A Quick Vignette

So I intended to buy myself a little radio to listen to in one ear for almost my entire time here, but I finally got around to it about a week ago. I guess cycling around with Alex for a week and change and then going back to biking by myself made me want something external to my own head.

Anyway. I primarily listen to Radio NZ, the NPR analogue over here, but sometimes classic rock, oldies or Radio NZ classical. I expected music to affect my mood, as it always does (driving rock, not surprisingly, is perfect for climbing hills) but I didn't expect it to paint whole pictures. So I was pleasantly surprised the other day when, speeding across a windy, grassy headland to get to my campsite late in the day, Wagner came on. With the crosswind, low-angle light and sweeping orchestra, it felt like nothing so much as starring in some studio-era Hollywood premake of Breaking Away. It was wonderful. (Yes, I would watch the shit out of that movie.)

The Northern Antidote

So the idea of poking up to the subtropical Northlands to combat the wet weather was a fine, fine idea. The Southlands (these Kiwi, they didn't get too crazy when they were naming regions...) where I would have gone if I had stayed on the South Island, are apparently flooding like whoa, after five straight days of torrential rain. I, on the other hand, have spent the past week with sunny and somewhat cloudy weather, cruising the skinny jut of the Northern Island above Auckland. I first rode up the Eastern side of things, that being the non-touristy. I'm not sure if it's less scenic or just incrementally farther from Auckland, but it's not as vacation-developed, being instead rolling hills devoted to cows and sheep. I shot straight up to Cape Reinga, where the Tasman Sea meets the South Pacific (When I say shot, what I mean is rode over the course of four days) and spent a rest day at a preposterously scenic campsite run by the Department of Conservation on a beach up there. For the rest of my time, until I go back to Auckland on Sunday to fly out on Monday, that's the plan. I'll ride a shortish ride each day, and then set up my tent at one of the various beachside campsites DoC runs. Oh, except Saturday will be spent snorkeling around looking at tropical fish, and tomorrow morning is set aside for HISTORY.

That deserves a new paragraph. I'll be at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, where the Waitangi Treaty (surprise!) was signed. (Quick history time!) The Treaty is now seen as the formative document of New Zealand. It was signed by British administrators and some Maori chiefs to bring them under the aegis of the crown. It kind of didn't mean much at the time, but was never exactly broken, and has since been rehabilitated into a living, legitimate legal document. So that should be great. I'll be honest: New Zealand history is kind of boring. In the 14th C, some Polynesians arrived via canoe. After a few centuries, the British (and French, but really mostly the Brits) arrived. There was no genocide, they mostly swindled/strongarmed the Maori out of their land, while their diseases killed a good chunk of them off. The country became independent, but not until 16 years after they could have, because they were proud British subjects. That's really about all that happened, outside of a strong rugby tradition and some proud service in wars overseas. So this is the one big site of historical meaning I'm pumped about. Other than that, beaches and trying to un-ridiculous my tan lines. (I have glove tan lines, people. It's pretty silly.)

A Southerly Jaunt

So, last I left things I was down in Kaikoura, having just had a wet, rainy day. Well, to be frank, things kind of stayed that way. I biked from Kaikoura down to Christchurch, which was two lovely days, and then met up with Alex there. We stayed a night there, which seems like a lovely city and got me the pizza I had been itching for for weeks now (1/2 smoked chicken and spicy apricot sauce, 1/2 tex-mex chicken, if you're curious) and then took the bus from Christchurch down to Queenstown.

The bus ride gave me a taste of the varying climates of the Southern Alps. They're called the Alps, but they didn't really look like it. North/East of them it's rolling grassy hills and wine country. As you get into them, it looks more like Colorado than Europe, with grass- and scrub-covered mountains by you and more jagged peaks in the middle distance. This carries on down to Queenstown and the lovely lakes around it. We biked north of there, over the Haast Pass, and then up the West coast of the island. Starting a little South of the Haast Pass, things get more lush than the Alps around Queenstown, more mountains filled with subtropical bush. I'm told the West Coast is show-stoppingly gorgeous; the Haast Pass certainly was, but for the nearly week we pedaled up the Coast, until we got well above the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers and all of the places that are said to be truly spectacular, the weather was too interested in dumping rain on us for any appreciation of the scenery we couldn't see through the grey. Still, what we saw was nice, and it was a good ride when we weren't like drowned rats.

