AN AFTERNOON'S OUTING.

Otago Witness, Issue 1989, 7 April 1892, Page 32

AN AFTERNOON'S OUTING.

By David Will. M. Burn,

Dear "Demon," — For the sake of auld' acquaintance " down south," as the phrase is here, I send you an account of a delightful outing from which I am not many hourß returned.

You must know that it is but two weeks since my new wheel — a 56, by Oates, of Christqhurch — arrived in Oamaru. Indeed, to be quite frank with you, she is the beauty celebrated in those verses "To My Old Bicycle," which you did me the honour of reprinting from the N. O. T. Since her arrival " Bonnie" and I have run over 200 miles in little trips. To-day, for the first time, we took the road for a run of some 10 or 15 miles, and thus it came about : Last night I worked, as is my habit, far into the v wee sma' hours," and as a consequence lay till 11 o'clock this morning ere I could summon energy enough to rise. At last I made a mighty effort, threw off the blankets, and rattled up the blind. Hurrah ! the very day I wished for — streaming with sunshine. I was . not long in dressing — lightly as might be, I need hardly "say — and, getting through my simple breakfast of whole-meal bread and fruit, with that joyous lightness of heart road-riders know so well, I wheeled out Bonnie, oiled her every bearing, mounted, and wheeled off easily up town to Severn street, Vhere for us North-enders the South road practically begins. Up the long hill we went with ease at a pace to make pedestrians and drivers envious — such are the virtues of a 20in back wheel and 6in cranks — and presently the noisy, dusty town, with its endless brick and mortar, was lost to sight and memory both? Into my pocket went my cap, as in the days of old, and I span merrily along, trolling my latest piece of nonsense to the weel-kent tune of "Biggin' castles in the air " : — THE WHEEL GIRL. My Love has got a Clincher Wheel, All beautiful and bright, As graceful as an antelope To my enamoured sight. To-day the club rides out in foree — How proud the boys all feel As a lady heads their column On her bonny Clincher Wheel. Chorus : Her bonny Clincher Wheel, boys, Her bonny Clincher Wheel ; When a lady heads their column On her bonny Clincher Wheel. To-day the club rides out in forceHow proud the boys will feel When a lady heads their column On her bonny Clincher Wheel. Off and away ! The outward ride We take at easy pace, None can too much admire my Love — Her seat, her easy grace ; For style the lady " takes the cake," But all the others feel : " l?or speed, we win — she's but a girl, Although she rides a wheel ! " (Chorus.) Vain hope ! fond boast ! We head for home " Ride as you like " 's the cry : A bright glance from my Love to me, And off we lightly fly. One after one we leave them all — How small the boys must feel As my Love cuts out the running On her bonny Clincher Wheel ! (Chorus.) Soon the tiny township of Weston was reached and passed, and coasting was the order of the day, down by the schoolhouse, on and on towards Teaneraki. The road, however, is not too good, owing, I suppose, to the diminution of heavy traffic thanks to the present day facilities for carriage by rail. Its surface both in form and colour recalls the road from Halfway Bush round Flagstaff towards North Taieri, but the characteristic dykes are wanting — we have mere gorse hedges here save at one point. Teaneraki ! Seemingly the good folks are not out of bed yet, for there is not a soul about. A glance at my watch soon solves the mystery — they're not in bed, but at their dinners. " May good digestion wait on appetite," I murmur, and glide on. Here is Will's church, but I've no time to stay to-day to look my old friends up ; I am exploring, and know not where I may have got to before nightfall. On, on, past Elderslie and Windsor, and what is worthier of note, past the fair metalled road and on to heavy clay, powdery - surfaced from the lengthened spell of rainless weather we have had since the last floods or thereabouts — small wonder ! Here I dismount beside a little clean, white cottage with bright curtained windows, to make sure I have not missed my way. No ! Straight on to Ngapara. I was too proud to ask how much there was of this stuff. What is a cyclist worth who cannot take rough and smooth with equanimity ? Oil, on — and now we rise, first steadily, then sharply ; but my large back wheel and 6in crank make light of grade and roughness both, and at the top we see — reward of all exertion — the fine white gravel surface of the last four miles of roadway to my goal. Only 100 yards or less of steep and pocketty clay are still to cross and then -. Come, Bonnie, Lass, and show your worth !

The fine "Ngapara gravel," as we Oamaruvians call it, makes a glorious road when well bound with good clay ; similar roads traverse South Canterbury in all directions, and but for stony riverbeds would make that district a cyclers' paradise. Now and then, however, if there be little clay or none mixed with the gravel the roads break up after continued drought and make a rideable but heavyish track for wheelmen. This section of my journey is looser than a less contented man than I would have been thankful for, but I race along the undulating road as merry as a grig — no, with a quieter and less obtrusive happiness, nodding to casual passers by and camps of threshing-mill hands, dreaming the while of bygone rides through the famous Seventy-mile Bush and down the Manawatu Gorge to Palmerston, and more particularly of the Mauriceville detour— the pure white surface I was flying over bringing back that almost ideal highway cut in the chalky hillside^ smooth as this paper I am writing on, and girt with rills of sparkling, tempting water. Ay, it was then we stopped at the little village and asked a drink of milk from one of these sober-faced Norse maidens with long plaits of hair — the ashcoloured hair of Matthew Arnold's Margaret that till that day had been a puzzle to me. And there . . . But whither am I straying ? Here is Ngapara, and there, by all that's fortunate, is Mr Flamank, the master of the local school, to whom on "birds of a feather" principles I have made .up my mind to find my way. So off I jump, glance at my watch of course — time, one hour

and three-quarters ! Distance, 18 miles— not a bad record over such a road for a man who never has been, and never will be, a •' scorcher." Greetings.exchanged, we find our way up to the teacher's residence, and chatj/or an hour or so on matters of perennial interest to men engaged in such a noble art as that of education — less so, perhaps, to the chance reader, so no word of them — and then at 4 o'clock after the heartiest of handshakes I take the road again, over the hill to the poor — I mean to Georgetown. "No slouch of a hill," as the New England gentleman might say, and after a hundred yards of its irregular clay surface I find a bed of several inches of fine dust, an excellent excuse for getting off. 'Tis just as well, for it is very rough as I proceed, and though I mount again it is not till I near the summit that 1 flnd it worth the trouble of attempting to stay in the saddle. At last we wheel on to the rolling tableland. Yonder is water — what ? Yes, the Waitaki, with its multitudinous blue shallows spreading across the broad, cliffbounded valley it has shaped itself in ages passed away. Beyond it hills upon hills, gorge after "gorge, and shoulder after shoulder. It calls to mind " The Englishman in Italy." . . . climbed to the top of Calvano, And God's own profound Was above me, and round me the mountains, And under the sea, And within me my heart to bear witness. What was and shall be — Oh, heaven, and the terrible crystal ! No rampart excludes Your eye from the life to be lived In the blue solitudes. Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement ! Still moving with you ; For, ever somo new head and breast of them Thrusts into view To observe -th'e intruder ; you see it If quickly.you turn, And, before they escape you, surprise them. But there ia. little opportunity to gaze, for the narrow wheel ruts, from 4in to Bin wide, and often bounded by miniature cliffs 6in or Bin high, claim close attention and nice steering. I wheel along, dwelling within on Browning's " Wind-grieved Apennine," and then Carlyle's stupendous Pirna-liko paragraphs, mass piled on mass of great granitic words and phrases as he, too, cleaves his way to the heart of the everlasting hills. "Wonderful is your influence," I murmured, "ye towering ranges, over the minds of men " ; and straight my mind rushes away o'er half the world to Norway and its mountain-nurtured people,'* and the great Bjornson and the greater Ibsen who have voiced the hitherto unutterable mysteries of the strange inner life of their compatriots. Soon the roughening road requires my undivided care, for here it "has been mended recently " — so runs the phrase, which I suspect to have some purely local mystical significance unfathomable by the unenlightened mind of wandering wheelmen from the outer word. Bonnie and I, however, surmount all difficulties, and presently we find ourselves curving adown a steep, rough incline, through a rocky gorge that brings to mind Waimate and its neighbourhood and memories of other rides and walks, none sweeter, with ; but this does not concern the reader. Yonder is Georgetown surely, and white gravel roads again. O joy and rapture ! Now we are homeward bound at a fair pace against a fine fresh breeze that keeps us cool without too much retarding onward progress. The roads are rather heavy, thanks to constant traffic and the drought, and the" tyre grits unceasingly as we steam past Georgetown ' with a flying compliment to the wee dot of a girl that stands a-smile — sole visible inhabitant ; past Peebles with a nod or two to its more numerous population, totalling three of both sexes ; past a lone schoolhousc, deprived of even the comforting companionship of its master's residence ; past Papakaio Gully,'and the tree where on that famous walking trip with four or five of our strapping senior boys, I sat to rest and sketch the grimy colliers driving past with dangling legs and rough, good-hearted salutatibns ; up the last hill with a wild charge, and here we are bouncing and bumping down its townward rouglier side into the main North road. Five miles to home, and the finest running without question of the whole day's ride ; the firm blue dustless surface' Dunediu boys know well, ground down to track-like smoothness by many a passing harvest wain and woolcart. Away we spin easily, effortlessly — 25* minutes by the watch, and I am hissing in my shower bath. Eighteen miles out in one hour and threequarters, and 26 miles home in two hours and a-half-4-average of actual riding time for 44 miles "of ■" samples " roadway 10^- miles an hour. Bonnie, 'you have done well ! I only wish that you could share my supper ; but as you can't I 'rub you clean of dust and oil, kiss your black handle with undisguised affection, and leave you for the night.