Sunday Night, frustrations. - first under lights

abortion of a ride last night. picked up Chris at 7, and we headed, via mega detour petrol stations (for the 4c voucher), eventually to bottom of rapaki. 7.30, got out of car, realised i didnt have my helmet! so, drove home, grabbed helmet, and decided to go check out the new trail in Lyttelton. drove through tunnel, 7.55 parked up hill from Police Station, and got on bikes, up a bit, carried up two flights of steps, then on up Gilmore Tce.

at the end of Gilmore Tce, there's this guy standing there looking smug. "you realise your tresspassing?" Huh? From before the turn around on Gilmore up to where the council reserve (and track) starts is private land that he (Mssr Angelo) pays rates on and has to maintain and permission hasnt been granted for public use blahdeblarhdeblah, self satisfied bastard. i asserted, and we negotiated a bit, and still he refused us entry to the public land. the only thing i WISH i'd realised was that there was NOTHING saying it was a private right of way, or that it was a Trespassing area. so, we ended up riding back down to the car, and thought we'd head up evans and do Greenwood.

got back to car, through a road closed sign, into more road closed area, and then backtracked narrow twisty steep back streets of lyttelton under the timeball trying to get past the closed bit, to no avail, the access to sumner was shut last night. so, figured, Living Springs...

drove round, light disappearing fast, and parked up on Bamfords. headed into the trails. did a lap in no time flat. nice lap, fun except for inhaling all of Chris's dust the whole way. decided to do a second lap. up farm track, into pines. chris getting a bit ahead, then "OH". his light had died. this is the trouble with HID lights, very little warning that they're going to die. i followed him up the rest of the pines, then he tried following me. but in Mississippi he just had too much trouble with the trees over the track and finally ended up kinda slipping off the track, so he bailed out the escape and used the full moon's light to navigate back to the car, while i blasted on down Zanes.