Gone With The Wind - Turbulent Love

No, not the American classic in which a manipulative woman and a roguish man carry on a turbulent love affair in the American south during the Civil War, but rather my ride home yesterday.



As a remedy for too much work and not enough play, I left work a little early yesterday and rode home on my fine Ibis Tranny singlespeed, along Wellington’s Skyline. I knew this idea had little merit and was likely to be more character building and soul destroying than a quality outing. But to get from the city to Porirua on trails there are few options. So despite not being able to see the hills as they were shrouded in fast moving cloud, I headed up anyway.



I climbed up via the Karori Cemetery Track which despite the recent rain was in great condition and only forced me to dab on those two switchbacks, which would be tight for a terrier, let alone my beast. I could hear the gale roaring outside the safety blanket of trees and was not looking forward to emerging on the ridge. But I’ve never met a kilometer I didn’t like and didn’t plan on whinging about kms I’d chosen to do today.

Singlespeeding along the skyline is pretty hard for me, so in a gale force Northerly it was shithouse. I expected to do plenty of hiking and wasn’t disappointed. Visibility was between 20-40m in the cloud I was riding in, and riding in a cloud meant I was wet, but working too hard to put anything over my t-shirt. It occurred to me that the road might have been a better option. But I cast that weakness away and plugged on, getting on the pedals whenever I could.

I did a couple of singletrack switchbacks and found myself out of the wind for a moment so I sat down and ate some of the chocolate I procured from a supplier’s Christmas gift basket and called Mr Al Crossling for a quick gasbag. Turns out it wasn’t Al with bb problems that I had called to help with, but Tigs, but was good to share my epic with Al as he sat at his desk making love to excel spreadsheets, or whatever a statistician does. I told Al I could hear the wind roaring like thunder about 100m away where the wind and cloud must have been pouring through a col on the ridge, then let him go about his business.



I dropped out of the gorse shelter around the thin track I was on and immediately got body slammed into the ground. I’d not leant into the wind early enough and paid for it. I got up, got pushed over again, and as I got up the second time and was halfway through pointlessly exclaiming “Fuc…” when the wind confiscated my left contact lens. I dropped some C-bombs in short order. My prescription is -5.75.

The next sections involved a lot of hiking alongside the bike. Even that was hard to do and if I didn’t keep a hand on the back of the bike, the gale would lift it off the deck and blow it out like a flag, twisting up my brake lines. I braced myself against the wind and risked ‘life and limb’ to bring you this high quality footage:



I was eventually relieved to drop out of the cloud and the wind off Kau Kau and as I span into the far more moderate wind along Ohariu Valley the memory began fading. I wondered what the problem was and why had I made a fuss about the conditions on the top. So I thought I’d blog it for posterity.

This morning dawned fine. Sunny and no wind. But I had no energy to do any of the riding I forcefully claim I never do, so got the train and ate a massive Mcmuffin.

Happy windy trails.Dave