Weird weather rides.

[Paul in NZ]

Cold?? You think this is cold?? Well, let me tell ya about the time that……

The tendency to whining and complaining may be taken as the surest sign symptom of little souls and inferior intellects. ~ Lord Jeffrey ~


It’s amazing. I’m sitting here in a warm home listening to the warm spring rain pattering against the windows and wondering if it is ever going to stop. All this while trying to remember the last time I rode the bike and whining to Vicki how it’s such a disaster that its raining because I really need to go for a ride!

Vicki looked up from the craft hobby she was trying to enjoy and gazed at the hall cupboard that contained several hundred dollars of hi-tech, 100% waterproof fabric, armour, the third best helmet that Shoei could build, not to forget the genuinely waterproof boots that don’t require weekly dunking in melted seal blubber to keep the rain out! She looked back at me and asked sweetly that since I was a big rufty tufty biker with enough clobber to outfit an Artic expedition, why didn’t I go for a ride?

Er! Well!! I dunno?? So I spend a most un profitable hour wondering why do I hate riding in the rain so much when so much of my gear is designed for riding in the rain?? (there is something VERY disturbing about Vicki’s logic)

Defeated, I made us another coffee and got out the old photo albums. Pictures of happy smiley people riding about the place in all sorts of weather (this was not helping) and I was forced to wonder when I had become so delicate. Had I suddenly become made of sugar and developed an irrational fear of melting in water? Of course, (I tell myself) it’s not the rain, it’s the cold… Oh! So the high tech thermals, the woven aluminium liners and the billion dollar gloves are ineffective?

Ah Hem! Back to the old photos ….

I just don’t quite know when I started worrying about this stuff. I owned a bike before I owned gloves OR a crash helmet and since the law did not require me to use one, I didn’t and thought nothing of it. In fact I only started considering using one when I lost a pair of treasured sunglasses one glorious day when I turned my head to the side and the wind whipped them away to roadside sunglass heaven. I really regretted loosing them because I had borrowed them from Dad and had to replace them.. Rats!

A bargain of the week, $20 ‘jet helmet’ (open face) in a delightful powder blue (always the stylish one) was just the ticket to hold on your sunnies but a proper leather jacket was WAY out of my range. So, riding kit was an old WW2, ex navy duffel coat from the surplus store, coarse woollen climbing trousers, and tramping boots. Gloves? Of course! A nice pair of Ministry of Transport surplus gauntlets with safety reflector white panels, just like granddad used in the war (Crimean I think)!!! A far cry from today’s ‘Ken and Barbie go motorcycling’ style. More like a mobile opportunity shop meets bag lady chic’.! If it was cold, add a couple more layers of whatever was free or stuff old newspaper down your front! If it rained, there was a strange damp smell that you only get from wet wool for several weeks in the flat.

By the late 70’s helmets were a legal requirement and the blue helmet had a fashionable spray can silver flame job over a satin black base. All done from left over spray cans too. The duffel coat had long gone (boy are those things HEAVY when wet) to be replaced by a stylish (and far too short) leather bomber jacket that I think the Bay City Rollers may have discarded. Legs were covered by 2 pairs of blue denim Wranglers which were worn like sharks teeth. You just replaced the inner pair when the outer dissolved. Gloves… Oh yeah! LOT’s of gloves. One dry pair, one nearly dry pair and a wet pair. Boots, old WW2 dispatch rider issue lace ups resoled with heavy duty commando grips. (white submariner socks turned down over the top) All capped off with a bile blue, 300ft crochet scarf made by my girl friends sister ( I think she hated me).. Phooar! A chick magnet or WHAT!

[Paul in NZ]

If it rained there were heavy duty PVC (distinctly non kinky type) yellow leggings / jacket set liberated from the dear old Union Steamship Company by the 3rd cousin of a dodgy flatmate for $20. (you had to use meths to remove the “property of” printing off the back). And in all that… I rode to work every day ( I didn’t own a car ), in the snow, rain and hail of a Christchurch winter on a motley collection of gushing and wheezing 1950’s and 60’s motorcycles..

I was quite possibly the worlds first metrosexual! A real trend setter!!

The root cause of all this poverty type bike riding gear was the severe penury that trainee technicians were forced to endure. Naturally this flowed over to the bikes I rode. While the well heeled seemed to manage the HP payments on nice Japanese bikes I was blobbing about on ancient british bikes. That’s was about the limit of our choices in the late 70’s. There were a few Ducatis about but new American or british bikes were far and few between.

