Today was the third day of cycling – we are making slow but steady progress towards Wellington where we’ll take the ferry to South Island, which almost everyone prefers to the North. The day started out with something very exciting – my toenail finally fell off! I am now left with a hideous nub. It better start looking normal soon. Gross, I know, but everyone who’s been near me during the past 3 months has had to listen to me talk about the gruesome details of my poor toenail that’s been dying since I ran the Twin Cities marathon on Oct 1st. Don’t worry, I won’t post any pictures, but just needed to note this major life event.

Today Jamie and I rode from Hamilton to Te Awamutu. Only 30 km – not quite up to our daily mileage goals! You see, I woke up this morning & packed the sleeping bags, mats, and tent…and immediately felt exhausted. At first I thought it might be due to the fact that the coffee we brewed in our wonderful french press stainless steel mugs (a very thoughtful Christmas gift from my brothers!) was a bust. First we used the ‘boiling water’ spigot in the campground only to discover it was lukewarm water. Ick. We were low on coffee so I dumped out the tepid water as fast as possible so we could re-use the beans with proper boiling water. To my dismay, the water I poured out was decidedly brown – precious caffeine down the drain! I boiled up some new water, drank the weak-tasting coffee and, as stated before felt exhausted.

I knew this trip would be physically very difficult for me and boy was I right. The 30 kms we covered today were, as the guidebooks call it, “Rolling Hills”. Ouch for my leg muscles. We’d speed down one descent only to labor up another hill. Repeat, repeat, repeat. For those of you in Seattle, the hills were not quite as steep as Queen Anne, but they were killer enough for me. I was panting and straining up each ascent while trying to be positive by concentrating on how big my leg muscles will be soon!

Sarah eating a snack:

At approx. 30 kms we stopped for some lunch & ice cream. As we were eating my legs started cramping and hurting. The next town was another 30 km away and rather than torture myself I told Jamie I wanted to stop for the day. He wanted to go on (bastard!) but was nice enough not to give me a hard time about being so tired.

We bought stuff for dinner at the local grocery store. The store was insanely busy – we waited in line for quite awhile before we actually got to the cashier. She then asked us for ID to buy our beer (legal age is 18 here). We gave her our US drivers licenses. She wasn’t sure of their validity so buzzed her manager to look them over. Everyone in line waited, manager came over, and said “We don’t see these too often, could we have a look at your passports?” We handed over the passports, she examined them thoroughly, put her finger on the “1980” on mine, everyone waited, … and then she asked me “So, how old are you?” I said 26, she said OK, and all was fine. The cashier then explained “We have to get ID from everyone under 25.” That didn’t make any sense at all to us, but we just left – we were happy to have our food & beer.

Jamie enjoying his hard-won beer:

Our average speed today was actually fairly high – about 17 kms/hr, with a riding time of 2 hours. Tomorrow we’ll stay in Waitomo which is the home of the world famous glowworm caves. These are huge caverns that are the homes to thousands and thousands of glowworms. They live on the ceilings, and as you float through on the small rives that run through the caves you can look up at the glowworms like stars.

Sarah and I began our New Zealand on January 1st. We decided to cycle down the West coast of the North Island in order to get to the South Island as quickly as possible. Some Kiwis and some Dutch travellers recommended that we spend 80% of our time on the South Island and 20% on the North.

We had just spent a full day relaxing at our camp site so we were both excited to begin bicycling. At the camp near Auckland, we met some Dutch and Australian travelers and a couple of Kiwis as well. The Dutch immediately asked us what we thought of President Bush and then burst out laughing. The Kiwis didn’t discuss politics, but they loved to make fun of the Australians because they said you can meet a beautiful blonde in Sydney and then be immediately repulsed when she greats you with a gravely “G’day mate!” We also sampled the famous New Zealand meat pies which were actually really good.

We got on the road early on the 1st and started to head South on the Great South Road. It was a pretty easy road and traffic was light, so we were happy after being warned by multiple people that the drivers in New Zealand are not friendly to bicyclists. After riding about 20kms we stopped for an ice cream and then we had to get on SH1. Peddler’s Paradise recommended taking SH1 most of the way from Auckland to Wellington so we were a little dismayed when we realized it was a 4-lane divided highway with a speed limit of 100km/h and a 3 foot bike lane with a lot of debris and no separation from the road. Yikes! After a couple of on-ramp and off-ramp crossings, we both decided we would like to have mirrors on our bikes. At about 30kms, Sarah got a flat in the rear. We examined and patched it and were about to start off again when we realized that she had a decent side gash in the tire.

Only 30kms into the trip and Sarah’s tire was already trashed! We decided to continue on down the road and swap out the tire with our spare folding tire when we camped for the night. We rode a little ways on and met some local children during a water break. It is really funny to hear kids with a New Zealand accent. This one exclaimed, “Yous fellas rode all the way from Auckland?!” and then decided he was going to ride the rest of the way with us. We convinced him not to, but he wouldn’t let us leave until I agreed to “make a muscle with him.”

The rest of the day was uneventful until about 60kms when Sarah cracked. I did my best Phil Ligget impersonation telling her “she was a shell of the woman she once was” and “all she could do no was limit her losses and live to ride another day.” That cheered her up a bit and she ate a neat little snack bar we found here called “One Square Meal” that has 33% of basically everything you need to eat in a day. That held us over until we made it to Te Kauwhata were we decided to camp for the night. We rolled into the village centre and a senior citizen on the city council welcomed us to the town and told us where the Domain camp site was. Domain camp sites are areas in the town where you can camp for free (we think) and he also let us know that the town was going to double in size soon because they are building a prison here and the senior center is also building several more housing developments. We purchased some middle bacon for our evening meal and got our tent up just in time before a nasty thunderstorm came through. We waited out the storm in our tent and then cooked up a pretty tasty dinner of potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and some fried middle bacon.

We were about ready to go to bed when Sarah started to feel sick. She had a sore throat and was sneezing and then got some horrible diarrhea to go along with it. She spent the rest of the night getting up every 20 minutes to run to the toilet. When we woke up in the morning, she was still feeling very weak and sick, so we decided to rest there for the day. I rode into town to get some toilet paper, orange juice, and yoghurt for breakfast and as we were eating we heard Sarah’s front tire explode. Her tires must be cursed! (The only other explanation we could think of is that we didn’t deflate her tire on the airplane and that somehow affected it.) Sarah spent most of the day sleeping in the tent and I fixed up her tires and a couple of other things that were broken.

We traveled 62.11kms at an average speed of 14.5km/h on our first day. Slow, but a little further than we expected.

After a day of rest, we were ready to get on the road again, so we hopped back on the bikes and rode down SH1 to Hamilton where we are right now. Nothing else broke today but the road was the same busy highway for most of the way, so the riding wasn’t very relaxing. About 2/3rd of the way through, we discovered a much quieter side road which we took. We were both happy to be off the highway, but the tradeoff was this road was rolling hills the entire way. The trip today was 65km and it took us about three hours.

In Hamilton, we stopped at a bike shop to get a new tire for Sarah (Vittoria Randonneur) and I got a new cycling cap that says New Zealand in three different places on it so people will really know I’m a tourist now. (I had to get a cap because the top of my head was burning – like father, like son.) Sarah and I are about to go have dinner now. There are a lot of Indian restaurants in this town, so we are going to try one. Happy New Year!