Un tempo fangoso

There’s mud everywhere.

Your team-mate completes his lap. You slap hands, and you’re off. The track through the tent village is like a bog and you can’t clip your shoe into your pedal. You bash your shoe on the pedal a few times and finally clip in. Out of the tent village, a hard left sends you up towards the gravel road. You’re working already – the mud is tacky and to ride through it is like forcing your way through a thick jelly.

You hit the gravel road and start picking up the pace. With a slight uphill gradient, its singlespeed bread and butter and you increase the tempo. Into the single-track of Westside now and the gravel is new and loose, but at least its holding the track together. You wind through the twisty track, shocked by how difficult riding is due to the soft surface. Then it’s briefly back onto the gravel road before entering Beeline extension.

This is an interesting little piece of track. At one point the track splits into easy and hard routes. The easy option is not to be thought of, so you take the plunge over a steep little drop and hum into a rooty, slippery wee descent. The wheels slide around but you get through it with a combination of balance and luck. The next bit is a twisty sloppy mess but you power through and out onto the four wheel drive track which runs past the tent village, via a little jump placed for the spectators’ viewing pleasure.

After passing the timing checkpoint you head back up the four wheel drive track and then head left around the side of the motocross track. The mud is unbelievably thick and your legs really start to burn as you dig it in. The entrance to the single track is a wide puddle of six-inch-deep mud and it saps all of your speed as you splash on in. Trying to negotiate the narrow single-track, your handlebar hits a tree on the right and you are nearly thrown off. The track winds out and back, a little extra loop thrown in before the main climb begins.

Reaching Jungle Gym you can tell that this track has been around for a lot longer than any of the single-track ridden so far. It’s firm and settled and seems easier to ride despite the uphill incline. The track winds its way up the hill vaguely parallel to the main road into or out of Wainui. However you are completely oblivious to this as you focus on winding up the speed, getting past other riders and embracing the pain. There’s a neat series of switchbacks which you power through, the big 29er frame hugging the outside of the track. Then you keep the pace on as you race through a rolling section, before attacking a steady climb. The legs and lungs really begin to burn, with sharp pain down the side of both calves. You thankfully reach the top of Jungle gym, breathing heavily, but can’t afford to slow down.

You soon pass through the top of Labyrinth and start on Snails. Despite the race conditions you can’t help but grin hugely as you flow through the wavy, rolling track. The track is like a pump track at the top, gradually losing altitude. The bottom section is a series of wide switchbacks which you swoop into, hugging the berms. The descent gives you a chance to catch your breath but you have to concentrate to avoid taking a spill on the flowing track.

Now you are out on another section of gravel road which you speed through before skidding through a 180 degree turn and charging into a wide fast piece of single-track known as the Wetlands loop. This track lets you really wind it out, only having to slow significantly when entering and exiting an elevated wooden boardwalk section of track. After this you come out onto another four wheel drive track which takes you back towards the tent village.

You come out into a swampy field and really push up the speed. Next is a car park which you scream through before re-entering the hard slush that is the track through the tent village. You’re already sweaty, very muddy and tired as your friends cheer you on. You know you have to finish another lap before you get a break. The course is fierce but also very, very fun. You can’t believe how much that first lap has taken out of you but you surge on and into the next lap, knowing there will be many more to complete over the course of the day.

A festive affair

The Food and Wine Festival has a bit of a misleading name, in that the word order suggests a focus on food. At the very least, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking that the food and the wine aspects would be equally represented. The website even advertises the event as “the food show”. However, to the veteran campaigner, it is known through hard-earned but enjoyable experience that the wine tends to take precedent, becoming exponentially more relevant as the day goes by. The reason is, those small samples add up fast. With entry at 20 bucks plus a near-compulsory fiver for a wine glass (so you get bigger samples), the event isn’t financially ruining. We were in for an afternoon of cheap, messy fun.


A quarter-assed Google search didn’t reveal how long the show has been running for, but it’s well established. Last year the event managed to coax slightly fewer than 20,000 assorted individuals out to jostle with each other as they walked slowly around in circles in the outside ring of Westpac stadium. The food show claims to be “the undisputed market leader in consumer culinary events”, and certainly there’s a wide array of delicious foodstuffs available to sample, but predominantly it’s an excuse to get drunk and sweaty for an autumn’s afternoon.

