The length of time between last post and this one is a reflection in the difficulty I have typing accurately with my left hand. Actually, my left-handed typing speed and accuracy is purely symptomatic of a variety of life's tasks that are slow and challenging for me, due to my inability to land a jump out of the bowl (saucer would be a better description) pictured above.
Pictured also is the offending cycle with the rider, who can jump and land things.
CTB disclosed his name for foolishness, it came from two people mishearing a comment of his, and stuck from there. The rules for the recipient are as follows:- They must crash by themselves and through their own ineptness. The name stays with them until they can find a suitable new recipient. The name that CTB came up with was The Evil Homo. This came about when he was riding with DB and Gael. He mentioned about descending like Il Falco from Como (Paolo Salvodelli, who was reknowned for his descending prowess), somehow the others misheard this and instead heard CTB announce that he was descending like an Evil Homo. Much laughter ensued.
Given some stiff competition a couple of weeks a go from Mikeal, Junior and Del Woodford, I was a little confident that my crash might not quite be the ultimate bicycle handling debarcle and that I may avoid the pain and ignominy of the title. On reflection I ranked as a deserved winner.
However I am saved, by quite some margin in fact. I'm fortunate that by the time I'm back on the road, the new owner of the title will be used to wearing it and will be looking to pass it on.
Last week, I endured Mikeal enquiring as to how I was coping using my non-dominant hand for lavatory purposes. I had to file a daily wipe report. On Friday night Doris came and took the Spawn of my Loins and myself in to the Auckland Domain to see the archival Anzac film footage being screened on the outside of the War Memorial Musuem. As we drove, she asked if I'd heard about Mikeal's accident with a Nifty Fifty. No, I replied, it was news to me.
What transpired is last Tuesday (the very week that he is giving me grief about showing off and being useless) Mikeal had a friend visit (would that be the two of them in the masturbatorium?), said friend had a Nifty Fifty. Mikeal jumped on this and made to ride up their cul de sac. The mighty 50cc engine was too much for him, and he wheelied it, lost control and then lost his dignity and a reasonable amount of skin of elbows, hips, and hands. All less than fifty metres from his front door. On a Nifty Fifty no less.
He kept this a secret, and I suspect that he was hoping his wounds would heal and he'd be able to avoid humiliation. Unfortunately, not so.
The honorific is all yours Mikeal, thanks for saving me.
As it turned out, last weekend was a weekend for the crashes.
The opening shot was from the Onanator himself, Mikeal, when he tangled with an errant steer in Totara Park, while MTBing. He claims there were two cattle beasts, and one went right, and anticipated the other to go left, but it defied him and went right also. Net result, Mikeal hit said beast, beast runs off, Mikeal has a lie-down sans some dermis from above his left knee. When I saw the wound on Sunday, it looked like an oversized and badly placed carpet burn, but that's just idle speculation.
Next up was my graceless grass/shoulder interaction.
Then on Sunday, Junior had a pretty heavy fall on a very greasy road near Taupaki. His helmet was wrecked in the crash, but his noggin and neck are fine. Apart from other bruising, his index finger isn't too flash and is now taped to his finger more commonly used for flicking the bird.
Del Woodford also crashed in the event he organised on Sunday. From what I understand, he also crashed without the aid of a fellow cyclist.
Del's crash is rumoured to have given CTB cause for thought, and he has come up with an award for the silliest or most inept crash. Once bestowed, it's the recipient's until someone else performs a greater act of stupidity. Apparently the name and story behind it are somewhat rude. It also looked like Del was set to grab the title, until CTB heard of my Saturday act. I'm claiming showmanship in my defence.
Additionally, I have been roundly mocked and laughed at, not without just cause I may add, but the mocking started within 30 minutes of the breakage, with a crack about it still being two weeks until opening weekend. (I'll explain that shortly) Then there was the assorted laughter of all and sundry. Add the daily humiliation on the walk to and from school from the assorted school mothers. Not to be missed was the use of me for Show and Tell by my progeny, his teacher being most amused. I'm certain now that in various households around the Balmoral area, I'm being held up as a cautionary tale.
Truth be told, I'm loving the attention, I just need to find a better way to attract it.
Now, back to the Opening Weekend remark. This came from a chap, who last year, broke his shoulder falling off a sofa on Opening Day of the duck shooting season. It just so happened that the sofa was in the back of a ute. The ute was driving down a gravel road, and he stood up to moon a local. The ute served and he was ejected roadwards. Skin loss and broken shoulder ensued. At least now, he can say, without a word of a lie, he did it falling off a sofa. I need to concoct a similar euphemism to cover my stupidity.
I'd been meaning to post a little missive describing the excellent Friday night I had last week courtesy of Doris and Mikeal, but that can wait until I'm a faster and more accurate one handed typist.
Today I'll write of my moment of stupidity and the outcome.
For the Prawn of my Loins birthday he got a new BMX bike, and very bright Haro Forum from the good chaps at Planet Cycles, and today he and I went for his first outing to a skatepark with it. Yesterday, he'd been most impressed to see Tristan, the best wheelbuilder in NZ, ride the birthday bike, manual, bunnyhop and otherwise perform tricks that I'm incapable of.
