DeeKnow’s Grotto

I’ve put up with a few cold places and situations in my time. When I was at primary school we had to play rugby in bare feet in the hard frosts of winter. I’ve slept on the snow near the ridge-line of the Southern Alps. I’ve camped overnight on top of a cold and windy Mt Sinai, and on occasion I drive through (but don’t stop in) Tokoroa.

But this morning for about an hour and a half I was as cold as I can remember, with no escape and little chance of warming up.

I stayed overnight in Auckland and got up in the dark this morning at 6:15am (something of a record for me) pulled cold leathers on over top of my polyprop long-johns and top, threw down a hot-chocolate, and leapt onto my bike for the ride back to Hamilton to get to work as on time as possible. The weather over the weekend had been clear and warm and the mornings pretty comfortable, but this morning, even in sub-tropical Auckland it was rather nippy.

The motorway from the North-shore into Auckland was slow going by the time I went over the bridge in the eerie glow of dawn, and even through to the south side of town the speed was pretty low so the cold was fairly bearable. But moving along at 100-ish on the southern motorway section to the Bombays was starting to get bloody uncomfortable. I had to keep working my hands and sheltering my left one behind the tank, riding one-handed for a time lest the both of them lock-up altogether.

Stopped at the BP in the Bombay service center, topped-up on fuel, then checked how much cash I had, bugger, not enough, didn’t have my Eftpos card. Mmmm… Quick grovel to the cashier, offer to leave my phone as a deposit, confused looks, the manager (Lois, bless her heart) came out of the back office, swipped her store credit card and payed the $16 I owed them out of her account saying not to worry about it, gave me the receipt and said drop in next time your passing.

Despite this potentially warm and fuzzy experience, I actually wasn’t feeling any warmer, and I still hadn’t had breakfast coz I was planning on eating at the Bombays and now didn’t have any cash. Busking for my breakfast wasn’t gonna work coz I cant dance, sing or play anything well enough to be paid for, juggling was possible but my hands were too cold to manage that. Clearly the contents of my cranium were not functioning at their usually impressive rate, this next leg was gonna have to be nice and easy.

Unfortunately for me things were about to get much worse. The section from the bottom of the Bombays through Pokeno, Mercer, following the river on long-swamp road to Meremere is notorious for fog, and that’s exactly what I hit after a few short minutes. A thick, white out, freezing wall of endless fog, dotted with dangerously slow moving trucks and cars, coating the visor on my helmet with a sludgy mist which I could wipe off with one hand, but my breath clouding up the inside. Bloody great, just what I needed.

After about 20mins of this insufferable torture I finally caught sight of the first sunlight of the day. Hallelujah!!! the Sun was up, and by Hampton downs was actually breaking through the fog, and then Bam!!! out into the clear, bright morning, perfect visibility, and up goes the pace again. At this point a motorcyclist faces the dreaded trade-off of winter riding: you either ride quicker and get home sooner but get colder due to increased speed, or ride slower and maybe feel a little less cold, but take longer getting there. I decided to take the former approach, sod the speeding tickets, the only thing on my mind now was getting through Huntly and home to warm the helll up.

Pretty soon I’m heading into H-town, through the back-streets to home, into the house, stripping out of my frozen leathers and easing my pathetic shambling carcass into a steaming hot bath. Its been ages since I’ve had a bath in the morning, and good lord was it great. I jumped in around 8:30 and after 20mins or so and a few hot-tap top-ups my core temperature had improved to the point where I thought I could face getting out and dressing for the road, and riding in to a day of work.

So it is I’ve canceled plans to attend the Brass Monkey, or any of the other ridiculous winter bike rallies run in NZ and around the world, I’m a summer softy, there’s no doubt about it. Please don’t invite me, refusal may offend.