The human kindness moment of my trip so far was a point where, halfway through the one day where it was really, truly torrential rain, maybe 60 km through a 120 km day, we stopped for lunch. We pulled into a Department of Conservation campsite, assuming it would have a roofed picnic table, because they almost always do. This one didn't. Riding in 50 degree pouring rain is fine, because you keep yourself warm pedaling. The second you stop, however, you realize just how wet you are and just how cold you are. Alex was in the bathroom and I was hunched under the tiny roof of an info board, contemplating how to have a dryish lunch, when an Irish gentleman popped out of his campervan and invited the pair of us in for a nice, warm cuppa. He and his wife (who had a wonderfully full accent only helped by loose dentures) were spending three weeks touring and were well and happy to help us out, which was exactly what we needed. We had a warm, nice ten minutes, and they went their way and we ate lunch under the awning in front of the toilet doors, which wasn't as bad as that makes it sound.

After we got up towards Greymouth, things improved. The weather turned nicer, first cloudy but not raining, and then out and out sunny. In Greymouth, we stayed with an old Lanakila friend, Jade Blackman. It was a perfect break from touring: we rolling into town at about 4:00 (I think), showered, had pizza and a few beers, watched him coach the women's regional developmental hockey team (He's the regional development director for what we call field hockey but here is a coed and a bit more serious sport.) and then spent the rest of the evening putting back a few more beers, playing cards, and generally shooting the shit. It was lovely to catch up with Jade, who is one of those people you want to have around more than they can be, and it broke up the touring. It was great to cruise up the coast on a sunny day the next day, but the pause really helped us recharge.

After we left the coast in Westport, we turned back East towards Picton and the ferry back to the North Island. We had a day-plus of very gradual uphill, but then a day and a half of similarly gradual downhill with a tailwind, which makes you feel like you're a very fast rider indeed. We stopped to do some wine tasting in the Marlbrough region which made me pretty sure I need to spend more time with white wines, which I have largely ignored hitherto, and then caught the ferry yesterday. We spent the night in Wellington, and today Alex and I made our ways (separately) to Auckland. I took the all-day train ride through the mountains and central plateau and tomorrow will ride north to tour the Northlands for about two weeks before I leave; he caught a late flight and tomorrow flies back to the States. I looked at the gradient maps of the terrain I'll be covering, and was disappointed at how small the hills were. How far I've come since I got here...

WWOOFing Part Deux

So yesterday I eased back into touring by biking the almost 30 km from the ferry down to Blenheim. Today I got back into things for real by biking 130 km from Blenheim down to Kaikoura. The ride was pretty flat after a hilly first 20 km, but it more than made up for that by slamming me with a headwind the whole way (headwinds are like biking uphill, but without the payoff of the downhill afterwards) and then raining for the last 40 km, while 50 degrees the whole damn way. So far, the North Island wins in the contest for my affections. Still, the magic formula holds: take some mountains, run them down into the sea, put a road along the coast, and I will love it. The formula's batting 1.000, people.

So, WWOOFing stay number two: I moseyed (if one can mosey on a loaded bike...) south from Paraparaumu to Porirua to a goat cheese farm on a road named Moonshine. I was staying with a middle-aged couple, Mike and Christine, who had two kids off at college. I say it was a farm because it is, but the farm is a hobby/source of food, not income. Christine works and Mike does consulting work occasionally, and farms the rest of the time. They have six goats which he milks and makes cheese from, seven pigs that eat the whey, trim the grass in the orchard (various fruit trees, not just/primarily apples) and occasionally get spitroasted and whole mess of sheep and a few cows up on the ridge above the farm in a big pasture. My responsibilities were largely carpentry, as Mike accurately described himself as a "bush carpenter". First I made the pigs a luxurious pigpen (I mean, it was insulated. Those pigs, they don't know how good they have it. After that, I installed some tongue and groove paneling in their son's bedroom where his bed's corner had punched through the plaster, and did a few other sundry things.

