Riverhead ride

Today was Waitangi day in NZ, bizzarely we have a public holiday on a Tuesday, I am not complaining though.

Even though youngest only came back from two and half weeks in Australia on Sunday he was off today with a friends family to go snorkelling up at Goat Island. I decided to go ride at Riverhead with a bunch of other Vorbers.

The forecast was for rain but it was a reasonably sunny, though windy morning. The six of us in the group and we decided to ride the Roadside trail we cleared a couple of weekends ago and then do the BikeParks loop and Eagles Nest trails. I havent ridden BikeParks for ages and have never done Eagles Nest. For a change I took the AC, the idea being on the AC I would get to hills and just say stuff it and walk up them, thus saving myself for the hlaf marathon this coming Sunday. This will mean I have ridden all three bikes in the last 10 days which is excellent.

The Roadside trail was OK, I would have liked to have done it last as Iit always takes me a while to get into the rhythm for twisty downhill tracks, especially riding the AC after riding a hard tail for a while. The first section of the BP trail is quite fun, down hillish with a couple of sharp pinch climbs that catch you out, the trails were really dry in most places with a couple of small holes as always at Riverhead. I made it half way up the road climb before quitting, only one rider made it all the way up, all three times. Eagles nest is a cool little trail off to the side with a couple of small jumps and steeper sections, we rode it twice which meant we had to do the climb a few times. Worth it. We then rode the rest of the parks trail back to the car park. A fun little ride, good group to ride with, not too fast and not too slow.

These are some photos from one of the other riders, on the climb I am the blob half way up the hill.
Me appearing at the bottom of Eagles Nest.

After the ride I was going to join the two oldest kids at Groove in the Park, a three stage dance music concert at Western Springs. I got a park about 2k from the gate which was better than I expected. My plan was to sift around and take some photos of the some of the bands. After queuing to get in for about 30 minutes and barely moving and with time slowly disappearing and rain clouds appearing over the horizon I gave up and went home. The main act I wanted to see was on at 6.15 and I had to be at friends for dinner at 6.30 so it was not worth hassle.

On recommendation from some blog I read I am listening to some free tracks from the Dismemberment Plan's web site, they are really cool. While do I only hear of these bands a few years after they split ?