TRIP BY MOTOR BIKE

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3251, 5 November 1932, Page 2

TRIP BY MOTOR BIKE

TE AROHA TO STRATFORD A SNAPPY STORY (By ~L. Holmes) (Continued) There ahead, I could see, was New Plymouth; the Sugarloaves and Paritutu, the unique, were clear to see more than once. But Stratford was my objective, so three miles out of Waitara I turned left south for Inglewood, the place where it makes a news item if there was no rain yesterday! The Mountain has been of course conspicuous for miles, but now it becomes the only thing in view. It is about and it is beneath. It fills half the sky. The day was still cloudy but in glimpse and in glimpse I saw all the peak, even to the top. It was like being allowed as a favour to see a rehearsal of some awful unveiling ceremony. One of the old Hebrew prophets describes Messiah's kingdom as "becoming a great mountain, and fillling all the world"; to appreciate that noble imagery, come to Taranaki. Past countless dairy factories, past lively stony rivers with remnants of primeval bush lining tbeir banks, the road steadily climbs. Waipuku, the highest point, is some 1200 feet up; this has been reached in a steady rise of twenty miles from the coast. Stratford itself, a little downhill from the shoulder, is still at a four-figure altitude. I coasted down the Mountain Road as it became Broadway, Stratford, at five minutes to five. The 207 rather assorted miles had taken seven hours, running time, and less than 2£ gallons of benzine. I turned left down Raglan Street to the journey's end. The visitor to Stoatford may be entertained by the street-names. When the streets were all to be christened some local Shakespeare-lovers must have got away with the job, and faking their cue from the name Stratford, they succeeded in naming all the streets after the dramatis personae of the bard of Avon. Regan and Cordelia, Fenton and Falstaff, Ophelia and Hamlet, Orlando, Rosalind and Celia, are all there together stiil, with scores more of the same parentage. A bit startling, like meeting Athens, Corinth and Jerusalem up the Wan-ganui-River. The only thing that surprises me is that they left the name of the river at "Patea", but perhaps Patea itself, astride the mouth of it, saw to that. Of course I could have enjoyed a longer stay, but one stay-at-home Sunday was all the time I had in Taranaki. There is one Taranaki excursion which I must take some day—simply a four-hour spin, through New Plymouth, Opunake and Hawera, round the 120-mile circuit of perfect roads that girdle the Mountain. It was possible that, just for a bit of extra fun, I might have set off back r, home via Whangamomona, Ohura and i Te Kuiti again. But there are some important clay stretches on that run I and Jupitcr-Pluvius from Mount Egmont made it impossible. When I finally set out back the way I had I come, at 10.20 on Monday morning, it was in moderately heavy and very settled rain. Due largely to the rain, = and also to the fact that the engine seemed a little reluctant, it took me

three hours to make Awakino (-78 miles); I had hoped for a time nearer 2% hours, on those roads. By Awakino the rain had finally gone, and the roads were dry. I stopped for a gallon (I forget whether it was "Fume", "Smell" or "Onion" that they gave me), but between it and a couple of little adjustments the engine resumed full business; as ( we bike-boys say,

"the ponies turned into horses." Just a couple of miles up the valley I passed a service car going my way, and never heard any more about him for the rest of the trip. The outbound trip had called for constant watching of these rough loose winding King Country roads, which I hadn't seen for years, but on the return I had the advantage of what I had learned on the Saturday. So at least I thought, till beyond Mahoenui I was entering a bend at about 25. Apparently someone had thoughtfully dumped a drayload of cracked boulders on this corner since I saw it last. Dots and dashes, stars and stripes! A fellow hadn't a hope. The spill did me no harm, and the bike very little; the only point worth mention was that one rock had made a proper job both of the headlamp glass and of the bulb. Well, I had reckoned to be home by dark, now I must. Te Kuiti by 3.20 —so that's when and

i where I am. Otorohanga by five to [ four; stop for another gallon. Te > Awamutu by 5.30; I looked hard at the town clock and said, slowly, "51 ; miles." Across the sand-swamp road ! to Cambridge, where the post office i was just about to close. Not good en- ; ough time; so one more notch on the oil-feed, and hang on. The early dusk of a stormy evening would soon fall; better any risk in daylight than the peril of being on the road after dark, at any speed, without a light. The last sti-etch, over the "hill road" through Tauwhare and Morrinsville to home, was done in a style that taught me something about the little engine's ability. I won't say the time exactly. For one thing,, you might call me an unsanctified perverter of the probabilities; and admittedly these unverified road-times are liable to sound just a little like an angler's weighings of the fish that got away, or a farmer's claims about his own cows. On the other hand, I might really be believed; you remember when the Ford people sent a man in a Model A in top-gear-and-a-clutch from Auckland to Wellington in 10 hours 49 minutes—and what the authorities had to say to them? So I'll only say that while I saw the post office in Cambridge in its last two minutes of the day's business, I. found three popular Te Aroha resorts still with open bars. . . . Well there was dust and there was rain and I had a spill, but still who wouldn't be a motor cyclist? Yes, even you who tour in motor cars, wouldn't you like to do such a trip at a total cost of fourteen shillings? inclusive of two bob for a new piston ring instead of the one that lost a chip off its end on the way down. And, oh lords of the Straight-Six or Vee- f Eight, wouldn't you like to be able to take the engine "right down" to refit a piston ring, and reassemble and have it running again, inside an hour?