While the rest of the city watches the wallpaper slowly fade around the questionably trendy Nubian head Nana left them, off Laings Rd, in a clearing in the forest, something strange and wonderful is happening, Lisa Scott writes.
Dwarfed by pine trees, surrounded by yellow gorse planted by homesick emotional Scots, mysterious figures tote shovels and grubbers and constantly insult each other: "You farkety farking a*** antler.'' "You fark head. You wouldn't know your fark from your elbow.'' This is the Whare Flat Trial Crew, getting stuff done (GSD) since 2005.
What is it about men, that when a bunch of them are bonding over something they communicate their enjoyment by mocking each others' sexual prowess? If the same thing happened in a group of women it would guarantee a state of utter bewilderment, followed by an eternity of no-speaks. But when you hear (what is the collective noun for men? I'll make something up) a urinal of men giving each other s***, it means they are having the time of their lives. It's the male equivalent of saying your hair looks wonderful and collectively fantasising about Ragnar Lothbrok.
Trail builders are a real melting pot, professionally: the Whare Flat crew consists of a mechanic, an engineer, a different kind of engineer (sorry I wasn't listening), a vet (when he's not feigning an injury), an astrophysicist and a geologist. The tracks are all rider-built. Because nobody else would build them, quite frankly. Everywhere you put your shovel in the ground there is a rock. Huge boulders have to be rolled down steep clay banks before being lifted into place as guardrails."Get ready to run,'' they said. I couldn't help but notice there was nowhere to run to.
Gareth Hargreaves is the man behind this sweary group, bringing food, and sometimes amber liquid as incentive. "If you get a bit tired, just take yourself away, rattle some branches and make a lot of noise, and people will think you're doing something,'' he says. Trailfund.org.nz has kindly stumped up $1500, but 8km of single track and seven trails (this one, Bermageddon, is the seventh) later, volunteer hours would be in the bajillions. They do it for the awesome.
You don't just need a shovel and an extensive vocabulary of devastating putdowns, when the track is finished you need nerves of steel to ride the fresher. Because you're quite possibly going to end up with steel inserted into some part of your body. Mountain biking is like a P addiction that results in hospital instead of prison. Society says good on you, for doing exercise: but you just have to look at the ACC stats to see the Mongrel Mob is practising better health and safety. It's no exaggeration to say A&E's list of most hated goes: 1. Drunk students 2. Slightly overweight middle-aged white men riding mountain bikes.
No question it's super-dangerous: gravity's in charge, organs are pulverised.
"Your kidney's like a tomato,'' explained Marcus, with relish."If you hit a tomato on a chopping board ...'' he made an explosive squishing noise that made me want to clutch my own kidneys, but I don't know where they are. Front? Back?
Backs have been broken. Tendons shredded, ankles skewered by those skinny metal things that hold the wheel on. Everyone's had their fair share of tumbles, but they'd rather go into the box absolutely wrecked than in good nick.
"That's why Nurofen was invented,'' says Gareth. What's not broken isn't worth breaking, in his opinion."I guess it depends on the gradient,'' I say. Gradients? What gradients? They don't need no stinking gradients. There's no formula, apart from how hurt you can get. A clear demonstration of the call of the wild in all men that makes them do stupid stuff and is, my dear ladies, the reason we outlive them.
The fringed sleeves of felled pines like eyebrows over a cowboy's face, City Forests has thinned in a way that hasn't left logs on the track, a comradely nod to the builders. Thousands of riders will whizz past this question-mark-shaped bend and never think about the fact that it took someone three weeks to build by hand.
A trail with no straights, white knuckle. Try not to hit the trees on your way down at 30kmh, the berms hopefully tipping you into a comfortable ridge.
"When you get down the bottom you have a big smile on your face. You're alive. Farking amazing. Go up and do it again.''
