OK to bicycle nude . . . but wear a helmet!

Nude Kiwi cyclists warned over helmets

• Tamara McLean
• From: AAP
• December 23, 2009 11:23AM

CYCLING starkers might be okay in New Zealand - but just make sure the cops don't catch you without a helmet.

Two Kiwi men wearing nothing but their birthday suits have been issued with a warning for riding without protective head gear on a jaunt around a sleepy New Zealand seaside town.

Senior Constable Cathy Duder was patrolling Whangamata, a beach resort in the North Island, on a quiet Monday night when she came across the two nude men, both in their early 20s.

"They were more shocked than I was, trying to cover up their bits and pieces with their hands," Senior Constable Duder told AAP.

When asked for an explanation, the pair replied that "they wanted to experience total freedom".

"And I said to them 'the way you're heading, you're going to experience total confinement'," the officer said, laughing.

She said the men appeared decidedly sober.

"They didn't seem drunk at all. That's what worried me," she joked.

Senior Constable Duder issued them with a stern warning for not wearing helmets and then sent them directly home.

"I suggested that they stay on their bicycles and not get off because they were managing to discretely hide their bits and pieces," she said of the men she described as "very fit".

When delivering the helmet warning, she said, she couldn't help but be reminded of a deadpan joke that recently catapaulted another Kiwi cop into internet super-stardom. Auckland police dog handler Guy Baldwin was captured on camera interviewing a shifty late-night carjacker who claimed he was merely out to buy a meat pie at the local servo.

Baldwin's replied: "Three o'clock in the morning, that pie has probably been in the warming drawer for about 12 hours.

It will be thermo-nuclear - always blow on the pie. Safer communities together," he said, using the long-standing New Zealand Police slogan.

The joke was sadly lost on the young offender, but not others, it seems. The clip has been viewed more than 600,000 times and the phrase "Always blow on the pie" has given rise to rap songs, music re-mixes, a South Park-style homage and a T-shirt range.