Picton
Gerbils in a Cage
02.19.2011 - 02.19.2011
Today was day 3 of mountain biking. Little bit of a misnomer because Friday was our only full day of riding. The plan today was to ride over to Picton, a really cute marina town and ride the trails around Endeavor Park. We loaded up the van with all our massive amounts of luggage and hauled it over town to Picton, about 20 mins. The trails at Picton are a bunch of interconnected trails for bikers and hikers. Our plan was to ride Snout Trail down the penisula and back. Should have been about 40 minutes. We came in on the wrong side of the park, so we had to ride up a grueling access road to start the trail. Got all the way to the top and discovered that Mtn Biking was not allowed on the Snout trail. CRAP. So we decided to obey the signs and started another trail which lead back down the hill. It was pretty basic, though downhill. We followed it over to the marina and then biked back. Nothing exciting, not very technical, no great views. Felt a little like gerbils in cages running mazes. These tracks would probably be good for beginner mtn bikers, soft corners, minimal obstacles and wider paths. All in all, only Friday was a good mtn biking day, and then I still had to ride 18 km on the road, on a not so fun route to start mtn biking. I plan to talk to Active NZ about the Mountain Biking component The fact that I paid an extra $499.00 for the Mtn Biking extensions, and was able to mountain bike for 2 hours did not seem equitable, basically I paid $4.15/minute to mountain bike. I really think it is more about expectation management in terms of what they represent - and the necessity to build some flexibility into what the bike guides can offer us. Our guide, Steph, was amazing though. Poor Thing, she got the 8 of us, with mixed experience and did her best to keep us all happy.
While we were waiting on everyone else to get back, Dana and Deb taught Jenn, Steph and I how to play “Slow Races”. You have to line up on your bikes and the last person to cross the finish line, on their bikes, without touching down, wins. I did not win. I did finally get the hang of it and did ok. I am going to have to challenge James when I get home and see how I do.
Steph got a call from Jordan when we were all back together and found out that the hiking group was running 3 - 4 hours behind. She really rallied. We went to a winery that was BEAUTIFUL. They gave us a beautiful wine tasting and then we went from there to a nice cliff hike before finally meeting up with the rest of the group.
Posted by jennwray 02.20.2011 19:47 Archived in New Zealand
