From Commercial Fisherman to MAGNZ Lead Marshal: Skip's Story

Pete: 00:00:13

Are you frustrated by the constantly rising cost of motorcycle registration here in New Zealand? If you're nodding your head right now, you're not alone. I'm Pete and this is Keep It Twisted, the new podcast from magnz.

I'll start with a massive thank you to everyone who tuned into episode one with Richard and Ant, especially those who left feedback or gave a thumbs up on the Mag NZ Facebook page. One of the questions we saw was, when's the next episode coming out?

Well, we've already lined up the first five episodes and we'll be dropping a new one every Wednesday.

For this week's episode, I'm joined by Skip, a commercial fisherman, passionate rider and the guy who stepped up as the lead marshal for our protest ride to the Christchurch High Court in June.

It's a short episode, just 15 minutes, but we'll hear Skip talk about his motorcycle, his journey into riding, how rising ACC levies are affecting everyday riders like him, and why motorcycles are so much more than just a means of transport. I caught up with Skip on a chilly night in his garage in Christchurch, right next to his beautiful bike.

Pete: 00:01:15

I'm here today with Skip, who I met about a month ago at the Christchurch protest ride. And we're in his garage and there's a huge great big Harley Davison in front of me. So I think, Skip, perhaps the first thing we do is start the bike.

Skip, you best tell us about your bike.

Skip: 00:01:39

This is my night ride, bro. My pride and joy. 10 Year anniversary. Harley Davidson is my baby.

Pete: 00:01:47

Is that stock standard?

Skip: 00:01:48

She's a bit custom, mates these custom tins. The rear end's been shifted out. I've got a 300 wide back tyre on that.

Pete: 00:01:55

Pretty wide yet.

Skip: 00:01:56

Yeah. Half the rubber plantations on that tyre, man. The air rides on there. I can adjust that air ride on the suspension? Yeah, on the suspension.

Got a dan Moto 2 into 1 exhaust, an aftermarket airflow filter under there. And just last week I'd had it on the dyno. What's it kicking out and started at 104 And finished at 120 horsepower. It goes real good.

Pete: 00:02:18

Listeners won't be able to see that, but what would you describe that as? It's a Harley Davidson but not a road Harley, is it?

Skip: 00:02:24

It's a V rod, mate.

Pete: 00:02:25

A V rod?

Skip: 00:02:25

Yeah. It depends who you talk to. There's a lot of controversy over the V rods of Porsche. Have a little bit to do with the making of the bike.

Pete: 00:02:32

Do they?

Skip: 00:02:33

Yeah, to my understanding, it was there two engineers, an engineer from Porsche and An engineer from Harley and they both sat down and created the engine and then Harley built the bike.

Pete: 00:02:43

And there's a lot of decoration in there. There's a lot of really fine artwork.

Skip: 00:02:47

Yeah, see, it's cool way.

Pete: 00:02:49

Have you had that done in Christchurch, man?

Skip: 00:02:51

I'm just a lucky recipient of it.

A guy was selling it, man, and he was offering a certain amount of money and I was out fishing at the time at Chatham Orlands when I seen it advertised. So I rang him out there and pretty much said, dude, if you'd hold me that bike, I'll pay you what you're asking for.

The catch is I won't be back from fishing for two weeks. Then after yarning to him for a bit, he was pretty keen to let me have his bike.

Pete: 00:03:12

So it's a beautiful looking thing and I shouldn't think there's too many of those in New Zealand.

Skip: 00:03:17

Ah, no, there's a lot of V rods.

But to me, I just had a list of what sort of bike I wanted as far as a V rod, you know, I wanted a white one, I wanted custom paint, I wanted drag bars, I wanted an E ride and I wanted 300 wide.

Pete: 00:03:29

Tyre sums you up.

Skip: 00:03:30

Yeah, pretty much. And when that come up online, I just went, there's my bike.

Pete: 00:03:34

I met you at the Christchurch High Court at the protest ride there. It's the first time I'd met you and you were the lead marshal.

