South: Part II

So, I'm in picton, and it's a quarter to ten and I'm about nine hours behind the rest of the group. Unfortunately, my day is not quite over. I have to get to Kaikoura, which is where we're spending the night and is about 160 km down the coast from Picton.

This

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was the longest ride I've ever taken in my entire life. I have never been so scared on a motorcycle ... ever. I didn't really know where I was going. I mean, I had an idea, but I left Picton on SH1 headed towards Kaikoura, and the next time I would see a sign telling me that I was headed to Kaikoura, I could fucking see Kaikoura. In SoCal, there's a sign every 10 feet telling you what freeway you're on or how far, and what, the next town is. You know what's between Picton and Kaikoura? not a god damn thing, that's what. So not only are there no signs to tell you where you're going, there's no, and I mean no, street lights. Or house lights. There's pretty much no lights at all. It was quite literally pitch black. It was so dark that I kept checking to see why I didn't have my high beams on, only to find that they were already on and they were showing me two things, jack, and shit. So I don't really know where I'm going, there's no signs to tell me where I'm going, it's pitch black and it's late. Which on one hand was nice. Since it was late there weren't a lot of cars on the road. On the other hand, there wouldn't have been a lot of room for the cars anyway ... because of all the tractor trailers going in the opposite direction. They kept on their side of the road, sometimes.

You have to remember here that SH1 is not exactly the South 405 through The Valley, 5 or 6 lanes wide in both directions and built straight enough to land a 747 on. SH1 between Picton and Kaikoura is one lane, each way, and about as straight as a Judy Garland concert. It's twisty, lots of decreasing radius turns and blind corners. All of the turns are marked with what must have been the legal minimum of reflectors. I lost track of the number of times I'd come over a rise and find myself having no clue whatsoever what the road was about to do. It's carved out of mountains that seem to be mostly sandstone so there's really fine loose gravel at the apex of seemingly every turn. It would be a challenging ride during the day. But it's not the day, it's night and I'm tired and in a hurry.

So, I put my head down and dropped the hammer and hoped for the best. It's too bad, it seems like it would be pretty scenic during the day. You spend a fair amount of time riding along the ocean after you come down out of the mountains. At a quarter to midnight I found myself pulling into the hotel.