and nothing fell off November 27, 2006  

So I knocked off the Taupo ride on Saturday. I rode a good ride, got a time I'm happy with (but which I think I can improve with a bit of effort), and had an excellent time. The weather more or less turned out, and the atmosphere was excellent.

We drove up on the Friday morning. We dropped Rebecca off at nursery, from which she would be picked up by her nana at the end of the day, and loaded up the car. Our departure was slightly delayed by popping around to Chez Smithaldson to see wee Ada, who was very small and tenaciously unconscious throughout our sojourn. Not wishing to tire the new parents, we departed around quarter past ten and hopped on the motorway. The drive up was characterised by us spotting the incredible volume of traffic that had bikes strapped on. Driving through Taihape around lunchtime, 3/4 of the cars parked in the main street had loaded bike racks on the back. Going around the lake at about 3pm, we spotted the first of the riders doing the 'maxi-enduro' event - four laps. They'd set off at 11am, and were going well on their first lap. There was a largish group giving it some welly up the Hatepe Hill, with a couple of support cars driving behind.

When we got to the motel, it became obvious that basically everyone there was there for the event. People were unloading bikes from cars, checking brakes, borrowing track pumps. There was a brief moment of hilarity at the check-in, when the lady running the place revealed that they'd only bought it five months earlier and the previous owner hadn't really bothered to enter a lot of the final bookings into the computer before he'd sold the place. Hence, a number of people who'd booked nice and early were arriving to discover that there was no record of their booking. Oops. Fortunately, my lackadaisical approach to booking meant that we were well within their ownership period, and we had a room.

Registration went like a breeze. I was expecting to take quite a while to get everything sorted; we were in and out of the rego building in 10 minutes, including the time it took to collect a spot prize (an economy-sized tub of massage creme). Result. Then it was just a matter of acquiring some dinner (pizza, ho!) and heading back to the motel for a carbohydrate-fest, compulsive last-minute checking of equipment and supplies, and a good night's sleep.

On the morning, I was out of bed spot on 6:29 and cramming muesli down my face as fast as I could. I carefully dressed, loaded up my jersey pockets with tools and food, and was ready to roll by 7:15. I was in a group scheduled to "begin starting" at 7:45. I got down to the line around 7:20am, found my muster point, and waited. And waited. And froze. There was a fair bit of wind coming off the lake and it was bloody cold. I was wearing armwarmers and a gillet on top of my cycling jersey, but I was still shivering. About 8am our line started moving, and by half eight I rolled over the start line.

The first 20k or so were more of a procession than a competitive event. The pace was painfully slow - about 15-18kph. This was at least partially due to the fact that we were very slowly gaining height, and riding into a serious headwind. After a while the groups slowly started splitting, and I managed to get out and make up a bit of ground. I'd been expecting the first half of the race to be the worst, due to the hills; this turned out to be true, although the hills were more "rolling" than "huge". I was immeasurably cheered to find the following painted in the traditional metre-high letters near the top of the Waihaha hill:

allez
allez
allez
go jan!

The constant wind was a bit annoying. There were a few hairy moments on some of the fast descents due to crosswinds. A friend of mine swears she saw someone blown over by a gusting crosswind: I'd believe it.

After about 75k, I ran into a co-worker of mine at a water stop coming up to the Kuratau relay point. He'd been going since 6am, I'd been going since 8:30, and it was about quarter past twelve. We chatted for a bit and then got going. Between the hills and the wind, it'd taken me a bit under four hours to get halfway around. I hoped that my speed might pick up a bit on the second half, however.

Handily, living in Wellington seems to have helped me get my hill legs back. Kuratau Hill wasn't too bad, though the sudden hard & fast descent down Waihi Hill was a bit white knuckle. This wasn't helped by the splendid views - a sign at the roadside warned "Watch the road, not the view!". It also wasn't helped by the debris on the road. A number of people seemed to have made bad decisions about how to secure things to their bike - all along the course I saw bidons that had fallen off, and on the Waihi descent I had to swerve to avoid a minipump that had obviously been shaken off someone's frame.

At the foot of the Waihi Hill, just outside Tokaanu, there was a sign by the roadside - "Flat for next 40k". About 200 metres further there was another sign - "Just don't think about Hatepe Hill".

So I didn't. I got my head down, shifted up, and rolled it. By this point, the sun had come out and we had a tailwind. As we joined State Highway 1 at Turangi, a few nice pace lines started to form up. I joined a line moving around 30-35kph and held hard. The tailwind pushed us along nicely and it was, frankly, absolutely great. Apart from a small pause in Motuapa to neck some more calories, I kept it going fast around the bays on the waterside. Traffic was present but not a problem - there were enough cyclists that the drivers couldn't get away with hooning it, so everyone was being relatively polite.

