Day 9 – Trial by Ordeal

This day started badly, turned worse ended painfully and was a trial by ordeal.

But, today, dammit I want my scalps!! (All the photo checkpoints are my “scalps” – a la Brad Pitt from Fury)

The Statistics

Today was a long hard winding road of temperature extremes, dust, and uphill corrugated roads.

It took me over 12 hours, and I can assure you, almost everyone of those hours were on my bike.

The Ride

The backfill

I didn’t sleep well before this ride.

I rode into Geraldine the previous evening as the skies opened up with big gobs of rain. The Metservice was predicting heavy rains for the McKenzie country area. I also knew this day was going to be a big day: both in climbing, and in distance.

I was still stressed by the issues I had finding accommodation and I had weird dreams during the night – like the Marvel Avengers were dropping bombs on me while I was on my bike that wouldn’t stay still.

Menacing stuff.

The Complications with this ride

This ride has a complete absence of an services along it’s way. It’s 111kms of nothing: no cafes, virtually no accommodation, little tarseal road.

With nothing between Geraldine and Lake Tekapo, your “risk” is higher – food screwups are on you, water screw ups are on you, mechanical screws up are on. There are no services or help for 111kms.

Failure, on this leg, comes with a high cost. And all of this is well understood before I hit the road.

On top of this – the weather was to crap out so in the back of your mind your always thinking about what’s your alternatives in the worst case scenario. The night before I’d tested all my bail out options if the weather turns bad – none were viable.

I had to push through this day, come what may.

The Execution

I set my alarm for 4:00am to get everything prepped for a 5:00 departure.

Breakfest was the remainder of yesterday’s last half of the OSM bar. In retrospect (which I’ve now learn) always at the end of the day, buy something for tomorrow’s breakfest and lunch. Especially when there’s no place to graze from during the ride. This is how risks grow bigger.

At 5:00 in the morning, the sun was still another 1 hour 45 mins off at I set out in the darkness. I’m not the world’s fastest cyclist, so if I can’t change speed or distance, my only option is to give myself more time.

But the mist was thick and heavy. My high beam lights cut a glow into the last of the night, as the dew formed into droplets on my helmet, dripping off it’s end.

These lights popped out of nowhere, seemingly in the sky and I pissed myself thinking about close encounters of the third kind.

Turns out it was fixed lights on a Ravensdown Fertiliser building which popped out of the dark as I turned a corner. I cycled on, my hopes of being anal probed by Grey bulbulous headed aliens dashed…

Wallabies jumped out onto the road during my travels, and I saw two dead on the side of the road. I guess this area has a wallaby problem.

Darkness turned to grey fogginess, which ultimately (40kms) turned into light of 8:00 in the morning, presenting my with my first challenge: Rockwood Rd.

Rockwood Rd is a stupidly steep street they goes on and up for 8km. It’s surface is gravel and in some cases pitted and corrugated so your bones rattle as your struggle up.

Corrugated gravel roads present their own challenges. They’re either pitted and your shake yourself to bits at high speed, or they’ve got accumulated gravel which will slow you down and could undermine your wheel traction leading to a power slide.

Trying to choose the best path to cycle on heavy gravel road is like trying to hold a turd from the clean end – it’s just not possible.

Again – good adventuring stuff.

I got to Rockwood road about 9:00 just as the temperature started to climb.

Too be brutely honest, its a really dumb addition to this ride and I question its utility. Its a gravel road, in the middle of nowhere, which is stupidly steep at both ends, and seems to connect the state highways hence kinda redundant.

Not only do you share the road with cars and trucks, but it’s a working farm area.

In the heat, a rapidly drank the 2.5 litres of water I’d carried from Geraldine, and I texted Share-vue Farmstay for permission to refill at their property.

 

It was quite the food bowl around this area:

 

 

 

Partial happy dance

Part way through this ride, I crossed the halfway mark, leading to a woo-hoo!

I want my scalps

The guide offers two options – head up Burke’s Pass, a tarseal road with food and accommodation. Or up the McKenzie Pass.

The McKenzie Pass is steeper, without services, and nothing but gravel. It’s also the only way you’ll get the photo check point without which you can’t prove you’ve completed the sounds to sounds.

Despite the heat, fatigue and exhaustion, damnit I was going to have all of my photo checkpoint scalps. I didn’t come all this way to woose out.

Pictures or it Didn’t Happen

The ride from McKenzie Pass to Tekapo is nothing short of a 40km sickening uphill, headwind grind.

I came off the pass into a headwind, and absolutely fatigued with the McKenzie climb. And then I had to double down and do some endurance riding just so I could sleep that night.

It took me closer to 2 hours to finally get to the night’s accommodation from the pass. I was tired, fatigued, hungry and starting to question my life choices. The only thing that kept the pedals spinning was sugar, Vic’s fantastic advice for doing cadence, and the support of Dean and other friends cheering me on.

And I still had to shop for dinner and breakfast tomorrow before I leave in the morning.

It was a very tough day at the office.

Early lights out in Jamesie land that night.