Welcome to the Flash Blog…

03/02/08
Hello everyone out there! SuperSickSteve here reporting again, this time from his sick bed. Yup, I’m still going downhill. Today, I’ve had a nice little fever and aching joints and running nose and plugged throat all day! It’s really fantastic! Not! In spite of this, I managed to post my longest day yet, clocking over 105km on the bike to get to Whataroa, where I’m reporting to you live from a caravan, or RV if you will. Yup, for 23.50 (I got a deal) I have a little aluminum box all to myself for the night. Two beds, a toaster, a water pot, and electricity. Sadly, no Internet. However, given the on and off pouring rain and the cold temps outside, I’d say I’m doing all right despite the fact that I’m in a little tiny village along the glacier highway. Today was a good riding day for the first 75 or so km, then it got really tough for me. Not just because of Mount Hercules, but due to a group of cycle tourists known as Pedaltours. Read on for more, and check out the map.

06/03/08
Hello rock-hounds. I have another day full of rocky miracle stories to share with you today I suppose. My trails today took me 87km from Waianakarua to Kurow, along the way passing some mighty impressive rock structures, including the Elephant Rocks, some Maori Rock Art, as well as some very amazingly shaped rock cliffs. Now I’m by no means a geological expert, but I certainly appreciated seeing these things, even though it meant I had to take another ‘scenic’ route, which meant a whole pile more of climbing as well as twists and turns, narrow roads, and even a gravel section due to a slight navigational error on my part (actually turned out to be a distance shortcut, but the speed was much slower). To learn more about my day, read on, and to see just where I saw some of these cool rocks, don’t forget to check out the map I’ve got up for you as well. Who loves ya, babies? Oh, by the way, big congrats out to Alyssa and Greg, as well as Trevor and Julie on their recent arrivals! Best of luck sleeping 🙂

27/02/08
Howdy gang, and how are you all doing today? Me, well, it was a soggy day for ActiveSteve. As such, you’ll have to forgive me, but there aren’t all that many pictures on my map. You can still see my route and all the stats, but not much for entertainment value I’m afraid. For the first while, there really wasn’t all that much reason to pull out the camera anyway. The scenery was just more rolling farmland, with sheep, deer and cows, much like the last few biking days. It was also really coming down, so I was pretty bundled up. Overbooties on, arm warmers, gore-tex jacket done all the way up with the hood over my helmet, and even my ski gloves to keep my hands warm, so as you can imagine, the camera wasn’t in a ready state as it normally would be! All that being said, I guess I can fill up a couple more paragraphs with some info on my day and evening in the beautiful Curio Bay area of the Catlins Coast. So, read on, dear literati.

15/01/08
Hi gang! Wow, another day has gone by, can you believe it? I just heard that some of you are wondering where all the posts went. Well, don’t worry. As you can see, I’ve been keeping up with my end of the bargain, but the NZ Internet it not living up to its potential yet! Hee hee. At any rate, I, your humble scribe, am still hard at work. Both on the road and off the road, so I bring you yet another story in the life of ActiveSteve, even though you haven’t seen any for days on end 🙂 Today I was heading from Raukawa Fall, the YMCA camp, down to Wanganui, a shortish 60km ride taking me to the Tasman Sea, and closer on the route to the south Island. As mentioned earlier, I’ve booked a return bus trip to New Plymouth from here, in order that I may check out the Eastern Coast of the North Island, and Mount Taranaki in general. This is not in any sort of violation, as I’ll still be biking from north to south on my trip, but otherwise, I would have to spend at least 4 days (2 up, 2 back) just to check out that town, and I wasn’t about to do that. Anyway, read on for a little bit about today and Wanganui.