that I still can ride a mountain bike, I ventured out today with the lunchtime crew of execs/riders/trail builders about who I am writing an article for
SPOKE. 
First up Caleb and I met up with Craig up at the wind turbine, where building is well underway on CarParts 2, about 2km of singletrack heading back south towards the Tip Track. It's coming along nicely, and will add another piece to the delicious jigsaw of trails that Welly has on offer. As Craig said, it's really a mountain bikers paradise here. Maybe I should put the Roubaix away for a bit. Naaaah....
Afterwards I met up with the ride crew. These guys have been doing regular, and I mean regular as in hardly missing a day at all, lunchtime rides since 1991! They are a wide-ranging bunch of characters, with apparently pretty bloody good bosses (or are their own bosses, a la Ian) abling them to take a couple of hours off each day to go and ride. Matt, Ant and Ian from my
12 hour team from last year are regulars, so I knew I'd be in for a pretty quick pace. Then they dropped the big one, we were heading up the
Tip Track. Damn it.
We didn't ride all the way to the top, but turned off just below the summit to descend down to Red Rocks, a ride that I surprisingly hadn't done before in my time here. It's a cool ride, absolutely spectacular views of the coast (if you can glance over through watering eyes as you rail it downhill at speed). At the bottom the ride along the coast is cool too, literally, but the day was sunny and not too windy, although the northerly going up Happy Valley road made it a headwind. But that's ok, when you've got Ian on the front... the guy is an animal, he just drove it up there with Ant, me and Mike the only ones able to hang on. I was hurting a bit by the time we hit Brooklyn lights, where Ian turned off to climb one of the steepest streets back up to the wind turbine and over to Makara. I pointed it downhill back to town, where Matt and I realised that you can't buy a coffee without money... I'll be doing a few more rides with these guys on my days off, but maybe not for the next 17 years.
First up Caleb and I met up with Craig up at the wind turbine, where building is well underway on CarParts 2, about 2km of singletrack heading back south towards the Tip Track. It's coming along nicely, and will add another piece to the delicious jigsaw of trails that Welly has on offer. As Craig said, it's really a mountain bikers paradise here. Maybe I should put the Roubaix away for a bit. Naaaah....
Afterwards I met up with the ride crew. These guys have been doing regular, and I mean regular as in hardly missing a day at all, lunchtime rides since 1991! They are a wide-ranging bunch of characters, with apparently pretty bloody good bosses (or are their own bosses, a la Ian) abling them to take a couple of hours off each day to go and ride. Matt, Ant and Ian from my 12 hour team from last year are regulars, so I knew I'd be in for a pretty quick pace. Then they dropped the big one, we were heading up the Tip Track. Damn it.
We didn't ride all the way to the top, but turned off just below the summit to descend down to Red Rocks, a ride that I surprisingly hadn't done before in my time here. It's a cool ride, absolutely spectacular views of the coast (if you can glance over through watering eyes as you rail it downhill at speed). At the bottom the ride along the coast is cool too, literally, but the day was sunny and not too windy, although the northerly going up Happy Valley road made it a headwind. But that's ok, when you've got Ian on the front... the guy is an animal, he just drove it up there with Ant, me and Mike the only ones able to hang on. I was hurting a bit by the time we hit Brooklyn lights, where Ian turned off to climb one of the steepest streets back up to the wind turbine and over to Makara. I pointed it downhill back to town, where Matt and I realised that you can't buy a coffee without money... I'll be doing a few more rides with these guys on my days off, but maybe not for the next 17 years.
3 comments:
Well..I rode around the quarry in claggy red mud till my wheels refused to turn.5 mins of unclagging with help of a stick and ready for another try.20 mtrs later I tried to bunny hop a tree and slammed into it,straight over the bars into -yep-a pile of red claggy mud.Bike weight had gone from 28 to 50 lbs.
Nothing like riding the local trails!!
Sounds like fun times! Which quarry you talking about?
hillsborough
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