I had another crappy sleep last night, so the 16km run, plus early dinner, plus reduced caffeine and a warm bath did not help at all. Perhaps today after a good ride my fortunes may change ? though it is quite humid tonight. Something has to work eventually.
Up early as I was awake, light breakfast of coffee and toast and in the car and off to Waharau, which is about an hour and quarter drive from home on the Firth of Thames. Wharau is part of the Auckland Regional Council park network and one of the few that we are allowed to ride in, and one of two that has tracks worth riding. The loop is short at slightly over 18kms, including 4 km of flat water front road, around a 450m climb over 9km, some lovely twisty ridge line single track in native bush and ending in a wicked double track decent back to the car park. I am sure the whippets could do the circuit quite quickly but for us mortals it is usually a 3 and half hour trip, with time for the slower riders to catch up, mechanicals, view admiring, photos and eating all to be catered for. This is the third year we have had a Vorb ride here, though this year we only had 6 riders down from the 20 or so last year.
Remarkably for a vorb ride we only left 20 minutes late, with a brisk ride along the road to the start of the farm track. There was a howling head and cross wind on the road and I seemed to lead the whole way – teach me for riding the hard tail I guess. Fortunately the hill we were climbing sheltered us from the wind as a long climb into a head wind would have been pretty tough. The track is a semi-overgrown four wheel drive/farm track and is fairly exposed.
The first third of the climb is not too bad, easily rideable for someone like me, the further up the trail the steeper and sketchier the track became with a couple of sections too steep for me to ride and a couple more that no one rode. It took us 2 and half hours to get to the top with numerous stops along the way.
After a quick refuel we lept into some nice twisty tightish single track. Sadly the council have graveled the track in the last year so it was not quite so much fun, and I particular hate riding down loose gravel trails, still it was a hell of a lot fun. There was a lot of vine and fern across the track so parts were fairly jungle. At one point I got ahead to get a couple of single track photos and picked a spot with a nice low hanging vine just to add to the action.
After the ridge line trail we climbed a bit more four wheel drive track before starting the descent back to the carpark. The first couple of km’s are just the most fun, not overly tight, but twisty with lots of short climbs and descents on a nice firm beech leaf littered mud surface, on one short section I clocked 47kmh. The rest of the decent is a bit more open on a narrow four wheel drive track. The whole track is shared with walkers so we were always cautious on the way down, fortunately the only walkers we saw were at a a viewing platform and a trail intersection. The decent takes about 20 minutes and pops you are out right in the car park.
The ride was great. Sadly some scum sucking low down dirty mofo had broken into my car while we out. They smashed the back right side window with such force they put a small dent in the roof of the car. Luckily out of the 5 cars there mine was the only broken into. Even more luckily the morons had missed the $700 zoom lens sitting wrapped in a t-shirt in my riding bag and I had phone and wallet on me. They obviously had no taste in music either as they had been through my CDs and left them all behind… The only thing they took were my house keys, which is a real pain as I will now have to change the damn locks. My car insurance will cover the window but not the locks. I will work from home tomorrow and get the jobs done. Damn shame to ruin a good ride.
The normal after ride is to go to the Kaiui (sp) fish and chip shop for fish, chips and beer. We arrived along with about 20 members of the Mazda MX5 club. The service is slow enough at the best of times so we flagged it and went home. The fish and chips are damn good which is why it is so popular…
I am hoping for a good sleep tonight !
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