It will come as a surprise that we left Twizel in cold foggy conditions. We rode up the eastern side of Lake Pukaki with its glacial chalky blueness and then rode over the top of the hills to Lake Tekapo. Visibility was poor in the clouds but the gravel road was great. Popping out of the clouds we surprised a group of sheep dog trialists. The dogs ignored us, the sheep didn’t.
After a coffee stop in Tekapo we moved onto the main event for the day, riding up the eastern side of Lake Tekapo through the Lilybank station and then towards the confluence of the Godley and Macauley rivers. To get there we had to cross the significant braided Macauley which involved riding up and down between braids to find bits shallow enough to ford.
We had to pick which valley to go up and because we are a democracy we went up the Macauley. I would have gone up the Godley but only because it’s part of New Zealand back country folklore whereas who has heard of the Macauley?
It was a fun track, a mix of riverbed double track and river bed. After 15km or so any semblance of track had disappeared and it was just a boulder garden. Fun though with multiple crossings and picking lines through the rocks. We reached a point where bits of bike were disappearing and it seemed wise to turn around. The trip back was quicker, usually it is with the assistance of gradient on one’s side.
The reverse crossing of the Macauley was complicated by the presence of a large group of 4 wheel drive people watching. Obviously, because we have penises, we could fritter around trying to find safe shallow crossings but instead we barrelled through. We got to the last braid which had definitely been considered too deep on the way in. Dave Mac, who is under the impression he has the largest penis dived in and impressively the 890 displaced enough water to get through. Obviously i had no choice then but to follow. You know it’s deep when your exhaust is under water. Thank god there were no rocks in the wrong place. Dave Lear is a mermaid and stylishly went through with no fuss. So we got away with it and forever those 4x4 people will wonder at the 2 wheeled awesomeness they witnessed. To be honest I doubt they were even looking.
So back down Lilybank road, 50km of high speed pea metal to close out the off road part of our trip.
I cautiously congratulated myself for not dropping the bike on this trip. That changed in the car park at Tekapo in front of 10 000 onlookers.
The thing is the bike is tall and I am short. I don’t like to stand on the foot peg with the side stand down as it is flimsy and with the additional weight of my carefully concealed rotundness I worry it will snap.
So to get around this I do a ridiculous goose step, risking pulled hamstrings every time, to get my leg over. On this occasion the bike was on an incline and in neutral so as I did my goose step the prick of a thing started rolling backwards down the hill. The result was me hopping along with one foot on the saddle which is about the height of my ear if you need a visual. The hopping went on, with each hop my dignity being shed like a thing that sheds a shitload (all the examples I could think of would get me into trouble). Well it all came to an inevitable conclusion with bike and dignity on the ground. To be fair I kept the handlebar off the ground by 1cm but the spectacle was complete. Thank god for helmets. Having pulled several muscles in different parts of my body I casually righted the bike, unhooked my pants from a foot peg (how did that even happen) and rode off into the sunset. 
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