Alan Tourist. Dad bought this for about a grand in the early '90s and I never really understood why, as it's a bit of a noodle even when unladen. I think he liked the Campag NR triple and long cage rear mech, which is admittedly pretty rare and groovy. This bike is now in the hands of his brother John. An Italian touring bike, who'd have thought? 

Congruent with orthodoxy: TA meets Nuovo Record - gearing's a bit steep though, isn't it?  

Yummy semi-fastback seat stays. Fancy hex bolt must have looked particularly flash in '72! 

Hetchins front end. Note the top tube wire guides and special mounting bracket for the Lucifer dynamo, a nice touch. 

1972 Hetchins Bagnum Bonum. This is pretty much how my dad speced the bike when he had it built. It's hardly been ridden and lives in Auckland at my Mum's place. I particularly like the groovy shallow drop handlebars which I've never seen before nor since. 

This is a Gillot dating probably from the 1950s. It was in my dad's posession but originally belogned to hisyoungest brother, who toured Britain on it in the early 1970s. Note steel, cottered Chater-Lea chainset and pedals, Campag NR derailleur and Airlite hubs. This bike is now back with my uncle.  

"Clamont" 753 road bike, circa 1985. I bought this for NZ$600 when I was seventeen. The wheels are as false as the day I got 'em, and the ring need replacing, as does pretty much everything except the headset and bottom bracket which I've already attended to. It's nice and light, though as you can see, pretty steep and with really short chainstays. Interesting bits include a fully operational SunTour Superbe Pro rear mech and a Brooks Pro which I bought aged 13 at Williams Cycles of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, 20 years ago. It was like cast iron when I got it and for years I wouldn't work out how to soften it (and yes, I knew all the tricks but don't really approve of oil soaking and goats entrails and stuff). Eventually I got some movement happening by taking it off its seatpost, placing it in the floor and gently standing on it in stockinged feet. From that moment on we were friends. My dad could never work out why I bought a bike that couldn't accept mudguards or racks, and in retrospect I agree with him. This bike is slowly being restored - improvements happen incrementally, usually when I get stuck for something to ride - and one day will probably be resprayed. Incidentally, Clamont is the house brand of the Clarence Street Cyclery in Melbourne. 

The Bridgestone T700, February 2004. If you were in NZ on this month you'll know about the constant storms, the flooding, the stock losses, the washed out bridges and the families stuck out all night on their roofs of their houses. Fortunately, in my part of Wellington nothing too bad happened and one day it was blowing a terrific northerly and I had to take advantage of it. So, I jumped on a train and went up to the head of the Hutt Valley and got blown 50km home along the Hutt River track. It's mostly gravel with a bit of sealed road and some mud. The Bridgestone was great, with the Conti Toup Touring's inverted tread giving just enough traction while the mudguards and extra flappy thing keeping the worst of it out of my eyes. Also rahter enjoyable getting small amounts of air off wee judder bars:) And I was still clean enough by the time I got to Lower Hutt to nip into an art gallery without leaving crud everywhere. Life was good! 

Bicycular Romanticism volume 2: Aniseed Valley. I'd raced ahead of the party and beat them to level ground by about thirty minutes, which is normally most unlike me. I suspected they'd got eaten by Taniwhaz, but they arrived in due course complaining about lack of brakes. I know the feeling. Which leads me to expound on brake pads for a moment. Now, if you've been reading this blog you'll have a handle on the kind of riding I like to do. So: it all becomes impossible if you cook your brakes and at NZ$60 a pair, Hayes mechanical pads are, like, way pricey. Naturally, your brakes get cooked if you drag them, as XC riders are wont to do. DH riders, conversely, generally ride bigger bikes which are more stable at speed over rough stuff and will tend to brake harder and later than if they were getting bounced around riding something light and nippy. Therefore, the limiting factor in how much brakes you go through on a hard ride would appear to be how comfortable you are descending over rough ground at high speed. My Giant ARSE is a good bike, but there's room for improvement. For someone considering a bike to tackle difficult NZ terrain, they could do worse than to try a Keewee cromoTOZE - like the Giant, but with twice the travel and Solid As! And made of STEEL so it won't disappear out from underneath you when you least expect it. 

Lookout! High above the canopy. Probably the summit of whatever knob we were at between Rocks and Browning huts, Richmond Forest Park. Extreme happiness suffused our vibe, as the honking downhill was about to begin... Needless to say, bu this time I'd caned my camera battery and didn't get any groovy descending shots. Next time! 

