The Statute of Liberty

The past few days have been a culmination of amazing experiences. I am going to avoid delivering the play by play because no one wants to hear that even from their spouse, even though that’s what we sometimes get .We're usually too tired at that point or simply content having someone willing to share their day with us to do anything about it. So many of us endure the play by play day after day but that’s not what I am going to do. A sequential series of feelings along with a few meaningful images transmitted into each other’s brains would be a far more affective portrait of ones occurrences’, lest drowning the significant moments in the details, hence the need for abstraction in art, poetry over prose or MSG in our food. I hate the play by play.

 We found ourselves invited to stay at quite picturesque farmstead north of Auckland. The family was very warm and surprisingly trusting toward a couple of brambling foreigners several days minus showers and much longer plus beards. Prepared to cook and mind to ourselves we were further invited to dinners of smoked snapper pie, roast lamb over stewed vegetables and rosemary apple pie, don’t forget the ice cream. We cleaned and did what we could to keep karma allied with us, however there was no way around it being a win for traveling team.

We reached Woodhill at last and I must admit I intend to become well versed in this emerging genre of cross-stuntry (CS).Yes there were isolated dirt jump courses and a few big bike only big hits but further out the groomed swoopy packed sand based trail was littered with stunt after stunt to skinny to ladder bridge to totter to gap to berm step up log skinny double double ladder bridge...basically a large scale game of chutes’ and ladders ending in a bike orgasm.. a bikegasm, a bikeogasm, yes! We indulged two days of this ever tempted to go bigger but being on light bikes, Tim and I had to finally admit it was a  ticking time bomb out there and it best not to stick around to see our race wheels go KA-POW.

We made our farewells at the farmstead and headed to a fantastic(perhaps even fantastical) black sand beach for the night. Big surf, sheer cliffs and a deep tidal alcove surrounded our hammocking spot. Now after a sleepy bus ride we are in Rotorua. It’s time to rebuild bikes and get back trailside. Im stoked to see the course and get our bearings. Tim and I are currently entertaining the kick off 100k race on sat, we'll keep posted on that. The egg smell is making me hungry...