Sunday a.m. greasy Rapaki to Taylors to home

Met at Steve's 8.30ish to find Steve, Andrew, english Mark, Wayne and Tony. quite wet, drizzly sorta rain, forecast to clear so figured why not... headed up Rapaki, it was much soggier than you'd've imagined. i felt lousy, due to a late night... but still hammered up the hill in good time, tho cruisier than normal. quite wet at top, but headed round Witch Hill, which was very rideable, bar the slick rocks. no real mud, just a tiny bit sticking to tires which then made for slippy rocks. along road, cautiously tackled Castle Rock to bridle path, and quite enjoyed it, with the squirrelly flicks that rocks throw at ya. then round road, Britten. Steve and Wayne were behind the rest of us and we decided to stay on the road, by half way round we realised they'd taken the singletrack, so i jumped the fence and joined them for the last bit. then we hit Greenwood...

Beautiful run down Greenwood. the damp rocks kept things very interesting, but the armouring and drainage has treated the trail well. the slats werent too slick and all was good. i had one very near off, just after the rocky descent that follows gloomy gulch, before heading into the switchback area, managed to keep in on board and continue down tho. Tony stayed well on my tail down the rest after that, he was on form!.

then godley, up and out, went pretty good. the backside before livingston was freshly dug, probably on saturday during the hot norwest, so there was a fair bit of exposed clay which stuck something wicked to the tires. got off and walked the worst of it, and then the descent to livingston on the newly formed line was sweeeeet. much better flow for me this time than last. Hubby was under a rock on Livingston, fixing a flat. we carried on, following these two identical nomad riders up the next climb, sneaking past them when one of them toppled off a rocky section that i cleaned. bomb to breeze all sweet, turned to watch tony crash just after the final cattlestop.

then a BLAST down the anaconda, caught excellent air all the way down. bit mucky in the bottom section, tail all good, climb over taylors not bad, nicholson good, dot com good. left ahead of others to get home for lunch, very tired by the time i made the end of Linwood ave.