Route map

Into Hawera early afternoon. Bumly, the Tawhiti Museum is close for the winter which is a shame - looks really good. Anyway, I sifted around Hawera for a few hours then caught a bus back to Wellington.

Here's the whole route: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&saddr=ohakune,+nz&daddr=Whangamomona,+Manawatu-Wanganui,+New+Zealand+to%3Acardiff,New+Zealand+to%3Alowgarth,+nz+to%3Angaere,+nz+to%3Arawhitiroa,+nz+to%3Alake+rotokare,+nz+to%3Amaata,+Taranaki+New+Zealand+to%3Afraser+rd,+taranaki,+nz+to%3Ahawera,+nz&mrcr=8&sll=-39.461644,174.401093&sspn=0.769739,1.277161&ie=UTF8&t=h&om=1&ll=-39.241826,174.874878&spn=0.772165,1.7276&z=10

Interestingly, the next day I found I had a remarkably acute pain under my right kneecap. My knee was fine for a five day winter tour, then snoozing on the bus I manage to injure it. Ah well, it came right 10 days later.

All in all a great tour. SH43 rocks and I reccomend it highly. Next time, I'd skip Ohakune and start at National Park and I'd spend more effort avoiding SH3. Probably catch a bus back to Welly from Stratford. Alternatively, train to Ohakune, west to Raetihi then down the Whanganui river road through Jerusalem to Wanganui. Could put these togethe into a nice loop, though getting from Stratford to Wanganui - which was my original intention - involves lots of stock trucks, animal food moonscapes and little old ladies who can't believe I'm riding a bike.

Mingimingi stream furniture

Hey, that's a car. And another one. Jesus! Three cars? And I bet they didn't wash downstream from the mountain, either.

Bet they weren't wearing helmets.

Mingimingi stream

See that white fence behind the bike? It's flimsy - probably wouldn't stop me and my bike if I hit it straight on. Bet it wouldn't stop cars, either.

Gravel Road

Exolent! That's Hawera in the distance. After this, we descend to the Mingimingi stream.

Rotokare sunset

Rotokare

Heading into Eltham, I was distracted by the big sign claiming that I hadn't lived if I haven't been to their local lake Rotokare. I decided to have a look. Had I known it was about 20 Km off the main road I probably wouldn't have bothered, but in fact it's rather pleasant. You ride through endless rolling hills covered with the fuzzy green animal food endemic in this region, and the when it's really starting to get dark, lo! A patch of old bush, a sharp descent and lo! again, a wee splat-shaped lake designed for water skiing. How groovy. There were pukekos!

Cardiff

I carried on into Stratford, of which you can find photographs elsewhere if you're interested. After a cafe breakfast, supermarket mission and a trip to the post office to send back a surprisingly large boxload of surplus gear, I continued west with a view to getting south to Hawera without having to use SH 3. This was partially successful. First up, Cardiff, one of hundreds of tiny NZ settlements which died when the men didn't come back from WWI. I headed south here, which was the wrong thing to do and I ended up on Highway 3 anyway.

NZ farming theme park (reprise)

Like something outta Dr Seuss

Check this out. Sheep graze here. Notwisthstanding the fact that it's early winter, I can only presume that it's not worth the energy to try and drain this paddock any further. I'm so not a farmer, ay.

Welcome to Footrot Flats

Vincent Ward Movies II: Vigil

I camped by the road side and was up early for the sunrise. Very picturesque. The land is still very mangled and marginal, by the looks of it.

Whangamomona

Whangamomona! Wanna buy a butchery? The pub was open, choarce. I didn't stay, but pressed on up the W. saddle.

John

Hello, I said to myself, another cyclist. This is John. He's sixty seven and lives in Ohura for the same reason that people live in Aro Valley, Hamilton East, Shepherd's Bush or Hong Kong - because it's central. He's very into wee motors and has no less than four powered bikes. This one has a Sachs 30 cc motor. The fuel tank is on top of the back wheel. John says it cruises at 27 Km/h when loaded which is not at all bad.

He sent me a pic of some of his other bikes, and one he took of me. He made the fairings from fibreglass. Cool.

Pigskins...

... stinky pigskins.

Several Little Piggies

Taranaki's very much about pig hunting, as we shall see in an upcoming photograph. However, these little piggies were quite domesticated and weren't too happy about sharing their road with me. Japanese schoolgirls say Ah... now.

Tangarakau Gorge

Mmm! Yummy land slips. I love this kind of thing. The road here was lovely, perfectly graded and with a good surface and of course no traffic. Freezing cold in the gorge, though. I stopped several times for hot liquidry. Coasting downhill, arms stuck out sideways pulling abunchive yoga stretches. Very nice.

Accidental ninjary

I never realised I was a ninja until I took this photo. Yep, it was cold!

