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Dedicated to Keeping New Zealand Cleaner and Greener!
Bush Ride with Tony
October 2007 I was riding my bike to get some lunch, and I spotted a bike the same as mine being riden down the motorway.
I flagged down the rider, and met a really nice guy called Tony. Giving him my number, I said anytime he'd like to go for a ride, to give me a call.
Well, yesterday he called, and since the weather looked good, I decided to take him through a track in the forest, an easy first off-road ride for Tony. Or so I thought!
Trouble is, that it's the end of winter, and besides four months of rain, there'd been heaps of four wheel drive vehicles through the track, turning it literally to a swamp!
Tony did really well. At one stage we stopped for a breather, and got talking.
What I didn't know, is that Tony had triple bypass heart surgery four years ago, and at that stage decided life was too short to waste, and he needed to appreciate life and do all the things he'd never done before - including buying and riding a motorbike!
Then Tony told me that he's 71 years old!
He may have fallen off heaps of times, but he finished the track, and that's a darn more than men half his age are prepared to even attempt!
It is physically exhausting on a ride like this. We literally had no traction or steering!
In my books, that makes him a real hero!
