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My busy week on a bike (long):
What a week. I had a blast this last week, though I ended a bit sore. It was a trip well worth the money.
Monday morning I was picked up from my hostel. We picked up one other client, and then drove to the Adventure South headquarters. This was the first trip of the season, and there were only three of us signed up for it. I loaded my bags into the trailer and jumped on the hybrid (part street/part mountain with semi slick/semi knobby tires) bike they had set for me to check the height on it.
There was me; Ruth, a company exec from Sydney; and Jasmine, a small women of Chinese descent who works at the Christchurch Casino. Jasmine was really nice, but was often the slowest at biking. She brought her own bike, and it had smaller tires than the AdvSouth bikes the rest of us were using, therefore she had to spin her wheels more to keep up at the same pace as the rest of us. Ruth, on the other hand, was one of those that just put her head down and pedaled. She didn’t stop for photos and she didn’t stop to read any of the information signs. On all but one stretch of the trail, she was the first one done. She didn’t ever really relax, and you could tell she wasn’t used to the cafes and historical hotels that we were staying in. I don’t really understand why someone would spend a bunch of money on flying to another country to bike and then not take the time to enjoy the history and the scenery of the place. Anyway…
Actually, I wasn’t only the only guy that was signed up to go on the trip, I was the only guy in the group, period. All of the guides were also female, and I was the youngest in the group. The latter was sort of common for the last year, but it was kind of different to be the only guy around. Becks was kind of the main guide for the trip, as she was the only one that had actually done before. Allison and Abby were both guides that were going on the trip to learn the route for future trips during the season. Angie actually worked out of the office, handling money, but was going on a trip to get out for once during the season (something encouraged by the owner of the company). All four of them were great, and it was quite fun to hang out with them during the week.
We had to drive for a couple of hours to get down to Central Otago, where the trip would be taking place. Our biking on Monday wasn’t actually on the trail. We actually were biking on the roads along a series of canals up in the mountains. These canals were put in to connect three natural lakes and three manmade lakes in order to produce hydro-electric power. Actually, these canals and dams produce the majority of New Zealand’s power (including for the north island via an underground cable). We were biking on a private road that was in really good repair (so a very easy ride), and it was a beautiful day. It was pretty calm, and the sky was a wonderful blue. There were some nice clouds in the sky, and we were surrounded by beautiful horizons. The area was pretty barren, so there wasn’t a terrible lot growing, but it had its own beauty, regardless. It was also a pretty flat ride, except for one really fun downhill by one of the dams. My only problem was that I didn’t know what the end would be like, so I couldn’t let it all out and go as fast as I possibly I could.
That night we stayed in the Dunstan House in Clyde, at one end of the Otago Rail Trail. The Otago Rail was built during the days of the New Zealand gold rush, when over 40,000 miners were up in that area of New Zealand. It went from Dunedin, the largest city in New Zealand (I’m not sure if that’s still the case, but it was then, at least), to the country’s major gold fields. When the restrictions on what trucks could transport were reduced and then eliminated, the rail’s usefulness lessoned and then became obsolete. One section was kept open to help with the building of the Clyde Dam, but the entire line was closed in 1990. The Department of Conservation purchased it and renovated it, removing the rails, redecking the 68 bridges, and putting down gravel for bikers, hikers, and horseback riders. The trail is closed to all motorized vehicles. Since it was a train trail, there are very few steep hills (up or down), since they would be difficult for the engines to deal with.
The Dunstan House, originally the Dunstan Hotel, one of the biggest pubs in the area. It was the first two story building in Central Otago. It was well know for its cellar, which was one of the best underground cellars in the area. Basically, if you had a good cellar that would keep the booze cool, you had a good pub. It also had its own brass band and dancing girls. The current owners are restoring the place, and it now is a bed and breakfast. They told us about the party where horses were ridden up the central staircase (which is still there) to the upstairs. After breakfast on Tuesday, which was lovely, they even showed us the original cellar, something they didn’t even know was there until after they had purchased the building. The cellar is basically as it was back then. They haven’t done anything to the walls or the floor, so three of the walls are from the original building. The wall that is along the street was thickened to support the second story when the first Dunstan hotel burnt down and the second story was put in on the newer one. I got a bit of ribbing during that breakfast because there was an earthquake during the night that I managed to completely sleep through even though it was shaking the house and furniture and made a bit of noise. I guess a year of living in dorms with thin walls will kind of do that to you.
