Our resident storyteller Simon Vincent discovers that riding round the city stimulates thoughts on a whole spectrum of brilliant possibilities…
I love the views I get from riding my bike: I see the city laid out before me, I see flora and fauna, I see history, I see weird and wonderful, and I see people. Sometimes, though, I just see the path ahead – the grey stretches out in front of me taking me toward my destination.
As my wheels spin, so too does the old grey matter. And often it is the grey matter that I’m riding on that guides my thoughts.
The average ride in Auckland takes you on a variety of surfaces. An interior designer would struggle to name all the shades of grey that a bike wheel rolls over. My mind wanders as my wheels meander, and the surface seems to direct my thoughts as much as the path directs my bike.
As I leave my house, I ride on a road that has me thinking of the Beatles’ song ‘A Day in the Life’- (“Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire…”). The surface is pitted, gravel-strewn, and my ride here is not smooth. My tyres crunch along and I concentrate. My thoughts are focused – I even do maths problems.
Joining the shoal of cars on the main road, my thoughts run with the crowd. I’m on the way to work and, much as I enjoy my job, while struggling for space amongst the mass of tinned commuters, my thoughts are of the day’s tasks ahead and what fresh problems I will have to deal with before I can justify a cup of tea.
Soon, though, I move onto the smooth surface of a cycle path that is a whiter shade of pale. There is no grey melancholy here. My wheels seem to turn by themselves, free from worries; my mind and bike eat up the kilometres. As I am not having to deal with cars and obstacles, the journey is free-flowing – and so is my mind. This is grey power at its best. Suddenly creative solutions and new ideas start to flow.
Often, I’m riding on the Northwestern cycleway, where the current upgrades make for a chessboard of a ride. Greys and black or bright white sections erratically appear, and this randomness flows through me – where else would I get the bizarre idea of writing about road surfaces!
One of my favourite rides is along the Henderson Creek path. Dappled light streams through the trees, adding to the sparkle of the speckled path. For some reason, this is a time for nostalgia; my mind drifts with the current to rides past and I relive the adventures riding a bike has given me.
Of course times and fashions change, and almost any colour can now claim to be the new grey. Sometimes it is fresh green that stands out, happily saying ‘you belong here and can go as you please.’ As I ride on the green of cycle or bus lanes, I ponder the sprouting of more and more great places to ride in Auckland.
And can anything be less grey than magenta? Now we have the wonderful Te Ara I Whiti Lightpath – magenta replaces grey. Grey has been described as “being both motionless and emotionless”. That is certainly not the case with the Lightpath’s joyous stretch of riding.
It is hard not to let out your emotions as you sweep along a piece of transport infrastructure as work of art. “To Lilly the Pink, the pink, the pink…” (For all of you of a nervous disposition, you can relax: I do all my singing in my head.)
More and more colour seeps into my rides these days. The bright yellow of the bridges out West; the blues of newly discovered spots; and even the orange of message tagging.
Grey may be seen as dull or boring, but more and more it seems to be connecting people and their bikes to a rainbow of possibilities. So let’s see grey as the dignified, elegant and dependable pathway to happy riding that links us to a bright future.
— Simon Vincent
