A gift for some friends

[Mikkel]

Brilliantly written Paul. I like it very much - especially since I'm currently in a country where it appears, at times, that humanity has fallen out of fashion.

[Paul in NZ]

Pliny the Elder is the guy who thought that home is where the heart is… It must be true because Pliny was a Roman soldier and a philosopher to boot who spent a lot of time away from home but I’m not thinking of Pliny or Romans, I’m thinking of Vicki just like a soldier and so the triumph and I are going home.

Before that I have to face round two of the breakfast beat up with the grandsons and again, there is the happy tearing about of small boys on cool mornings. I’m glad I’m well past my own kids doing it but I’m also glad of the visit. Somehow you know that the future will be OK when you see it – well lets hope they have the pleasure of enjoying there own grandsons. Its my last morning in Christchurch and there is a lot to do and people to see before we make the dash for the ferry so as much as the siren call of an extra hours kip temps me, it’s time to move.

I need a new bag – I think my old ones broken. When you leave home it seems to have a Tardis like quality and swallows everything you can think of but at the final repack its shrunk, despite there being less stuff in it. Fortunately I have a lot of bungee cords and eventually everything is squeezed into submission and the zipper closes. We go through the same old drag race down the drive and granddad is still a prick, I win by 20ft or so.

I’m not a world class visitor. I’m much better at popping in so I do that. Dad’s up and looking great but it’s time to go to the next visit so it’s a handshake and a hug and see ya next time Dad, at 88 who knows how many next times there will be but lets hope for a few more. 10mins later, I’m holding a good lookin baby – one extreme to another and the whole thing is not completely lost on me, the generations flow like a river, the young give life to the old and so it continues. Pretty sure this kids going to be a biker if Mum and Dad have anything to do about it ;-) Last call is my other brother – he’s looking great, we talk shit but we both know I have to keep moving if I want to catch that ferry in Picton so with one long swinging kick, the Triumph purrs into life and we depart Christchurch.

I’m meeting Jim and Warwick at Woodend. Its at the end of the northern motorway and as I ride there I have a case of déjà vu. The woodsmoke in the chilled morning air and the strange haze on the plains takes me back to my youth. We used to ride out to Kaiapoi to see Des who had a garage full of AJS parts and a head full of stories. I was 15 and he was a lot older than that – old enough to know better than to run off to Aussie with a floozie but that’s what he did. First we knew was when I went out to pick up a tool box for a 54' and his wife was not a happy camper at all. Divorce was even a pretty rare thing then so my eyes must have been boggling at the audacity.

I’m not sure why Woodend is called Woodend because the local still seem to have plenty of wood going by the smoke from the fires. Maybe someone lost an erection there once? I can understand that as it’s never turned me on much but I need gas so I stop across from the lads and in the time it takes to fill a small tank and swipe a card we are on our way

Sometimes the best ride of a trip is the last part. There’s not too much expectation about an event or some such, there is just a road that ends in a place that you know so there is not much to do except kick back and enjoy it. And I am enjoying it because for once I’m going home without a hangover or a sick feeling in my stomach, I’m suspecting that there is something to be said for this moderation lark but I’m not 100% convinced. I suspect this personal failing on my part needs more study!

The old Triumph is holding up well during the trip and thrumming along without any real issues. There is an annoying oil leak from the timing chest that is letting a little oil dribble up onto the top of the gearbox. Its annoying because it’s my fault and if I was not so damned lazy I could sort out plus I can see it while I’m riding along. The Triumph likes to cruise at about 100 to 110kph – you can go faster but the faster you go the more it makes its displeasure felt and eventually it will throw a wobbly – or a conrod and after 20 years together we have reached the stage where neither of us can be bothered with that lark. It is a lovely old bike but not much chop as a motorway bike but to be fair, its roots go back to a time before motorways and to when a motorcycle had to be quite good at lots of things, except motorways. Edward Turner laid out the first of his twin cam twins before WW2 and it’s hard to imagine a more influential design of the period. There were plenty of twins before it but none with the compactness and zing that made it such a best seller in a world of chugging singles. Even the war didn’t stop it but it did allow the likes of AMC, BSA and Nortons to catch up and design their own twins, some were better but none went like the Triumph! Bikes like the CB750 were the answer to the questions motorways posed and are justly revered for this by the motorway generation. Highly collected as much for what they represented the shaking off of the old world for the new rather than for being a fabulous motorcycle. At 53 I should be a member of generation motorway but I think I inherited a recessive gene, I must ask Dad about that, because I don’t like motorways or Honda CB750’s.

We get to Dommett again but theres still no sign of aliens or my sunglasses and I reflect that maybe the place was named by the first people to get there. They probably crashed a UFO or a CB750 and with a mouth full of broken teeth ‘dammit’ came out as Dommet and it stuck… It’s just a theory but it’s an attractive one and it helped pass the time.

When we get to Cheviot this time, we have lunch at the old Road Services Café and I have a pee in the old Road Services Toilet. It’s a proper government built toilet and I suspect it’s going to be here a long time. While Cheviot has a proper dunny, proper café culture has not quite flourished here but the folks at the café know their customers and what they like. The toasted sandwiches are really very good and I think about having two. Warwick’s dad still lives in Cheviot so we leave him to go and do his family thing while Jim and I head north again. Again, a lazy swing and the Triumph twin burbles against the more frantic note of the Kawasaki and we cover some ground.