I spent 35 kilometers on a bike on Monday.
Tuesday we started riding along the trail. We rode the eight kilometers from Clyde to Alexandra in beautiful sunny, warm weather. The area near the river was green and filled with trees, while the other side of the trail had a view of the scrub brush and dry grass on the rocky hills that made up most of the area (except for the green, irrigated fields of all the sheep pastures, of which there were quite a few). It was another 17 kilometers from Alexandra to Chatto Creek. There was a straight stretch right after Chatto Creek that was far more difficult than it should have been. It was a straight flat ride, but a wind had picked up after our short stretch break at Chatto Creek, and we were riding directly into it. The wind did provide some help, though, once I got to the hill that we had to climb. The trail had a few very long switchbacks to make the ascent a 1 meter incline in every 50 meters to make it work for the trains, and the wind was a tail wind for some of those long uphill stretches, which made it easier to climb the hill. It was a 10 kilometer stretch from Chatto Creek to Omakau, where we had lunch, and then another 9 kilometers from there to Lauder. That last 9 km should have been easy, but the wind had picked up even more by that time. This time it wasn’t a tail wind or a head wind, but a nasty cross wind that slowed us up and at times forced us to get off our bikes and walk a bit or risk getting blown off of the trail completely.
We stayed that night at the Lauder Railway School, a former school house converted into a B&B, another place steeped in history (though not quite as remarkable as our previous evening’s lodging) with another great friendly couple that were the owner/operators. By the time we finally got off of the trail, my arms were a bit sore. It felt like they were pretty wind burnt, but it became apparent later that evening that I also had managed to get a bit sun burnt on my arms. The bright red color of my arms contrasted greatly against the pale white color of my chest, and I still have straight, vertical lines on my shoulders between the pink arms and the white chest where my sleeveless t-shirt ended.
I was on my bike for a total of 44 kilometers on Tuesday, and though my legs weren’t really sore, my seat definitely was.
On Wednesday morning, I got a bit more ribbing at breakfast because I had managed to sleep through another event in the night: this time high winds that rattled past the windows and outside of the house. It was still a bit windy when we got back on our bikes, and a bit cool (well, cool for me and cold for the others - I got nicknamed "Icicle Man" by Becks for always having the least amount of warm clothing on and often being the only one in shorts), but luckily it warmed up after a bit. This section of the trail had a few more gentle ups and downs than Tuesday’s ride (with more ups than downs). It also had the first couple of tunnels to ride through. It was kind of fun to ride into the tunnel out of the bright sunlight and into the darkness without a flashlight. I had a bit of an "Oh, duh" moment in the first tunnel when I realized that it would be easier to see where the walls were if I took my sunglasses off. I stuck them in my mouth, since I could see where my saddle bag was. That was right before Abby called out to me to let me know that she had stopped in the tunnel to take a picture. I replied, and my sunglasses fell out from between my lips. Of course this happened right when I was in the middle of the tunnel, at the curved part where you couldn’t really see any light from either end of the tunnel. There was no way to see where my sunglasses had dropped, so I started groping around for them, and then I realized I had a light, the same light I had used at the Rangitata Rafts’ lodge when the power had gone out. I had ridden on Monday and Tuesday without any music and just listened to the wind and the birds and the crunch of gravel under my tires, but for the longer ride on Wednesday I had put my headphones on. I pulled my iPod out of the pocket on my Camelback and used the light from the screen to pick up my sunglasses.
I made sure that I took my sunglasses off before entering the second tunnel. Unfortunately, I still had a bit of a problem with that one too. I stopped in the middle to take a picture of the light shining in at the end of the tunnel. After I took the picture, I put my camera back into my saddlebag, but I didn’t zip it up. I figured it would be much easier to do that once I was back in the sunlight. Unfortunately, right as I was coming out of the tunnel, I managed to hit a bump that jostled my camera out of the bag and dropped it to the trail. Fortunately, it was all right, but I managed to crack the Circular Polarizer that I had on the lens, one of the two filters I had screwed on. At least it was just a fairly cheap filter that I can replace here in Christchurch and not the entire camera.