In terms of personality fits, this was much better than the yoga centre. They saw their role as sort of in between bosses and host family, which was perfect. The food was wonderful, I did some good baking with Christine, got a tour of the bush on the farm from Mike, and spent all of last Monday and half of Tuesday out on the yacht they share with two other families fishing with Mike and my brother Alex, who Mike saw fit to invite with us. We caught a whole mess of snapper and some Kahawai, as well as a small shark (we released it when Mike caught it, but it found my hook quite literally two minutes later, so Mike killed it as a danger to our bait, and fed it to the pigs) and a gurnerd. We had a hoot, and I ate a lot of fish the next couple days.

Mike is also a man enamored of eating everything. He introduced me to eating fish heads (or at least the edible parts thereof), which is delicious, and we had a nice dinner of pig hearts, liver and testes one night when Christine wasn't home. I got to help milk goats, which was easier than I feared, and also with the cheesemaking, which turns out to be one of those things that isn't as hard as you think, but which requires a good bit of precision to turn out correct. It is now my position that my mother should get a small herd of goats for cheese and wool. (Goat milk is good for arthritis, dad!)

They had a good deal of macrocarpa lumber that had been milled from a tree on the property, so I made Mike a wooden feta mold to replace his plastic one that had been made from a jug. If you know about such things, I decided to hand-cut dovetails for the joints, which is a nice idea, but I did it on a plank that I had planed to thickness using a power planer and belt sander and cut the dovetails using a coping saw and a large push saw, which are not remotely the correct tools for the job. It turned out fine structurally, but I didn't take a picture of it because I was so embarassed at how ugly the dovetails were.

In any event, I had a lovely time at the farm. I am now over being freaked out by the pupils goats have (Have you ever seen them? THEY'RE RECTANGULAR!) and think that pigs make maybe the funniest noises of any animal. Being wired the way I am, I also now want to make cheese. I don't think I'll get any dairy animals anytime soon, but I may well experiment with the rest of the process next time I have access to a kitchen of my own. It was a wonderful spell, although I'm glad to be back cycle touring again. (So long as it isn't 50 and raining all the time.)

Back in the saddle...

Sorry things have been quiet around here. I'll try to be updating more frequently again. Last I left things, I was setting off on a bout of WWOOFing before biking. I spent three weeks doing so, first at a yoga centre, and then at a goat milk farm. As of today, I've started biking again, after taking the ferry down to the South Island. The plan was for Alex to be with me starting today, but he has to fly up to Auckland to get a replacement passport for the one that he lost/had stolen, so he'll catch up to me in a few days.

I'll update you on things in parts. First, the WWOOFing at the yoga centre. I had a notion that I could learn some about organic gardening while helping my hamstrings etc through yoga. I achieved half of that. The Centre was run by a couple, Eric and Cathryn. Eric was a Dutchman who had emigrated to New Zealand in the late 60s, spent the next 2 1/2 years walking around the country with a packhorse, and then run a vegatarian restaurant in Wellington before opening the yoga centre in the late 70s. In the mid-80s it moved from Wellington to Paraparaumu, roughly 20 km North, where I found it. (Paraparaumu is prounounced with the "para" like paraplegic or paratrouper, which threw me for a bit, but if you're a resident, you just say "Parparam".) Cathryn was a good bit younger, having met Eric in the mid-90s on a plane flight to Bolivia, and decided to quit her overly stressful job in mainframe repair and relocate to the centre. They also have an 11 year-old son, Ananda, who loved unicycles.

The centre was kind of ramshackle, in a charming way. You could tell it used to be a place where a lot happened, but, my theory is, as Eric got old and the two of them spent more time childraising, the place itself got less vibrant and became more just a home that also had two yoga classes a day. My role was to work four hours a day, do all the yoga I liked, and have free time the rest of the day. As it turned out, my work was simply to chop wood for eight days straight. I have no problem chopping wood, but eight days is a bit much, and it was all stupid little wood, so I didn't even get the satisfaction of splitting big, manly hunks of firewood. (I learned everything I need to know about how mild the winter is here from how small the firewood is...)

