Fluidride: Bike Shop, Seattle Washington

Fluidride Team rider Nathan Hoch spent this winter in New Zealand riding bikes and exploring the country. After three months, he’s back in town and tells the story (Videos Here).

Hey guys, over this last winter I had the amazing opportunity to take a couple months off from work and rain, and take my bike down to the southern hemisphere where summer was in full effect and racing was the name of the game.

I left Seattle on a rainy January 5th evening, as the Seahawks won their first playoff game I was in the air to L.A. on the first of my five flights to eventually get me to Dunedin, NZ. After 31 hours, four bad breakfasts, and one bribe of a baggage handler, I was in Dunedin and hoping that my ride would be there. Fortunately for me, I was in the trusty hands of Sam Reed and Peter Cooper, my guides for the next 11 weeks. They met me within minutes and we headed out to the truck to load my gear up and hop a parking barrier to escape paying the airport parking fees. My New Zealand experience had begun.

The first race I made it to was in a small tourist town called Wanaka, in the southern part of the South Island. This was a new course for the Kiwi’s and a completely different experience for me. Standard Kiwi trail building technique in New Zealand consists of busting in a trail with as little extra effort as possible, this makes many of the tracks extremely challenging, with very rough sections, off cambers, and tricky corners. Also standard in New Zealand DH courses are big jumps, almost every course has at least one jump larger than 30′. This track was long, fresh, and dusty; a perfect track for my first race in 5 months! The race was brutal, a combination of jet lag and lack of fitness left me feeling drained and I was pretty far off the pace, but super motivated for the next race. Kiwi legend Nathan Rankin came out of his 14th retirement to take the win, with young guns Mike Skinner and Matt Scoles taking second and third.

From there we traveled the length of the South Island up to the more tropical setting of Nelson. New Zealand is such an amazingly scenic country that for the whole eight hour drive all I did was watch the country go by and listen to music, and the time flew. The Nelson track was as different as it could have been from the Wanaka round, and after my first practice run I decided that this was one of the best tracks I’ve ridden. The course was a good length and had technical sections, tree sections, jumps, drops, and good corners. This race was both a New Zealand National and a UCI points race, raising the stakes to the next level. Practice was a blast, with all the riders stoking on the awesome course. The weather the whole time was hot and sunny, and I was finally getting used to summer in January.

Sunday morning found the course being a bit torn up and dusty but still very fun to ride. Qualifiers went off without a hitch and local favorite Kieran Bennett qualified first with a bit of a gap on the rest of the field. My run was going great but a washout in the lower section had me seeding mid-pack, but I felt like I was on the pace and was amped for the race. This was a tough course to stay up on, and to begin my streak of NZ race run crashes, I went down again in the lower corners of the course. As the Kiwi’s would say, Gutted Rat! However the race was amazingly fun, and the weekend was anything but a disappointment. In the end J-Lo Justin Leov took the win with Nathan Rankin and Matt Scoles following him to second and third places in a super tight race.

The night after the race was a good one, leaving many people to make the drive home on Monday a bit blurry eyed and dazed. My group headed back towards the prairies and wineries of the Blenheim area for several weeks of classic New Zealand, ‘Getting Loose’. Be sure to check out the headcam videos I took while I was travelling.

Stay tuned for part 2 of Nate’s Adventure