Hatepe Hill was presaged by, well, OK, by the village of Hatepe, but from my perspective mainly by the sudden clump of worried looking cyclists having a last-minute stop/stretch at the bottom. On balance, I can say that it is indeed just a hill, and probably not as nasty as the Ngauranga Gorge - with the added advantage that it's always nicer riding up a full lane of tarmac rather than a narrow footpath. But after 135k you're a bit stuffed, so it was quite a slog. Not helped by the bloody relay riders - these jammy gits were only doing 40k sections of the course, so were still fresh and happy. One annoying prannet cut in front of me at one point, waving and shouting to a mate. The fact that some of us were a lot more knackered - including one or two of the enduro riders who were still present - didn't seem to have occurred to him. Twerp. Still, at least I didn't resort to walking up the hill, which several other people had to.

Once we hit the top of the hill it was a pretty straightforward run down the last 20k to Taupo. At this point I was doing some mental arithmatic, based on my times. On my previous week's training ride, I'd ridden 125k in just under six hours. Today, I'd ridden the first half of the course (80k) in about four hours; I was hoping that the tailwind would help me make some time up on the second half, with a target of 7 1/2 hours total. At the top of Hatepe, I checked my watch and realised that if I caned it the rest of the way I stood a chance of hitting a 7 hour run. So I thought why not give it a bash, shifted back up, and went for it.

The last bit running into Taupo was thus a bit of a blur. A blur which shifted abruptly into freezeframe as I rounded the corner and hit the lakefront, which invovlved turning straight back into the wind that'd been pushing me along. It was at this point that I realised quite how strong the wind was. It was like cycling through treacle. Any thoughts of a big last burn to the line didn't last long, as I had to give it all I had to maintain a moderate pace. I managed to summon the effort for a final big sprint for the finish line, aided by Heather yelling at me from the barriers, and rolled in for a total time of 7:04. Just missed my amended target, but in general I was bloody happy with the run.

Having finished, I handed my transponder back, necked the free drink, and collapsed in the massage tent for a bit. I then had the happy discovery that the food vouchers that were included in the entry fee could also be used to buy beer, and got outside a hot dog & heineken. The vibe on the domain afterwards was great; lots of happy people wandering around going "blimey", families turning up, etc. It was like being at a rock festival, except different drugs and the smelly people had more of an excuse.

Quote of the day came while waiting with the pack at the start line. I overheard the two blokes in front of me point out a fellow rider thus:

Rider 1: You see that guy dressed as superman?
Rider 2: Yes.
Rider 1: Don't try to draft him. The cape flaps up into your face.

The event itself was very well run. Hats off to the organisers; everything went perfectly, and all the tedious official stuff went like a breeze. Well done to all involved. I'll be back next year, parental obligations allowing. Now I just need to get around to healing these saddle sores and restoring my muscle glycogen, and we're all good.

wearing a rut November 22, 2006  

First off, many congratulations to the Smith family on the arrival of Ada Olive as of this morning. Lots of love and best wishes to all involved. We look forward to meeting her.

I'm sure it's a sign of the times when my first thought on hearing this at 9am was "She was born six hours ago - why aren't the photos online?"

Had one of those days. I had what I can best describe as a comedy dismount in heavy traffic on the way in - tried to cut into too small a space while filtering to the left of the nose-to-tail traffic on Newlands Road this morning, and ended up dropping the front wheel down a two-inch drop left to the gutter, causing me to slew to the right and come off. Fortunately the car behind me had good brakes (and was doing 3kph anyway), so I wasn't marmelized - and my bike's safe too. Bit of a sod though. Mind you, better than the friend of mine I saw at Kaiwharawhara, where he'd (as he put it) "collected a pedestrian" at speed. When I went past he'd staunched the blood from his mangled finger, and the police were helping him sort out the bike (which looked undamaged) while the pedestrian was being helped into an ambulance. Which is just one reason why I don't like combined pedestrian/cycle paths: pedestrians move unpredictably and often don't look where they're going. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but when you combine it with high-speed cyclists...

On the other hand, I did win a backpack as a spot prize at the WCC's Cycle into Summer event in Civic Square this morning. That, plus a free breakfast, set me up nicely. What did it set me up for? Getting a little too enthusiastic on the way home, doing a really mild (I swear) bunny hop up about a 2 inch gutter, and popping another spoke in my rear wheel. Jesus. Mind you, it is on the same side and diametrically opposite to the spokes I busted last weekend, so it was probably weakened on the ride home. But a wheel rebuild is now on the cards sooner rather than later - in to Capital Cycles at 8:30am tomorrow to get that blasted spoke replaced and pick up a couple of spares, I think.