Bashing through Beech. Quick stop to run up to the lookout. I've never managed to photograph the NZ bush to my satisfaction - it's usually so dense that not much light gets through, which necessitates long exposures, implying camera shake and lack of detail. One day. 

Browning Hutt, Richmond Forest Park. Freezing cold. We stayed at Rocks Hutt after having scended the Dun Mountain Walkway, then traversed to Browning the following day. Took around four hours, some of it ridable, most of it not. Note extremely low saddle positions. Bicycular Romanticism volume 1. 

Sarah tries to reconcile Eric's GPS reading with her map. Note overwhelming prescence of alloy hardtailage and Marzocchi Bombers. A great day for freedom, one might say. Ah, Nelson! Where else can you ride 100m from the centre of town and then stay on singletrack for the next three days? Gnaw yer bits off, New York City! Also: yer bike won't get stolen if there's no people around:) 

Barry at Pointy Wind. Aptly named - it's calm as on the way up, equally calm just on a bit, and a howling gale at the place itself. Note extensive use of black wool and jowly Karrimor saddlebag which ensured great traction and full on muscle development when carrying.  

Pattersonian countryside shot, featuring Shed. Cute ei? Note ham-fisted "differential exposure" technique yeilding oversaturated sky in the upper right hand corner. Would look nice with a string of penny farthings hurtling down the road. And if you ran into a herd of sheep being moved from one paddock to another it probably wouldn't hurt. As much.  

Pahiutua dairy factory, as owned by Fonterra. Fonterra is New Zealand's - possibly the world's - largest dairy company. Being middle management in Fonterra means stuff like you live in Japan and do heinous deals with all sorts of expensive people. Weirdly, Fonterra isn't a limited company, nor is it listed on any stock exchange. It's a cooperative owned by the dairy farmers. Apparently if it went public it would be about twice the size of Telecom, the NZX's most thoroughly traded, er, thingy. Photographically speaking, note blue sky, puffy clouds and cow food. I wanted to get the discarded black tee shirt and broken beer bottles in as well, but my camera ain't that good. 

Untitled (Abandoned House, Ihuraua) # 1, 2004. Note sheep-food desert.  

Ihuraua Chamber of Commerce building. 

Could be anywhere, couldn't it? Actually somewhere near Alfredton, if that's any help. 

Experimental auto-photography #1. Double pinstripe chocolate herringbone denim jeans from Mandatory, Wellington, NZ. 

Dark Forbidding Hills in the Wairarapa. "No way," they say. So where am I? http://www.wises.co.nz/map/default.asp?street=&suburb=&town=MASTERTON&sttype=&id=112134|2&svctype=1&zoom=4&mapaction=0&mapwhich=19&width=512&height=512&businesses=1&brad=25&color=-1&filled=0&e=2731250&n=6031250&routemethod=0&s_id=&radius=&mapsize=3&move=true&zoomin=true 

This is what Mountain Biking is About # 5. This is Sarah high up on the Dun Mountain Walkway, January 2004. One of my favourite shots - I'm inclined to use words like "juxtapose" and "contrast". Note that she is carrying her bike. We did a lot of that. Got big shoulder muscles, eh.  

Wow, this section's actually ridable! Greg employing the Keewee to its best use. Shortly after this the light failed and I ran out of film. By this stage we'd run out of food. Water was short, but senses ofhumour were still intact. After all, who wouldn't be smiling with blah inches of travel? Note clever branding on forks. Dutch cyclist pleae note: jersey reccomends Cees Geluck bouwbedrijf (which apparently means Builder) and endorses Cafe-Snackbar Sint Maartensdijk. So if you ever go there, spend money and tell them I sent you. And if you're 30 years too late, complain to the EU. 

Dun Mountain Walkway, Jan 2002: Greg going up. Ideal singlespeed territory, Greg rides a depleted uranium Keewee DH rig.  

Pointy Wind, Richmond Forest Park, January 2002 (I think). Astute readers will be struck with the outofsynculareic nature of the photos posted to this blog, yet in the spirit of tolerance and fair play will not care too much aobut it. Times state are for trampers. Mountain bikers will take more or less time depending on the impossibility of the terrain. We had the misfortune to descend via an apparently straightforward route heading due north to the Maitai Dam which, due to Badness, turned out to be a stream of football sized orange boulders. "From Hell" doesn't even begin to describe it. Even Greg "much of it 100% ridable" Smith had issues with it. Suffice tosay we didn't get back til well after dark (and this in the height of summer) and it was one of those missions where a) going up was vastly easier than going down, and b) it didn't take nearly as long, either. 