Still. There was a group of us that between us all possessed the skills required to keep these things going. The thought of restoring one to factory specs was utterly beyond our ken so they all tended to become more and more ‘customised’ as time went by and the original components failed. Then one sunny spring weekend it was time for the first (and I think only) annual ChCh Custom Motorcycle Club Labour Weekend road trip! For us, on these bikes, this was going to be a pretty huge event. After all the hoopla of planning we were finally meeting in the carpark and lashing on tents. Full of hope and enthusiasim, we set off south! The first casualty was a Triumph 350 unit twin that managed 30 feet and failed at the edge of the car park!

However, off we went.. Man, was it windy… It blew so had John’s ‘C’ kitted, rigid framed T100 (the all alloy one with twin carbs) would only run on one pot until we built a shroud for the windward side carby… (Strange but true) It seemed the strong crosswind was actually sucking air OUT of the carb! But, this was a time of manly men and eventually, (quite by accident) everyone arrived at the same campsite and with a glint in their eye, a hunger in the belly and a great thirst for beer, we set too!!

Again, nylon was seldom used for tents and if it was we certainly could not afford it so heavy canvas was the order of the day We did have a back up vehicle (a 1939 Chev Master saloon from memory) so we could actually carry the ‘motor tent’. One of those huge things like a mini circus tent with a green canvas top and hemp ropes. By the time that went up and dinner was cooked we were all ready for bed! I can still remember now, sitting beside my little 1952 Triumph speed twin and looking out at that mountain lake and the clear, starry night and wondering if life could be any finer than this?

The next morning dawned clear and warm and soon changed to clear and HOT! I’m not sure how many of you have ever been in the central south island when it gets hot but trust me… IT WAS HOT!! Tee shirts and third degree sun burn were the order of the day and we spent a few happy hours tearing about on old bikes on empty mountain roads and having more fun than most of us could handle. Amazingly, nothing broke, no one crashed and we found we could buy cold beer at the little pub just up the road from the field we were camped in!!!

Predictably, that night we drank beer. More beer than my 18 year old body had previously seen but somehow that too seemed right and some time about 2 am I finally stopped feeling sick and staggered off to my sleeping bag! Sun burnt, tired, a belly full of bad food and a spinning head! Ah Sweet memories!! It was a communal tent and I while I may have arrived with what I thought were civilised people I soon realised I was sleeping with a barbarous horde of grunters, squealers, snorers and goodness knows what the heck that wassers. It was a fitful sleep and my last in a communal ‘club’ tent!!

[Paul in NZ]

Some time about 4:30 am my bladder finally gave up the fight against stale beer and upgraded the signals being sent to Mr Brain from an urgent ‘please attend to this now’ to ‘panic’. It was definately time to go to the little boys room….

Of course it was DARK and I suddenly thought VERY cold?? Oh well, being a good scout. I’d packed a little torch so I reached out to my bag to find it.. Flailing about in the dark to find said bag amongst the discarded gear, my arm, rather unexpectedly, went ‘sploosh’..

Now! Even in my sleep deprived and beer befuddled state I could tell that ‘sploosh’ was a significant and unwelcome noise to hear in a tent in the night…

The torch was found and then I discovered that while I was sleeping on a small island of dry ground. A rapidly growing sea of not very dry ground surrounded me. ‘S funny I though, I didn’t hear it start raining and I don’t recall lakes having tides? And It sure is quiet outside!!!! Now having spent a lot of time in the mountains tramping and climbing I kind of knew where this was going… Yup! It was snowing… Not just a few swirling flakes either but a solid, silent fall that was not only settling but was now getting on for 2 inches deep out side with no signs of slowing down.. This was not a good look!!

By now a few other people awoke to find that they had chosen low spots in the tents and soon the whole camp was a buzz. The ‘Still Very Drunkards’ were dragged shivering from under picnic tables, the fire was stoked up and a hurried council or war was called to asses the situation.

We were miles from anyplace, little food left, no communications (pre cellphone) and the snow was really falling big time, if we were going to go anywhere today, we had to move now!

It really was a heroic effort, camp was packed, coffee and whatever warm food we could find to eat was consumed and we hit the road. Or first objective was to get to the main road before the little unsealed road we were on was closed. We reasoned that the main tourist routes would at least be patrolled. It was cold! I had no eye protection except that scarf. I’ve never been so grateful to a girlfriend’s sister while awake. As I rode the snow piled up on my chest in a solid ice pack and would periodically fall off like an small avalanche onto the tank. By the time we got to the main road I’d had to stop the little Triumph twice to clear the snow off the top of the magneto (behind the engine) and once had to remove an end cap screw to let the snow melt out. Every stop I had to grab the exhaust pipes to warm my hands..