And I have to say I thought you did a really solid job at pulling together all of the people who had turned up and at giving really clear instructions so that everybody knew exactly how to behave on the ride and where to park and how to handle themselves at the courthouse. And I guess you don't see that level of comfortable, confident leadership very often.

Skip: 00:04:01

Oh, cheers, mate. I have led teams before in my past.

Yeah, I guess I wasn't the best leader in the beginning there, but I used to work for a corporate company, dairy farming there in the beginning it was kind of a bit rough on my crew and I ended up going through a lot of 2ics, the company I worked for, they sort of got a hold of me as I was going through too many people and put me through a leadership course. So I believe that that's where I developed those core skills into running teams.

Pete: 00:04:28

So a bit of self reflection through the leadership course.

Skip: 00:04:30

Yeah, yeah, I was definitely grateful for that because I was sort of heading down to get myself in a lot of trouble of how I was treating people. I'm a fisherman by trade. Mate, I'm a commercial fisherman, so I get a lot of crew that come out here.

So I understand when I need people to be somewhere.

I can deliver that message in such a way where I can get my message across without being too difficult in the way I deliver my message and how I need things done. When we're out fishing, sometimes I can give them the freedom to sort of speak and move, but sometimes I just can't.

Pete: 00:05:00

Were you fishing before you went dairy farming and you've come back to it?

Skip: 00:05:03

I always sort of grew up as a fisherman. My grandfather was a fisherman. My old man was a fisherman. My uncle's a fisherman.

Pete: 00:05:10

And what about motorbikes and skip? How have you got into bikes?

Skip: 00:05:13

Bikes? Well, don't quote me on how old I was, but I was sort of a young fella, maybe around 12ish, I guess. My grandfather, he brought me a quad bike.

To me that was just the best thing that ever happened. 12 Years old on this quad bike. Hey, none of them was banging around on that.

But I soon worked out if I turn my bike on a certain angle, I could get this thing up on two wheels. Well, that just put the shits up the old man. And he was just like, we gotta get rid of this four wheel thing and buy him two wheels.

And then my first bike as a two wheel bike was an XR110, the old Honda farm bike. No, it was a trail bike. Well, I banged around on that for a bit. That's where it all began.

Pete: 00:05:53

And then what have you ridden as a grown man?

Skip: 00:05:55

I've had two bikes. My first one was a ZXR Kawasaki Ninja. Yeah, that was the 600. It was a fast bike. Yeah, it was a sports bike.

Hey, and reason why I wanted a sports bike, bro, do you remember Vanilla Ice? Yeah, when those Vanilla Ice, I seen them on tv, brought their sports bikes. I was like, mate, that's me, bro.

Pete: 00:06:18

I thought you were going to say something like Top Gun and you'd see Tom Cruise on the old Ninja.

Skip: 00:06:23

That's where the old sports bike come from, man. So I banged around on that for a bit, bro.

And then me and my partner at the time, we had kids and it was decided that it was a wee bit too fast or maybe I wasn't paying attention to the speed limit too much actually, and it was time to give it up. So I jumped off the bike for about 10 years. And then as time got on, I was sort of like, mate, I just really want to get back on a bike.

But I didn't want another sports bike. I just wanted a cruiser. So, yeah, the old Harley Davison was the flavour for me.

Pete: 00:06:52

How did you get involved with Mags and Skip?

Skip: 00:06:54

I can't remember when I first become a member of Mags, and that was just a Facebook post of Richard when he started talking about the ACC levies and whatnot. And I went, oh, man, this is definitely a group I want to follow. And then I met up with them. They done.

They'd done a VTNZ run where they delivered a letter at vtnz. So I jumped on that run, me and a few of the boys, we cruised down and we jumped on that run there.

Pete: 00:07:18

Yeah, Was that one Saturday morning?

Skip: 00:07:20

Yeah.

Pete: 00:07:20

Yes. Yeah, I saw the post.

Skip: 00:07:22

Yeah, there was a good turnout. There was. There was a few bikes on that.

Pete: 00:07:25

One and they chose V10Z because they're a licensing agent.