This is What Mountain Biking is About # 3. "Abstract expressionism hanging on your office wall - you don't understand it; you don't understand it at all." Note extreme wiggliness of everything. One of my favourite shots.  

This is What Mountain Biking is About # 1. Note bell - particularly worthwhile on dual-use tracks for keeping trampers from writing grumpy letters to the Department of Conservation complaining about mountain bikers. Funny; there's nothing on earth that sound like a bicycle bell except a bicycle bell. And it always makes pedestrians jump out of their skins.  

Please to be forgiving overexposure. Large chunks of the Queen Charlotte Track look like this. This is what we call Native Regrowth. Vast tracts of NZ were deforested by Pakeha during the settlement period with a view to grazing sheep and cattle. Much of the Marlborough Sounds have since been reconverted back to non-farm use and the bush is taking hold again. The best bits of the QC are about 100 years old, which enough to give you the proverbial warm fuzzies. It can only get better:) 

The Bay of Many Coves (and a Weka). A friend observed that if you zoom in slightly it could be any picture of any part of NZ portrayed any time after 1750. Please to be ignoring power lines, such as theyre aren't.  

This wee birdie is a Weka. We met one rainy Thursday on the Queen Charlotte Track overlooking the Bay of Many Coves (so called because blah blah zzz...) It tried to eat my tyres. I gave it some museli bars instead. It was a bit skittish, maybe because it's flightless. Then again, so am I; but I'm big, and I've got a bike.  

My Hetchins Magnum Opus. Will part-exchange for pre-war curly, 23 - 24". More pix available on request.  

Ron Cooper's business end. Note Reynolds "since 1935 Spitfire grade" tubing, Campagnolo headset, GB bars and stem and overall exceptional quality of everything. Totally 20th century, man:) 

Tasty nether bits:) Tyres are Chen Shin (aka Maxxis for you mountain bikoid nouveauphytes) 27 x 1 3/8" and work great on wet grass.  

Ron Cooper's back end. Brakes are Shimano Deore XT from the late 80s. They replaced quasi-original Mafac cantis when my dad acquired the frame in 1978 via a complex 3-way swap (to be illustrated later). He always complained of poor braking. The XT cantis didn't improve matters, though the fault is not theirs. I hold the Weinmann drop levers responsible: I could never get the bike to stop comfortably with them either. The current setup with GB bars uses Weinmann levers too, but they're more easily grasped and the bike stops lovelyly! 

Ron Cooper in minimalist roadster mode. It's the lightest bike I have at present and is very good in traffic. British Hubs Co "Airlight" hubs (sic) are gorgeous and live up to their name. Fiamme rims, Wheelsmith double butted spokes. Suntour Cyclone rear mech, Simplex front, TA chainset, Chater Lea pedals - probably a bit old for the bike as it's set up, but they work fine - and new BBB stainless Steel bottle cages which I reccomend. The saddle is the ubiquitous Brook B17, dating probably from the 60s of 70s. Shifters are Shimano Deore which are of course way 80s but make the bike ridable when issued with flat bars, as it is. Chrome frame original. Why do frame builders not use chrome any more??? 

Ron Cooper again. The bars and stem are GB, alloy. Bit narrow for my liking, perhaps, but quite suitable for blatting around the city nonetheless.  

Ron Cooper as roadster. Eclipse handlebar bag dates from the late 1970s. Quite good, actually - it has bungee cords attached to the front axle to keep the ba in place over the rough stuff. 

Three lovely chainsets. L-r, Campag Super Record, 1960sish Williams, TA "tworing" chainset. Fullytastyas.  

Dycifer Lumino rulebooks page two. Note authentic scrunch marks. 

My Dad always said Lucifer were the only brand of dynamos that were any good. From my point of view, writing in 2004, a 50-odd year old dynamo which still works with minimal friction and chrome intact is No Bad Thing. Why not! Please email me if these instructions are any use to you. 

Overlooking Lochmara Bay, opposite Picton on the Queen Charlotte Track. I reccomend it - 70km singletrack over three days, with nice places to stay and a water taxi to take you gear. Fully picturesquee az. Bike setup as it was, me wearing minimal wool. Got a bit chilly one particular Thursday, but no harm done.