By gum we've been busy!

Ha ha haaaa! Just making myself laugh by accidentally writing 'busty' instead of busy in the title...if only...

Anyway, there is a reasonably good excuse for this blog being late. And that reason is that I've been busy. Busy with activities as far ranging as attending wine festivals and doing incredibly long bike rides.

Wine festivals are pretty self-explanatory, so I'm not going to go into too much detail here except to say that if you ever get the chance to attend Taste Martinborough you should go. The highlight of the day for me was Jo applying her dog training techniques on a very drunk Australian by repeatedly telling him to 'sit & stay' (it didn't work though and he was eventually wrestled into his seat by a Kiwi woman). So I shall instead give you a fascinating summary of our weekend at the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge.

We, that is Jo, Harriet and I, had cleverly decided to avoid the worst of the traffic by leaving Wellington at 4pm, and this plan would have worked brilliantly if it wasn't for the ludicrous traffic jam we encountered about 20 mins outside of the city. A traffic jam that saw us travel about 50km in 2 hours. The rest of the journey was fairly uneventful, alot of it goes along a very dull road called 'The Desert Road' even though it isn't in a desert, just a very boring flat plain, and through a variety of non-descript towns. The most interesting town was a place called 'Bulls' (why?) and that was only interesting because of it's 'amusing' habit of trying to put dodgy puns on as many buildings as possible eg the local medical centre was 'cure-a-bull', the pc shop was 'comput-a-bull' etc etc, whilst the dullest place was Levin. It's so dull I can't even think of anything to say about it. Oh yeah, the petrol station toilet had no loo paper. Fascinating, huh?

Eventually we reached Tuarangi, having enjoyed a rather lovely view of the big volcanoes on the way, and tried to follow Rachel's directions to the place where we were staying. This was somewhat hampered by Harriet's decision not to bring a road map with us and our decision to call Rachel to get a better idea of where we were going only to find that she'd managed to go 150 or so km off course, so eventually we gave up and headed to another petrol station to consult their maps and sample some of their finest crapola food.

We got to our destination, a weekend place kindly loaned to us by the parents of one of Rachel's friends, at about 10pm and I proceeded to commandeer the largest room (with ensuite no less) for Jo & I. I also needed to have a quick practice at riding Harriet's bike as it had those funny clip pedals, you know the ones where you attach your shoes to the pedal like skis, but having fallen spectacularly on my arse several times in quick succession I decided against using them and vowed to wear normal trainers. My falling off shame has been lessened by Harriet informing me yesterday that she did exactly the same thing last Saturday, except that she was at a set of traffic lights in town and her humiliation was compounded by having many more witnesses. Karmic retribution for laughing at me, I'd like to think. Anyway, after that little debarcle, we took ourselves away to bed in readiness for a 5.00am wake-up so that we'd be able to register and drop off our bikes by 7am.

So, fortified with 5 hours sleep and a bowl of porridge, we headed off to Taupo 40km down the road. We registered and dropped the bikes off about 30 seconds before the deadline and then realised we had sod all to do until our respective stages of the ride. I was signed up for the 2nd stage and Harriet for the 3rd, whilst Rachel & her mate Amy had 4th & 1st respectively. Once Rachel realised this (and the fact that her changeover point was about 500m from the house we were staying in) she dropped off Amy and went back home where she proceeded to go back to bed until 12.30pm! Jammy wee bastard. By this point, about 8am, I had gone to get on the bus that would deliver me to my changeover point 40km down the road. I feel it is sensible to point out that the NZ weather had decided that it would turn f******g freezing and with a slight drizzle.

My bus trip was uneventful except for the realisation that I hadn't actually met Amy (who I had to swap the tracking/competition timer ankleband thingy with) as Rachel and she had arrived after we'd gone to bed and we'd left before them in the morning. Bugger. Luckily Jo, being the only sentient one in our group, had realised this and given her a description of me and shown her a photo. We arrived at the changeover point at 9am and I proceeded to wait for Amy to arrive...thanks to the persistant drizzle and chill breeze I was forced to put on every item of clothing I had with me and by the time she arrived at 10.45am I was wearing the following couture combo - red nike trainers, powder blue 3/4 running leggings, greenish/sludge hiking shorts, red t-shirt, blue fleece, orange waterproof jacket, red woolly hat & a bike helmet. God, I was gorgeous. After an emotional changeover (I was immeasurably relieved by the fact that I could start moving and stave off hypothermia, not to mention get away from the 60-something bloke who was having a conversation about chafing and his lack of undercrackers), I began the long slow slog to meet Harriet at the 2nd changeover.

Interesting aside - why is it that you only hear the conversations about the 1st & 2nd stages being by far the hardest after the 2nd stage? Basically it was 2 hours of pedalling up and down hills in the rain, with a headwind. The only thing that motivated me was the unspoken competition between me & some of the larger participants - I would overtake them on the way up a hill only to have them sail past by sheer force of volume and gravity on the downhill. It's really aggravating, but I'm pretty sure it was mutual. As mentioned, stage 2 is the hilly part. Imagine cycling up and down Camberwell Grove for 2 hours, or Mount Pleasant for those more familiar with Liverpool, or Mount Pleasant for those more familiar with Tunbridge Wells, or anywhere bloody hilly...like Switzerland. By the time I met up with Harriet I was ready for a nice sit down, so I trudged off to the free bus that would transport me back to the start where I would meet up with Jo & Amy. I decided I would send Jo a text message informing her that I was on my way and proceeded to scoff the contents of the handy bag o'treats they give you for being stupid enough to take part (coincidence that the last time I got one of these was when I ran the marathon? I think not, they are clearly an indicator of foolish levels of physical activity) ie, a banana, a snickers bar & a bag of 'healthy' crisps. Jo very kindly bought me a coffee in anticipation of my arrival back at the beginning, alas she didn't anticipate that the bus trip would take an hour and a quarter. I drank it anyway.

Not long after we convened back at the start we got a text from Harriet saying that she had finished her stage and was heading back up the road to the house (seeing as she was only 500m or so away), but that there was no point in us driving all the way back until Rachel finished the last leg as we'd only have to come back in and pick her up anyway. So we went to the supermarket and bought booze & pizza making ingredients for the night ahead and then went and spent our free food vouchers (for being stupid enough to take part) on very messy roast beef sandwiches and sausages. Rachel mentioned afterwards how heartened she was by our rousing celebration of her crossing the finish line and I am afraid that, yes, I did burst her bubble by informing her that our delight at seeing her was mainly inspired by the fact that it meant we could go home and have a hot shower. Jo wins the prize for longest suffering though having spent approximately 10 hours doing nowt but wait for us lot.

Not much else to report - went back to the house, had a shower, Jo went to bed and slept until 9pm, made pizza (well, I oversaw rather than made), only managed 1 bottle of wine between 5 of us, crashed out. Harriet is now trying to persuade me to do the Coast to Coast in 2007, or at the very least a triathalon. I am resolute in my refusal to humour her, though I might have a crisis when my 40th is approaching and crack. I'll let you know...

S