In March this year my partner and I loaded up the 4-wheel drive, attached the camper and then travelled for several hours to Colville in northern Coromandel (NZ). It was a perfect weekend in terms of the weather, scenery and action. Narrow coastal roads clung to cliffs, opening out into picnic areas in sandy bays with reflective blue waters.
John assisted as a marshall and a first aid official for the mountain bike races while I was merely a gopher - (go-pher this and go-pher that.)
By Friday afternoon hundreds of mountain bikers had set up camp in a paddock amongst the cowpats. We officials used a back-packers' hostel as headquarters for meetings, meals and social intercourse.
On Friday I helped John with sign-posting mountain tracks for the Saturday mountain bike races. We condemned one farm track that was so steep we nearly shredded our hands by crawling up jagged, broken rocks. The only hand-holds were sparse, prickly gorse bushes. Cyclists tyres and knees would have been slashed.
Across the road, set back in trees nestled a dilapidated old house, obviously a popular hang-out for locals, judging by the number of cars parked in the drive-way. 'Happy hour' reached a crescendo by 3:00 every morning. Drugged and drunken revellers roared and warbled to irregular thumping of drums and tuneless strumming of guitars. This set off the dozen or so farm dogs that joined in, howling and barking. Not to be outdone, cattle beasts in adjoining paddocks bellowed throughout. Then just as we were dozing off at about 5.00am the bells of a nearby Buddhist community ensured sleep was out of the question.
17/06/07 @ 19:27