Fare Thee Well - 2014 As It Was

2014 is without doubt the fastest moving year on record!

 Well, for me it certainly was. I am sure I had less than 5 days all year that were chill days, that is, not pre allocated to work or something to do with the kids, the house, trail building or mountain biking. 

First World Problem, yes, I know.

That isn't to say that I didn't have a good time. 

The year started on the right note, with a 4am road ride to see in the new year.

I was soon on holidays with the kids and we spent some time in Canberra and the Snowy Mountains, joined by Gaz and his daughter, Elody.

After a week back at work it was time for some more time off!! Yep, I headed to New Zealand, the South Island to be exact, for a motorbicycling holiday with my little Bro and two of his mates, Wayne and Geoff. This was the culmination of almost 20 years dreaming and we finally decided we just needed to make it happen.

And happen it did! 3900km in 10 days saw us roll all of the passes from West to East and back again as we made our way South down the island. Much great Kiwi beer was consumed and tall tales told....

A rest day in Queenstown was golden.....

Chasing my little Bro, Chillertek...this was as close as I ever got.

The 10 days went all too quickly but I will remember that trip for a long time to come....er....especially as I have a lot of photos to prompt the ageing memory!

Trail building took a huge leap forward this year with a professional contractor cutting our next trail. We only had to plan the route then watch him cut it out. 

Spangled Drongo was born! We then had a huge trail care tidy up day that was well attended by about 40 riders, our best roll up so far.

In fact, we had 2 new trails built in our forest with the latest, Birdwing, going in during early December. It is very new and raw but it is our best effort by quite a ways, so far.

Work took precedence for the middle portion of the year. Well, you have to pay the piper at some stage. Much tooing and froing of the country ensued. 

This was my view for 708.4 hours this year...

The view outside was usually much more interesting.....

And with about 80 nights away from home this year, I tried to keep the fitness up by stepping out at every opportunity....

The kids did much as well. Lucy started high school and to our great relief, loved it. They both played sports. Lucy being in an undefeated Under 12 girls soccer team and Will battling through another Rugby season.

More importantly, they both did quite a bit of mountain biking. 

Lucy took some wins this year. In fact, she won the State Series with a clean sweep of all races...

Pancakes and pies fuel those little engines.

I had a couple of new mountain bikes join the stable this year. 

A new cross country race bike and a new "all rounder", my much anticipated Titanium framed Lynskey 29er to replace my old faithful Giant XTC.

My poor motorbicycle has rarely seen the light of day this year. I guess I may have had it out of the shed 6 times all year. Clearly an unacceptable outcome for such a pretty, old girl. 

I do have some plans for her that involve Chillertek, so watch this space.....

I must thank all of my regular riding buddies for allowing me to ride with them. I appreciate your company, your different outlooks on life and your humour. Thanks for some great rides throughout the year....here's to more in 2015...

Apologies to those that I haven't been able to catch on film...er memory card, you know who you are......

2014 was simply frickin' awesome! I don't see how 2015 can be better, but I know it is going to be bigger, better and hopefully........loooonger.

Cheers and thank you for tuning in this year.

Happy New Year all!

New Zealand - A Quick Look At The South Island - Part 5

Days 9, 10 and 11

Balclutha to Twizel to Methven and Christchurch - 796km(498mi)

The beauty of Kiwi motel rooms is they all seem to have a great little kitchenette in them. Either us Aussies are too lazy (quite possible) or too corrupt (make you buy something from the motel,quite possible also) to include some basic eating facilities in our motel rooms. It will be buried in "a regulation" as to why we can't but we were pleased that the Kiwis retain this freedom as it allowed another cost effective, semi-healthy breakfast before we rolled on toward Twizel today.

We had some discussions over beers the previous evening as to which way to leave Balclutha. There was an East of the Clutha River option and a West side option. 

New Zealand- A Quick Look At The South Island- Part 3

Days 5 and 6

Fox Glacier to Queenstown - 430km(269mi)

After a restful sleep, where my new room mate (Wayne) said there was no snoring, unlike when he shared with "Geoff the chainsaw" the previous night, we wandered down the main drag of Fox for some breakfast. There was a hustle of tourists getting onto buses for tours, being picked up for chopper flights and the odd long distance cyclist getting ready for another day of pedalling in paradise.

We were soon on the road, leaving the Fox Glacier Inn and it's great hospitality behind. While not the most aesthetically pleasing of pubs, the friendliness and service make it a "must visit". Steve produced the following  photo hoping to embarrass me, but I present it here as a testament to west coast hospitality! ;-) (even if the young lass was from Austria) You just have to get a photo with the bar staff when you ride your bike INTO the pub!