Water stop

I'd have stayed longer in my sunny spot, but there was no water source. I pressed on and a few k down the road I found a nice culvert. Gurgle wurgle. Drink, wash pot, wash singlet, spare rinse socks. Nowhere nice to camp here, though, so I decided to ride til it got dark and camp somewhere dumb instead.

NZ farm as NZ farm theme park

If you were going to build a gigiantic warehouse in Dubai showing what New Zealand farms look like, you'd be hard pressed to find a better example than the one shows in this photograp. So Legoland! So naturalistic! You'd almost think it grew this way naturally and therein lies my point. You may see a picturesque pastoral scene: I see a desert of sheep food. Mind you, that's what NZ is all about. Despite the fact that almost everyone lives in the cities and has forgotten than NZ makes almost all of its export dollars from farming.

Ngutu Reserve

Yay, sunshine! I found this spot (it's not much bigger than the photo) with a north facing aspect and caught the sunshine while it lasted. Sprawled out here for a few hours and read Plutarch. Got beeped at by the occasional car but since there's no point stopping I was spared passers by telling me how interesting I was (which was not the case while eating breakfast in Stratford a day or two later).

Cold and misty

Ah, very nice. An empty road, bit of fog, gentle hills. Lovely! This photo was taken at 11 am and the sun was threatening to bust on through so I was looking for a place to stop, dry out, eat and snooze. I'd been riding for 7 hours at this point, albeit fairly cruisilyly.

Vincent Ward Movies I

So we follow the Whanganui river for 20 Km or so. Took a photo of this structure, which I assume has something to do with measure the river level, not dragon-resistant Rapunzelage from a bygone (or forthcoming?) era.

Here we must reference Vincent Ward's River Queen movie. Which I haven't seen, like most of his output.

The Big Taumaru

I reached Taumarunui at dawn (7am) to a crowing competition from the town's roosterageses. Now, I'm a city boy and I haven't much interest in small North Island farming towns, so I stopped for a pie then headed off to State Highway 43: The Forgotten World Highway! Can't remember why it's called that, of course. It runs from Taumarunui to Stratford and nobody ever needs to go between these two places AND YET it's a full blown state highway and is graded and surfaced as such.

The way I think of it is: it's a six metre wide cycleway where you're very occasionally interrupted by powered vehicular traffic. The farming in this part of the country is mostly dry cattle, not dairy, so it's mostly stock trucks as opposed to milk tankers.

At first, there were more hills than cars. Then there were more landslips than cars. Then more dead possums than cars. By the time I got halfway, to the border between western Ruapehu district and eastern Stratford district, I was coasting down beautifully graded, picture-perfect country roads with my arms stuck out pulling a bunch of yoga stretches. Very nice. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Descent into Hell (well, Taumarunui, anyway)

At 3am I'd reached the point where I couldn't sleep anymore koz I was too cold and damp. My broken collarbone (1996) started to ache, which is a good indicator that things aren't going to improve comfort-wise unless Steps are Taken. So, I got up and after an hour's worth of hot cups of tea and trying to fit all my gear back into the saddlebag I was on the road by four. Bear in mind this is early winter, I'm at 500m altitude, it's overcast, with a full moon and it's been raining, so I was wearing four layers of wool and had my raincoat's hood up pretty much all of the time for the entire trip.

It was a beautiful moonlit night, with frost on my legs and cold feet. I stopped every hour or so for hot miso soups. Couldn't do anything about my feet except get off the bike and walk for a bit, which got them warmed up a bit.

Extreme Picnics in the Naki

So... coupla weeks ago I jumped on a train to do some riding from the central plateau down to South Taranaki. Not a part of the country I'm familiar with, so I was looking forward to it. I chose the Trek and the Nelson Longflap and took with me a Macpac Pinnacle down-on-top sleeping bag, a flash new Thermarest (scored for a pittance at some second hand shop in Nelson last summer) and my Macpac Coccoon bivi bag. These work well together, except I'm a bit tall for the 'ping bag which means I get cold feet. Nothing life threatening, though.

Since for some reason NZ still has a north-south train service, despite everything - personally I wouldn't mind if they ripped out the whole main trunk line and turned it into a rail trail - I took the Overlander from Wellington as far as Ohakune. I chose un 2 as the departure date koz a) it's Queen's Birthday Weekend and b) on that day the Overlander was being pulled by a steam loco between Fielding and Ohakune. Choarce! Most irregular in this age. There wasn't much difference in how it felt along the way, except that everything smelled of steamy coal dust.

Anyway, in retrospect I should have gone all the way through to National Park, as the ride between Ohakune and NP is a trifle dull and a bit traffickey. And it was overcast and raining so Ruapehu wasn't visible.

We reached Ohakune around 1:30 pm and I arrived in NP at dusk. I had an early start planned so I just setup my bags and crawled in. Unfortunately I'd neglected to dry out the insides last time I used it so everything was damp. I loaded up on some hot muesli, knocked back a shot of whiskey from the hip flask and crashed.

