Is it Kim Jong Un or is it Richard Goldsbury? Side shaves for the win. Photo Jono Baddiley

Satire, after all, is just comedy without any punchlines.  But who exactly was the joke on at the Kim Jong Un-duro? Following in the succession of the Winston Peters Enduro First Enduro, the Donald Trump Freedom Enduro and the Tiger Woods Golf Enduro, the annual Wellington Mountain Bike Club event at Makara Peak in Wellington has vacillated between political ideologies more frequently than a Hollywood A-lister.

Certainly the sold-out crowd of 200 competitors were not the butt of any jokes, as April sun shone down on a carefully selected set of trails that minimised pedalling and maximised rowdiness, but with a couple of easier options too.  In true communist style the same choices were presented to everybody. Five stages were marked out with live timing, and the easy category riders were ranked on the easiest two, the hard category on the hardest three, or if all five were ridden then those hardcore riders were also in contention for the prestigious Pyongyang prize.  The vibe was not one of forced labour, more one of laidback Leninism. Stages could be repeated and done in any order, and timed tracks outside of your category could also be ridden, but the catch was that riders had to be back to base within three hours, or face a hefty time penalty. Word on the hill is that people prefer this freedom, a socialist freedom where the only cost incurred is a queue for the most popular stage.

The view from the top of Stage 4 – Ridgeline. Photo Lisa Ng

The imperialist aggressors at PayPal however put their capitalist oars in to try and scupper the good ship DPRK.  During the peak of the online entry rush an email was received reading:

Dear WMTBC

As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the PayPal system.

PayPal’s Compliance Department has reviewed a recent transaction and identified activity that may be in violation of U.S. regulations. U.S. regulations currently prohibit the purchase or sale of various goods and services originating from or being shipped to North Korea.

In order to prevent risk for us and our customers, we have limited what you can do with your account until the issue is resolved. Please note that we reserve our right to terminate our account relationship and close your PayPal account if we are unable to resolve this issue.

But PayPal could not handle the cunning ways of the Rising Sun of Socialism, and before long the barking capitalist dogs were whimpering on their bellies and the event was back on.  Or perhaps just someone sent them an explanatory email that it was all just a parody…

Our Dear Leader was engulfed in happiness on the morning of the event as the riders set off from Mud Cycles after a stellar registration effort and anonymous red smoke bombs.  Naturally Kim Jong Un himself set all the fastest times for all stages, and returned to Muds with ample time to rescue a drowning puppy and build a new orphanage, but behind the Ever-Victorious, Iron-Willed Commander the battle was blinding.  With a total of thirty-eight different categories spanning age, gender and difficulty, the prize presentations at the end of the day may have appeared arduous. But behind every set of results were comradely and not-so-comradely rivalries, stories of bad luck, broken bikes and triumph. A sign of the close racing is that every one of the five stages had a different rider posting the fastest time, with top honours going to the various skills of Maxwell Wickens (Lazy Fern), Connor Jacob (SWIGG Starfish), Calum Chamberlain (Nikau), Cowboy McGinnity (Ridgeline) and Jesse Cseh (Vertigo). Unfortunately Kim Jong Un wouldn’t part with any of his precious rockets for prizes, but in a change from the usual ‘find a piece of junk and spray-paint’, first and second position riders still received fully functioning rockets.  Not of the rapidly exploding kind, but Egmont Seeds stepped in to provide a stack of rocket seeds, a more environmentally friendly option that will slowly explode into a tasty side by spring.

Prize presentation was a sit-down affair. Photo Rob Lee

It’s not a straightforward task to have live timing on five tracks simultaneously, with multiple contingencies for accident and injury, on one of the country’s busiest mountain bike parks. Even less so to be able to get the whole lot packed up and back in the hands of the proletariat within an hour of the last rider returning.  To this end the Party has to thank our small conscripted army of volunteers, coerced with nothing more but their own goodness of heart (and free Garage Project beer and sausages). Thanks to these people the whole event ran smoothly, and the biggest hiccup was when the neighbouring soccer club came and bought out the sausage sizzle.

In addition to the volunteers our sponsors also did us proud, donating spot prizes from beer tokens to Marxist tyres (or is it Maxxis?), and assistance throughout the event. The sponsors were

Mud Cycles

Marleens importers

Maxxis tyres

Raceface

One Fat Bird

Egmont Seeds

Garage Project

Chainslap

and also

Makara Peak Supporters

Wellington Mountain Bike Club

without whom we’d be little more than belligerent Bolsheviks camping out in Trump Tower.

William Bennett getting into the theme on Stage 2. Photo Tom Adams

The winners on the day – won. But communism isn’t about standing out from the rest, it’s about filling an arbitrarily assigned role in society, and not getting your lunch money stolen. Within the many categories there were those who revelled in beating their mates. But that’s ok the lynch mobs showed them later on what a real beating is.  Overwhelmingly the feedback was that people enjoyed a good day out riding bikes, with minimal fuss and plenty of GCs (good comrades) around them and got the Kim Job Done. Riders, organisers and volunteers – we salute you. The only thing at ground zero of this satirical testing was taking the whole Enduro thing too seriously, and with this in mind the smiles were wide and the people happy. We didn’t even need guns.

*I’m not actually a communist