01-22 Mountain Biking Bonanza

Pictures

Saturday

As if we weren’t punished enough from walking several miles both up and across volcanic terrain, our itinerary included a nice romp down a mountain biking trail on Saturday. Having never been hard-core mountain biking before (unless you count jumping off of stacks of 2x4s in the front yard when I was 11), this would be an interesting trip.

I haven’t really kept up with the technology in mountain bikes, so I was rather impressed with the bikes we rented. They had the full deal – shock absorbers, disc brakes, and one-click shifters. Spiffy. Rolling around the parking lot, I notice my front brake is rather weak, so I tighten it up.

To make things interesting, New Zealand and the rest of the civilized world likes to switch the front brakes, i.e. the front brake is now on the right hand, back on the left, instead of the other way around like us Americans are used to. This is sure to make for some interesting times.

The trail we take is actually an old 4x4 trail that runs approximately 25km through the NZ countryside. Not knowing what to expect exactly, we thought we were only going to be going a few kilometers. The initial part of the ride was easy, although somewhat uphill. With cohorts Tim, Luke, Eddie, Jeff, and Eric, we were pedaling along at a good rate. Most of us were in decent shape, plus or minus a few fat cells here and there. Luke and Eric were more experienced, so they hung to the front of the pack.

Things got interesting once we finished our half-hour ascent and began our three-hour descent. Part of the deal was to have the rental guy pick us up from the bottom of the trail so we didn’t have to pedal all the way back up (which was conveniently at his house).

Luke, being the badass speed-demon that he is, flew down the trail, and we frequently came up upon a pile of bikes and bodies, the frequent participants being Luke and Eric as they kept eating dirt and running into each other. I think Luke eventually got tired of the facial (and groinal) punishment and slowed down a bit for the rest of the trail.

Earlier in the day Lisa was predicting I was going to kill myself, so I decided to be extra careful to prove her wrong. For the most part, I was successful, with a few teeterings and totterings here and there.

The trail itself was absolutely beautiful, as it snaked and hugged the mountains as we rolled down. Most of it was grassy and not gravelly, making for good traction and a smoother ride. There were parts where the drop-off was quite scary and would have been a major inconvenience should one of us have fallen off. Fortunately, this scenario didn’t come to pass and we arrived safely at the bottom.

At one point in the journey, a small herd of sheep wandered onto the trail, and of course ran as we approached from behind. For a good 5 minutes or so we herded the sheep down the trail, until they got smart (or more likely lucky) and turned off the trail into a neighboring pasture. Sheep are some of the dumbest animals I’ve come in contact with yet.

The last leg was the most difficult physically since a lot of it was either flat or slightly uphill, unlike the extremely long downhill route we took earlier. Jeff was struggling for a while until he learned how to shift gears right – I figured out pretty quickly that shifting properly saved a lot of extra effort.

In the end, we all made it there in one piece. While we waited for the rental guy to finish talking to the painters at his house, we played with his retriever, Ziggy, who was one of the coolest dogs I’ve met in a while.

At the end of the ride, I realized my camel-back was dry and I had consumed 3 liters of water, and I didn’t pee once. That’s a lotta sweat. The ride back was quiet as we were exhausted, outside of some small-talk with the Dutch rental guy who was trying to immigrate to New Zealand to continue running his hostel business and eventually move into livestock farming. Interesting fellow.

That afternoon, once the girls returned the van, we decided to pick up and head back. Once again, I ended up driving the diesel beastly Toyota Hiace Minibus. At one point, we ran over a hubcap or something and it knocked a hole in our exhaust somewhere, turning the purring minibus into a roaring sputtering machine from hell. Needless the say, the rest of the ride back was a bit more nerve-wracking.

We got there in one piece, and I didn’t drive on the right-hand side of the road once!

Until next time,

--P