A (lovely) late night, saw me wake on Sunday, tired, dehydrated and feeling worse for wear. Tough. It's now or never.
I arrive at Blue Lake and it's pouring. Proper wet, and three hours riding seems a tough proposition. To liven things up, I duck up a nearby walking trail, and pick up a Geocoin from a cache I had looked up before I left home.
(Note: Geo caching is a nerds sport, where people hide a 'cache', essentially a container in some random place, and you use a website, a map, and clues to hunt it out. The cache will have a logbook to sign, and sometimes small 'treasures' to swap. A Geocoin is a numbered coin, which is released into the caching system with a mission)
The Geocoin's mission was to go to caches on Terrain difficulty 5 climbing trails. I found it in a forest, so obviously I'm not the only one scared of height. I figured it would be fun to ride it up to the highest point in the Redwoods though, where I'd marked out a difficulty 4 cache for some Navigation practise.
So basically, I'm a child. I had this whole 'I'm on a mission' mindset, transporting a helpless refugee to a better place. Or something like that. Seriously, I don't like training, have to do something to keep my kooky mind happy.
A big climb, a fun downhill, a grunt again, and I'm in position to head out for the Mount Moerangi Cache. I pick a spot and head out for a bush bash in tall pines. It's a trig, on a high point. Can't be too hard to find, just go up right?
After 15 minutes walking, my gps is doing cartwheels, unable to make up its mind which direction I should go in. My compass doesn't seem to make much sense, and the gps route says I've gone around in a semi circle, which doesn't feel right at all. I stand still, with that sinking feeling, that I have no idea which way is in or which way is out. My navigation tools are more of a hindrance than a help, as everything is contradictory. It's been raining persistently for nearly two hours, and now I'm spending too much time navigating and not enough time moving, I'm getting cold. I know I'm within a ring of roads, and a straight line of no more than 2km (worst case) will have me hit the road..... but the sensation of seeing my gps say I've walked in a circle without me realising it has me doubting that I can straight line at all in such dense bush.
I find a slightly open patch of bush and sit down to eat something, hoping that sitting still for a while will help the gps to secure satellites through the high trees and dense cloud. Heading off cautiously, with one more try to find the trig before I go to Plan B, I'm pretty sure a choir of angels sings when I suddenly pop out at a trig surrounded by dense bush. Extremely relieved is an understatement!!
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| A trig, a cache, and a forest. Three of my favourite things. |
With a bit more trust in my GPS now, I find a trail and decide I won't risk bush bashing again, following it down to the loop road then running back to my bike. Then I feel a heavy weight in my jacket pocket, the geocoin which I forgot to drop in the cache. Back up the hill, and this time I practise my tracking skills to follow my own trail down. :)
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| This is what the Garmin says I did when cache hunting. I don't believe it completely, but maybe a bit.... |
Just my favourite trail, Split Enz, then a road ride back to my car, 45 minutes or so. As per usual, Split Enz brings a grin to my face, it's so much fun, even in the rain. It really is my happy place, in the forest, not a soul to be seen, on a stunning single track with sweet corners and these little jinks where the trail pops around a jutting tree and root. It's so smooth. Until I take a tree a little close, veer away and find myself grinding along a small bank with no chance to manoevre and collecting a tree.
Shoulder, hand and knee took full brunt and it takes a few seconds for everything to calm down enough to think. My knee immediately stiffens up. A little hobble, a tentative stretch, then the shakes hit and I need to sit down and have something sweet to eat. I might have a little cry from the fright, but no one saw it so it doesn't count. I don't do falling off. I'm a bit of a girls blouse. I watch tough ladies who I ride with fall, get back on and keep going. I have great admiration for them, but think that if I fell off I would stop riding. Today, I'm in the middle of nowhere in the pouring rain (still), my knee looses up and riding is the only way out.
I make it back to the car; late, wet, cold, muddy, bruised and a little bit disorientated. Just what I needed.
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