Meet Tama Easton

Nov 18, 2004
by Drop In!  
The flights are booked! FALL LINE Productions is shipping the Drop In Crew to New Zealand for the fourth season of the HUGELY popular and ONLY freeride show on the air... Drop In New Zealand!
Helping the crew in their preparations for the journey across the Date Line, and Equator is Tama Easton. You'll be hearing a lot from him as he posts regular updates on the progress throughout the planning stage and regular updates as the tour progresses down under.
For more about Tama...What’s your occupation?
I'm currently the "Library Systems Administrator" for Victoria University of Wellington - this involves looking after the system that tracks all of the books in the library, swearing at my computer, and staring longingly at the sun shining on the singletrack infested hillsides of Wellington. I also run a New Zealand mountain bike website called Vorb (www.vorb.org.nz) and am the assistant editor for Spoke Magazine. Before all of that I worked in a bike shop for 5 years. Luckily I'm leaving the library a month's time to work fulltime with Vorb, Spoke, Drop In and ride my bikes until my legs fall off. Wish me luck.


So you’re a Librarian. Hmmm. OK.
What’s your favorite book?

Hell, that's a tough one. I'm currently reading a motoring magazine, does that count? The book I've read the most in my entire life is "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams but I'm currently into anything by Neal Stephenson, he's a damn fine writer.


Where do you live? What’s the riding like?
I live in Wellington - which is the capital of New Zealand - on the Southern tip of the North Island. It's a city wedged between a harbour and steep hills. Because a lot of the hills are too steep for any sane person to try and build a house on them it means that there's lots of greenspace, most of it infested with singletrack. We have a broad term for many of the local trails - "Wellytrack" - it's tight, twisty, steep, and often infested with rocks and slippery roots - I love it. There's roads to the top of many of the hills which gives us lots of scope for shuttling, some of the trails finish right in town so you literally exit the downhill into a city centre full of cafes and bars. I also enjoy epic cross country missions, when I'm fit enough. I can ride out of my house in central Wellington and ride all day, mostly offroad on a huge range of trails with fantastic views at the top of big grunty climbs, followed by giggle inducing downhills. If you're coming to Welly the best bike is a small hardtail with big forks, or a medium travel freeride bike - big heavy sleds are a mission to thread through the trees.



I said tell me about Wellington not Vancouver / The Shore!
It's eerie isn't it? Except we don't have much in the way of wooden structures and when Kiwis say "bush" they actually mean something closer to "jungle." So don't worry about riding off the trails, generally some vines will break your fall.

What do you know about Drop In?
I thought I wasn't suppose to let on it's a front for Bolivian drug cartel money laundering? Aside from that every year since 2002 Mike and Tim from Falline Productions get together a crew of exceptionally talented mountain bikers and head out on a debauched roadtrip in a smelly bus. Some how they still manage to ride their bikes in lots of cool locations, film the riding, and edit it into a TV series. The brilliance of Drop In is that it brings mountain biking into the homes of lots of people who have no clue about mountain biking, or freeriding. Hopefully there's a bigger batch of fresh converts each season.



Got any plans for the Drop In Crew when they get down there in March?
Muwhaha... oh yes (rubs hands together)... ahem. I'm addicted to roadtripping and have a whole bunch of regions lined up which should give the Drop In crew, and it's viewers a good taste of what New Zealand has to offer in the way of mountain biking. The exact plan is still coming together as a lot of it will come down to what style of riding the Drop In crew want to do, and how much time we have. There's heaps of good riding all over New Zealand but I think the places that'll stand out are Queenstown, where local legend Nathan Greenwood has been working on lots of kick ass trails (you may have seen some of them on NWD5) Rotorua, which is hosting the 2006 mountain bike worlds, and Castlerock, which is just a fun place to hang, ride and chill (Check out a small video of Castlerock action.



photo
(Nathan)

photo
(Castlerock)


That said, there's riding everywhere and everyone's got different tastes so it'll be interesting to see what places amp which riders. Unsurprisingly New Zealand doesn't have much in the way of North Shore structures compared to Canada, and there's not as many hucking spots. But we do have vast amounts of singletrack, brake scorching downhills, stylely jump-parks, and I'm sure hucking can be found anywhere there's a steep enough tranny. There's also plans to soak up the Kiwi local culture, which will be lots of fun.


What is your role in the whole tour? Don’t you have a library to run or something?
From past experience of doing magazine photo shoots, roadtrips and events I'm guessing my role can be summarized as "dancing monkey boy." Having spent the last decade road-tripping around New Zealand with bikes I've accidentally turned into a walking encyclopedia on trails, local riders, locations of hospitals, the best cafes, and amusing things to do when it rains. My vehicle (an ex-hearse) collects 20-30,000km a year, and as New Zealand is only 2,000km from North to South you can imagine how much I get around.


photo


The Hearse will be coming along, so I'll be a driver for the trip, as well as gopher, map guru, gourmet chef, out of practice mechanic, and a gold mine of local knowledge. I'll also be saying such things as "Argh, it's going to rain, don't worry, I know some wicked hotpools close by", "Oh crap, what has he done - damn, I'll drive him to the hospital", and "I suppose I'm going to the shops then." There's also plans afoot for me to upload daily updates so you folks on Pinkbike and Vorb can keep up to date with what's going down. Needless to say, I definitely won't be polishing anyone's helmet.

So "dancing monkey boy" is probably as accurate as it gets but we'll say "consultant" to make me feel better. Oh yeah, and I'm leaving the library in less than a month, do you want to me steal any books for you?


photo



I hear you’re going to let us throw you off of hucks wrapped in bubble wrap to test distances? True?
I thought the plan was for me to ride off them on a tricycle? As long as
we get the right levels of caffeine and sugar into my bloodstream it'll
be sweet as.




Favorite Rider today: Chris Birch


Favorite Trail Ever: Wakamarina, Richmond Ranges


Best Band: Underworld


Favorite Quote: See them down there, coiling and wiggling, sticking their pretty tongues out.


Say the first thing that comes to your mind


Dirt = Skids

Fun = Singletrack

Maturity = Uptight

Money = Bikes

Bike = Blizzard

TV = Dull

Kilt = Jelly-wrestling

Chest = Hairy

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