During this section of the ride, we also got to the highest point of the trail, at 618 meters, which also happened to be near one of the two trail markers showing where the trail was at 45°S, exactly half way between the equator and the South Pole. Right after the peak was one of my favorite parts of the trail. I went from being the very last one in the group (I had stopped to read an information sign and take some pictures) to the very front. It was a great downhill stretch with a tail wind. I love the downhills. I just kicked it into my lowest gear and just started pedaling. I was going pretty fast, and I just swept by every one else, even though they were pretty spread out on the trail. That section and the next one were the only ones where Ruth wasn’t the first one to get to the stopping point.
The first part of the day was from Lauder to Oturehua, 23 kilometers, and that downhill stretch was between Oturehua and Ranfurly, where we stopped for lunch. The stretch from a brief stop in Wedderburn (right after my glorious downhill sprint with tailwind) was on a slight down slope (though a very gentle one, unlike the previous downhill), and there was still a bit of a tail wind. I stayed out in front of the pack with Allison as we kept up a pretty fast pace in the light rain that had started down on us. The last stretch from Ranfurly to Waipiata was fairly uneventful, and we parked our bikes after a total of 56 kilometers for the day. We left our bikes in Waipiata and drove to Naseby, where we stayed for the night. We were at the Royal Hotel, another historic building built back in the 1800s. We also got to have a bit of fun before dinner. We went to a huge indoor curling rink, built by a local who has competed in the Olympics for the New Zealand curling team. I think it may be one of the few all year indoor curling rinks in the world outside of Canada.
Curling was a blast. I’ve watched a lot of it on tv during winter Olympics, but this was the first time I ever got to try playing it. Sweeping in front of the stone can definitely get your heart working, and it can be a bit difficult at first trying to get the stone to go where you are aiming (instead of having it curling left or right). I was the only one that had to work on releasing the 44 pound stone more gently. My first few stones went out of play on the backside, where all of the women’s first couple of stones didn’t make it past the hog line and fell out of play by not going far enough. I was also the only one that managed to fall out there on the ice. We all were wearing rubber gripper soles on the bottom of our shoes, which provide an amazing amount of traction, but towards the end of the match, I got really excited sweeping in front of one of the other teams stones (encouraging it to go to far forward and out of play - it happened to be an important switch from advantage to their team to an advantage for mine when it went out) and managed to lose my footing. Apparently it was quite a spectacular fall as first one foot then the other shot into the air and I went down on the ice by way of my butt, right elbow, back, and then head. Two of the other guides at the other end of the ice were really worried as they watched me fall, but I got right back up. All of my hair and my stocking cap managed to cushion my head against the ice (though my neck was just a bit sore over the next couple of days), and I had gone fairly limp without conscious thought, courteous of all of my years of practice with falling and my training in martial arts, so the rest of my body didn’t hurt for more than a minute or so. I wish someone had managed to get a picture of it, though, so I could have seen what I looked like from the other end.
When we got back outside after leaving the curling rink, we noticed that it had started to snow. It continued to do so while we ate dinner, and had finally started to stick by the end of the evening. When we woke up, there was an inch or two of snow on the ground. Luckily, Waipiata, where our bikes were, and where we were starting on the trail again, was a couple hundred meters lower in elevation, and the weather down there was still clear, so we would still be able to bike.
It was a cool morning when we got on our bikes, and it stayed that way pretty much all of Thursday. It wasn’t really cool, but it never got so warm enough that we had to strip off our extra layers. The first part of the morning’s ride was through a beautiful gorge that had me stopping frequently to take pictures. It was also the first part of the trip that had enough trees on either side of the trail that I counted it as forested (with my Pacific Northwest prejudices as to how thick a "real" forest should be, lol). We even got a bit of hail during this stretch, though it was still quite sunny out. We finished the ride from Waipiata through Daisybank and on to Hyde for a quick break, and then did the last 27 kilometers from Hyde to Middlemarch, for a total of 51 kilometers for the day. Middlemarch marked the end of the Otago Central Rail Trail. The stretch from Hyde to Middlemarch had a few different exciting moments. There was the herding of sheep while on bicycles (a large herd of sheep was hanging out on either side of the trail at one point and as we approached they started running away from us, but forwards instead of sideways, so they kept running as we kept biking. We actually had to stop at one point because they were also crossing a bridge and there was no way we could have gotten onto the bridge with all of them on it). I got attacked by four different magpies. They would stand on the posts at the side of the trail, and as I biked along the part of the trail that was near where their nests must have been, they would take up into the air. The would swing up into the sky and then would dive down, out of the sun so it was harder to see them, and swoop from left and right at my helmet and then fly up into the sun to do it again. Since the sun was over my left shoulder, most of the time I could only see their shadows swooping by the shadow of my helmet and hear the crack of the air as their wings swept by just above my head. My legs were a bit tired towards the end of the long ride (and from all the days before), but there was one point were a particular song by the Black Eyed Peas came on (They Don’t Want Music, featuring James Brown). My iPod was on shuffle, and when the bass beat of this particular upbeat song came on, I just started pumping my legs and kicked up the spend my tired legs were going at for the entire length of the almost seven minute song. It was just one of the songs that just made me fell like going. There was also one other point that I really just kicked it and started pumping my legs, but that was for the very end of the ride. Allison and I had a bit of a sprint race for the last few hundred meters of the trail before it stopped in Middlemarch (I won the race, of course. I may not go as fast up hills as everyone else, but I’m definitely built for short powerful bursts of energy which gives me an advantage on the sprints).