So back to today, we headed out to Shadbolt Park and it's little skatebowl. There the Kaos Kreator rode with aplomb. Jumping, bunyhopping, almost getting a manual off the coping and generally having a ball.
Time to finish, a lunch venue agreed on, and I had a brainfart. I rode to the top of the bowl, down flat out and jumped out the other side to land on the grass. My bike jumping skills are sub-par and my landing skills, even worse. the outcome was a shoulder first landing on the grass, I felt the crack and stood up and ran my left hand over my right collarbone. It wasn't the nice smooth thing it should be, instead the skin was tented by something a bit sharp and irregular.
A trip to A&E, a couple of x-rays and a small chat where I described me being a dick has resulted in a sling, some good pain relief and an appointment in a fortnight with an orthopaedic surgeon.
The weekend that has just passed contained brilliant Autumnal weather and superb riding. I stacked in the miles and am starting to feel that I may be a cyclist again.
Saturday's ride with Warren and Serge was unbeatable. The route was varied (and at Serge's insistence we saved ourselves from State Highway 16). The first part of the ride was entirely on very quiet country back roads, no traffic and a glorious, windless day. The picture below tells the story.
One of the odder sights of the day was The Grim Reaper. This fellow was found in the middle of nowhere, and cuts quite an impressive figure in the rural environs.
We even managed to ride some metal roads in honour of the Queen of the Classics. For a change Serge was quite happy about the experience. The two kilometres of metal being in very good condition and passed quickly. Here's one exiting the metal.
And the other.
The reward for the metal road was this view, the Tasman Sea stretching out bluely. Please excuse the crooked horizon, was taken while riding. Note to The Crocodile:- When you and I rode this road last year, we encountered thick fog here, and all the way along the top of this ridge/cliff. You were unbelieving as to how close the sea was, or that we were even close to the ocean. Later you looked at maps and saw where we were. But, at last, I get to show you the view. Sunday dawned the same, so I took the mutt to the dog park. The upper half of the North Island is suffering a drought, and here is reasonable evidence of this. Normally this face of Big King is green and lush, here it's anything but. There is also a very happy dog in this photo.
Later I entertained myself by riding Scenic Drive in absolutely unbeatable conditions.
I did, however, make a fundamentally stupid decision and decided to ride up Duffy Road after I been over the top, and climbed up out of Bethalls. The 26% grade ripped my legs from me, and I whimpered. It took quite some time to regain any sort of pedalling composure.
Lastly, here's a piece of very shakey phone camera video work showing the hidden delight that is Chamberlains Road.
I stuffing the miles, like a greedy man. I have had Easter and racked up some good training then, now the tribe is tiki-touring around the North Island, infesting BMX tracks and skate parks, so I'm domiciled in the domestic abode, with merely myself and my mongrel for company, and I'm capitalising on this chance, the good weather and current mental fortitude in tracking down my missing fitness.
This cold snap, sure it's clear skies, but it's still unpleasantly cold compared to what we are used to, has come suddenly, and the darker recesses of the cycling wardrobe are being plumbed. Hell, I'm not ready for thermal 3/4s, full finger gloves and cold tootsies.
Easter, that great holiday and celebration that, for us in the southern hemisphere, signals the descent into Fall, and the loss of daylight, colder temperatures and knee warmers. This year, Easter was magnificent in the weather stakes. Windless, with warm days and mild nights, not a whimper from me can be heard.
I knocked out some good miles on the bike, stringing together rides over the four days. My goal is to return to being the man I was in Summer before having a lie down in a crit, wedding festivities, moving house and some other assorted stupidity ripped all fitness from me.
On Saturday I took my son, all 7 years and 51 weeks of him, and the dog up to Woodhill to meet Warren and his dog. Junior also had his loinfruit there with another school dad and more offspring, they arrived after us, and did their own thing. My Village Idiot thought he was king of the world, riding with two men and two dogs, it was great. After Lulu, my dog, had ingested various picnic leftovers around the carpark we finally got going.
Warren, the dogs, the Kaos Kreator and I rolled around various trails, I was shown how grossly inadequate my technical riding skills are on rails, my son riding things with ease. Eventually we saw Junior and co at the start of the Cookie Trail, there the assorted midgets had a bit of a conflab and compared notes, then the two parties went their respective ways.
Of our party, I can report that we had a ball, but I did break Lulu, the dog, a little. By the end she was just trotting, well to the rear and taking any shortcuts available, obviously her pre-ride carpark nutrition wasn't sufficient. She did arrive home, thoroughly exhausted, but very happy. Meanwhile Charlie, Warren's pooch, was still spritely at the end, she is a ball of energy and a delight to be round.
Tonight I carried on racking up the miles. With the aid of a decent light I tackled some of the Waitaks. It was glorious, quiet, dark roads, a mild night and sometime glimpses of distant city lights. The only thing truly missing, because I was a bit later and I also normally ride these roads in the pre-dawn, were the assorted walkers, dogs and runners who almost always say "Gidday". At various points I felt like the world was asleep.