New Zealand-A Quick Look AT The South Island Part 2

Days 3 and 4

Westport To Hanmer Springs To Fox Glacier- 830km(518mi)

Waking to grey skies and rain, I jumped on the Trumpy and ducked down to New World and picked up some bacon and eggs, plus some bread rolls. Having spied a bbq in the garden of the motel I thought that cooking our own breakfast using the utensils in the well stocked motel room would be a far cheaper alternative to buying four bacon and egg rolls at a cafe. New Zealand is actually quite expensive! As it turned out we had enough for two each with some bacon left over. We were soon as full as a public school !

I haven't mentioned my riding gear yet. I had purchased an RST all season 2 piece suit for the trip and had only taken the tags off of it as we were loading our bikes in Christchurch. This was supposed to guarantee no rain....Anyway, you could say that it was untried. Today, it would get a baptism of fire..er..water.

Sorry for the crappy

photos, but the suit is awesome!

The other unknown was how would the bikes handle in the wet? Wayne from Paradise had mentioned to me that the tyres on the Trumpy were just as good in the wet as in the dry. Now I wasn't sure if he meant they were rubbish in the dry and hence no worse in the wet or if he was just planting a seed in my head. Riding in the rain is all about confidence. Either way, I would be taking it pretty easy until I got a feel for them.

We made our way out to Cape Foulwind to check out the seal colony but finding it quite a walk from the bike park, we decided to simply press on in case it rained all day. We had accommodation booked in Hanmer Springs for the night and there was a bit of riding in between. This didn't stop some horsing around at the Cape though.

Courtesey The Road To Nowhere

On a positive note, my gear seemed to be be watertight and warm.....unlike my boot which had trickled water in from somewhere.

We beetled along for a while, before seeing an amazing photo opportunity that was worth risking wet cameras. The weather really was pretty crap but being warm and (mostly) dry I was quite enjoying the ride with the wet coast's spectacular vistas.

Not long after we stopped at Punakaiki to see the Pancake Rocks, an unusual geological phenomena. Basically the rocks look like stacks of pancakes. There are a few blow holes that were pumping but there was so much water flying around the place anyway that I wasn't overly impressed. It was late morning and we were STILL looking for good coffee though.

The road straightened out a bit now and began to dry so that we had a pleasant ride into Greymouth. Here we stopped for a bite to eat and to get a decent coffee. This done we were back out the road headed toward Reefton and eventually Lewis Pass. It looked to be dairying and livestock farming along here with views off to rain capped hills in the distance. Very nice.

Stopping to take a photo while on a group ride can be frustrating for the non-photographers. As I saw some opportunities and pulled over, a few minutes later Wayne would come riding back to see if I was ok. "Yep, just taking a photo" was my slightly embarrased response. They soon came to ignore me when I disappeared off the back, which was fine with me.

We stopped for fuel in Reefton, which looked like a pleasant town that could do with an explore. That wasn't to happen as this was a tear-arsed tour of the South Island with no time to look at anything. I had a slight moment at the service station when moving my bike from the bowsers. As I moved the bike, my helmet was on the mirror. Just as I stopped it decided to jump ship! I managed to get my foot under it to break it's fall but then it rolled about 5 metres across the forecourt. Of course this scratched nothing but the visor! D'oh!!

As we rode out of Reefton, the heavens began to open again making for a cool, wet ride. As we climbed the mountain the temperature began to drop. It got down to about 10C (50F) at its lowest but I simply activated the heated grips and was toasty. My tyres really did seem to be quite good in the wet as we were motoring along and this was a very heavy bike, what with my kitchen sink in the panniers! The only real issue was with visor fogging, making for some exciting corners! Have a laugh at me a I go from visor closed, to open, to closed, to open, to.....you get the idea, in this montage.

To be honest, I was concentrating so hard on being smooth I didn't even notice the "Pass" bit of this road. It just felt like we were riding through a winding forest road, with no discernable climbing or descending. However, the scenery very quickly changed to open vistas across azure rivers to distant mountains. BAM! We were back in Middle Earth!

The rain had eased somewhere around here and the road was now dry. Combine this with jaw dropping views and that last 50km(32mi) into Hanmer Springs took a few hours to complete!

Bye Bye Rain!

Geoff and Steve

 Chillertek motoring by.

Looking back up the Walau River valley.

We were staying at a backpackers tonight in Hanmer Springs. It turned out to be a normal house in a residential street and I was a bit dubious. Jack In The Green was actually a very clean, well run backpackers. We had our own separate unit and hey, what was that on the lawn? Another BBQ! Once we had offended the locals and tourists alike by exposing our lilly white skin at the hot springs we shopped up a storm then cooked ourselves a decent meat and one veg meal, all washed down by some DB Lager, all for bugger all $. Well, 3 of us did. Steve apparently doesn't eat peas.......the little girl.

Jack in the Green's....green. BBQ at far right.