Three more days. Forecast's good. Fingers crossed. Especially given my bloody rear wheel.

the akatarawa summit ate my wheel November 20, 2006  

Did a quick 125k yesterday morning. Rode from Newlands down the gorge and along to Petone, alongside SH2 to Upper Hutt, through the Akatarawa Valley to Waikanae, and then back via Paekakariki Hill Road and through to Porirua. Got back at 12:05 just in time for lunch. I mainly achieved this by leaving the house at 6:10am. I would have left at 6 (having got up at 5:30), but spent an angry ten minutes failing to find my dry cycling gloves. In the end, I had to wear my old gloves, which were still wet from being washed. Great, I thought to myself, I'm going to be doing this with cold, wet hands.

This turned out to be true, but a non-issue. It started raining at about 6:30 and didn't stop until about 9:30; I was soaking wet (despite rain jacket) and freezing cold for most of the morning. The only way I could stay warm was to keep pushing the pace. The first 35k or so were a straightforward blat along State Highway 2 through the length of the Hutt Valley. Since this was about 6am, the traffic was pretty light, but this was a dull as ditchwater and slightly intimidating section of the ride - head down, bum up, give it some welly along a long, flat road with occasional cars zooming past your right elbow. Once I reached the Akatarawa Valley it got a bit more interesting. Basically, no-one drives along the Akatarawa Road at 7:30am, so it was a clear run for the next 35k. Clear, that is, apart from the torrential rain that was falling and meant that I couldn't see much. And also flooding the road. Apparantly surface flooding had been a serious problem on the road the day before, but when I went past it was mainly clear - a few minor floods still washing across the road surface, and the obvious traces (scattered rocks) of recent slips and floods, but perfectly navigable. The Akatarawa Road is an excellent ride, and I'm sure it'll be even better in bloody sunshine so you can see what you're doing. As it was, when I finally crested the summit and reached the viewing platform, it was like looking at the inside of a ping-pong ball- the cloud was just sitting on the tops, so I was inside the middle of it. Cue a hilarious medium-speed descent on dodgy tarmac, with glasses covered in water, with my front brake starting to sound a bit dodgy (it later turned out that the crap on the road had worked as grinding paste on the brake blocks, wearing them down faster than usual, so I had actually worn the block down to metal - this is very much not good). The descent down the Reikorangi side of the hill was excellent, though; once the seriously windy bit runs out, there's a lot of seriously fun gentle downhill with sweeping curves, short rises, etc. It's a big ring descent in the grand style.

Once I hit Waikanae, it was just a matter of turning around and heading home. Straight down State Highway 1 from Waikanae to Paekakariki - SH1 is actually a better ride than I'd expected, as it's got some quite nice wide margins of good quality tarmac for most of it. So although there's a fair bit of traffic going past, it's usually a reasonable distance away from you. 20k or so to Paekakariki, and then hang a left up the Paekakariki Hill Road, which was having one of its brief spates of being open. It intermittantly washes out: I'd heard that it had just been reopened (though it turns out to have been closed on the Saturday due to minor slips). From that direction, the Paekakariki Hill is a sharp, grunty climb, followed by a very nice descent through a rural valley. By this stage the rain had stopped, so I had been able to clean my glasses and actually see what I was doing. This combined with a desire to stay off my brakes (due to aforementioned issues) to mean that I took the descent relatively fast and grinning.

Once I emerged at Pauatahanui, so did the sun. It took a while to warm up, but around the time I hit Porirua it was all looking good. Unfortunately, in Porirua, I realised what had been familiar about that pinging noise I'd heard during a grunty bit of the climb up the Akatarawa road. It was a spoke snapping. Probably due to the lateral stress as I stood up on the pedals and gave it some welly. Of course, once one spoke goes, the others end up taking more strain, and sure enough, another spoke had also gone. Both non-drive side, which is a bit unusual, but there we go. But certainly not good. I remounted and rode gingerly home, taking it as smooth as possible. Riding through Porirua towards Tawa, someone in a white van yelled "Poof!" at me as he drove past; bit of a contrast to the rainforest, sheep and cows that had characterised most of the ride. Coming through to Churton Park/J'ville, the sun really came out and started baking me. So from having spent most of the ride wondering how you tell when you're in first stage hypothermia, I had to strip off most of my stuff to avoid heatstroke. Put it this way: I rode for just under 6 hours, and drank about 1.2 litres of liquid. I was going pretty hard, but wasn't sweating much until right at the end.