The yoga was nice, although less challenging than the yoga I've done in the states, and did my hamstrings wonders. The area was beautiful, and I took a nice long bike ride every day, but beyond that there was basically nothing to do. I spent a lot of time reading, which is fine, but was kind of bored otherwise. The diet, however, gave me some trouble. I had oatmeal for breakfast, which was just fine, but then lunch and dinner involved a salad that was always lettuce, beets and raw carrot with no dressing, and an entree (I'm using that word the American way; over here it means appetizer.) of steamed broccoli, beans from the garden, brown rice and quinoa or chickpeas. Every day. Sometimes there Cathryn made rice and tofu cakes that were good and crunchy, but bland as. I have no problem with any part of that food, but added up, it was only sort of satisfying, and the repetition was killing me. So I decided to jump ship for a goat farm, which turned out to be a great choice. More on that next time.

The (Other) Windy City

Last you left me, I had just finished riding around the East Cape. I was in Gisborne, which is supposed to have some nice parts, but which, in my (brief) experience, was rather blah. Two days of high wind and rain were forecast, so, as my route down to Wellington from there was supposed to be a) busy with traffic b) not spectacular and c) expensive, I hopped on a bus and fast-forwarded down to Wellington, capital of this nation.

As you may or may not know, Alex, my younger brother, has been living and working in Wellington for a bit over a year now. I dropped in on him, to spend a little down time and hang out. It was good to see the dude, and Wellington is a lovely little city. (As Lonely Planet puts it, it "punches well above its weight".)

We didn't truly take in all the sights, as neither of us was/is particularly flush with monies, but we still poked around for a week, seeing what the city had to offer. Variously, the Te Papa museum was good, though a very touristy museum, the zoo was small but charming (Red pandas are still the best), the Deerhoof concert was great, The Fantastic Mr. Fox is fantastic, there are a ton of lovely restaurants around the city, and I'm quite enamored of the affogato, a scoop of gelato with a shot of espresso in it.

I should point out here, as I haven't yet, that this whole country seems to drink instant coffee at home and a lot of espresso anywhere else. I have yet to even see drip coffee offered anywhere. The instant coffee part is a mystery to me, but the espresso on demand is a wonderful thing to have around.

In any event, Wellington's hillsides and culture was lovely, and made me jealous of Alex's year there. I don't know that I'll be moving, but it's certainly a place well worth spending the time.

As for me, I'm now on a break. As I've covered a good bit of the North Island and Alex won't be available for the two of us to tour the South Island for a couple weeks, I'm WWOOFing (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) at a yoga retreat center a bit North of Wellington for a bit. I work around four hours a day, gardening in the organic garden and doing whatever, in exchange for free room and board and all the yoga and tai chi I decide to do. This will be lovely and relaxing, and also very cheap, which is nice because New Zealand, for all its charms, is more expensive than Mexico would have been. I'll post about the Centre soonish, but things will probably be pretty quiet beyond that for a couple weeks, as momentous things will likely not really be happening.

The East Cape

I've recently finished up with the East Cape circuit, which was, in a lot of ways, even better than the Coromandel Peninsula. The Cape, as its name would imply, is the Easternmost jut out of the North Island of New Zealand. Because, I suppose, it isn't that close to any cities, it's pretty sparsely populated, despite being gorgeous. I rode around the perimeter, from Opotiki to Gisborne by way of Hicks Bay, mouth agape much of the time. The riding was pretty hilly, up and around the coastal range, but the roads were better than in the Coromandel, and there was much less traffic.

I stayed in campsites overlooking remote bays, ate ice cream that was homemade at Macadamia Orchards (I'm used to orchard meaning apples, but I've seen macadamia and kiwi orchards around here, so I'll have to expand my definition, I guess.) The countryside was totally stunning, even when the road turned inland and I was in the rolling hills of the mountain range rather than hugging the coast.

The East Cape is also where a lot of Maori people live, both traditionally and currently. The route I took is dotted with marae, the the Maori meeting houses/community centers. They aren't tourist centers, though, so I didn't have the opportunity to look in one to see the flax weaving and wood carvings. I did get to see the Anglican Maori church in Tikitiki, which I'm told is similar, and was certainly stunning. I have some pictures I'll get up when I'm able, but imagine a good-sized wooden church wherein every square inch was covered either with a flax weaving or carved wooden decoration. It was certainly stunning, and I can only imagine the marae are even moreso.

