Mad John Rusty. Lives in Hamilton. John rides a Suzuki VX800 and also a Suzuki GSX400. Both of these motorcycles have done the Grand Challenge with John as the rider. At time of writing he has completed 10 Grand Challenge events - thats 10,000 miles in 240 hours. John makes his Rusty mark in many ways besides the events he takes part in and works on, he has been our computer wizz for years - keeping our systems up & running. He spent countless hours in keeping sometimes out of date machinery functioning, along with migrating our programs & data forward to a modern environment. With the Rusty computer system modernisation now finished, John has had less to do. "
Something we suspect he's really pleased about, at least it gives him time to get more riding in.
As to the "Mad" in Mad John Rusty - this label was attached by Lee and Bob Rusty because of Johns predilection for doing the 7th, 8th & 9th GCs totally solo, not to mention doing the Challenge & a half ride as well.
One of the membership priveleges, is that any Rusty who's involved in the actual running of a given GC either at base or checkpoint are eligible to do that year's route within a calendar year, ie before next year's GC. Start/finish times are recorded and petrol reciepts are used as checkpoint verification.
The Grand Challenge is hard to do at the best of times - it much harder to do alone.
John's most hard-out year was 2000 when he did the 1999 GC route on the weekend that daylight saving cut in (thereby only having 23 hours instead of 24), then doing the 2000 GC route on the 28th December 2000 with the first half of it being in absolutely torrential rain, followed by the True Millenium ride (Cape Egmont to East Cape) just two days later.
The "Mad" is bestowed in the nicest possible way. It is an honourable title earned with staunchness of spirit.