Then we rode back up Houghton Valley Road to the summit of Mt Albert, down past the zoo and up to Truby King House, where Al did some mad hucks as captured by my superb photography skills.
The week was busy as. The Taupo/K2 rush in full effect, along with all the regular work - and I still have to get onto reviving Peter's Healing 10 Speed!
My neighbour Neil had an unfortunate accident on his lovely old Cecil Walker that munted his frame/forks, front wheel, bars and stem.
He got a Salsa La Raza frameset from TradeMe which he got my old buddy Ross Bee to repaint in the orange hue he wanted.
As usual Ross did a lovely job, and once I'd cleaned the parts up and rebuilt the bike it looked wicked. And before I get the usual blizzard of emails criticising the stem height, please note that the geo between the two bikes is different and I'd rather cut the steerer down than try to lengthen it later on. ;)
Among other jobs I had to deal with was a road bike with a persistently loosening headset. This bike had been built by a prominent Wellington bike shop and had been returned several times to have this issue sorted without success, but as soon as I removed the headset top cap I could see what was going on. The steerer tube had been cut without using a guide and was one of the most lumpy cuts I've ever seen. This meant the top cap was butting up onto the steerer at one point, causing it to both bind and be loose at the same time. It always pisses me off to see this kind of crap workmanship come out of shops, but I guess it's good for me when I sort it out and end up with a new client...
Here's Ant's lovely Santa Cruz BlurXC I did some brake fettling on.
Some months ago I saw an ad for a book on cyclingnews.com that I HAD to have for my library, so I put in a pre-order with Amazon. It arrived and I have been devouring it's contents whenever I get the chance. An awesome book to add to the archive.
Now, you may be wondering why this post is called "10th Anniversary". This is for two reasons; firstly, and most importantly, it is 10 years since I met my beautiful wife Jacq. We met when she was celebrating her birthday and the 10 years we've been together have been full of joy and sadness, trials and tribulations, good times and bad, but we've been through them all together and are more in love than ever. Arohanui, Jacq...
I baked this cake for her birthday
Secondly, it's the 10th anniversary of the Makara Peak Mountainbike Park. As followers of my blog will be well aware, I'm a huge fan of this superb facility for all levels of off-road riding, so it was great to help celebrate the first decade of it's official existence. We were supposed to party at the Skills Area but a foul Wellington day meant the function was shifted to the Karori Park Hall. Great fun with games like the tyre toss and quick tube change - both of which I was utterly inept at, although the tube change would have gone better if not for a dud track pump!
There was excellent party food and a big cake. Some hardy types went for a ride in the rain afterwards (at least the regenerating native trees would shelter them from the gale-force wind!), but I'd run out of time and had to head home...
Here are some pics of some of the movers and shakers of the MPS:
MPS Chairperson Ben Wilde
Some of the attendees
MPS Secretary John Randal
City Councillor and staunch friend of the Park, Andy Foster
Simon Kennett, one of the Prime Instigators of the Park from it's inception, relates some history of how it all got started
Jonathan Kennett blows out the candles on the cake
Bonne Anniversaire, MPS and Jacq and Oli!
I'll be back in a day or two to write up my Road Trip to Rotorua last weekend. Until then, thanks for reading. Cheers, Oli
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