In general, I found myself fascinated with the current state of Maori people and the social politics of race in New Zealand, though frustratingly without any effective vectors to investigate. (As a man in transit on a bike, it's hard to really dig in...) An argument with a Czech woman at my hostel (totally civil, but we certainly disagreed) about responsibility vis-a-vis alcoholism and poverty and economic opportunity really got me considering them as an analog to both Native Americans in the US, about whom I know shockingly little, I guess because I'm an Easterner, and also African Americans. (There are a lot of signs up in stores/restaurants about no one in gang colors being allowed in and a lot of graffiti around.) Hopefully I'll figure out a way to learn a bit more.

In any event I can't recommend the East Cape enough. A beautiful rural coastline, some lovely nature domains (I saw a 2000 year-old tree that was sacred to the local Maori tribe.) and wonderful people. If I'd stayed longer, I hope I would have gotten a better understanding of the dynamics of the area, but, regardless, it's about the prettiest countryside I've yet seen.

Two More Days & A Mess of Photos

Yesterday, I believe it was Sunday, I had my longest day yet. I biked from the lovely little hostel where I was staying in Tairua with the backyard view of the ocean South clear off of the Coromandel Peninsula. The first half, being on the peninsula, was lovely, though it had a few climbs. (I'm getting my climbing legs, after a week or so now, so I'm around to the sort of masochistic satisfaction with climbing I have on my road bike--unless it's really steep, which is just stupid.) I stopped in Waihi to see the big, gaping gold mine pit they have in the middle of town and to have a late lunch. (I'd already had an early one; it turns out that when you bike all day, you need a lot of fuel.) After that, though, I had 60 km to go on a pretty busy highway. Well, New Zealand busy, which meant two lanes but with a good deal of traffic. I didn't feel unsafe, but I had to pay too much attention to traffic to really enjoy myself. Off of the peninsula, the landscape shifted from coastal mountains to rolling farmland. Still pretty, but not quite gorgeous. The last 5 km or so were pretty much on a highway coming into Tauranga, a pretty sizeable city, but with wide shoulders and the expectation that bikes might be there.

Today, I left Tauranga and had a ride up the central plateau to Rotorua. The plateau was higher than any of the passes I've been over so far, but was a gradual enough gain that I didn't mind it at all. There was a fun dip through a gorge in the middle, with a fast downhill between two rock walls, then, after crossing a wide stream, a short but steep uphill. After that, there was nearly 10 km of downhill for which I didn't have to pedal once. That was wonderful. Rotorua itself sits on Lake Rotorua, a body of water directly on top of a volcanic cone. Hot springs bubble up all around.

Rotorua is a cultural center of the Maori, or at least has become so; I'm not sure. You can see a traditional Maori show and dinner, or hangi, here, but I decided that spending the money wasn't quite in my budget. Also, I had terribly mixed feelings about the cultural tourism, but I'm not sure how that would have shaken out if I'd actually taken in the show. Instead, I made a tour of the city's various hot springs, even taking a dip. Like all sulfurous sources, this town smells vaguely of eggs and farts, but you get used to it.

I've read a lot about how aggressive NZ drivers can be in my guidebooks, but I haven't seen it so far. They seem to me to be more like Vermont drivers dealing with a bike--they'll give you enough space to make sure they don't hit you, but not really slow down at all. Still, no one has menaced or crowded me at all. (Well, except for the logging truck on the dirt road up near Port Jackson, but that road wasn't wide enough for him not to crowd me. [Yikes]) If an accident occurs because of me, it's more likely it would be someone swinging into the opposite lane to give me plenty of space right before a blind turn and hitting an oncoming car. They don't seem to care about seeing who's coming down here as much as I would. Still, I've yet to really feel unsafe, which is nice. (I've had no trouble acclimating to biking on the left, but I still have to think about which way to look when I cross the street.

