November 11, 2005

Too heavy!!! That is how I would explain our first test ride in New Zealand. Our plan was to ride from Sumner to Akaroa, a ride of about 38 miles of undulating hills on the banks peninsula outside Christchurch. We arose at 7:00am packed our bikes and left Steve’s house about 9:00. We made it as far as the end of the driveway before we hit our first snag. My front panniers began rubbing on my front tire a problem that would affect my ride the remainder of the day. I corrected it by repositioning the pannier on the front brace but I could not find a way to keep it in a stable position for the more than 15 minutes at a time.
Leaving the driveway we started our first climb of the day, a moderate hill between Sumner and Lytleton Harbor. We both immediately noticed the additional weight on our bikes and how it was diminishing our climbing power. We should have turned around and dropped some gear but in our persistence we continued up the hill and down the other side to catch the ferry across Lytleton to Diamond Harbor. We picked up the track on the other side and climbed a 2km hill and descended into Purau. After the small village the road began picking up grade for the next 7km. Most hills have short sections where the road becomes flat or changes grade direction such that riders can get a rest. The terrain variations allow a bicycler to break a climb into discrete climbs with short rests in between. NOT THIS HILL! In fact it just became steeper the higher we climbed, Jodi was off her bike after about 3km so I walked with her from then on. We climbed and climbed and climbed, pushing our ridiculously heavy bikes up the hill thinking “the top must be around the next bend” but with each successive blind curve came the revelation that there was more climbing to be done at an even steeper grade. After looking at the watch and hearing cursing and swearing from behind it was becoming very clear to me that we were not going to make Akoroa on bicycle. After some discussion we decided to turn around and ride to Christchurch, rent a car and drive to the hostile we were supposed to stay. I was really surprised on the ride down how much of the hill we had climbed, how steep it was and how unstable my bicycle felt. I had the feeling my rear wheel wanted to fall to my right and the front wanted to fall to the left making it really hard to keep the bike straight and making the ride feel very “flexy”.
We planned to return via the course we had taken with the exception of returning to Christchurch instead of Sumner. I remembered Steve saying that one of his friends lived in Diamond Harbor, where she had to commute to work via a ferry to Lytelton and a bicycle ride through the tunnel on the highway, so I thought, instead of riding another set of hills, we ought to do the same. I have run class V rapids, driven cars too fast on icy roads and jumped cliffs on my skis but none of those experiences come close to the feeling of terror that I felt riding through that tunnel. Approaching I noticed a wide walkway on the left going in the tunnel leading me to believe the ride through was going to be a synch but a 100 meters in, the walkway all but disappeared leaving no buffer between the tunnel walls and the adjacent lane with vehicles rushing from behind. Then with every redneck blowing his horn to hear how it sounds caused our nerves to become frayed very quickly. All I could do was put my head down and pedal through as fast as I could, which could never be fast enough. I suspect this will go down as one of the dumbest and scariest things I will do in my lifetime. On the other side I collected what was left of Jodi and we promptly exited the road to a less busy one and continued riding (after a pretty good tongue lashing ) to a car rental agency.
We thought we would try the agency that gave us the best price last year and they came through with a $25NZD rate. We tossed our bikes in the car along with all our gear and drove to Akaroa. On the way we stopped for some beer and groceries, some tortellini and sausage for dinner. In about an hour we arrived at the farm hostile and were very surprised with our room and its unbelievable view. I drank a few beers, took a shower and cooked some dinner. I hope tomorrow we make better decisions!!!