All in all, a good ride. Good preparation for Taupo: I'm feeling a lot more confident about the ride. 126k is a good distance, including a few grunty hills and some good undulations. It's probably not as grunty as Taupo, but I knocked it off in a reasonable time and didn't suffer too much on the climbs. So fingers crossed for Saturday.

And I managed to get the wheel fixed by those nice people at Capital Bicicletteria. So a wee bit of fettling and I'll be good to go. Though you do get some funny looks riding the bus carrying a bicycle wheel. "Yes, I'm buying it in installments for Christmas. Next week I get the front wheel and half a handlebar."

Sunday morning was of course made more interesting by us having spent Saturday afternoon/evening attending the nuptials of Merridy & Stuart. The happy couple seemed to have an excellent day, despite the appalling weather. My mum looked after Rebecca, so we concentrated on watching nuptials and going "Yay!" in the appropriate bits. A rather moving ceremony at Old St Paul's was followed by a slap-up reception at the Gear Homestead. A lovely time was had by all, and matrimony was the winner on the day. Special shout-out goes to Even Littler Jack (about a year old), who didn't quite understand everything that Mummy and Daddy were doing but looked very cute in a wee tuxedo.

Was reading through the liner notes to the Nightmares on Wax entry in the DJ Kicks series the other day, and came across a nice little piece of text. Apparantly the origins of Nightmares on Wax's first album came about from the idea to produce an album of instrumental hip-hop for stoners. That's probably the best description of chill-out that I've ever heard. Though they do claim that it was an idea way ahead of its time, which doesn't gel with my recollections of the early 90s ambient revolution.

We had the bomb squad outside work today. Someone must have left a suspicious package outside a building nearby - I work close to several major government agencies or vital infrastructure providers, so terrorism is not entirely out of the question. They got to do a controlled detonation via robot and everything. Most impressive.

getting nervous now November 16, 2006  

Just finished reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. Excellent stuff; dystopic end-of-the-world stuff in the fine Ballardian tradition, lashings of black humour, and a compelling story. Well worth reading. The target is genetic modification and the advisability of playing god (she argues that it's a bad idea).

Damn. Looks like the rumours were true. After years of being one of the few riders wearing a team strip other than USPS/Discovery Channel, I'm going to have to get one of next year's Discovery Channel strips, as Ivan Basso has signed for Discovery Channel. This has seriously annoyed a lot of the directors sportif of the other teams, who're muttering about there having been a gentlemen's agreement not to try to poach anyone implicated in Operation Puerto.

Had a good training run on Sunday. Did two runs of the J'ville - Ohariu Valley - Karori - J'ville circuit, which I clocked at 33k for the loop (for a total ride in the early 70s). Rather unfortunately, it was slinging rain down when I rode out, so I wrapped up large (thermal tights, rain jacket) and didn't bother to put on sunscreen. Sure enough, 30 minutes later the sun started peeking out, and got stronger and stronger for the rest of the ride. Accordingly I now have a very bad case of cyclist's tan on my arms - hands and shoulders are white, and everything in between is an angry red. It's a way to start a conversation in the showers at the gym, anyway.

My two favorite things in life are libraries and bicycles. They both move people forward without wasting anything. The perfect day: riding a bike to the library.

Peter Golkin, museum spokesman

The weather is refusing to cooperate with anything. We've had a week of appalling weather; gale force winds more days than not, gusting to 150kph, sort of thing. It's made riding to work hilarious. I've had to resort to the bus once or twice (gusting gales = I want to live, thanks). Nothing has fallen off the house, and the new heating system is making life nice and toasty, so we're not having too bad a time of it, but it's very unpleasant whenever you leave a building. The problem is, a surprising amount of my preferred leisure activities involve leaving the building.

And for the final comment on the US elections - Dan Savage's gloat-fest on Rick Santorum's ousting. Heft.

a brief note from the front lines of the gender wars November 07, 2006  

R: Daddy, girls don't have long hair, do they?
Me: Well, some girls do have long hair, and some girls have short hair.
R: No. Girls have short hair.
Me: OK. Who has long hair?
R: [triumphantly] Daddies!

and bloody windy it was too November 06, 2006  

I went for a ride through the scenic Takarau Gorge on Sunday. That sounds better than "I rode from Johnsonville to Karori", but it means the same thing. It makes you realise how much Wellington's geography is a series of settled valleys - on one side of the skyline ridge are the built-up, developed suburbs of Karori, Northlands, Ngaio, Khandallah and Johnsonville. On the other side is a load of farms and working pine forests. It's a full-on working rural lifestyle complete with paddocks of sheep, one-lane bridges, and squashed possums on the road (I counted 19 - I didn't count the one that someone had skinned and pinned the skin up on a fencepost). The ride itself is lovely; twisting rural road, rolling terrain, the option of popping down to Makara Beach for a quick dip (blowing a gale when I was there), a really nice wee river valley, and then a sod of a climb up Makara Hill and a scary-fast drop into Karori. Either I'm getting fitter, or I was going against the tide: I was only passed by two people, but saw a good couple of dozen coming the other way.