Skip: 00:07:28

Yeah, I guess so, yeah, sort of. We turned up there and dj, he read out a letter to them and we sort of took off from there.

So that was my first sort of official dealing with them as. As far as rallies go. And then I caught their last post for that High Court in Christchurch.

While I was sort of going through the post, I spotted ants and he'd reached out for some marshals, so, yeah, I'll be happy to help you out, mate. So I messaged him, just sort of introduced myself and just said, yeah, man, if you need help, I'm more than happy to help out in any way I can.

And he replied and we spoke to him and from there he sort of put me in charge of the marshalling team. And then we just sort of figured out the route to take and who are the volunteers that were sort of keen to help us out on the day.

And then I was just going to meet up with them and come up with a plan and execute it.

Pete: 00:08:18

My overwhelming memory. I was tailoring Charlie.

So I was the last bike in at the court and I remember you standing on the side of the road in your high vis and you gave me a big finger and then you pointed to your right and it was very clear that I was going to park there. And I just thought, this fella's on it, he's really organized, he knows exactly what's happening. There's no messing around, no room for confusion.

Skip: 00:08:37

I guess what I wanted to do was I had to keep the stairs up to the courthouse itself clear because we actually had quite a lot of room on the footpath, but the road itself was quite limited. So we decided and got permission, parked the bikes on the footpath.

And I wanted to place the bikes in a certain position to allow that freedom for the public to go up to the courthouse and walk past if need be. So I figured out, man, the best way to do it is I've got one of the marshals to help me.

And as the bikes come rolling down, I was just like, this is where you guys have got to be, mate. And everybody just sort of slotted into place.

Pete: 00:09:12

The other benefit of that was when it was time to leave, nobody had to do a U turn or struggle turning around to get out. It was just a very straightforward pull forward and off the pavement, and away we go.

Skip: 00:09:23

Yeah, that's what I was hoping for, mate. I still want to make it messy, and I didn't want any problems.

I just wanted people to pull up on their bikes, step off their bikes, and when it was time to go, step on our bikes and ride off.

Pete: 00:09:34

That came together within less than 40 hours, and it was cool to see people who hadn't met before working together. No egos, nobody being the big I am. It was just a very good collaborative approach. It was an enjoyable day.

As I said in the first episode, it was the best day on a bike I've had in a long time. When we think a bit wider than that first event, we think about the mag campaign and the ACC levy increases.

I'm keen in the podcast to explore the impact that that's having on people who ride on a regular basis, whether they're daily commuters or weekend riders. I wonder if you thought about the impact that that levy might have had on you and your riding habits.

Skip: 00:10:14

Money's tight, bro. It's a lot of money that they're asking, what is it now? Just over 800 bucks. Yeah.

So, man, for me, yeah, I put my bike on hold, and then I just rode dark for a while. I toyed with that idea just to do it for as long as I could, because the penalty was a lot cheaper than actually paying for the rego.

So I thought I could get four fines and stall, you know, winning.

But then in saying that, I kind of felt like I didn't want to break the law as far as riding dark all the time, because I got a few bros that were doing the same thing, and I thought, well, this ain't really cool, guys. We can't really be setting this example. So, yeah, I just sort of dug deep and got the money, because I ride my bike every day. I can.

If it's not raining, I'm on my bike.

Pete: 00:11:04

I saw you were out over the weekend from Matariki with the crew?

Skip: 00:11:07

Yeah, Yep, yep. I've done a run, a Matariki run with the Red Rum boys here in Christchurch. Red Rum Aotearoa.

We met over there at Brighton Pier and just on daybreak, one of the Kaumatau within the group there, sort of Dana Karakea.

And then, yeah, we jumped on our bikes and rode into town and then from there we went back to another location where we sat down there and had a yarn and we had a hangi, had a feed together and we all went on our way. So it was a beautiful day.

Pete: 00:11:34

So riding the bike isn't something you do on the side. It's a fundamental part of you as a man. It's who you are.