As you may have noticed, I've totally shifted to metric distances in my head. This is because that's all there is down here, and I don't have any way to keep track on my own. I made the conscious decision not to have a bike computer which would tell me my speed and sitance covered, because I would pay more attention to it than it deserved, and eschewed a watch for similar reasons. I travel a certain distance each day, and get to where I'm going when I do.

All right, now for a mess of photos. This is not all I've taken; if you want more feel free to pop over to my photostream.


This is my faithful steed, fully packed. I've since straightened up the top of the back rack and put a few of those things into the panniers, so it's a little less jumbled, but that's the basic gist. I don't know what it weighs; I don't want to know what it weighs.


This is a pretty good depiction of what the gravel road from Colville up to Port Jackson was. Unrelentingly gorgeous, mostly hugging the coast with occasional jaunts a little inland in the forests of the Coromandel Mountains. Totally worth rattling three bolts off of the bike...


This is the view from the pass between the West and East coasts of the Coromandel peninsula, just East of Coromandel Town. It was a bear of a way to start the day, but the view was great and the descent afterwards was amazing.


This is Cathedral Cove, just a bit East of Whitianga. The tides have progressively hollowed it out of the rock promontory. I had to bike up a ridiculous hill to get to it, but it was totally worth it.


This is the old, empty pumphouse at the Waihi gold mine. It's just the shell now, all stone, conrete and steel beams. It's gorgeous.


In the process of their gold mining, Waihi has progressively (I assume) dug this hole in the middle of their city. You could put a lot of stuff in there before you filled it... Note the trucks down in it.


By and large, the roadsigns are pretty much what you'd expect here. In the Bay of Plenty region, though, the ones advising safety seem to want safe drivers to put helmets on their cars. (At least, my best guess is that those are helmets...) My other favorites are the one asking you to merge traffic like a zipper and the railroad one, which is a simple and perfect outline of a choo-choo train.


This is the pool at the middle of the Kuirau Park in Rotorua. It was as warm as the steam suggests.

So that's it for now. More photos as I take them and find computers willing to let me upload them.

Today etc.

So I ended up riding down to Tairua today, with a stop off at Cathedral Cove and the Hot Springs Beach. Well, sort of. I saw Cathedral Cove, where the tide had opened up a tunnel with a somewhat vaulted ceiling on a beach, and it was gorgeous, but I wasn't there when the tide was right for Hot Springs Beach. As I had to go over and down a sizeable pass to get to Tairua, I'm not sure I'll double back tomorrow. Rather than describing another route, some observations so far.

-There is a lot of roadkill in this country. There's no large predator running around, either because they never made it to New Zealand or because they were hunted to extinction, so maybe a large population of critters is responsible, or maybe they're dumber about cars here, or I don't know what. Anyway, a lot of small to mid-sized animals are flattened around these parts.

-Kiwis, or at least drivers on Kiwi roads, seem to be more cavalier about tossing empty bottles out their windows. The roadsides are littered with them. (I suppose that, biking around, I do spend more time than most taking in the roadsides, not just the views.)

-A liter and a half of soda here costs around $2.50. A can costs $2-3, and a 20-ounce bottle will run you $3-4. Is this deposits? I don't get what's going on. I'm sure there's an at least semi-sensible reason, but it's opaque to me.

-I've run into four other bicycle tourists so far: 1) A german man, on his second day out, biking around on a hot day in tights rolled up to his knees and a blue dress shirt unbuttoned halfway. His gear was fine otherwise, so I chalked it up to savoir faire, rather than ignorance, but dang. 2) A Japanese gentleman, who was about halfway through a week of touring here, then going to Australia. His English was pretty halting, so that was most of our conversation. He was, however, wearing aqua booties, or whatever you call them, which was great. 3) A frenchman who had been touring New Zealand for ten weeks already, with two more to go. He seemed to feel the need to give me advice about everywhere, though, to be fair, a lot of the advice was quite helpful. 4) A Belgian man who was touring wineries, and who advised me to tell them that I couldn't buy anything, but was reviewing their wines for my website. That's what he was legitimately doing, and apparently those are the magic words to sample everything. I'm not sure, however, that my wine knowledge/vocabulary is up to snuff. Best of luck to all of them, of course, but especially the Japanese gentleman, because those water shoes were fantastic.

