stuart test blog

I bought a new mountain bike on Friday from Crankworks in Wellington. It’s the GT Zaskar Expert which is a model up from the Avalanche Expert that I was originally looking at. It was on special at $1999 (down from RRP of $2700) and Mike at Crankworks gave me a good deal on some Lake SPD shoes too. Oh and I bought a Cateye TripleShot headlight too! So it was a very exciting purchase for me, here are some pictures of what I bought:

First the beautiful bike:

Next the shoes:

And the headlight:

So Andrew and I went for a ride yesterday on our new bikes around the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary fenceline on a section which is known as the “Rollercoaster”. Andrew had also recently got a new bike – an Avanti Hammer with some Shimano SPD shoes – so both of us were getting used to riding offroad with SPDs. Very funny indeed, watching us cycle for a few metres, then topple over, then get up again, ride for a bit more, then fall over again!

Then on the way back to the car, with our confidence a little higher, we were screaming down the Rollercoaster and loving it. But then I came up to a turn at the bottom of a steep section and realised I couldn’t turn in time. And because my feet were clipped in, I couldn’t get them out in time to help brake/turn. So I went screaming up the grass verge and flew over the handlebars head first into the bushes.

Fortunately I had a relatively soft landing in the bushes – apart from my hand which got punctured through the glove by a sharp tree stump or branch that was sticking up. So I ended up needing a couple of stitches and a tetnis shot at the after hours medical centre. Here’s the wound just prior to the stitches: