Every Man Needs a Dog

Every man needs a dog. Not for nothing has Canis domesticus been referred to as man's best friend. At least I know that no dog will ever stoop as low as the Reader from Mt Rascel who has threatened me with publication of a photo. The picture in question apparently shows me in rather pathetic form following a valiant attempt to stay away from a large chasing bunch in a tour a few years ago.

As any of you know, this simply can't be true.

Unfortunately my dog has nothing to say in this matter.

I'm missing a naturist

On Sunday, Junior and I set out for a very wet ride through the Waitaks. Apart from the spectacle I am about to mention, the murky conditions, the pain of Mountain Road and the general sense of smugness that comes from riding in foul weather, there was little of note. The spectacle we saw was an ostentation of peafowl. We had to slow and dodge a bevy that wandered across our path.

Later, much later, I was musing to myself about the other strange things I have witnessed from the saddle of my bike.

The north-western bike path is always good through the summer months to see tired individuals engaging in the walk of shame. Their legs jelly-like and their stride not so confident, best out on the town clothes and shoes really not up to the task of a 15 to 20 kilometre stroll home. One morning this year, a glorious morning, warm and just on sunrise we passed a chap propped up against the lamp post by the Patiki Road raceway. He was facing east, fast asleep and shortly he was due to get the full glare of a summer sun. I'd wager that his mouth would have felt like someone had poured silica gel in it by the time he woke. At least he would have woken with a view.

There is, etched indelibly in my memory, a facial expression from The Worm that I'd rather forget. Junior also had the misfortune to bear witness to this face. It appeared as The Worm tussled with getting a tyre back on a rim after a tube change. I don't want to describe it too vividly, but I will say that it looked like a mix between an eager school boy, a rutting dog and Rob Muldoon. Thankfully once he started pumping the tyre up it went away.

I've seen a huge variety of animals as part of my two wheeled rubber time, both domestic and wild. Have seen some rare native fauna, some introduced fauna that left me enraged and wanting a firearm ( Mustelidae family take a bow), have had a few near misses and frights with both large and small quadrapeds, but the single strangest sight came in the depths of a winter dawn.

Several years ago Warren King and I were riding in the Dairy Flat and Coatsville area, we had left in the pre-dawn dark and had just ridden past the dawn. We dropped down into the back of Coatsville through Sunnyside Road, which at that time of day is anything but sunny. Down the bottom is a narrow little glen with two one way bridges in quick succession. It's a rural area. Between the bridges we passed a couple out walking, each of them carrying on their arm a large Sulfur Crested Cockatoo. Suffice to say both of us were speechless. No one believed our story. As luck would have it about a year later, quite a bit later in the morning a group of us were out riding in the area and passed the same couple with their cockatoos. That served to dispel a few rumours as to Warren's sanity.

Unfortunately, while I have seen plenty of wildlife and a banjo playing chap at Matawai I am yet to see any female public nudity as part of my riding. If I post my riding plans, is there anyone who would care to assist?

Yours in anticipation.

Salacious gossip.

I have on very good authority that the man who is one of the best boutique bike manufacturers in the world has undergone gender reassignment. This news comes to me, not from the horse's mouth, but from a very good customer and man who lives in her, previously his, area.

More strange food stuffs, following on from my musings about Parker's ability to ingest an oil slick mid-ride and have a ride named after him, I remembered some other strange mid-ride food ingestions I have witnessed.

To preserve the dignity of others, the parties concerned will remain nameless.

A longish ride up around Helensville, and Mysterex pulls from his pocket a tinfoil package. Unwraps the contents, a piece of cooked steak and proceeds to wolf it down.

Mysterex Two, when riding from Te Kaha to Tokomaru Bay (173 kilometres of beauty) carried a bacon and egg toasted sandwich from Te Araroa to Tokomaru Bay on a warm summer day, a distance of approximately 80 kilometres. 5 kilometres from the days end, there was a stoppage in the bunch due to a minor mechanical mishap, and Mysterex Two pulls his brown paper bag from his back pocket and eats solidly. Here he is pictured mid ingestion of said greasy, well-travelled thing.


Then there is this man - does he have a problem? Enough has been said elsewhere about this picture, but suffice to say, that he was generous with his scotch and I'd happily partake again.

Paycheck equals plus 15

This man is pure

Reclaiming the BCL

Recently I learnt that the term BCL is in far greater parlance than I thought. The BCL is a looping ride through the foothills of the Waitakere Ranges. What surprised me was how widely the BCL is known, how few know what BCL actually stands for, who invented the loop and where the name came from. It's also been appropriated by others and claimed as their own. I love the loop, want more people to go and ride it, get out of the traffic and ride some decent roads, but I also want to restore it's murky origin and give credit to one of the sports' more foolish men.

The loop is a thing of beauty, it has all the right attributes for a good ride, scenery, quiet roads, easy access and bail-out points, shelter, a mix of terrain and most importantly an excellent cafe in the form of The Hardware Cafe at Titirangi. It's generally around two to two and a half hours (excluding coffee stops). The official loop has four climbs. Starting from the Swanson end they are Christian Road, Coulter Road, Parrs Cross/Forest Hill Road and Carter Road. It also has the knuckle whitening plunge down Godley Road and the sprint for the crossing at Green Bay. So, time for the history lesson.
I invented the loop. Yeah, sure someone else had probably strung the roads together in that particular sequence before I did and probably has since I did, but that's semantics . I first starting riding it soon after the roads were first sealed and then started dragging, and being dragged by, others over it.
Enter early winter a sometime a while ago. A group of us set out on this loop. I know that present that day with me were Steve Parker, Chris Tennent-Brown, Peter Ulmer, Garry Ulmer, Wayne Mason and Pete Bruggeman. A diverse bunch. I seem to remember Eric McKenzie being in attendance, but he disavows it.

The ride went well, with the usual banter and bluster, we stopped at Titirangi for a coffee, but The Hardware Cafe was full. So, we went across the road to the unfortunately named, and now deceased, Long Drop Cafe. There, the strange and slightly rude, Austrian/German owner gave us a lukewarm welcome.
For some less than fathomable reason CTB and I both ordered a glass of champagne (ok, not true champagne, but something wet and cold served in a flute glass with alcohol and bubbles). The others ordered standard coffee stop fare, scones, muffins, etc, except for Steve Parker.

Steve ordered what is argueably the strangest, least desirable mid-ride meal I have ever witnessed - Butter Chicken. What came out was a bowl of rice with the usual red coloured curry, floating, no, swimming in oil. It looked more like oil soup, like the Exxon Valdez had run aground on the rice. He devoured it.
After a few minutes rest we rode on, took the Godley Road plunge, contested the Green Bay sprint and wobbled home, all the time waiting for Mr Parker to explode. Overall a satisfying morning in the saddle.

Over the wires the following week there was much laughter at Mr Parker's food choice and comment that we must ride that loop again. Someone called it the Butter Chicken loop. Soon that was shortened to the BCL. That is how it came to be.

Any questions?

Roads I Love!

Here we are blessed with a huge variety of roads, pancake flat, lumpy, long steady hills, scenic, hard pinches to grunt over, walls to chew handlebars on and a few soul testing climbs that inspire respect always. It's easy to complain that we don't have the Alpine passes of Europe, the lung searing climbs of the USA, the bergs and cobbles of Northern Europe. What we do have is variety. I could think of nothing worse than riding day in and day out in the American mid-west, endless flat, windswept roads.

The hard thing about riding here is to decide where to ride. It's easy to fall into a rut and ride the same roads all the time. You ride them because it's easy, convenient, safe (those aren't mutually inclusive terms by the way), but it doesn't have to be that way.





Chris Tennent-Brown, as well as moonlighting as a Z grade celebrity, is an excellent urban pathfinder. He has a 1 hour loop, The Nutcracker Suite, that will make your knees tremble and your bike creak. This whole loop is within 4 kms of downtown Auckland, is safe to ride almost anytime of day and can't be ridden in the wet (Unless you want to risk a testicle/top tube interface). The climbs are mostly short, but intensely steep, greater than 20%, and there are several sections that require a modicum of confidence and bike handling ability.

