Makara Rampage, Ice Cream Rampage & Child Juggling

Its not easy to get the whole whanau out biking. Despite best intentions I hardly ever manage it, and it has become double tricky now we have young George who just turned 5 months.


My smokescreen, Amie, is getting back out on the bike after a long spell out of the saddle and wanted to head up to Makara with her friend Kristen from Vancouver. I cunningly tied it in with some sifting with Al Crozzalozza whilst a girly morning tea took place and we swapped the kids over at 2pm on the dot.

It was an awesome sunny day in stark contrast to the rankness of the day before which had put the odd unseasonal puddle on the track and added a little no-traction-action to some of the chutes.


Al and I cruised via the standard fare of Koru, Sally Alley, Missing Link, Aratihi to the summit and then sauntered along Zaks Track and headed down Vertigo which was riding really well. Then we enjoyed a foray up Trickle Falls to the waterfall with the riderfall next to it.



I'd not ridden it before and always had a crisis of confidence on my own or found myself there with both an inappropriate machine and inadequately sized stones between my legs. It feels great dropping in with the waterfall next to you. Recommended. Fine when soaking wet too, which is handy, as to my knowledge it has never been dry.


After a poke around on Rimu, AMP Connecter, Magic Carpet and Live Wires, we arrived at the car park for the hand over of the juniors. Amie and Kristen headed off whilst Al headed up to ride Deliverance and I took the ankle-biters to Karori Park for a scooter/bike/ice cream fest. Kristen's man, Rob, carried his offspring in a back pack up Wahine and down some of 98DH.

Al returned in time for ice cream. The choices of ice cream were, in grandeur, related to the ferocity of one's challenges for the day. So whilst I feasted on a Gucci White Magnum at $3.30, Al had a Lemon & Lime Splice at $2.00. When Al deploys less Shank's Pony on Vertigo's drops he will be stepping up to the Cornetto.

In another huge win, our daughter, Ella who is 5yrs, learned to ride her bike by herself at the park. She has been ok without training wheels since October, but learning to get moving by herself was a HUGE event. She got right into it and earned herself a White Magnum at $3.30, like her old man.

Amie was less than impressed with the video of Trickle Falls and has assured me I won't be doing it again for some time. Then what do I find on the camera? A shot of her and Kristen rampaging the See-Saw Of Death! Pot, kettle, much?


Hope you are all having a good Christmas break.

Cheers
Davo

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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

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Makara GLC - Rampage Time Trial

For the Spartans, the main event at the recent Makara Peak Festival was the ever epic Grand Loop Challenge. 30 warriors turned up to try their metal against the impressively loose, dusty and rocky trails to the summit and back down Ridgeline.

Commander Crossling Ran the show with jockstrap-like support from Rammer and Bushlove’s Amazonian Arizonian, Ashley.

This was the latest opportunity for sultry shysters, Davo and Wonny.J to knock heads. With Davo one up in there epic odyssey of rivalry, Jaghorn would be looking for a victory in this race within a race to preserve his debatable honour.

First man out was lean bean, Stu ‘Holeshot’ Houltham, followed at 20secs by Lanky Wildman, Tom ‘hot chicks on his Facebook’ Bradshaw, then Fastest Man, then Wonny Jaghorn, Davo and NCX2.
Fastest Man reeled in the human golf club, T-Rex, on the early climbing and continued his rampage to dish out some good news to Holeshot Houltham on Aratihi. Stu was later heard to be baffled as to where Ed found 40secs on him, and blamed his 20hrs of training that week. Here at Sparta Towers we call bullshit on this as nobody has ever trained for that long in one week and to our knowledge it is not humanly possible.

Ed takes the win with a new record time.

Meanwhile Davo, rocking his (Wildman’s old) Ibis Tranny singlespeed, was chasing Wonny hard to get on par before the descending. Luckily he caught Wonny and Tom at the same time on Koru and dispatched Wonny sharply lest any spectator see him exchanging pleasantries with a rival, especially one with pink heart shaped sunnies and zebra print lycra tights.

Wonny chased hard but was kept a couple of corners back on Aratihi by Aldred, who was motivated to stay clear of hard charging Clive NCX2 Bennett, who was coming strongly from behind. Eventually NCX2 collected both the retro rivals once he found his stride after bloodying himself going uphill in Sally Alley.



Dave led Jaggerhorn onto Ridgeline and they both stalled the singlespeeds in the gale force crosswinds on the rocky pinches and did some pathetic hiking, but picked up Clive on the main descent despite a delicate dismount from Davo. Aldred drew out a gap with some pinball dh styles to take 4th.

Ashley meanwhile was cutting out a fast lap to win the Goddess section. Unfortunately there were few ladies prepared to take on the loop and plans are afoot to remedy this low attendance with initiatives from Sparta Towers such as placing Horn Dogs like Kah Chan and Sam Rammer Dungey as strategic topless cheerleaders around the course.





Everyone wants MOAR Grand Loops and intensive planning is underway at BLR HQ to deliver them.

Excellent pics from Ridgeline by Damien Steele-Baker here

Moar pics of the fine day by Andy Kingpin here

Results on P3 of this thread

Happy trails.

Leonidas. BLR Press Sec & Fluffer

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