This became apparent early. In the hustle around the first stall we went to, ‘generic-wine-brand’ wines, I struck up a conversation with a short, balding, middle-aged gentleman in a slightly greasy leather jacket. This exchange was a great chance to touch base with some of the “affluent, sophisticated audience” promised on the website. The gent was quick to enquire about my aspirations towards the “the 300 club”. Membership, I was informed, was to be gained by partaking in 300 alcoholic samples over the day. With such a wonderful prize up for grabs, we went straight into it.


Participation always starts sedately enough. People are still sober enough to use any manners they may possess. Sampling is just that – a small amount on the end of a toothpick, to give the would-be connoisseur a taste of what the gastronomic world has to offer. It’s the perfect time to try the delightful range of boutiquesque food products the New Zealand market has to offer – and all while never missing a wine or liqueur stop.


While insignificant details such as product and brand names are hazy, I do remember several such samples which enchanted the heart and the mind. One particularly impressive product on display was a full blown meat smoker, with samples of the tasty small meats that it could produce available. There were many different types of oils for sampling. I mostly went for those infused with chilli, and was rewarded with a variety of full, spicy flavours. Particularly good and quite different was a type of oil which was made out of macadamia’s. This oil was light and subtle. There was also a wide range of pesto and hummus type products which were particularly good, some well-crafted mango yoghurt, and a range of gourmet honeys which were very worthwhile. Of course, there was a whole lot more, but my memory was in no state to provide specifics.


On the alcoholic side of things, there was more wine than anyone really knew what to do with, a few beers, and several honey or lemon liqueurs. I tried Syrah, I tried Gewurztraminer, I tried Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris. It would have been foolish not to have some Rieslings, and I was anything but. I stayed safe with the Savs and the Merlots and the Chardonnays. There was a lot of wine to try, so I did. As to colour and type, I didn’t discriminate.


Now this quantity of wine made things increasingly sloppy. At the beginning, we were a tight knit group of five. We went to stalls together, we waited patiently for each other, and we went with the flow. Then the booze kicked in. We fragmented. We met new people, we saw old friends - we diverged and converged and reached the lost-control verge. Technology is always a boon in these situations, as it’s very enlightening to receive a text like “Phm lost1 wryou?” and have no idea where you are or they are, but anyways you’re so drunk the screen is swimming.


Our conduct also deteriorated. Queues were things to push through or ignore. Handfuls of samples were the norm. It was a challenge to see how much cocktail sausage would fit on one toothpick, and we were comfortable in shamelessly going back for seconds or thirds. I even got caught signing up to a web mailing-list multiple times, because each time earned me a ticket for a bacon butty. My (male) friend went and used the women’s bathroom, and didn’t realise he’d misrepresented his gender. He just thought it odd there were no urinals. Things were unravelling.


In Wellington, we are generally blessed with a wide range of attractive women out and about – the food and wine show is no different. However, part way through the show, with a strong wine filter, all of the women began to look pretty good. We were leering like depraved beings, pushing and jostling with the sweaty, urgent crowd. We stank of wine - it was spilling all over us. Strawberry daiquiri’s had appeared from somewhere. I had an extra wine glass, hung stylishly across my torso on its lanyard. Our endurance was flagging. We needed to sit down, needed to eat, needed more samples of wine; we pushed ourselves aimlessly around the stadium. We had a rest in the Hoegaarden beer garden, and I left with one of their pillows as a souvenir.

And then it was over for another year. The logistics of regrouping and getting home where mind-blowing, due to the states we’d all gotten into. We stopped for more wine at the railway station and I smashed my glass all over the floor. I had been pretending to present it to a friend on the stolen pillow. Some friends took a taxi; it had ticked up to $40 before they even left the railway station, while they waited for everyone to get there and get in. Others stumbled home in the rain, bleary eyed, in the early evening. The night was young and ripe with possibility. We weren’t quite sure what had happened, but we knew we had liked it. We would be returning next year.