Winter Solstice Ride

Not long now, and the sun will start to climb a little higher in the sky in it's daily arc, and our days will start to lengthen. We still face the coldest month, July, but that knowledge can be tempered with the increasing day length and the lurking Spring.

To that end, it's time to celebrate the Winter Solstice and Matariki. Recent discussions with CTB and I have led to the following plan.

Meet Potters Park (Corner Balmoral and Dominion Roads) at 06:00 hours, on Saturday 25th June.
From there we will traverse the bikepath west and end up taking in the sheer hell that I described in my last post, the goal is to be on Scenic Drive to see, and toast, the sunrise.

We will follow that with a roll back and a civilised coffee.

The Randomator

On Saturday I took CTB west, no, not in a Pet Shop Boys type way, this was into the Western Marches to reveal to him some of the delights of new paths and territory that I have discovered of late. We noodled about and had a great ride.

I suspect that there will be a Summer Solstice ride in that area soon, and that there will be new cuss words and descriptive phrases coined on that particular day. I'd love to illuminate you all more with my first failure of the weekend, but that would give the game away, so will save it until after some others have experienced the monster that lurks out there.

My second failure of the weekend, now that was a true nightmare, and I have revisited the moment several times, and each time it has the same result.

On Sunday a couple of us headed out to chase Kingfish. It was a glorious day, and there was an abundance of fauna to observe. The kingies were about, but frustrating in their lack of appetite. We were serving up live Jack Mackerel, which were generally ignored. One did receive the rasp treatment from a king, several others were stolen with no hooking of the yellow tailed thieves.

A session with soft baits did bring in the only fish of the day, a glorious 70 cm snapper, caught by the skipper, Mr Ulmer. An utter monster of a fish, he was beautiful.

Then, while drifting some more live baits, my live bait was struck and the reel screamed. I leapt up and grabbed the rod from the holder. What happened next, entirely my own fault, was the stuff of noviceville and deserving of full mockery. I, in my haste, turned the clicker off and struck the fish hard. What I failed to do was engage the reel in gear. The reel spun rapidly, and in the blink of an eye was a mess of bird's nested monofilament.

Two of us struggled for what seemed to be an eternity, but was probably all of ten seconds, with the bird's nest, trying to get the reel working. Then the fish felt the hook and started accelerating. All I could do then was hang on, as the rod bent over, the line tightened and then snapped. What followed was silence from the skipper and a torrent of foul language from me.

While I ranted for a bit, then sulked with the rod and reel, the skipper looked at me with a mixture of disdain, amusement and pity, all well deserved. After a long time, I calmed, readied the gear for action again, and returned to the fray, but the quarry was long gone.

It was the one that got away. Next time...

Te Ako o te Tui

Right, what have I been doing? Somewhere my life has taken a lurch to the left. As a consequence posting to this organ has been tardy and erratic by any standards.

The windtrainer still greets me disdainfully. However the moment of freedom from the garage is not far off, and I can barely wait. My clavicle is healing well, but I've been given strict instructions by medical staff not to leave home without the sling. I'm being boring, but good.

At CTB's fortieth birthday festivities on Saturday my Minion demonstrated great skill and luck to win a pocketful of gold and admiration in the Paper, Scissors, Rock competition. It was great to see him get his game face on and keep his composure under pressure.

On that note, a happy birthday to you, CTB, you're almost at the halfway point.

Careless dogs

I'm torn at this time of year, as always. There's the want to hold onto a rapidly slipping Summer, tempered by the fact that Autumn brings some glorious days, cools starts and beautiful weather, but the days get shorter, lights are needed and suddenly I start ferreting about for arm warmers.

The upside is that there's a possibility of rain and that will suddenly mean that the hot, dusty metal roads that I cherish will be rideable again. This long, sustained period of dry weather we have had has been a boon for road riding, but it makes the metal roads pretty horrible. All the metal comes to the surface, lurking like marbles. The dust and dirt I couldn't care less about, but one of the pleasures of these roads is dragging others through them , seeing and hearing their delight as they ride roads they wouldn't drive normally. When the roads threaten their ability to even stay upright, then the chances of getting them to enjoy them are slim.

Some rain will let the loose metal sink into the surface of the road, and make for a far more friendly experience. Plus, I hope that a whole lot of people watch the spring Classics and have an urge to go, get filthy and banged about on short steep hills and rough, narrow roads.

Junior and I rode the BCL on Saturday, meeting a tardy CTB on Carter Road. The humour on the ride came on the Kelly's Road descent, where I made a small excursion down a grassy bank due to the greasy roads. The damp of Sunday morning was the first time there was any moisture of substance on these roads for quite some time, net result was not a huge amount of grip.