Bridgestone T700 with Carradice Nelson Longflap and 3 large pizzas

I was going to send this to Carradice Hacks (www.wallbike.com/content/carradicehacks.html ) but haven't got round to it. I don't like conventional racks very much - they spoil the lines of the bike and tend to rattle and come loose unless you've gone and sourced some nylock bolts. With a Carradice saddlebag and an old Karrimor rack, the load is suspended from the saddle and has a bit of bounce to it.

One thing I like about Carradice bags is that they're designed to be deliberately imperfect. By which I mean - they don'thave a regular box shaped profile and aren't really designed to sit vertically. A 45 degree angle actually makes them quite a bit more versatile, as the image shows.

Diamondback Ascent - Sorry Unconvenience

Did a spot of cycletouring in Thailand and Laos last year. Nothing to write home about, to be honest - I don't really like hot temperatures much. After I crossed into Laos at Huay Xai I ran into the stonkingiest roadworks I've ever seen. Hills were too steep to ride up and too steep to ride down with my (overloaded) bike.

So I gave up and buggered off to Honkers (Hong Kong) instead which was much more to my liking. (Oh yeah, and Bangers - Luang Prabang - is totally overrated).

I left the bike in Bankers (Bangkok), though the riding around Lamma Island looks pretty good compared with most global megatropoli.

Does my Trek's arse look big in this?

The Trek with Carradice Nelson Longflap and handlebars for the eBayers. Like the Tardis, you can get more into it than you think:)

The On-One Inbred 29er fix

This is not quite my only (so-called) mountain bike, but it soon will be once I strip the Diamondback. I spent a lot of time researching the viability of a fixed gear offroad bike, spurred initially by Matt Chester's titanium creations. I was all set to order a Chester but the prospect of a long waiting list and financial reality dictated a cheaper option.

This bike has Velocity Dyad 700C rims, IRO sealed hubs (same as Kogswell and On-One's but in silver), Dimension moustache bars, 170mm Middleburn cranks - actually a Truvativ on the left side) and a 60" gear (32/16x30") which is good for pretty much anything. Brakes are XT Vs from about 1997 and levers are Dia Compe 287Vs.

While the left crank was waiting for replacement I had 175 mm cranks on this bike and managed to get it up to 51 Km/h one day when conditions (mine and the road's) were favourable. Even so, it's slightly too lowly geared to keep up with geared roadies on the flat most times. Not that I care.

I've done a four day offroad trip on the Heaphy Track on this bike and it was FINE. Good thing about fixed is that on smoothish, flatish but wiggley as hell tracks, where you need to constantly add speed then scrub it off again, a fixed gear is brilliant. You don't need to brake constantly every few seconds to stop the bike running away with you, you just use your legs. Result? Hands still comfortable ,whereas on a freewheeling bike they'd be cramping up.

On-One's service is not great - if I was doing it all over again I might go for a Surly Karate Monkey instead but with decent, reasonably prices 29er framesets rather thin on the ground cheggars can't be boozers. So I'm told.

The Orange Gillot

Gillot is a marque which began in the 30s, I believe, and whose heyday was the late 1940s. Since then, the brand changed hands several times and in fact frames are being produced even in 2007 with the Gillot badge on 'em, but they're the usual alloy and carbon you get nowadays. This Gillot isn't particularly special, but it's nice and big and it's a lovely colour. Running gear nothing to write home about - this might become a fixie one day but I'm got tunsiv derailleur drivetrains floating about so it's gearied til then. Hubs are Shimano and they're surprisingly good for their age. Bearings move, etc. Bonus.

Raleigh Record Ace 1982

Since I'm on a bit of a roll with the old 27" touring bikes, I'm reliving my teenage years a bit and buying a bunch and doing the hell hell parts swap from hell. Here's a Raleigh Record Ace which I'm trying to get as close to the Trek 720 as I can. Most of the running gear is taken from my old Bridgestone T700, which was always a bit small, so it's v

ery much like the Trek except it's running Shimano gears instead of Suntour. The Shimano barcons are smaller than the sountour and don't have ratchets.

Apart from that, same mudguards, also has sealed hubs and BB, same bars, same brake levers (all my bikes have Dia Compe levers, they're great), different pedals but still MKS, same tyres (Schwalbe Marathons) and same saddle. And the Raleigh is a 1982, like the Trek. How good!

Trek 720 1982

So... About time I updates my blog, perhaps? I am very lazy. Which is another way of saying, I've been busy noodling around with bikes to care about blogging. However: time for some more photos.

This is a 1982 Trek 720 which I picked up on TradeMe for the princely sum of Not Much. After putting on the now-obligatory moustache handelbars and removing front loriders, rear rack, handlebar bag and panniers it's now a lean/mean/blahblah machine. Very nice indeed. I ride this one to work most of the time and it's done some way gnarly tramping tracks on a South Island tour earlier this year. Phil Wood hubs, probably a Phil bottom bracket (koz it's done about 2 dozen stream crossings and still works) and Suntour gears. Lovely.