Eventually, with a few minor tumbles and a lot of pushing all made it to the highway and it was there the fun began… Although the road was in theory ‘closed’ for normal traffic the gigantic tour busses were still running and they were not slowing down for anything, they had a schedule to keep.. The road was just a white blur defined by the marker posts and every time one of those big monsters came past it was instant whiteout! Getting passed by a bus is scary any day but in those conditions with the stuff being thrown up it was a nightmare!

Luckily the snow was fresh and as long as you stayed out of the bus tracks where it had been compressed into ice there was traction to be had. It got so deep the frame rails on the little Triumph were dragging but that’s when the wonderfully low tuned, modestly powered twin came into its own. Bigger bikes like Tridents and Bonnies were slipping about but the light little rigid trumpy just ploughed on! Somehow it seemed the older bikes had less trouble with the slippery conditions than the newer ones.. Go figure!! Eventually, snow built up on and in everything, even the drum brakes became unpredictable and ineffective and we lost count of the number of times someone had to be lifted out of the ditch on the side of the road.

[Paul in NZ]

Eventually, with spirits and body temperatures falling we struggled into the closest town big enough to have a motel, well into the afternoon to find everything shut. Several people had to be physically helped from their bikes and any further progress without food and warmth was simply not an option. The Motel owner took pity on us and earned our undying gratitude by opening up, lighting the fire and shouting free soup for all… It was the BEST soup I ever tasted, liquid life itself.

There was no way, with the gear I had, was I moving any further that day!! However, as always, some folk simply had to be someplace else the next day so those who could not blag an extra day off work via the one pay phone, hit the road after borrowing what ever dry stuff could be spared from the group. As is often the way of these things, by the time they left the mountains 50 miles down the track and hit the coast road they had a dry and warm run home.

The rest of us, sat by the fire and dried out too tired to talk. 6 hours to travel 60km…

So… You reckon its cold NOW sonny?? Pah!!! It was far colder when I was young!! (probably the Ice Age)

Footnote!
Most of the crew were broke when we had to stop the extra night. I’m proud to say that every single person settled up their IOU’s with the motel owner as soon as they could. They deserved it, look at the picture and imagine these guys after 2 nights of sleeping rough, no showers, covered in mud and snow. Would you take them in?

[Ghost Lemur]

Thanks for yet another fantastic story Paul.

You really need to compile all these together into a website. Remember there's enough geeks here who can handle the setting up/coding side of things for you. Then all you'd need to do is up load each new story when you had written it.

[gav]

Damn, thats some great writing there, Paul.
Note to Admin, can we have Pauls stories in its own column maybe?

[vifferman]

Most of the crew were broke when we had to stop the extra night. I’m proud to say that every single person settled up their IOU’s with the motel owner as soon as they could. They deserved it, look at the picture and imagine these guys after 2 nights of sleeping rough, no showers, covered in mud and snow. Would you take them in?

Where's "the picture", Paul?
Great writing, by the way! I'm quite jealous that I don't have similar experiences to write about.

[Paul in NZ]

Ooops!

The Picture!! Drat!

Thats me in the middle. It was taken by a Christchurch Star reporter in the Riccarton Mall car park just before we left. My Parents were so proud of me getting my piccie in the paper (NOT).

There hardly a decent (ie expensive) bike between us, yet they all got there and back! My forks were all compressed from riding through the rain channel.

Happy days....

[Blakamin]

Ooops!

The Picture!! Drat!

Thats me in the middle.

You have handlebars growing out of your helmet!!!
It looks like nuthings changed much....will have to get you on the triumph in the same pose!

[Gasman]

Ooops!


Thats me in the middle. It was taken by a Christchurch Star reporter in the Riccarton Mall car park just before we left. My Parents were so proud of me getting my piccie in the paper (NOT).

Happy days....

Did/do your parents have a dim view of bikes, or just the kind you rode?

That's a wonderful story and deserves a full time forum!

I guess that story has to 'take the cake' for true weather woes and how it can add true 'adventure' to an otherwise quiet boring ride....Hmmmm. Maybe the boring bits are better than I thought!

[scumdog]

I wish I could tell it like Paul, I had one of those rain soaked rides with Crissy-Bimbo on the back (mrs S. D.) and it was douching down, my WW2 goggles were steaming up so much I couldn't tell if I was running over the mud from the roadside slips or the bike was skidding on the wet road, the cold trickle of water was running through the hairs on my chest like the ball bearing in one of those '60s milk bar games where you try and intercept the little ball bearings running down through forest of spikes......

[LB]

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Another great read - thanks Paul!

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