As my back wheel starting sliding under braking, it flashed through my mind that it was several years ago that I met tarmac on this same corner in the wet, and maybe I was about to repeat the mistake. Thankfully I kept my head and merely exited stage left, stopping on the grassy bank. Junior was suitably amused. The adrenaline compensated for my fading fitness on the next climb for some time.

Caught in a trap

It's not everyday that a man acts out the metaphor, but last week, on Wednesday CTB did.

He was one of the game souls who started the inaugaral Kiwi Brevet . An feverish trial of inner strength, endurance, sheer bloody mindedness and cycling. It was eleven hundred kilometres of riding around the top half of the South Island, a mix of roads and terrain, just madness of the best sort.

CTB rocked up on his cyclocross bike, and four days later finished the event, in third place. The next day he had to go and have his backside re-skinned with plastic skin.

Well done fella!

I'm looking forward to catching up for that beer and hear the gritty tale in full.

As an aside I did raise the prospect of me doing it next year over dinner last night, surprising it got the tentative thumbs up.

Ebony and velvet

As part of my project to make lasting mark on humanity I have been brushing up on my literature again. Some of my knowledge and appreciation of English and American literature has grown quite rusty, and my memory of the great poets is a little more feeble than it has been in the past. To this end I have taken to reading poetry again, partly for the sheer pleasure of it, and partly because it's particularly irritating to others to recite at opportune moments.

This reciting at given moments, in some ways, it reminds me of listening to CTB singing, with gusto, and long before Walk the Line gave Johnny Cash popular, hip cred, Ring of Fire. The particular occasion was at the top of yet another lung-searing ascent of that painful bit of tarmac, Birdwood Road. I reached the top, as part of a ride with half a dozen others, bathed in sweat and gasping to hang on to the bunch. CTB, to then add salt to the lashing, launched into, in his fine baritone, Ring of Fire. Not just a few gasped lines from the chorus, no it was the whole damn thing. I, at that precise moment, hated him for it, just purely from sheer envy of the voice, the composure and the effortless nature, it was unalloyed magic.

With my renewed confidence in poety I have been attempting to instill/install a sense of literature and culture in my growing minion. He is now quite taken with a couple of Blake and Wordsworth poems, and has given over to reciting The Tyger on the walking bus and at school. It is a fine thing.

Well, here's a flashback for me. Somehow, when I was trawling Youtube for tasty clips on phoney health schemes, you know the sort, L. Ron Hubbard meets Brain Tamaki, I got distracted and the next thing I found this. The movie that this is the opening to, The Hunger, it made a deep, lasting impression on me, and this clip prompted a flurry of mental activity not seen in my cranium since the moment last year of the tanned girl on a vespa in a short skirt, the wind and the fortuitous glance.

Ian and Myra

Tandemonium.
No, it's not some wierd new element created by firing neutrons, positrons, electrons or other small bits of matter at slightly larger bits of matter and hoping that something sticks.

Instead think:-
Burke and Wills
Nelson and Hardy
Achilles and Patroclus
Bonnie and Clyde
Fred and Ginger
Roy Rogers and Trigger
Michael and Bubbles

This is a new unholy union that, hopefully, will be remembered for all the right reasons, and not for scarring the eyes of thousands with Mikeal's (you know, him, master of chicken feeding) backside encased in mid 'eighties Tinley swim/ride apparel.

The union we are contemplating is a tandem assault of the Round Taupo. We want to behave like a great white shark, gliding effortless through the shoals of riders, snapping their legs when we hit the flat and making grown men go bug-eyed.

This is a venture that is filled with positives, we are fit and strong, we have ridden the event before, we enjoy riding bikes, we will be a satorial trainsmash, we have little fear. There are only a few negatives, neither of us has ridden a tandem before, we have a tendency to argue and bicker, we are both a little stubborn, we have only four weeks to get our act together.

This afternoon we will rip the seal from our tandem chastity, having borrowed CTB's tandem, we have decided that we will just get on and ride. I'm prepared to wager very good money that there will be several near crashes, several sets of shouted instructions, several attempts to stand in unison, some bewildered pedestrians and motorists, a truckload of laughter and a pair of grins a mile wide.

I will post an update, and maybe a photo, after the trembling subsides tonight.

