The NZ Summer Lovin tour rolls on, and with somewhat predictable fashion its back to a favoured location, the Hawkes Bay. Yup, much raving went down about the goodness on tap here in the bay around this time last year. So, returning to the same location, its important to make sure we spice things up a little bit and explore some new routes. The good news? That’s as easy as fuck in the Bay, which seems excessively over supplied with back roads that look like they’re off the set of a Zombie apocalypse movie based on how deserted they are.
Given my tentative rides to date, it was time to step things up a level and tackle the 70km out and back from Dirty oTown HQ to Kairakau Beach (to avoid fucking it up, I just referred to it as K Beach). This was going to be the biggest test on the #road2recovery and the longest ride in about 3 months… Fart noise. So, for the Road followers out there (that’s you Jonsey), here’s some more quality Road Porn for you.
The first attempt was an epic fail, it quickly occurred to me that no, I wasn’t going to beat the storm and yes, I was riding straight into its fisting. Wanting to avoid the “How did you re-injure yourself again?” conversation, I beat a scampering feline retreat back to my blanket. The only good news? I got to use my $750 Rapha Rain Jacket again, thus bringing the average cost per use down to a mere $125 level, basically a give away.
The filter doesn’t really do it justice.. Promise there was a storm. Honest.
Fast forward a day for take two and normal Summer Lovin service had been fully restored, and fucken then some! Much like last year on these H Bay rides, it becomes problematic when I want to keep stopping to photograph what locals would refer to as “Just fucking farm land mate“…
Welcome back to the Tuki river
And they probably had a point, none of my shots really making much sense other than to reinforce that I was clearly someone who had recently been released from sitting around in the same spot for too long and that thought blue sky and green grass was a novelty that deserved a lot more attention than its usually provided..
Pointless essentially, other than to stop at the top of a climb
Given I still can’t really climb out of the saddle with the gimp set up, it was slower going than usually. If you’re into your dramatic out of the saddle feral power efforts up rolling climbs then you’ll be right at home here, the countryside is peppered with them, to the point where you’ll easily fuck yourself and then spend the rest of the time wondering where you can get a coke, in other words take two bottles. 35km’s later, it was K Beach time!
Shimmery
The only downside of getting to the coast is the fact you’ll most likely want to hit the beach and/or surf… The combo of 27 deg sweet burning heat and finally seeing a beach with sand and no ships make it a compelling proposition, until you realise that its illegal to come out of the water and jump on the bike, awful.
CAAD10 making its comeback reunion count
And just for good measure while we scoff down some power lollies arrangement while wondering how we’ll get home, the beach to the left, yes, blatant scenery porn:
Time to nude the fuck up
The climb out of K Beach is decent… Well, 15 minutes solid, which is probably more like 13.5 if you don’t stop to take photos of the road that when you get home and upload them don’t seem to make a lot of sense… This one’s for you WA, there’s a KOM down here waiting for you to come and finger it silly with those frothing Welsh mitts:
“Nomad says its around 13 minutes, which means about 8.5 for me then, jolly good”
So yes, its been another completely normal summer ride with me making a partial attempt to wrap a story around it. For Kiwi’s it a bit “big fucken deal eh“, but if you’re from out of town and are forced by work/partner to come here for a ‘wine tasting trip’, and assuming its summer, then its well worth bringing the road bike to get out and sample some of the deserted roads around these parts. The variety is awesome, the very few motorists overly courteous and the views make you go “Fuck yeah“:
Hills still a little green for my liking, but each to their own
If you want to hit this shit, then here is the Strava file action for out of towners/evil foreigners. Its quite possible that I created some segments that I ended up being the only person to have ever ridden on Strava, absolutely the cheapest way to bank some new KOM’s. Filthy:
http://app.strava.com/activities/230390260/
In some important good news – 2 hours and 45 mins in the saddle in the new Cuore kit that will be the same items used by the DN Road Kit which is going into production soon and I’m pleased to report that its comfortable, PRO feeling (which doesn’t translate into performance) and no drama’s at all. Thank fuck for that, as there’s a reasonable amount of it on the way!
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