Bicycles offer the greatest escapism I have experienced anywhere. Ever. You can do your best thinking or absolutely no thinking at all while turning pedals. Throw wilderness into the mix and you have utter bliss.

PSA: It’s not always sublime. Let’s not look at it through rose tinted Prisms. Sometimes it is completely ridiculous. Sometimes turning those pedals gets tough. Mother Nature ad libs with conditions that certainly didn’t feature in the weatherman’s radar. Then you slice the side wall of your brand new rubber. Or the mate you started out the ride with while feeling jovial starts stomping the climb a few bike lengths ahead while you are deep in the hurt locker. You’re now less jovial. In fact you’d love to tell him to “Fuck off” but he’s your last link to humanity in the middle of fucking nowhere. Before you know it the experience you’d envisaged as a Gram worthy adventure with cols, coffee and QOMs denigrates itself to Type II fun.

I’ll fess up. Type II is sometimes a good kinda soul food. My Type II fun memories extend way back to the mid nineties and conquering rolling Welsh hills and moorland with my brother fueled by a family pack of Mars bars. I’m still an addict.

It would seem that some of my friends and whanau are too. I have a great many comrades in arms who are living for encounters outside of the comfort zone.

Like riding a cyclocross bike through the Akatarawa Forest. Surviving the infamous Doper’s while woefully under-geared. With a drivetrain that is battered from the earlier three hours of grinding. Getting chased by a bull in Battle Hill. Enduring an acute case of ‘cross back. Extracting marginal traction on almost every corner. Then realising that when you’ve finished busting your ass to get to the summit of yet another peak, the bike you’re riding is gonna transform a normally rewarding descent into a completely unnecessary Vibrofit session as you progressively lose feeling in your fingers while still desperately clutching your brake levers. In the drops.

If this sounds like you then you might have been one of the 144 gravel friends who joined the inaugural Akatarawa Gravel Fondo. Early one Sunday morning full of enthusiasm, caffeine and joviality while astride a wholly inapproriate bicycles destined for an epic adventure through a piece of lower North Island real estate named after its hanging vines. Landscape infamous for its annual Karapoti punishment welcomed to the gravel fringe.

The Fondo was inspired by too many years spent following Stateside escapades like Dirty Kanza and The Belgian Waffle Ride, combined with a vacay that included some mixed-surface cruising a stone’s throw from LAX. My first ride back on home turf a few months ago brought about a dawning realisation that we had all the core ingredients right here in Wellington. Nek minnit, pouring over maps inspired a suitably ridiculous route built on the foundations of some of my fave local grav grav all tied together into one big ass day.

“Pah! Only 90 kilometers?” gave way to, “Shit, how much climbing?”. Two thousand eight hundred vertical meters to be precise. And given it’s the Capital, that vm came gift wrapped in a parcel that was steeper than a steep thing. Then it was all polished off with a final sojourn through Clark’s Creek. Savage. It was like Bear Grylls had been enlisted to assist with gravel riding route planning for the day.

Amongst the gravel grinding, there was however, light at the end of the tunnel. A dynamic duo (and quite possibly New Zealand’s unofficial biggest gravel fans) felt inspired by Salsa Cycle’s “Chase the Chaise” and took it upon themselves to makeover the Cannon Point Trig bench complete with golden spray painted corflute and plastic flamingos. Safe in the knowledge there were a mere five kilometers left until beer o’clock, gravel grinders owned the chaise. The most notable effort coming from a sultry young minx who bust out Victoria Beckham’s signature pose. Upper Hutt had certainly seen nothing like it before.

Weary legs rolled back across the Harcourt Park bridge that they had so eagerly cruised across 6 hours prior. Custom printed business cards returned with a variety of holes punched. Memories banked. New riding buddies made. Post ride Strava uploads rolled in thick and fast with “This was harder than you usual effort” notifications trending like the latest Goop announcement.

Despite the blood, sweat and tears left somewhere in the dirt between the Kapiti Coast and the Hutt Valley, the stoke could not be contained. Calls for Akatarawa Gravel Fondo 2021 ripped across social.

So, I guess, I’ll catch you all next year.