Rubber Glove Seduction

Sometimes days beckon and a ride is ordered. On this occassion, several years ago, the weather was fair and the assembled company decreed that we should head south and tackle Ararimu Road and the Hunua Valley. There were four of us that day, The Reader from Mt Rascel, Mr Kerby, CTB and myself. In all, the makings of a good ride with a few laughs thrown in.
Normally I ride with the climbing prowess of a land anchor, but on this day CTB was midst sumo training and was a little more lardy than usual, so my grasp on the caboose was taken. Every time the road pointed skyward he would go to the back of the class, then get sent to the corridor.
At that particular time I was pretending to be scientific and analytical about my riding and had one of those infernal Polar Power Meter thingamees. At best it looked like someone had dropped a few extra cables and zipties on my bike and then tried to deny their existence. Looking back it wasn't the best piece of industrial design I've ever seen, and was nothing more than an ego caresser for me.
That particular day it did have a use. I was able to gauge the exact point when CTB would be sent from the class, one watt higher and he was adrift, so we rode all the climbs off my wattage and made gentle time. The ride progressed well, the day was balmy and the wind benign. Then we stopped at the Ardmore aerodrome and the strange little cafe there.
Conversation was quite civil, until The Reader from Mt Rascel started mentioning that he was now of an age that he needed a prostate check, to which CTB popped out with "A visit to Dr Jellyfinger!"
That set all of us off, there were tears of mirth and rolling around. The other elderly patrons wondered what these four lycra clad fools doing. A good ten minutes of my life disappeared. After the hysteria had dispersed we were finally able to remount and ride off, but the merest hint of anything rubbery for the rest of the ride and legs would be instantly weakened.
It is now a ride etched indelibly in my memory.
I'll post the route tomorrow.

Urbane Stupidity

Things are heating up, Jorge the Persistant has revealed that he's not in Texas at all. Migrating through the mid-west he causes destruction where ever he alights, he's like a one man locust swarm. Thankfully we have the Pacific between us and his goatlegs.


These pictures are an abbreviated pictorial essay on CTB and my urban rolling last night.












Thank you Sanai for the sensational Tempura!

Jughead

Last Wednesday evening I let CTB drag me around the better (or harder) parts of his Nutcracker Suite. He was on his trusty cyclocross rig and I on my road bike. As will be shown later, one of us made the right rig choice.

We trolled across town and up Kitchener Street. There I engaged my trusty twenty five tooth cog on my rear cassette and grunted and heaved the bike skyward. CTB leading the way, me following like a man who has been a couple of rounds with Jack Dempsey, and that was only the first and shortest climb.

Then we tackled Liverpool Street, marginally easier than the last time I rode it, but still a horror that darkness serves well. At the top I was several lengths adrift, the world was unable to be heard over my pounding heart and pedestrians in the immediate area were fearful of being inhaled.

After a brief roll and chat we plunged down a footpath in the back of Arch Hill and then turned at the bottom to ride up again. Here, the lack of run up and my sheer lack of coordination meant that it took me three goes to clip in and let the climb assault me. I was so slow that CTB had darted up to the top and was inching his way back down the precipice before I was even near half way up.

From the top we started to descent again, but then engaged in a hard left. This was where my rig choice was shown up as being inadequate. I was quite unable to make the turn, feeling that at walking pace I was about to be pitched over the handlebars, the front wheel folding under and my trajectory carrying me a long way down the muddy grass slope. Thankfully, this was my fear and not the reality.

I managed to unclip and get a foot down, then remounted and rode into the pitch black bush, following a narrow, winding metal track. Here my handlebar mounted headlight was about as useful as a candle and I squealed like a pig at a couple of near misses with the shoulder of the track, feeling it drop away.

Eventually after a few more bits of nastiness we adjourned to a small bar in Mt Eden. After a brief fortification with about one point two litres of beer each, we set out to tackle Big King.

There, with admirable Beer Strength I attacked the first wall, only to blow. CTB danced away from me like a butterfly, the steep gradient serving him well. At the summit, in the dark, with the city lights laid out around us, we were flushed, panting and kings for a moment.

It was urban bike fun at it's best.

I will head in some time with a slant level to get accurate gradients, the data off my garmin being patchy, but from what I can see, Liverpool Street is twenty seven percent, the other climbs are less. Good fun stuff up or down.

This was space

What's up with all these hoary old bands getting together for revival tours? Men, usually, well past their youth, getting on again like nothing acrimonious ever passed between them, all for the sake of a bit of wallet depletion in the name of nostalgia.

Over the past couple of years there have been a number of tours of reformed groups, all who haven't produced anything since their prime, but are held closely to the bosum of us born in the decade of peace, love and sunshine. These bands are no longer Angry Young Men and I'd wager that good deal of them no longer hold dear the tennents of their beliefs that they had when they wrote their material. So, what gives?

Don't misunderstand me and think that I am saying that once you reach a certain age you should no longer take the stage. Heaven forbid that thinking. There are a growing number of artists who are ageing and still adding to their body of work with new material that is worthy and innovative, in many cases maturity adding new dimensions. Additionally, these chaps live have a body of work and experience that allow for deeply enriching concert experiences.

