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12/14/10

I had looked into different activities to do for day trips and such out from the city but I had not arranged anything the previous day so when I slept in to 9 am I missed most of the options I was considering. At the same time I was not overly interested in anything for the tours I had looked into. One I looked at was taking a shuttle bus early in the morning to Hammer Springs and doing the natural hot pools and a bit of hiking but I had just done the hot pools in Rotorua so I was not overly interested in that or the spa stuff that you could also do with that trip. I had also looked into the trip that brought you to some of the high country where Lord of the Rings had done some shooting but that was somewhat expensive and I did not think besides seeing some nice mountains that I would get that much out of it. Two of the other activities I had looked into were doing a horse back riding trail in the mountains for a couple of hours or going on a wine tasting tour. I had already walked around the park and the center of the city and I was itching to get out of the city. I decided to have some breakfast and then I would go and do the Gondola trip to the top of some mountain near the city and hire a mountain bike at the top. I had no clue what it would be like but I figured that at least I could get in some nice biking. The city has a couple of things that they push very hard and they do packages to put them all together.....those are the City Tram, Gondola ride, Punting on the River the combination of doing all those things is like $95 or something. I had no desire to ride the tourist tram around the city as I was happy enough to walk or take city buses and I also had no intention of doing the river boat ride on the Avon which is somewhat similar to the rides you would take in Venice, Italy. I made my way to go and catch a bus and by noon I was at the Christchurch Gondola base and I was not very impressed with the surroundings at this point. I arranged inside with man selling the tickets to get the ride to the top of the gondola and then hire a bike at the top. He called the mountain bike hire company and arranged a time for me to meet the guy at the top to pick up the bike. The total cost was $65 to ride up and hire the bike. For some reason I thought I had read in one of the brochures that it cost $50 but they would not budge on the price. The time they set up was 1:45 pm to pick up the bike. I was not sure what I would do at the top for an hour and a half but I guess I would figure out something. As I rode up alone in my gondola cabin looking at the sheep below on the mountain side and thinking......this is not that great of a view I do not see why they push it so much. Once I arrived at the top it was a completely different story. The 360 degree views were absolutely stunning. The views consisted of the city of Christchurch, the Canterbury Plains and Lyttelton Harbour, on the crater rim of Christchurch's famous extinct volcano. I walked around taking in the sites and snapping pictures as I toured the summit station. I ended up having some time to kill before I went mountain biking but not enough for a worthwhile hike in the area so I ate a little lunch at the little cafe. I then left a little early to make the short walk to go and meet the guy and get the mountain bike. I was early and the guy was already at the meeting location setting a bike up for me. He showed me the bike which was a Specialized mountain bike which was a hard tail (Front suspension only) and then he gave me a helmet and a bike lock to use. He then gave me a paper map and went over some options I had for riding. One of the options was all down hill on a paved road and that did not sound very exciting or challenging at all. Then he told me of another path down the mountain that had a small bit of climbing at the beginning and then lead to a gravel 4X4 type trail through a National Park down the mountain. I asked him what he would recommend and then I asked him what time I needed to return the bike. He told me he wanted it returned by around 5 pm at the gondola base. That would give me a tad over 3 hours so I was thinking I can do a lot more then what he is showing me. I asked him if he could recommend any place else to go and he suggested I take it down to the beach. He said it was a nice place to relax and grab a coffee. I then asked him about riding back up the mountain and he told me that most people are quite happy riding for an hour and that is about it. I am most certainly not most people so I just let that one go. He showed me a route I could take if I wanted to go to the beach and then climb back up the mountain but I was unsure how he wanted me to get back down the mountain from that point. He then told me again that would be quite a long ride at around 30 to 35 KM with a big section being uphill. I decided right then I was going that route if I had time. I thanked him and went on my way to the section that started on the gravel road down the mountain. He also suggested a small single track section that I could try before I got to the gravel down hill section. I first arrived at the single track section and instantly remembered how inexperienced I am at mountain biking. I bought on this summer and ended up going out on a easy trail ride one afternoon with a friend in MN. This single track was a bit past my current experience level so I went very SLOW and dismounted when I felt uncomfortable.....for some reason I did not want to miss hit a rock and go face first down a cliff. I was glad to be done with this section and I remembered I am a big chicken on the mountain bike and the last thing I needed was another foreign hospital visit. The gravel down hill was quite easy but I took