering a straight rental to save money and research the journey on the internet, be aware that the services we offer to stitch your itinerary together utilising our up-to-date knowledge and network of relationships, will ensure a hassle free holiday for you. You can "turn your brain off and concentrate on enjoying your vacation, without all the worries about timing, accommodation and missing things through 'just not knowing' . We recommend that you don't try this the first time you visit New Zealand. If you have doubts, ask yourself this: Could we come to your area of the world and find the best restaurants,cafes and lodging (and avoid the horror stories), the most interesting roads, views etc, by reading a guide book?

Come and enjoy beautiful New Zealand now! We will help you create the vacation of a lifetime.

Safe riding, and Best Regards,

John, Ian, and Ian Jnr

SOUTH ISLAND 10 DAY SUPER SPECIAL

Have you been planning a trip to New Zealand, but the rising costs of airfares
and everything else around you making you think twice?
Well, we have been listening to our clients feedback and advice and come up
with a package that will help you achieve your dreams-
Go here for the details: http://guidedtours.gotournz.com/SIspecial

Latest Airfare Deals to New Zealand from USA

Coming to tour New Zealand with us in the 2008-09 Season? Check out these deals from Air New Zealand for Oct - Dec 2008, and Feb 2009 (return airfares from US$1449):

Happy Hunting....

Cheers,

John

Song of the Sausage Creature, by Hunter S Thompson

Al Kinney, a friend and client who toured with us a few years back just sent us this classic piece from Hunter Thompson.
Thanks Al.... Now, I'm going out for a ride.... :-)

Cheers,
John

---------
You've probably all seen this before, but it's been too long since I have, so I send it along to brighten your day…

Al Kinney


Song of the Sausage Creature
by Hunter S. Thompson


There are some things nobody needs in this world, and a bright-red, hunch-back, warp-speed 900cc cafe racer is one of them - but I want one anyway, and on some days I actually believe I need one. That is why they are dangerous.

Everybody has fast motorcycles these days. Some people go 150 miles an hour on two-lane blacktop roads, but not often. There are too many oncoming trucks and too many radar cops and too many stupid animals in the way. You have to be a little crazy to ride these super-torque high-speed crotch rockets anywhere except a racetrack - and even there, they will scare the whimpering **** out of you... There is, after all, not a pig's eye worth of difference between going head-on into a Peterbilt or sideways into the bleachers. On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.

When Cycle World called me to ask if I would road-test the new Harley Road King, I got uppity and said I'd rather have a Ducati superbike. It seemed like a chic decision at the time, and my friends on the superbike circuit got very excited. "Hot damn," they said. "We will take it to the track and blow the bastards away."

"Balls," I said. "Never mind the track. The track is for punks. We are Road People. We are Cafe Racers."

The Cafe Racer is a different breed, and we have our own situations. Pure speed in sixth gear on a 5000-foot straightaway is one thing, but pure speed in third gear on a gravel-strewn downhill ess-turn is quite another.

But we like it. A thoroughbred Cafe Racer will ride all night through a fog storm in freeway traffic to put himself into what somebody told him was the ugliest and tightest decreasing-radius turn since Genghis Khan invented the corkscrew.

. I still feel a shudder in my spine every time I see a picture of a Vincent Black Shadow, or when I walk into a public restroom and hear crippled men whispering about the terrifying Kawasaki Triple... I have visions of compound femur-fractures and large black men in white hospital suits holding me down on a gurney while a nurse called "Bess" sews the flaps of my scalp together with a stitching drill.

The motorcycle business was the last straw. It had to be the work of my enemies, or people who wanted to hurt me. It was the vilest kind of bait, and they knew I would go for it.

Of course. You want to cripple the bastard? Send him a 130-mph cafe-racer. And include some license plates, he'll think it's a streetbike. He's queer for anything fast.

Which is true. I have been a connoisseur of fast motorcycles all my life. I bought a brand-new 650 BSA Lightning when it was billed as "the fastest motorcycle ever tested by Hot Rod magazine." I have ridden a 500-pound Vincent through traffic on the Ventura Freeway with burning oil on my legs and run the Kawa 750 Triple through Beverly Hills at night with a head full of acid... I have ridden with Sonny Barger and smoked weed in biker bars with Jack Nicholson, Grace Slick, Ron Zigler and my infamous old friend, Ken Kesey, a legendary Cafe Racer.

Some people will tell you that slow is good - and it may be, on some days - but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of the trouble it's caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba....

Which we had - no doubt about that. The Ducati people in New Jersey had opted, for some reasons of their own, to send me the 900ss-sp for testing - rather than their 916 crazy-fast, state-of-the-art superbike track-racer. It was far too fast, they said - and prohibitively expensive - to farm out for testing to a gang of half-mad Colorado cowboys who think they're world-class Cafe Racers.

The Ducati 900 is a finely engineered machine. My neighbors called it beautiful and admired its racing lines. The nasty little bugger looked like it was going 90 miles an hour when it was standing still in my garage.

