CHIT-CHAT.

Otago Witness, Issue 1994, 12 May 1892, Page 31

CHIT-CHAT.

• Dear Demon,— Since my run up to Waimate we have had strange weather indeed. Thick drenching mists have covered everything for days, and few cyclists save myself have ventured out in the mud upon their wheels. To me there is a charm in riding in . the rain and over roads that stick like hasty pudding. I can remember one season in the south when I rode twice or thrice a week out to the country, and not once escaped a ducking one way or the other — a most persistent business the rain supply that winter. Several of my trips in Canterbury and Otago I have ridden in the wet. The fastest time I ever did in from North Taieri to Dunedin was through a rain storm. I was wet well nigh to the skin, but was all the fresher for it, and rippled through the puddles in grand style, describing" as "we used to say a truly elegant map of Polynesia on'my back. Many a time riding from Hilton to Waimate I had to start in rain or else ran into it about the Washdyke, and finished my journey "like a drowned rat," my friends would 6ay, but happy as a king. During the jubilee week when Jupiter Pluyius " let himself out" upon his job of Tain-making I was on the load again— from Waimate up by Pleasant Poipt towards Fairley Creek and back through Kakahu. I had to plod through mudcovered paddocks at Makikihi, to cross the Pareora on the ties of the railway bridge after expostulation with the ganger, who thought I ought to stay this side of the raging torrent because there was no traffic bridge to cross ! Then through fresh paddocks inches deep in yellow slime, before I gained the road again. But the delightfullest part of it was travelling from Timaru to Pleasant Point— a trip of an hour in good weather, it took me three hours tc cover the 12 miles, such the tenacity and depth of the mud I had to labour through. Dunedin mudlarks will think of that sweet patch through Caversham— town side of Forbury road asurfaceof peasoupwhiletherainis on, but after a day or so ofsunorwindthe"excellenteststickphast paste" : such was the Point road on the jubilee event. Some folks may wonder why I did not go by train. Bless you, I liked it. Starting away from the Point, I went some miles up the roa( i — what did it matter? I retraced my steps, and soon was wading through the swift and treacherous little Tengawai waist deep. This sort of thing gives life to the tame miles on Canterbury roads that run on flat as pancakes hour by hour. 1 "reached my destination dirty, wet, and tired, but would not have arrived by train or coach clean, dry, and fresh for worlds !

I have even raced in raiu — on a clay track : the bliss whereof is too transcendent for expression; let wheelmen of imaginative temperament work out the idea fpr themselves. Analagous to rainy riding is an experience I bad near Wellington. I rode " up-country "to *pay a call one afternoon, and found my track li d round the shore of a' pretty little bay whose nr-me is neither here nor there. The tide was in, and the track was under water ! I'm not particular as to what I get to ride on, bar ploughed land, so on I went— my back wheel barely visible above the water, sometimes indeed completely covered by it— as placidly as though upon an asphalt side walk, and as the sandivas hard and smooth, and the dip of the shore but slight, I put out gallantly to sea, and rippled on serenely till suddenly I saw m front of me the gloom of deeper water, which a quick glance shorewards showed to be a ditch carried well out into the bay. How to escape I knew not, I was too close to wheel away, and even so could not have crossed it nearer shore, nor waß I wise eLOugh to see that a bold stroke would have s ivi d me-that by going out to sea a little f urthe • I sho ild have found the bottom of the ditch amos; unnoticeable, while six inches more of dep h would not have made much d ff erenc etjmy l unning. I saw naught for it, bat a quick dismount into 2ft of water or elsa a pretty certain header into that glooming ditch which would have swallowed up the pair of us completely. As partial dryness seemed considerably better than a total drenching I jumped off, and made for the land as best I might On my home trip the tide was down, and I got to the main road dry, or at least with no fresh soaking! - Butl am wandering far enough from Oamaru. I find the mud in otuvmain street here of an excellent quality, as one would have surmised

from a careful analysis of the dust I spoke of in a former letter. Three days of heavy mist are just enough|to work it to the " stick-phast " stage where there is not too heavy traffic. ■yVhere many vehicles pass and repass continually a change takes place in the consistence of the mud— it is less like glue than grease— and one's tyre instead of sticking to the stones, and coming off with a continual gluck, gluck, gluck, "most musical, most melancholy," slithers and slips upon them in a most inebriated fashion, necessitating an alertness on the rider's part that makes a trip • like this in rainy weather considerably more interesting than when skies are fair and roads in better order. Interesting even sometimes to the onlooker, as, for example, when in such- a week nine or 10 years ago my tyre slipped sideways off a great round greasy piece of road metal opposite the Queen's Theatre in Princes street, and my wheel went down beneath me like a' shot.— But the mist is lifting, the moon is breaking through the shapeless masses that drift slowly towards the hills— to-morrow we we shall see the sun again, and in two tlays the mud will vanish, and only the glorious greenth of tree and herb remain to speak of what the least contented then will call a welcome rain.