I
t’s quiet, damn quiet. I’m wide awake.
It’s 6am. I shower and shave, dress,
and head outside to a breathtaking
dawn over last night’s jumble of plastic
chairs and tables strewn drunkenly around
the decks in front of the duck-pond. Over
which the sun is rising through leafy trees,
into a cloudless, inky blue sky. Fresh dewy
air and sun fill me up, and I look forward to
a familiar run through winding beauty to my
former hometown of Christchurch.
By Christ I’m hungry, and last night's fee
included breakfast. But breakfast is at 7. In
the kitchen there are a few loaves of bread,
a toaster and an empty row of coffee pots. I
wait. Out front is a series of horse paddocks
with newborn foals zooming and springing
back and forth, galloping up to mum and
then zipping away again, playing with the
sheer bloody glee of being alive and well. I
remember the feeling. So I grab the camera
and, while they lie down exhausted, I get a
photo of their ears. The bike is packed and
now I’m just waiting. I break into the kitchen,
toast two bits of bread, steal some butter
from the basket of packets, and find some
Marmite packs too. I’m chomping when the
neighbour turns up to ‘do the breakfast’. It's
all too late, however, and I’m on the road
by 6:45am.
“
The earthworks are
astounding; massive steel
structures with phenomenal
heavy-gauge roofing slopes
at 40 degrees to cover the
railway in sections
South of Kaikoura the road passes again
over hugely battered and beaten ravines
and peninsulas. The earthworks are
astounding; massive steel structures with
phenomenal heavy-gauge roofing slopes at
40 degrees to cover the railway in sections.
Atop these are whole tree trunks bound into
place to stop the massive boulders bending
and breaking through. Entire bays are now
missing. Some hills are so fractured and
friable that they are covered in what looks
like chain mail for mega giants. It beggars
belief. And the roads are good. I ride most
of it agog. At Oaro I turn away from the
coast and start rolling over the motorcycle
fantasy roads of my adolescence. The
Hundalees. These are a series of steep and
twisting roads that used to be infamous for
your dad boiling the car radiator, grinding
three speed lurching column changes,
fumes, and children vomiting. They were
legendary in my day. If you could get over
the Hundalees without chucking, you were
cool as.
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KIWI RIDER 21