My gripe, and what I maintain, is that an artist, or group, who are just trading on nostalgia won't be getting any of my wallet contents.

Enough grizzling, CTB and I are off for another scout of new sections of road bike urban foolishness. Come Wednesday night we will be finding excuses for feeling brave. Then we will have a beer or two, before we wobble off again.

In the interim, I decided to plot out the route of the Nutcracker Suite. This little loop of torture and terror is not of my creation, it was the inspired creation of CTB, and his fevered hand lays heavily upon it.

Here it is:-

http://www.mapmyride.com/route/nz/auckland/323125046384124300

Go, tackle it, I'd recommend at least a twenty six on the back, a securely fastened stem and a good dose of Chopper Read as essential components.

We had often thought it would be fun to have a competition around this loop. Open to anyone, they just post their time. I might even be brave and post my next attempt, that will give a nice, low baseline.

The Dark Nest Of Your Village

Today I was out for a lunchtime preamble around Eden Terrace, Auckland. For those of you not familiar with the area, it is an old part of Auckland, with a maze of narrow streets, often one-way and, more often than not, reasonably steep. I've ridden through quite a bit of it at times, sometimes feeling like I was about to heave and go knock-kneed from the effort, especially following CTB as we followed his Nut Cracker Suite.

I was trying to work out a new permutation of the streets to allow a couple of previously unridden sections to be added in to a loop. As a bonus I got to see some old rundown villas, some restored villas and various small business operating out of ramshackle premises. All quite interesting.

Until I got to the bottom end of Fleet Street, there I discovered what are arguably the worst situated apartments in Auckland. I will return with a camera to capture the true horror of what I saw. Imagine a line of shoe boxes stacked six high, with their ends cut off so you can see in. These, set facing SE, slightly below street level and a large turning bay for the front yard, have no privacy and no sense of humanity. How did this happen?

Speaking of bad planning, on Sunday, at the death, one hundred and sixty kilometres under my belt, I followed The Croc and Junior onto the Norwest bikepath east of St Lukes Road. I have ridden that in the past, fresh, and thought it a pretty miserable experience. Several stop signs, a couple of nasty little pinches, one short wall and threading in and out of narrow streets. After the width and freedom of the bike path proper, it was a nightmare, and to add insult to injury the ramp up to Newton Road was where my form left me, and I was left a shell of a man.

What gets me, is that planners have planned and built an excellent path West of St Lukes Road, past Chamberlain Park, through Unitech and out along the side of the Norwestern Motorway. But East of St Lukes Road, they have had some sort of collective ice cream headache and routed the thing through very bike unfriendly streets. All okay if you are fit and familiar with the route, but not at all friendly for Jo and Josephine Average, or for the Sunday Family Ride. My One Point Three meters of Kaos Kreation is pretty fit and strong on a bike, but there's no way he'd survive the walls and bergs that present en route.

What I'd like to see is some sort of continuity with the existing bike path West of St Lukes Road and segregation from traffic and homes/drives.

That, at least, will save me the embarassment of whimpering in the midst of the urban public when I implode.

Spacenauts

A chance for something different on a fine day.

This is a pictorial essay of sorts of a roll through some extraordinary parkland and reserve on the fringe of the Manukau Harbour, within 30 minutes ride of downtown.
The first section had a few walkers and a couple of twitchers, but pretty soon we had the world to ourselves.

Time, as we rolled along, was passed with tales of sunken Taiwanese fishing vessels in the Hauraki Gulf, discussion about CTB's recent dip off the end of the pontoon in the Oruarangi Creek and whether stabbing your girlfriend 200 odd times was a loss of control.
As can be seen we eventually ran out of track. Before this happened we rode on firm grass, mud, shells and rocks, we passed through axle deep water, squelching grass, and loose soil. All the time we had magnificent views of the Manukau Harbour, the harbour entrance, algae covered sand bars and constantly changing terrain.

Turning back was never really considered, the only backtracking was forced by the tracks running out completely, but not until we had ridden to the very end of them. With a little backtracking, we found what we thought would be a continuation of the loop. The track disappeared and the markers random. On we pressed, riding and walking, through the magnificent landscape. Finally we found a race and rode out it to hit tarseal not far from the airport, immensely satisfied.
If you look carefully, in the above picture, you can see Gagarin riding off to check a possible route.



Strictly speaking, these are walking tracks, and in places have immense historical and cultural value, so deserve to be treated with respect. All bar the last section can be comfortably ridden on a road bike. Pick a fine, calm day and go and explore the lesser known parts of your world.

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.

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.