Paul Petch

Port Hills to Taylors Mistake

Today was one of those days…. one that refreshed my memory to why we moved here last November. Blue skies- warm breezes and dry trails calling. Summer seems to be here :) With a shorter 70mm stem (vs the 90mm) and the Speicialized Eskar upfront with a new Larson TT on the back  the Cove was ready for this season :)

Craig and I headed to the Hills with the aim of riding to Godley Head and taking it a little easy due to this being Craigs first “real” mountain bike ride since May due to a really bad ankle injury. Half way up Rapaki he was really feeling it…. but after not riding outside of the gym and indoor trainer.. all of the extra body movement adds up. I never caught him on any of the other non technical climbs today so he got into the groove pretty quickly :D

At the bottom of the Greenwood track (wow that trail is fast and dry!) we bumped into Tama and two other chaps basking in the sunshine. We were actually going to join Tama this morning but due to leaving later than planned we could not head off at the same time. Tama runs the NZ online forum Vorb- and we discovered that he was running a live photo thread of the days ride from his mobile phone…. how cool is that?!!

The last trail into the carpark was off the hook especially with Tamas mate from Wellington hot on my heels….. getting air off rocks with a XC fork was a warning sign that I needed to dab on the brakes a little more at this point :). The road climb out to Sumner is also a beast… luckily the change of tyres helped me out on steep road climb….. god only knows what pushing the mountain king up and over would have been like! After arriving back into Sumner we all went our own ways with my Wife Amy meeting Craig and I for some food and some chill time looking over the ocean. Very nice!

The new stem length on the Cove was absolutely fantastic today- I was actually in control of the bike today rather than the bike being in control of me. What brought on the change of stem exactly? Well, I’ve felt for a while that the front end was very slow to respond on technical stuff and after spending most of the winter on the GT and recently the Lynskey- the cockpit was just to stretched out and slow upfront too when I got back onto it. Today it was absolutely dialed… and the summer tread absolutely flew too! I’d heard that the Larson are a fast rolling but grippy tyre…. and that is not wrong… what a bloody brilliant rear tyre it is. Having some more pedal clearance too was also VERY nice compared to the old school XC vibe of the Lynskey. I just don’t think the Lynskey is cut out for the rocky hills at all to be honest :(

All the tracks were pretty much dry with the Anaconda having the worst ruts and wet patches. Hopefully the next working bee will fix this…. and I’m happy to help out too. What a F**kin brilliant ride it was today and nice to spend it with some really good company too. Cheers guys! and a big shout out to Tama who rode rigid today…. crazy loony man!

There are a few more pictures here.

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Related posts:

1. Port Hills to Sumner
2. Richard’s visit. Ride five. Port Hills to Taylors Mistake
3. Port Hills into Taylors Mistake
4. The Flying Nun track – Port Hills
5. Taylors Mistake Christchurch

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Bike Rides and tagged with cove, craig, port hills. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.