This week got off to a halting start. But we made it through. And got a lot of sunrise photos, for better or worse.
Monday
It’s a holiday. And a no ride day.
Tuesday
Bitey rain on the way to work. Raroa Rd, Raroa Rd! One day, in another life, we will meet and talk at last about all the ways we have wronged each other. We will cry, embrace, and forgive each other.
Bitey rain on the way home also. Lay on the floor.
Wednesday
This also turned out to be a no-ride day. Back on the horse tomorrow.
Thursday
The morning ride. It was a clear day, glittery light, only one close passer (but it was one of the classics – on a blind corner into oncoming traffic).
At lunchtime, I zoomed down the hill into town for a coffee with my friend Susan. I’m always a bit nervous about locking my bike outside People’s Coffee on Taranaki because one time I came out and my back wheel had been taken off and I couldn’t put it back on. But today was incident-free.
Slogged back to work afterwards, rejuvenated. I wonder if the Terrace could ever be made better to bike up. I think it’s probably a lost cause. There should be a little bike bridge that sails over it. Or a tunnel.
A fast-ish ride home in a cool evening. This was one of those rides where my head was full of work as I slogged up hills, and I arrived home with no memory of the ride.
I went out again in the dark for a Little Jog around Highbury and Kelburn. Have been experimenting with whether my leg will let me run on it or whether it will get angry. A work in progress.
Friday
Got up just after 6, splashed face with cold water, put on a hi-vis vest and my most hideous and comfortable shorts, and attempted a Big Ride. A morepork was still out, and the moon and stars. Shockingly, some people striding along in business clothes already. Roads otherwise quiet, sky only just starting to lighten. I had an idea that maybe I could make it up to the Golf Ball and still make it to work in time. Zoomed down into Aro then up Durham, towards Brooklyn. (As always, I could’ve gone along Highbury Fling, but I really like to start this climb right from the bottom.) I am always amazed at how quickly I start roasting, even in chilly morning air. After about thirty seconds of steep climbing, I’m ready for an ice bath.
This ride, I quickly realised, was going to be a failure of fuelling. I’d had a glass of oat milk before setting off, as if I was some horse just out for a gentle amble. But from the get-go, the ride was a struggle. Legs felt like two rusty old saws. Lungs like… what? They just weren’t interested in participating. Also, my head (swaddled like a baby in two head bands) felt very cold, and as I got further up, it got colder.
Breath and steam swirling in the beam of my front light as I inched up Helen and Apuka and Karepa. The sky was becoming a pinky peach – I think of this colour as ‘Ezibuy Peach’, as I remember a lot of the tracksuits and t-shirts in the catalogue in the 90s were called ‘Peach’ or sometimes ‘Terracotta’. All variations on washed-out orange.
Somehow, with much suffering, I was able to get to the turbine. As I approached it – that grinding, unforgiving hill near the top – I decided I would just get to the flat bit and then turn back for home. But then, suddenly, without even thinking about it, I was sailing past the information boards and through the gate and carrying on. I would strike out for the Golf Ball!
Five minutes later, wheezing, it was clear I had made a mistake. It was getting really cold up there. Even my tongue was cold. Carried on for twenty minutes or so, dying several times on my way up hills, and reached the weird old place that used to be Barkington’s – and some could argue that I was by now so close to the Golf Ball that I might as well keep going – then turned around, defeated, legs burnt to a crisp.
Back on the corner of Ashton-Fitchett and Hawkins Hill Rd, I cruised back along Highbury Fling rather than going down through Brooklyn. There’s something about moving from the road onto a dirt trail in the bush – I felt like a hedgehog running to safety.
For a while, under the trees, it was still quite dim. No other cyclist or walker in sight. Mostly blackbirds. Then suddenly, bits of bright gold light plunking through the trees. Towards George Denton Park, I nearly went careening down a bank on a narrow bit of trail, and finally woke up properly.
Home! Had a hot shower then saddled up again for the ride to work, grinding up Raroa, doing the fingers just one time. I have bought some trackpants that are much better for cycling and that I can almost get away with at work, if I stay mostly behind my desk.
Rode into town after work, weaving through traffic, towards necessary beers. Rode home later at night – a good ride on quiet roads. On Victoria St, near a couple of laughing dudes, I rode through the most incredibly delicious cloud of weed. Went slowly up lower Raroa, both headlights on. Moon in its dumpling phase – about a third full.