Friday, January 17, 2020

Friday Night Bonanza, *post number 1111

One-thousand, one-hundred and eleventh blog post...

What added up to a fairly sizeable total tonight.

First up, I parked in Hillsborough Tce and rode around and up Ramahana, Aotea and Huntsbury, then across Vernon, Witch, single-track above the road, Castle.  Back up the road and up onto the Tors, slippery down here with all the dried weed-eaten grass, and a wee low-speed OTB crash onto soft tussock.  Then back on the above-road-singletrack and through the fence and up onto the top of the Duncan Pirate Track.  Into this, and man is it dry. So dry.  Dry AF.  A tinderbox.  Hoped like hell my hot disks wouldn't set a fire.  In the forestry at the bottom I took a muppet route down.  Looks like there's been more work done in there.  Then back on the road and around and over Centaurus Rd hill and back down to the car.

A veritable feast of 18.5 kms and 807 m climbed.

Meanwhile, T and Beck were walking up Rapaki Valley and I txtd when I was back at the car.  T suggested I ride up and meet them.  So, drove around and up to the start of cRapaki Track and parked and rode, leaving my gloves and bag behind, because I was thinking they'd be on their way down and I'd meet them... But no... every corner, are they there?  nope.  Once up on the flat I spotted them, rang, "is that you near the top?" "is that you under the pylons? Hi! - come on up!"  "Ungh, okay"  Off I treadled, meeting them just shy of the top.  Grabbed a snack off them, then headed up to the new singletrack and bombed down (pausing part of the way down, out of view, for a quick chat with Douglas), waiting for them at the flat and riding with them til it got steeper and my coasting got faster and faster til I was bombing to the bottom where I waited in the car for them.
another 250+ m in another 8 kms...

Well earned, we went to Zaffron and ate.  mmm

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