I was hunched over the tank like a person diving into a pool that got emptied yesterday. Whacko! Bashed on the concrete bottom, flesh ripped off, a Sausage Creature with no teeth, ****ed-up for the rest of its life.

We all love Torque, and some of us have taken it straight over the high side from time to time - and there is always Pain in that... But there is also Fun, the deadly element, and Fun is what you get when you screw this monster on. BOOM! Instant take-off, no screeching or squawking around like a fool with your teeth clamping down on our tongue and your mind completely empty of everything but fear.

No. This bugger digs right in and shoots you straight down the pipe, for good or ill.

On my first take-off, I hit second gear and went through the speed limit on a two-lane blacktop highway full of ranch traffic. By the time I went up to third, I was going 75 and the tach was barely above 4000 rpm....

And that's when it got its second wind. From 4000 to 6000 in third will take you from 75 mph to 95 in two seconds - and after that, Bubba, you still have fourth, fifth, and sixth. Ho, ho.

I never got to sixth gear, and I didn't get deep into fifth. This is a shameful admission for a full-bore Cafe Racer, but let me tell you something, old sport: This motorcycle is simply too goddamn fast to ride at speed in any kind of normal road traffic unless you're ready to go straight down the centerline with your nuts on fire and a silent scream in your throat.

When aimed in the right direction at high speed, though, it has unnatural capabilities. This I unwittingly discovered as I made my approach to a sharp turn across some railroad tracks, saw that I was going way too fast and that my only chance was to veer right and screw it on totally, in a desperate attempt to leapfrog the curve by going airborne.

It was a bold and reckless move, but it was necessary. And it worked: I felt like Evel Knievel as I soared across the tracks with the rain in my eyes and my jaws clamped together in fear. I tried to spit down on the tracks as I passed them, but my mouth was too dry... I landed hard on the edge of the road and lost my grip for a moment as the Ducati began fishtailing crazily into oncoming traffic. For two or three seconds I came face to face with the Sausage Creature....

But somehow the brute straightened out. I passed a schoolbus on the right and got the bike under control long enough to gear down and pull off into an abandoned gravel driveway where I stopped and turned off the engine. My hands had seized up like claws and the rest of my body was numb. I felt nauseous and I cried for my mama, but nobody heard, then I went into a trance for 30 or 40 seconds until I was finally able to light a cigarette and calm down enough to ride home. I was too hysterical to shift gears, so I went the whole way in first at 40 miles an hour.

Whoops! What am I saying? Tall stories, ho, ho... We are motorcycle people; we walk tall and we laugh at whatever's funny. We **** on the chests of the Weird....

But when we ride very fast motorcycles, we ride with immaculate sanity. We might abuse a substance here and there, but only when it's right. The final measure of any rider's skill is the inverse ratio of his preferred Traveling Speed to the number of bad scars on his body. It is that simple: If you ride fast and crash, you are a bad rider. And if you are a bad rider, you should not ride motorcycles.

The emergence of the superbike has heightened this equation drastically. Motorcycle technology has made such a great leap forward. Take the Ducati. You want optimum cruising speed on this bugger? Try 90mph in fifth at 5500 rpm - and just then, you see a bull moose in the middle of the road. WHACKO. Meet the Sausage Creature.

Or maybe not: The Ducati 900 is so finely engineered and balanced and torqued that you *can* do 90 mph in fifth through a 35-mph zone and get away with it. The bike is not just fast - it is *extremely* quick and responsive, and it *will* do amazing things... It is like riding a Vincent Black Shadow, which would outrun an F-86 jet fighter on the take-off runway, but at the end, the F-86 would go airborne and the Vincent would not, and there was no point in trying to turn it. WHAMO! The Sausage Creature strikes again.

There is a fundamental difference, however, between the old Vincents and the new breed of superbikes. If you rode the Black Shadow at top speed for any length of time, you would almost certainly die. That is why there are not many life members of the Vincent Black Shadow Society. The Vincent was like a bullet that went straight; the Ducati is like the magic bullet in Dallas that went sideways and hit JFK and the Governor of Texas at the same time.

It was impossible. But so was my terrifying sideways leap across the railroad tracks on the 900sp. The bike did it easily with the grace of a fleeing tomcat. The landing was so easy I remember thinking, goddamnit, if I had screwed it on a little more I could have gone a lot farther.

Maybe this is the new Cafe Racer macho. My bike is so much faster than yours that I dare you to ride it, you lame little turd. Do you have the balls to ride this BOTTOMLESS PIT OF TORQUE?

That is the attitude of the new-age superbike freak, and I am one of them. On some days they are about the most fun you can have with your clothes on. The Vincent just killed you a lot faster than a superbike will. A fool couldn't ride the Vincent Black Shadow more than once, but a fool can ride a Ducati 900 many times, and it will always be a bloodcurdling kind of fun. That is the Curse of Speed which has plagued me all my life. I am a slave to it. On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME."
Cheers,
John