Thursday, June 13, 2013

Ride Day 5—Hawkes Bay

Day 5 RT 23—Tuesday, July 6th
Cow Head to Hawkes Bay
64 miles
Maynard’s Motel (everybody stayed in motel this evening)


Tour Guide Description: Enjoy the spectacular coastal scenery. There are several scenic look-offs today, as well as an ecological reserve. The prevailing tailwinds are usually very strong at this point. Our campground offers a boardwalk, which crosses typical island marshes and follows an active salmon river.


A TOUGH day that started with heavy rain that never let up. I dressed in my GoreTex® rain jacket, rain pants, put plastic bags over my shoes, a shower cap on my saddle to prevent the wet coming up through the cutout, and placed all items in my fanny pack and handlebar bag in plastic Ziploc® baggies. Everything got soggy nonetheless, and both of us were wet to the skin by day’s end. Hypothermia was not a problem, though, because we built much heat climbing.

Today was a day when brightly whorled snails entered the watery road in great numbers. We tried to avoid them, but there were too many. We also stopped at one point, and Suz asked me to try to identify a bird call she’d heard. As soon as I heard it, I knew it was a loon. Shortly after hearing the loon, we saw two loons flying in the opposite direction along the shore. We also stopped because both of us heard a mournful wolf-like howl. We heard it again and it sounded like a wolf, but as there are no wolves on the island, it had to be a loon. Their calls are eerie and mournful. We also also came upon two young moose browsing at roadside.

At one point, Claude rolled out from a roadside store and told me that it was a good stop. I really wanted to continue on and get out of the rain, but waited for Suz and asked her if she wanted to stop. She seems to need to stop often and to drink and eat at much shorter intervals than I. Anyway, she replied, “What do you want to do?” This wasn’t the “yes/no” I wanted to hear, so I'm sorry to say that in my irritable discomfort, I rounded on her and asked her again: “What do YOU want to do? I asked if you needed to stop. You need to make independent decisions based on the way you feel! You’re always so wishy washy. You’ve got to think for yourself, yadda, yadda, yadda.” She countered by accusing me of not telling her what she needed to know that morning to prepare for a rainy ride, and by saying that she wanted to drive all the way home. I don’t know where the driving bit came from as my doing the lion’s share of the driving hasn’t appeared to be an issue.

Claude was nonplussed when we two stood in the rain yelling at each other, and wrangling over whether Suz needed to stop or not. The upshot: We did not stop but rode on, cold, wet, and angry. Our arguments always crop up when we are stretched to our limits. When we arrived that evening, you could tell that Claude had recounted this shouting match to the others, also.

When we got to the arches, a diversion slightly off route, we took the left and rolled down to these arched rocks that stand by the shore. Aki was there eating under the meager shelter of a roofed sign. She took pix of Suz and me under my umbrella and of both of us before the arches. We took pix of her at the arches, also.


Suz, looking like the little Dutch Boy in her rain pants. Hers and mine, as you can see, were soaked through. Waterproof, not.


Aki at the Arches


When I saw a sign for toilets, I climbed up a boardwalk to a parking lot above, but saw no toilets. Aki was behind me. When I started down, I stepped off the last wooden step and both feet (remember they are in plastic bags) flew out from under me and I fell flat on my back, whacking the back of my head, just under my helmet, hard on the edge of the bottom step. It was very painful, giving me an instant headache and swelling immediately. I was alarmed that I’d done something that would prevent me from continuing the ride, but both Aki and Suz said that my pupils looked okay, and my vision wasn’t blurred, so I picked myself up and made it to the bottom of the slippery wooden ramp holding onto Aki’s shoulder.

After that, the swelling made it difficult to turn my head to the right more than a couple of degrees, but I think the cold and rain actually helped because it kept the back of my head/neck cold.

A little farther down the road we stopped for a roadside drink and a soggy energy bar when we saw some yellow lady slippers near the road. We are loving the flowers that manage to bloom heartily in this harsh, rocky, and often wet terrain. Also, we get along best when identifying birds, rocks, and flowers etc.

The last 10 miles were hilly and seemed endless. But finally we arrived at Hawke’s Bay and Maynard’s Motel where virtually all of the riders had booked rooms, having deserted their camping for the night. We all made many trips to the motel washers and dryers with our sodden clothing and gear. 

Then at 7 pm, we sat down to a meal together for the first time and chatted with people we hadn’t really gotten to know before: Joanne & Tom and their son, Will; Pat and Rick from Florida who wanted to ride the Bon ton Roulet; Canadian marathoners Dave & Nancy.


Suz and I ordered pizza. It was delicious—thin crispy crust and tasty topping. The dry clothes, food, warm shower, and sense of truly being a part of the group went far to make both of us feel better

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