Schulz and his interference in my childhood

A Christchurch loop.
This really is a tour of my childhood stomping grounds. A lot of the roads travelled on this loop I rode both bikes and horses around as I grew up in the countryside south of Christchurch.
As a loop, it is pretty flat, but hey! that's a feature of riding around Christchurch. The middle section from Motukarara, over Gebbies Pass, around Lyttleton Harbour and out over Evans Pass are rolling with a couple of climbs, but most of it is pancake flat.
I've started the loop at the foot of the Port Hills, at the end of Colombo Street. It was here and a couple of kilometres further along Cashmere Road that my father took me to watch the 1974 Commonwealth Games cycling road race. My memory of the day is pretty hazy, but I do remember seeing the peloton climbing Hackthorne Road. It looked like a wall to me, and my mother's car used to grind up there protesting, so to ride up there, that was god like.
My other, more vivid and enduring, memory of the 1974 Commonwealth Games is also one of my more embarrassing. At that time Christchurch, New Zealand was still relatively unsophisticated and certainly in Prebbleton or Halswell we had no canned fizzy drinks. Sweets were in multiples per cent and popsicles were less than ten cents.
Friends of my parents had come over from Sydney, Australia and with them they bought some cans of drinks. They gave me one, the can was steel, orange in colour and had a Peanuts carton on the outside. To my eight year old mind it was a thing of wonder and I was going to save it for a special moment.
Our family went to one of the sessions of the track and field programme of the Commonwealth Games at QEII Park, it was Sunday, a warm summer's Sunday. Being Sunday, and an important occasion, I was dressed in my Sunday Best, as were most of the rest of the crowd in the grandstands that day. In addition to being dressed in my Sunday Best I had my prize possession, my unopened can of drink.
As was my usual fashion on family outings to public events I quickly took off and ran wild. I'd been bought up on a diet of expeditions to country races and A&P shows from an early age, and was an old hand at dealing with crowds and finding things of interest and other like-minded children. I set off, with prized can in hand, wanting to find other kids, have a chat and play, then at the appropriate moment, open my can of nectar and consume the contents to the awe of the assembled child crowd.
But there were no like-minded children, in fact there were no roaming children other than myself, so after exploring the underside of the grandstand, wandering about finding nothing of interest I decided I better watch some athletics.
I went across the stand to find a free seat, and there I perched watching the pole-vault. In front of me was a family group, I can recall nothing of them, except the father. He was dressed in a dark brown suit.
I was thirsty, so now was the time to enjoy my rare beverage. I pulled on the ring tab as I had been shown. What happened next wasn't even close to what I imagined would happen, but was a surprise nevertheless. The contents of the can, well shaken by an active small boy's exploring, exploded out in a shower of orange stickiness. A number of people were hit by the warm shower of orange fizzy water, but worst of all, was most of this orange stickiness spraying on the father in the brown suit.
I was mortified, most of my drink had gone, it had escaped of it's own volition and what was left was warm and syrupy sweet. My hands were sticky and I now had a very perplexed and angry man in front of me.
So, before he could say anything, I did what any eight year old boy would do, and ran off, eventually finding my parents. Fortunately I never saw the brown suited man again and for a number of years after canned drinks arrived in New Zealand I was deeply suspicious of opening them.

Back to the loop, it follows around the foot of the Port Hills to Tai Tapu, then out through the long straights around Greenpark to Motukarara. Finally at Motukarara the road tilts up for a short time as it climbs over Gebbies Pass and into Lyttleton Harbour. From there it's a very pleasant wind around the inner harbour, and in and out of bays, before climbing back out over Evans Pass to drop down to Sumner. The last part of the loop follows the foot of the Port Hills back to the start point.

The loop is approximately eighty four kilometres and can easily be added onto through Christchurch. Also if you are feeling like a bit of climbing, it's a good detour left at the top of Gebbies Pass and along the Summit Road and follow it along the top of the Port Hills to the top of Evans Pass. The views on a clear day are magnificent. Less pleasant is the climb out of Govenors Bay up Dyers Pass Road to join the Summit Road, steep and shoulderless, it's just a grunt.

Here's the loop here.

http://www.mapmyride.com/route/nz/christchurch/555125127697051602