Bay Harbour: September 06, 2023

Bay Harbour News Wednesday September 6 2023
16
NEWS
3000km e-bike
Get more out of your ride
Connect with fellow
riders and talk bikes
over a free coffee
Casual & Country and Ten27
owner John Turnbull bought
his first e-bike last year and
has now completed the
Tour Aotearoa; a route which
stretches 3000km from
Cape Reinga to Bluff. Katie
McDonald from Cycleways,
where he bought his e-bike,
catches up with him
Firstly, how did you get into riding
and what made you decide to do Tour
Aotearoa?
I’ve spent all of my life working. I’ve
never played golf or done anything like
that, it’s always just been work. But my son
has taken over a bit more now which has
given me a bit more time. My friends who
come into the cafe said “you’ve got to go
into Cycleways and get yourself an e-bike”
and so I did. And I enjoyed it so much
that I wanted to go around more than just
the block on it. For some reason I got this
TA (Tour Aotearoa) thing in my mind. I
started telling people I was going to do it
and I told so many people that I couldn’t
chicken out of it!
Did you do any training or smaller
rides in the lead up to it?
No! Well, I’d done a couple of thousand
kilometres in the few months beforehand.
But with an e-bike you don’t really have
to train as much as you would on a
conventional bike.
What bike did you use?
I’ve got the Specialized Turbo Levo
Comp Alloy, and it’s awesome. There were
a lot of times where I felt it was the perfect
bike for the job. A lot of people said “Oh,
he’s on an e-bike” and then someone else
would say “yeah, he’s the sensible one!”.
I’m 74 and I’d only been biking for a few
months when I decided to do this, and I’ve
done 5,500km on my bike in 9 months.
I’ve gone from nothing, to that.
Can you tell me a bit more about the
experience?
People say “oh, there must have been
times when you weren’t enjoying it”, but
I loved every minute of it. I started at
Cape Reinga and I was going through the
North Island during all the floods and
the Cyclone. It rained the whole time but
it wasn’t cold, and I stayed dry thanks
to my jacket and over-trousers. It was a
challenge, but I never regretted it once.
Did you do it by yourself? And how
long did it take?
Yes, I did it by myself but my wife
followed me in the car. I liked doing it
by myself because it meant I could go at
my own pace. It took 33 days of riding.
I could have done it in a lot less, but in
saying that, I had plenty of breaks as well. I
would always be on the road by 7.30am or
8am, and usually I’d be finished by 1pm or
2pm. One day it was 6pm; it was 9 hours
of riding and I can’t remember anything
about it because I was so focussed on what
I was doing. I had no idea how long it
would take; I didn’t know if it would take
Find out more
facebook.com/kickstartcanterbury