The Hundalees are always fun, except this time there are a few loonies making a point of reducing my fun factor but I'm relaxed and they don’t make it much past minor annoyance as we sweep down the hills and onto the thin strip that is the Kaikoura coast. The ozone sits heavy in the air as we pile into Orao. I like Orao, it’s a hopeful sort of place nestled in a small bay and straddling the railway line but it’s difficult to pronounce. I stayed there once on a high school biology trip and was amazed not to be kept awake by the trains, the ozone seems to tire you out and sleep comes easily but there was no time of sleeping or Orao, we had a boat to catch.

We had made pretty good time – good enough to play tourist so I took Jim to the seal colony. I was thinking of abandoning him there but the seals wouldn’t take him so after a few happy minutes watching a stream of campervans unloading a horde of seal bothering marine mammal fetishists, we pressed on.. Humans might get a good nights kip at Orao but it’s a tough job for a seal to get an uninterrupted snooze at Kaikoura – mind you, the middle of the car park is probably not the best place for a snooze unless you are the Paris Hilton of the seal world and simply need to be seen.

Hitcher had told Jim that the best café in New Zealand was at Kaikoura so we went and found it and had a scone and a cup of tea. It was pretty good but I think I need to take Mr Hitcher to some proper cafes.

[Paul in NZ]

I do like the road north of Kaikoura but on the heavy ozone days it’s wise, even on an old rattler like mine to watch your corner speed. The salty air lays thick on the road as does the mess from the stock trucks making the road slippery in places. There are signs warning you that it’s slippery when wet but I don’t trust them. Most signs are quite well behaved but for some reason the ones around Kaikoura have a malicious bent, probably take after the locals.

Well north the coast is as wild as any in New Zealand. These are not sunny, sandy beaches for lolling about on, these are angry places where the ocean glowers and rumbles in a very disconcerting fashion, just daring you to get a little closer so it can slap you down and suck you out to your doom. propably get eaten by a giant squid. We scurry past pretending not to look for whales or giant squids and soon we get to ‘The Store’ at Kekerengu. Because I’m old I remember when it really was just a store – it was important because it had a petrol pump and I had a 1.5 gallon tank on my chopper. With a rigid frame you were pretty well read for a break then anyway but now there is no pump, the independants have nearly all gone and instead we have a splendid view and a posh café and a large deck. It seems if you want to survive along state highway 1 you need to ditch the overalls and put on a party frock. As Mr Dylan noted, times are a changin’. I fleetingly think of Dommett and shudder as I imagine Dommet in a party frock – I doubt Dommet would wear killer heels with that frock, more like gumboots and arrive on a quad bike that looked like a crashed UFO. Anyway – we had another cup of tea (which was very good) and enjoyed the wonderful views.

The towns of Ward and Seddon are named after two of our most famous Prime Ministers. Richard John Seddon served as PM for 13 years and he was known as ‘King Dick’ but frankly I think he would be a bit disappointed in his namesake. Seddon was a big fan of the British Empire but he was not much of a fan of giving votes to women, he was quite grumpy about it actually. I wonder what Mrs Seddon thought about it? She was a Spotswood and the settlement of Spotswood is down near Cheviot. Lets hope it was named after her, she had nine children so I suspect she was pretty busy most of the time. Maybe thats why he was called King Dick? I guess only Mrs Seddon would know and shes not saying anything…

Sir Joseph Ward was a baronet and he was PM twice but while he didn’t have a cool nickname like king dick he did drive in the last spike of the North Island Main Trunk line. I suspect some other blokes did the rest of the spikes and no one seems to have written their names down anywhere. He was born in Australia and was married to a De Smidt. I bet she was relieved that she had a name change during the first world war. She only had 5 children so I think she had more time for thinking. I wonder if she though much about king dick?

If you need a party frock to survive on SHW 1 , Ward and Seddon ended up with good honest flour sacks from the goodwill store – we kept going, mainly because what with all this tea drinking, time was pressing.

Somehow by good luck or good timing we arrive at Picton bang on time and are joined by a builder come BMW boxer twin enthusiast. With a few notable exceptions I try to avoid BMW owners because as soon as they know I have a Moto Guzzi the get all odd, well, odder really. He does not seem very odd at all but explains that but telling us he had just picked the bike up (trademe purchase) and was riding it home. Turns out he knew little about Seddon, Ward or even BMW's but he was keen to learn.

The ferry trip was calm and it got dark again. We rolled down the ramp in Wellington just passed the 9;15 arrival time and after a few hearty, ‘well dones’, must do this again, say hi to the families and such we went our separate ways into a relatively pleasant night, me and the Triumph soldiered up the Ngauranga Gorge. The proper Maori name is Nga-Uranga which means landing place but now its more well known for the gorge rather than any landings. Having said that, a year or so back a motorist managed to mount the guard rail at the bottom and land on the road below killing himself in the process, those Maori knew a thing or two about naming things. I see that its not been rename the place of the extended guard rail so I am always careful driving down the gorge, no need to tempt fate or ancient Maoris. The gorge is 2 km long, has a grade of 8% and 65,000 cars a day traverse it but this being a Sunday evening, there are very few of those 65,000 cars so we wick up the throttle and the steady burble becomes the flat drone of a triumph twin under load echoing off the walls of the gorge. I see an older driver smile as we strain past but a younger woman scowls at me from behind the wheel of her people mover and I wonder if Mr Seddon was right about votes after all. I doubt she delights in the morning antics of small boys either.

This is a regular commute for me and it’s no longer very interesting so we box on… In next to no time, I’m bumping over the gutter and rolling down the drive at Raumati (means summer). The garage door is open, my car is backed out and the lights are on – welcome home – the triumph settles into it’s odd irregular and uncertain idle caused by it’s much maligned, worn and ancient Amal concentric carb. The key is flicked off, silence at last and as I collect my welcome home hug, a drop of tired oil, obviously exhausted from all the work goes splat on the floor – its been a pretty good day!