Overnight drizzle and plenty of condensation made for a soaking wet tent in the morning, but I was able to hang up the rainfly in the sun while we ate breakfast to get it mostly dried out. The eating area at this holiday park is semi-outdoors, and with the sun it was comfortable enough, but… Read more…

We had time to kill between the 10am checkout from our high-rise AirBNB and our 1pm bus. There were a couple of parklets built into the intersection nearest the AirBNB, so we started out there, and then eventually walked the bikes a couple blocks down to a Turkish restaurant for lunch. The friendly-but-pessimistic owner wondered… Read more…

No signs of our barn-rave remained in the morning, with Steve either still sleeping off his Coronas, or (as a true veteran partier) already out for the day. On our way out Rett briefly visited his shed to make an honor donation in exchange for his generosity with his home-grown produce. The morning continued yesterday’s… Read more…

When we left the Auckland area in November, we needed three days of riding around the coast to get to Thames. For the return we’d be taking a more-direct overland route requiring just two days. Well, “Auckland area” is doing quite a bit of work there; our target this time was the Papakura train station,… Read more…

Yesterday’s hike was tougher than we expected, so that made it extra-helpful that we’d planned a short easy roll downstream back to Thames. Well, of course it’s New Zealand so there were still a number of uphills taking us high above the river’s route, but thankfully the exhaustion of our hiking muscles wasn’t affecting our… Read more…

We have a big hike today, so we were up at 6am, to a relatively-dry but chilly (40F) dawn. The last couple nights my bike has been under tree cover, while Rett’s has been more out in the open, and it’s been crazy to see how hers gets soaked in condensation at nightfall, while mine… Read more…