Swimming down the Mangakirikiri

After a hard night out fundraising for the school multi-sport team Lea, Boss and Teleri headed off with me from Hanaia to bike down the Mangakirikiri and out the Pakihi. This was the first time for me on a MTB for a few months and Lea was a bit hungover!

I have never taken on the 40+ creek crossing with it so deep or swift so it was outstandingly good fun. The Boss and I tried every crossing and some twice to nail them and we got most of them. The Boss' highlight was face plant over his handle bars into a deep pool emerging with his glasses still on. Some unkind people did a lot of laughing.

Teleri, to her credit, listened to my creek crossing coaching and was soon nailing most of them, but shortly after telling her it wouldn't hurt if she tumbled into a creek she promptly did so and landed on a rock and hurt herself. I told her if she had gone faster she wouldn't have fallen off.

Lea was pretty useless and talked herself out of most of them but did impress with one dive into a creek and another dive onto the hard ground.

We were all looking forward to the final hole which Sam O'Dwyer dived into last year (see NZMTB mag for photo). Not only was it deep it was very swift with an electric fence going across it just about where you would surface if you fell off and were swept doen stream. I was the only one who tried to ride across (twice!) and Boss and Lea kindly stood where the fence was to resecue me if I was swept towards it. I was ultimately unsuccessful but had great fun being swept off the bike.

It was a hard ride back to Opotiki into a strong headwind with Lea doing a lot of the work and then a mad dash from Opotiki to Hanaia with Teleri leading the charge all of the way home.

Even them we couldn't rest as Teleri interviewed us for one of her papers. Apparently we area sub culture and Andrew and I had to answer questions about why we did these sort of things, what people thought of us etc. If anyone has answers to these questions please put in the Comment area as I lie awake at night worrying about these sorts of questions!!

Great to be back in the saddle on one of our many great tracks! It was fun and sociable! Go the SOBs