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About the Bike


Three areas of responsibility:  body, bike and mind.  Lose or critically damage any of the three and the show’s over. Of course you start the TA with your bike in the best condition possible.  Some even have brand new bikes.  Most have at least done things to their bikes to match them better to the job at hand. In that regard, most people have hard tail mountain bikes and many have gravel bikes, trying to strike a balance between fast (my gravel bike adds at least 5kph over my mountain bike) on the considerable proportion of pavement in the TA, able to handle the gravel and cycle trails that constitute a big part of the remainder and still good for the a few gnarly challenges like the Maungatapu.  Many trade the last one away and just hope skills and/or hike-a-bike will get them to the end.

Mine was the best bike I had for the job, a full suspension XC bike.  I changed the chainring to 34 teeth for the pavement, put some good general tires on it (Vittoria Mezcals) and used it for my training.   I also added carbon wheels for weight.  

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend others increase the chainring size, in fact some go down rather than up in size.  Increasing the number of teeth does give leverage and speed on pavement, but also increases the power you need for climbs.  It worked for me.

I replaced the chain before day one, put new tires on it the week before and booked it into an Auckland shop to reassemble and ready it after flying up from Christchurch for the drive up to the start. When it came out of that shop on February 15, Tom at MEC had done a fantastic job, it felt great and was definitely ready for the ride.  

It survived transport to Ninety Mile beach, and was perfect for the ride from Cape Reinga and to & along the beach.  The Mezcals handled the sand pretty well.  At Ahipara on the first night tho I made a maintenance mistake.  I rinsed the bike with a hose and decided I’d wait til the morning to lube it.  My rinse wasn’t thorough enough and in the morning the chain was brown with rust.  After just one night!  I rinsed again and plastered the lube on and hoped. The chain seems to have survived okay.

From there it seemed mostly a case of watching chain, tyres and tightness of various Allen bolts including those holding luggage. After Northland, we had it booked back into MEC Bikes Mt Eden, the same shop that had reassembled it off the plane, timed for passing through Auckland.  As before, Tony at MEC Bikes Mt Eden tuned it up beautifully and confirmed the chain was not likely to cause any problems to Bluff. 

As we continued south, it was important to clean any gunk from trails off the chain at the end of messy rides. I got into the habit of lubing the chain pretty much daily while also keeping an eye on tires.  Tyres became less of a focus the further down we got.  Those puncture resistant Mezcals seemed so reliable, and my home mechanic August at Chain Reaction had ensured they were well sealed.

The Bridge to Nowhere day was particularly tough on the bike though, but a thorough clean and lube in Pipiriki got us to Wanganui where The Bike Shed gave it a proper degrease and tuned the bike for $40.   It felt pretty much like new after that.

I did have a chain-related incident on the Bridge to Nowhere section that’s worth mentioning.  After slipping in the mud at one point, the chain somehow came off and fell between chain wheel and chainstay in such a way that it couldn’t be pushed back.  Instead a fellow rider showed me how to disconnect the quick link and re-thread the chain.   My Topeak Alien X multi-tool had a useful quick link separator. That issue never arose again.

I don’t think I had my bike checked/tuned, or encountered any other issues with it from Wanganui until Hokitika where I took it in for a cursory tune-up.  I did notice quite a bit of wear in the rear cassette when the bike was mounted on the work stand at Hokitika Cycle & Sportsworld tho, so Gary the owner and mechanic extraordinaire replaced that for me.  He also noticed that the hub bearings were feeling a little laggy, but suggested I wait to address that at home.  It was expected wear and wouldn’t stop me getting to Bluff.  The tune-up was well worth it and the bike felt fantastic the next day. 

In a clumsy moment in the wet on the second to last day I dropped my wheel into a cattle grate while holding a gate open for someone.  That bent the front brake disk, but still didn’t seem to prevent the bike from moving along at pace or the brakes themselves from working. It certainly didn’t take the gloss off speeding into  Bluff at last.

There’ll be a bit of money spent on it when I get back home to freshen it up, but overall the yellow steed was almost perfect for task. 

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