it slower then I could have since I was a bit fearful of the loose gravel sections. I then biked along the river and then along the coast. It felt great to be independent and on my own for transportation. I also was seeing a beautiful part of the city that I had not yet seen. It would have been a pity to not go to the ocean in Christchurch and see the beach. It was a nice relaxing ride and it even takes some getting used to biking on the left hand side of the road. The main road to the beach I was going to was quite busy so that was not as peaceful as I would have preferred. I arrived at the beach and locked up the bike and went and sat on a large rock structure to hang out and relax and see what people were doing on the beach. The nicer sand was on the left hand side of the rock and that is where people were laying out and playing around on the beach. The other side of the rock was much darker sand and that is the area where all the surfers were going out to catch waves. I stayed in this area for about half an hour just relaxing and treating myself to an ice cream cone. At 4 pm I figured I needed to get rocking so I could get the bike back by 5pm. I looked at the map once again and found the roads I would need to take to get back up the mountain. It seems that it is much easier to go biking down the mountain then it was to go up the mountain....weird huh? I was just working and about 5 times I needed to get off the bike and stretch and walk the bike for about 15 yards before getting back on the bike and grinding it out to the top. I had filled up my water bottle and I was happy I did since I was working like a dog to get up this mountain. At every turn and switchback I would hope / imagine that the summit was just a little further....I got my self to keep moving on the bike and I was racing the clock to get the bike back on time as well. I was about 2/3 the way up the mountain and I was passed by an older cyclist who cruised by me and gave me yell of encouragement saying this was a good character builder. I was wishing a few things at this moment...first was that my fitness level was crap so that is a bit of a bummer, second is that I wish I was wearing padded bike shorts, and third was why did I want to ride up the mountain again. It took me about an hour and twenty minutes to get to the summit and when I got near the summit I asked another biker what the quickest way down to the gondola base was and he was not sure. He said he thought a gravel path went right to it but he was not sure how to go. I looked on the map and the guy had not mentioned at all biking down the Bridal path to me which lead me right to where I needed to go. I decided to go for it. I biked over to where the path started off the paved road and looked down the path. HOLY SMOKES!!!! Was I really considering going down this path on a bike it appeared to be straight down and not a gentle downward slope more of a terrifying slant with loose rocks. I was not sure mountain bikes were even allowed on this course and I stopped an older man and asked him if I could bike down this. He said yeah, some people do...... I was somewhat hoping he would tell me no that would be crazy and then tell me to take the paved road to the original gravel road I first traveled down. No such luck he said not too worry that I would be fine and people do go down with bikes. I got on and slowly started out...... I had both brakes locked up and my weight as far back as I could manage over the back wheel. I had to stop a couple of times and regain my composure and make sure I did not loose control and go have to fast......I was pretty frighten at the lack of control over the bike I felt I had going down this aggressive trail. One point I stopped after getting a bit out of control and ending up more in the washed out rut in the side and I dismounted to have a mountain biker come behind me and pass me. He said to me..."you have not done this very many times have you?" I told him this was my first time down. He then told me that it gets easier the more you do it and then he was gone going down the hill. This at least helped my confidence and was able to ride down more stretches for longer...still not going very fast but in more control. With only about 15% of the hill remaining I had just passed a couple of ladies hiking up the trail when a full suspension mountain bike went flying by them and then me who was stopped at the time down the trail. I did a definite double take on this guy and the girls saw the expression on my face. The only thing I could come up with was just saying to them that he didn't look to be going very safe.....and they got a laugh out of that comment. I ended up returning the bike to the Gondola at about 5:30 so it broke down to an hour and a half of down hill or pretty level streets riding, and an hour and fifteen minutes of straight climbing up the mountain. Then the 10 minutes of sheer terror going down the bridal trail. I returned the bike and was able to catch the bus back into town and the driver did not make me pay even though it had been six hours prior when I took my first ride out. The way it is intended to work is that you go shopping or whatever and have up to two hours since you got your ticket to get back on the bus. I went back to the hostel feeling good and ready to eat some dinner and relax. At some point that night I was looking around on the internet and I did a search for running events in Christchurch just for the heck of it. It turns out a nice multi sport event was going to take place the next day and I was interested in doing something like that. I wrote down the main information that I would need and decided that I would do my best to get out and do this race if I could work out everything else needed for this race was to happen.