Skip: 00:11:40

It's just an extension of me. Like what you see is me. Yeah. I ride my bike as much as I can. I love riding my bike. I like riding by myself. I like riding with a couple of people.

I love riding in a pack. Yeah, you name it, man, I love it.

Pete: 00:11:54

I typically ride on my own. I've normally got my wife on back as a pillion. I've done a few club rides and I prefer riding on my own.

Skip: 00:12:06

You don't have a pillion. I don't have a pillion. Seat made in mobile.

Pete: 00:12:09

I suppose some of it is you've really got to be on your mettle when you ride in a group because you're never quite sure how other people are going to ride.

Skip: 00:12:16

Yeah, yeah, you do. Yep.

Pete: 00:12:17

And you see a swarm of bikes will catch up with you and they'll come past you and the first two will go past and there's a nice safe overtake. And then 3 and 4 will come by and there's a closing gap because there's oncoming camper vans.

And then 6 and 7 and 8 and 9 come past and you're thinking, far out, fellas. Yeah, yeah.

Skip: 00:12:35

Here's what I don't understand. Hutching. So acc, they've categorized your bike into CC ratings. So the higher the CC rating, the more you got to pay in registration costs.

That Ninja I had, man, that had 280k on the clock, man, And I tuned that bike to do all of that. I was in my late teens, my early 20s. I hadn't had a lot of seat time on the road on a decent bike.

My V rods, that's a: 1250

I'm in my 40s or hours and hours, miles and miles and miles of seat time on the road. I consider myself today to be a hell of a lot more competent rider than when I was in my early 20s. Yeah. So who's more dangerous, bro?

Me today on my cruiser on a: 1250

Or I was like, does this make no sense to me? Like how help me understand this.

Pete: 00:13:45

You know, I appreciate the efforts you put in with MAGNZ helping get that protest ride underway and then finish safely. I think that a lot of people would say thank you for that.

Skip: 00:13:53

One last thing, Hutchie. I'd just like to give a shout out to Mark Chappell.

Thank you, Bro for everything you're doing for us riders and taking ACC to court, being that face in the courtroom for us, man. Thanks heaps.

And then I'd just like to chuck out a massive mana wave to Richard and Ants for sitting down that day and having a whiskey and coming up with this platform of magnz mate there. Without you guys, this probably wouldn't be. Wouldn't be a thing. So you really appreciate everything. Cheers, guys.

Pete: 00:14:25

That was my chat with Skip, Commercial fisherman V Rodder and a very capable leader.

Skip mentioned how massive ACC Levy hikes have pushed him and plenty of other good responsible riders to seriously consider riding dark to stay on the road.

When government policy makes it so expensive that everyday Kiwis are forced to choose between breaking the law or giving up their bike, something has gone badly wrong. Wrong. No one should be put in that position. These levies aren't just numbers.

They're pricing people out of something that's often their main form of transport, their passion and for many part of who they are. That's exactly why MAGNZ is pushing back hard and supporting the fight in the High Court. We shouldn't have to break the law to stay on two wheels.

If this resonates with you, visit magnz.orgnz to join the fight against rising levies and stand up for riders rights across New Zealand. While you're there, check out our Give a Little page and the merch shop.

We've got T shirts, hoodies and much more in a range of colours, all featuring the MAG NZ Rego Freeze or Keep it Twisted logos. Every dollar we raise will support the legal fight and help us keep the pressure on.

If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to follow Keep It Twisted in youn Podcast App so you get the next episode delivered straight to your device. And you won't want to miss that one. It's an interview with Mark Chappell, the lead claimant in the High Court action against Accident.

We'd also love to hear what you think of the show. If you have a moment, please drop your thoughts, questions or suggestions on the magnz Facebook page.

Alternatively, leave a positive review in your podcast app. Massive. Thanks again to Skip for inviting me around and sharing his story.

Ride safe and I'll catch up with you next week for episode three with Mark Chappell. Until then, stands up, visors down and keep it twisted.

Skip: 00:16:08

We're not gonna pay it and no we ain't gonna it we're not gonna play it anymore.