-Do you know about cyclists' tan lines? Serious cyclists get some pretty hilarious tan lines, and after five days I'm already on the way. My head is pretty normally tanned, though I do have a bit of a raccoon thing going on from my glasses. The truly hilarious bit, though, is that I'm tanned from where my sleeves end to where my gloves start, from say 2/3 of the way up my bicep down to my wrist, and also from mid thigh where my shorts stop down to above my ankle where my sock starts. I'd show you pictures, but I've yet to be able to upload anything.

Miranda Hot Springs to Whitianga

Edit: For some reason, the first map seems to work, but the second doesn't. I can't really explain why, as I did the same thing for both, but to check out what I did that didn't make the second map, just scroll north on the first.

On Wednesday, I got up, packed up my things from the Hot Springs resort where I was staying, and made my way on along the coast of the Firth of Thames. I stopped in Thames for a cup of coffee and some supplies, and then pushed on up the coast. If Tuesday was pretty, Wednesday only got better. The road hugged the coast, with the surf hitting rocky beaches beside or below it. I was worried that Route 25 would be heavy with traffic, as my guidebook warned it might, but it wasn't bad at all. I got to the town of Coromandel, for which the peninsula was named, and found my lodge for the night. I'm going to try the map thing again, though apparently Google let me down last time. If this doesn't work, I'm going to have to figure somethign else out. (It works in preview while I'm writing it; if it doesn't work later, sorry, I guess.)

On Thursday I headed further North up the coast. The Touristy loop goes East from Coromandel, but I went up to Colville, and then on up to Port Jackson, at the Northern tip of the peninsula. The second half of the ride, above Colville, was gravel roads. That was great fun for most of the day, but the long hill at the end nearly did me in, and I was robbed of my fun during the descent down to the Department of Conservation campsites at the point because the road was so washboarded that I couldn't safely go fast at all. Not only that, but it was such a harsh ride that I rattled three bolts off of my bike, setting my rear rack and then front left rack partially connected and swinging. Luckily (by design, most likely) the bolts to the water bottle cages are the same size, so I just cannibalized them and had to stow my water bottles elsewhere until I got back to Coromandel and its hardware store. I stayed the night up at Port Jackson, which had a lovely sand beach facing the Pacific, with only the Great Barrier Island above it. I wish I had brought more food; if I had had enough for an extra day with me, I would have stayed there and lounged around. The route is here (again, if it works).

As it was, the next day I reversed track and headed back to Coromandel. The ride was just as wonderful the other direction, though climbing the big hill was a poor way to start the day. (Are you noticing the trend that I hate big hills? That's not quite true; I hate steep, big hills, but it's a recurring theme on my bike...) Because it's only 65 km or so from Coromandel to Port Jackson, I was back in Coromandel by the early afternoon, but chose to take it easy that day because my knee was a little cranky. (I messed with my pedal cleat position, if you care, and things seem better today.) No map of this day, because it's just Thursday's reversed.

Today, I started by heading east from Coromandel. This had the advantage of being paved, but the disadvantage of starting with 3.5 km of steep hill. I made it, but it was a rude way to get started. I've currently made it down to Whitianga, but am going to push on further. I'll let you know later just how far I make it. So far, if the West coast of the peninsula was all wind-swept rocky beaches, the East seems to be sunny, sandy ones. Both beautiful, just in different ways. I guess I can see why this is the touristy portion, though.

The first real day.

So today I left Auckland and got down to the business of bicycle touring. I went out for my last breakfast for a while as a dude who doesn't cook for himself (I got french toast, and they layered the bananas and bacon in the stack with the toast. Fine work, Auckland!) and then packed up my personal effects and hopped the commuter train down to Papakura so as to not have to deal with the city traffic on a fully-loaded bike. (All told, my rig weighs somewhere in the 70-80 pound range. I haven't weighed it; I'm not sure I want to.) After a quick stop at a supermarket for some food, I clipped into my pedals and went.

