Sunday damp Pleasant Greenwoods

Nice ride this morning. Looked to be dodgy, cos there was a bit of precipitation, getting me quite damp riding to Steve's, where met Pete, Wayne, Andy and Tony. There were mutterings of cancellations, but we managed to get through that and off we tootled across to and along the Heathcote, along the Cut and then down behind Ferrymead. Interesting 'features' along with some real wheel eating lateral spread cracks to be avoided.

Then it was off up Mt Pleasant, up up up, past all the broken houses and slumping retaining walls, into the cloud. Regroupled at top, Steve hitting the wall just prior, and it was off out Greenwood.

First section, very slippery rocks, pinging the wheels about the place a bit, past the ruins and the rocks were still well slick, but trail surface pretty good, dust all settled and not a skerrick of mud. The lower we got the better seeming the trail became. Lo and behold, we found Nick Singletrack and PedallingKiwi and others working away like good trailworkers on a new line around one of the troublesome corners lower down. Stopped for a yarn, and continued on down to find a bunch more (who were less pleased we werent stopping to help - cajoling "bring a spade next time!"). These hardy faithfuls had done a spectacular job on cleaning up the trails, de-rutting it in places making for a smooth flowy run the rest of the way down. THUMBS UP to them.

At Evans we hit the road and sped down to Sumner, gawking at the rock falls and quake damaged hills and crumbled landmark buildings before coffee-stopping at Dotcom. Afterwhich we tootled home, gawking some more then taking the Ferrymead singletracks back a bit quicker this time, providing more fun challengewise.

Interesting to note, only 2 days prior to the Feb 22nd quake, we'd ridden down Captain Thomas. Boulders on this track would have killed any one of us 5 times over had they hit while we rode.

Pete kindly gave me a lift homewards.