Graham, No, the annual registration for bikes with over 500 cc’s is still over $500/year here.
Best way I found to cope was to just register one of my two babies and to switch the plates and restoration information back and forth each week when I changed to the other bike. It works because my two CB700SC’s are an ’85 and an ’86 and they look look nearly identical to the casual observer. A month ago, a buddy of mine from Texas came down and he and I and a Kiwi friend, Roy, all did a tour of the South Island. We were out for eight days and seven nights. And luck was with us as the weather held for us the entire time. We did Christchurch > Oamaru > Dunedin > Invercargill > Queenstown > Haast > Hokitika > Arthur’s Pass > Christchurch. What a lot of fun that was. Having a Kiwi, Roy, along was a good thing. He knew many of the backroads. There was a lot of beer drunk and stories told on that trip. But, I learned something about myself on that ride. About four or five days in, when we were going through mountain curves one after the other at high speed, I started to realize that I had a small sense of doubt nibbling away in the back of my mind. Nothing went wrong and no mistakes were made. But as I laid over into each additional curve, I found myself thinking, “One more time and I’ve done it right again and no one else has done anything stupid….”. I’ve spent most of my adult life on motorcycles and I’ve only ever dropped a bike on the road once. And that was after hitting a oil slick going around a corner in town all the way back when I was in University in the 1970’s. I realized that I’ve had a very long run of doing it right and being lucky as well. The little voice was making me wonder if it was time to say enough. So, I thought about that for the rest of the trip and near the end, I decided that that’s what I was going to do. So, on the last night over a beer, in Bealey Hotel just easy of Arthur’s Pass, I told my buddies that I was hanging it up. No more high-speed mountainous runs for me - this was the last one. I was going to sell one of my two 700SC beauties and keep the other one for around the city and I was going to buy a sports car and settle into a new reality. Some years back, I had to give up running and racquetball out of consideration for my knees. So, now it was, for me, the time to do the next age-appropriate thing. I know a lot of the riders on this list are getting older like me. I’m 68 now. So, maybe some of them can relate to my story. Cheers, from New Zealand, Dennis > On Apr 2, 2016, at 7:53 AM, Graham Rogers <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hey Dennis, good to hear from you again. I hear Chch is making a good > comeback. Im still riding my 700S as well. Have you been able to lower the > cost of registration? Graham > > On Friday, April 1, 2016, Dennis Gallagher <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > Hello all, > > Dennis here down in Christchurch, New Zealand. I was last active here about > two years ago. I'be been traveling a lot so a lot of extra E-Mail was too > much but I'm back and settled in again. > > I've still got my two CB700SC's; and '85 and an '86. Both still running > strong. > > Just wanted to check in and say, "Hello". I'll be following along now again. > > Cheers, from way down south, > > Dennis Gallagher > Christchurch, New Zealand > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Nighthawk Motorcycle Lovers!" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','nighthawk_lovers%[email protected]');>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers > <https://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Nighthawk Motorcycle Lovers!" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers > <https://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Nighthawk Motorcycle Lovers!" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