Yesterday, Rebecca spent much of the day wearing a red/white striped cap that Clare knitted for her - she couldn't be separated from it. At one point I said "Can I kiss the top of your head?" She looked up at me and said really solemnly "No, Daddy, you can't kiss the hat." She then carefully moved it to one side a bit - exposing about half her head - and said "You can kiss the hair."

The weather forecast for the rest of the week includes a straight row of little pictures of black clouds. It's going to be bloody fun commuting for a while, I'd say.

relaxed November 01, 2006  

It's been an interesting couple of weeks. We've just returned from a fun-filled trip to Auckland. Rebecca had a great time seeing the extended family, learned several new words, and got to sit in the pilot's seat of an airplane. Result.

The airplane was actually while we were driving back down through Mangaweka. We stopped off and popped up into the DC3 Cafe, a bit of a State Highway 1 landmark (I note that the McDonalds in Taupo has ripped off the idea). Rebecca expressed a strong desire to go up into the 'biscuit plane'. There was no-one else in the plane, so Rebecca ran up to the front and I popped her into the pilot's seat. I sat in the co-pilot's seat, just in case. She loved having a go at it. She was particularly impressed with the way that the steering wheels moved in unison, and being able to play with the various knobs and buttons.

Of course, the DC3 cafe wasn't actually doing much in the way of food, so we ended up having cheese toasties at the cafe section of Rangitikei River Adventures. This was - quite literally - the friendliest retail establishment of any kind that I've ever been in. Astonishingly welcoming and nice - the couple that ran the place were bringing out puzzles and crayons for Rebecca, giving us extra cups of tea, etc. If you're passing (or, presumably, if you fancy going on a rafting or kayaking trip) I'd definitely recommend dropping in.

Auckland was very mellow. We spent most of the time hanging around with various members of the extended family (there's a lot of extended family up there), turning Rebecca loose to wreak havoc with her cousins, etc. The weather mostly co-operated; a few days of torrential rain, yes, but much less so than further down south. We relaxed a bit, shamefully failed to catch up with most of our Auckland mates, had a few drinks, took a few cuttings of interesting neighbourhood plants, that sort of thing.

I'm always impressed with the plants that grow up in Auckland. I got several bad cases of bamboo envy this time: mature stands of bamboo with culms 20m high and as thick as my arm. And not just in the zoo, either - the best clump I saw was growing in a suburban garden just around the corner from my in-laws. Lovely, lovely stuff. I just wish that we could grow that sort of thing this far south (though that said, I haven't checked that we can't, it's just that I haven't seen anything on that scale down here).

While we were in Auckland, we took advantage of the free babysitting to nip out and see Out of the Blue. It's one of the most powerful films I've seen for years. An excellent piece of film-making, deeply moving, and almost unbearable to watch in parts. It's the story of the Aramoana massacre - when in 1990, a bloke in a very small NZ town (population under 300) went berserk with an AK-47 and shot thirteen people, including several children. It's very worth seeing if you get the chance - overseas listeners may want to watch for it at film festivals or arts cinemas. My sister-in-law's partner is a survivor of the massacre, and reckons that it's a relatively accurate reflection of what happened and that all New Zealanders should see it.

After commuting for two months on the mountain bike, I switched to my road bike today. It's astonishing what a difference it makes. The ride transforms from stable, solid and grunty to a much more subtle, flighty, and fast zip. Of course, you have to watch where you're going a lot more - it's not quite as possible to ride straight up kerbs, for instance. Still, only another three weeks until Taupo; the ride looks like it'll be hilarious. We ended up driving around the west side of the lake on the way up to Auckland. That's the hilly side; on the basis of that shufti, I'm anticipating a certain amount of pain for the first bit of the ride. Still, I know that once I see the thermal vents by Tokaanu (and let me tell you, it's pretty cool seeing that bush-clad hillside with the steam rising up from unseen vents in the undergrowth) the worst will mainly be over.

Hilariously, the official site for the Taupo cycle challenge includes some very useful elevation profiles for the course. These are marked at appropriate points: "Kuratau Junction", "State Highway 1", "Water stop", etc. One of the profiles has a section simply marked "Lots of hills".

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