Middlemarch may have been the end of the Otago Central Rail Trail, but it wasn’t the end of the trip for us. We had lunch in Middlemarch, and then drove to the middle of nowhere. The section of rail from Taieri to Dunedin can still be traveled on the historic Taieri Gorge Railway Express. The road that leads to the station at the end of the Taieri Express is 12 kilometers off of the main road, and it’s the only thing at the end of that road. There really isn’t anything else around it, so it’s kind of funny seeing a bunch of people get off a train out in the middle of nowhere (though a lot of people just took it from Dunedin to the end of the line and then just took it right back). The rail goes along the side of the steep Taieri gorge. I stood outside on the little porch at the end of the car between the two cars for the entire time we traveled through the gorge, taking lots of photos. It as a very spectacular rail trip, and I didn’t come inside until we got to the suburbs of Dunedin (at which point my fingers had gotten pretty cold and my core body temp had dropped from being out in the wind for so long). We checked into our hotel for the evening, the Leviathan, a large, old hotel more modern than the other places we had stayed, but still full of history. There were antique furniture and decorations throughout the hallways and the entire hotel (including a set of carved chairs and a table covered in dragons - I took pictures). We went out to dinner at a place a bit more upscale than the cafes and historic restaurants that we had been eating at all week. It was an Italian restaurant called Etrusco, where I had a fabulous dinner of Penne alla Verde (penne with lots of parmesan, spinach, and pinenuts) and a glass of Italian Cassasole wine. I was too tired after dinner to do anything, so I went back to my room and started downloading my pictures onto my camera, but there were so many I had to go to sleep before they were done.
We loaded up the van after breakfast and put the bikes back up on top of the trailer, then started driving north. We stopped for a bit to view a strange geological occurrence at one of the beaches. They are called the Moreaki Boulders. There is a group of these four to five foot rounded boulders sitting on the beach. They look like they have been pieced together as there are cracks and veins of quarts segmenting the surfaces of the boulders. There are also smaller pieces that look like they have broken off of the boulders, like the shell off of a stone egg. These boulders of mudstone and quartz were probably formed by being washed in and out by the current over hundreds, or possibly thousands, or years. I’ve never seen anything like it. And I also can now say that I have walked along the beaches of either side of the Pacific Ocean: the northeastern and southwestern shores of the mighty expanse of water.
We unloaded the bikes once again and took a 25 kilometer bike ride along the coast up to Oamaru. It was a beautiful bike trip along the Pacific Ocean, but it was also my hardest ride of the week. When we were on the trail, there were very few steep inclines, that wasn’t the case on the up and down rolling hills along the coast. There were a couple of really long hills that really made my knees hurt. They weren’t as steep as the hill I live on back in Portland, but they were steep enough and long enough to make my knees feel like they were about to lock up, forcing me to stop for a bit until the pain went away before I could continue on up the hill.
We stopped for lunch in Oamaru for lunch, where I had an extremely tasty grilled chicken ciabatini sandwich, and then we piled back in for the couple hour drive back up to Christchurch. The van seats aren’t the most comfortable, and what parts of my bum that weren’t sore from the bike became so on the ride home. I unpacked out of the van and checked back into my hostel, after a very eventful week. We went through all four seasons in five days: hot, cold, calm, breeze, wind storms, snow, hail, rain, and even an earthquake (6.5 near Queenstown, I think it was). I took over 750 photos in five days. It probably won’t be until after I get back to Oregon before I manage to pull out the best of those photos to upload onto my photobucket.