I biked from Papakura up to Clevedon, and then around the coast down to Miranda Hot Springs, all told a distance of 73 km according to Google. I had planned to push on to Thames, but my backside and the option of a place to stay that included hot springs access made me reconsider. If I did things right, you should be able to see the route here.

The ride was along what's called the seabird coast, and for good reason. The first third to half was through rolling country that looked like they had crossbred the Finger Lakes Region and Colorado, say, but with plant life from Hawaii. (This is a terribly flawed analogy, but we're limited to my frame of reference, I'm afraid.) After a hard climb, I descended to the coast, which gave me a view accross the bay to the Coromandel peninsula, where I'm headed next. There were indeed a lot of seabirds, and the ride was terribly beautiful the whole way. It didn't hurt that it was a lovely day today, some clouds but mostly sunny. I did learn, however, that hard climbs on a fully-loaded bike are not my idea of fun.

I'd love to go on more, but I'm afraid my time on this machine is about to run out, so I'll go soak my bones in the hot pool instead. Until next time.

Tubes In the Sky

Why is it that all airports feel identical? I guess there's no real incentive to make them truly unique, given how the present form fills the logistical needs well enough and their liminal nature makes sure that only workers spend much time in them. Still, they seem to all be the same sort of anodyne atmosphere that's calm without being peaceful.

I took the bus down to Logan airport the morning of the 20th. When I said in the previous post that my bike was boxed, that was a lie. I had a box from the local bike store that a bike frame had come in, but it was too small for a real one with handlebars and wheels and a seat. According to Qantas's website, I could get a bike box with no trouble at the airport, so I took that at face value.

Silly me. I was flying American for the first leg, because they're the Qantas affiliate, and when I got there I was informed by the baggage counter lady that they no longer had bike boxes "because of the economy", and she suggested I take a taxi to one of the nearby sporting goods/bike stores and spend the $200-300 it would take to get a plastic bike shipping box. The problems with this plan were a) my budget could take that hit, but not gracefully, and b) I don't see how I would take such a thing with me upon arrival. Instead, I talked to a check-in woman, who suggested I try another airline. I lugged all of my stuff to the next terminal over, and after a panicked 45 minutes in line at United, easily got the box I needed. I reversed my steps, now carrying a flat but huge box in addition to the bike and large duffel, taped the box together and put the bike in it.

All told, I spent about 20 hours in the air, with an additional 6 or 7 hours in airports. The Boston-LA flight was on a plane that wasn't really big enough, but the LA-Auckland leg was on a massive 747 that was way more comfortable. (Can we make it a law that all big planes should be silver, not white? They look way cooler that way.) Thanks to the magic of the International Date Line, my February 21 was only about 10 hours long, and spent entirely at 35,000 feet. Sorry December 21, but you've lost your crown this year. I've now passed through customs and biosecurity(!), where it turns out they won't x-ray your bike if it doesn't fit through their machine. I'm not smuggling anything, but maybe I should have been... I'm now at the hostel in Auckland where I'm staying tonight before setting off tomorrow, trying to gauge just how jet-lagged I may or may not be. Time to head out for lunch and the supplies I couldn't take on the plane.

Off We Go

All my panniers are packed, my bike is boxed, and I'm set to go. Tomorrow morning I catch the Dartmouth Coach to Logan, from whence I fly to Los Angeles and then to Auckland. I leave Boston at 5:00 tomorrow night, and, thanks to the international date line, arrive in New Zealand at 9:30 Monday morning. Total travel time: I'd rather not do the math.

Upon disembarking in Auckland, I'm spending a day in that fair city at its finest hostel, and then setting out for points East. The plan is to head down the Eastern coast of the North Island via the East Cape, which is supposed to be gorgeous. Upon arrival in Wellington, the Southernmost city on the North Island, I'll meet up with my brother Alex, and we will spend some time touring the more rural and mountainous South Island.

I'll have a camera to document my travels, though I'll cop to being a man given to not taking as many photos as he really should, and I'll update things here as often as I'm able. I'll guess that'll be roughly weekly, but time will tell. All told, I'll be in New Zealand until May 3rd, which should allow me plenty of time to get my fill of its charms. I hope to avoid sheep attack and highwaymen, but only time will tell!