As per my last post, I love unsealed roads, and while the Rodney District Council do their best to reduce the amount of this pleasure available to me, they are still about. They range from narrow, rough farm roads to smooth, wide forestry roads and they are all fun to ride.



Both north and south, there are hundreds of miles untrafficked rural roads, quiet and begging to be ridden, have a look at a map, plot out a route, take some cash, go and get lost, come home happy.

Neck on block time.

Okay, it's time for Le Tour. So, what's there to get excited about this year?
Lance coming back to his old stomping ground? Pretty big call from a man not used to being viewed as fallible. So far this season he seems to have had fun, broken a bone and ridden the Giro d'Italia for the first time in his career, not a bad return to the pro ranks.
Carlos going for the back to back? Meh. He might be a nice guy, he is Mr Consistant, but he just doesn't engage me either way.
Cadel going one step higher? I'd love to see an Antipodean on the top step, but can he? With his team? His form in the Dauphine was excellent and it was great to see some aggression, but I have some nagging doubts as to what he'll be like in July.
Alberto? He's got the pedigree, he's won before, all three Grand Tours, the Giro d'Italia, Le Tour de France and the Vuelta a Espana, his TT ability has improved, he's the real deal. BUT who is going to be top dog in Astana, Alberto or Lance? Or are we going to see another twin leader implosion like T-Mobile in 2005 with Vino and de Kaiser duking it out?
My pick - Dennis Menchov. The Russian won the Giro d'Italia with a very calculated and controlled ride, pouncing on the leader's jersey in the long time trial and then hanging onto the shadow of his only real threat Danilo DiLuca to ensure the top spot. Sure, he delivered a fair bit of blood-pounding excitment with his last stage final kilometre crash, but overall he was as cool as a cucumber. He has won the Giro, he's won the Vuelta a Espana, his team are focussed and on song, when he wins Le Tour he will be the only rider of the current generation to have won both the Giro and Le Tour in a single season (last time Marco Pantani 1998) and one of six riders to ever have won all three.
All of that aside, and unlike some previous years where the latter stages of le Tour which have been pretty much a procession for GC and opportunities for breakaway specialists, come the second to last day with it's defining climb up Mont Ventoux, there still won't be a clear winner for the overall tour until the finish line of that stage has been crossed.

Defy Evolution

Sometimes sealed roads aren’t enough for your road bike. Everyone who has followed cycling racing has witnessed the epic nature of the Spring Classics and Monuments of the sport. The cobbled climbs of Flanders, the trenches of northern France and the Strada Bianca of Italy, these all have produced epic wins, appalling weather, career defining crashes, the nearly men, the bike breaking battles and a spectacle that is unrivalled. For me, it was Andre Tchmil’s win at Roubaix in 1994, after a titanic struggle through mud, rain, crashes and cobbles that drove home the true nature of riding and racing.

In that spirit, and on a scale far more fitting to my mortal abilities, "Defy Evolution" I said, to all and sundry, "Come and join me of a roll around some great unsealed roads to the north of Auckland." And several committed.

I did try and encourage others to join. I cajoled them, by mentioning that non-attendance would, in the words of Fender from Robots, show that they were made of a rare element called Afraidium, it’s yellow and it tastes like chicken. Didn't really work. I threatened some, that didn't work. So just the faithful joined me (except for a couple of non attendees who had genuine, certified domestic Don't Ride Today orders)

We set off on the appointed date, a frosty morning, and thoroughly enjoyed 4 ½ hours of bone chilling temperatures, grand views, epic unsealed roads with no traffic and a sense of satisfaction that will take some shifting. No accidents, no incidents, no mud (damnit). Doris didn't crash as she thought she would, Doug regained his scarred memory from an earlier venture over similar roads, and we all came out smiling and wanting to go back for more.

Hell yes!

This is what it's all about.

Photo c/- Mike T.