EXTRA
Breaking news story just in this morning of March 5th, 2008. With great crowds of cheering supporters, ActiveSteve climbed the world’s steepest street, Baldwin Street, in Dunedin, atop his trusty bicycle, Epicus, while the Burley Kid watched from below in admiration. This feat caused burning lungs and the taste of blood rising in the throat with the pounding heartrate, but the feat was over almost as quickly as it began. Onlookers were most impressed with this achievement, proclaiming aloud their respect for the task. Several keen eyes were even more impressed by the fact that ActiveSteve remained seated for the duration of the entire climb, and choose to attack almost the entire climb straight on rather than weave. However, in the steepest sections, the traditional alpine style of climbing was adopted for a short section, by weaving left and right to ease the slope. To mark the achievement, a certificate was acquired proclaiming the feat. The onlookers, so impressed, were clamouring to become signed witnesses to the act, even though there was no such place on the certificate. A quick addition to the scroll by ActiveSteve made a fellow from Pensacola, Florida most proud to sign his name proclaiming the validity of the climb. With great smiles and satisfaction, ActiveSteve, Epicus, and the Burley Kid continued back on the road, ready to tackle more hills for the day, albeit at much lesser grades!
28/12/07
Today was another day of firsts for ActiveSteve. It was the first day that I got to jump on a trampoline. Yes, I nearly killed myself in the process, but that’s just par for the course in my world, isn’t it? I kid of course. I didn’t get hurt or anything, but I did have some near misses. The other first of the day was this was the first day that I biked on the Coromandel Peninsula. I had originally been unsure whether I wanted to do this section of NZ, but after today, I’m quite glad that I did. The scenery is very nice, and the roads were uber-cool. A drivers paradise. Maybe not a cyclists’ paradise, but I still enjoyed. Read on for a little story about it, and the map too!
Hello again friends. As promised, I’ve split summit day into the climb to the top and the climb back down in the interests of making each post manageable. There was still far too much to relate about my New Year’s eve after the summit, that you are now faced with needing to read a second post in one sitting (depending on your addiction to all things ActiveSteve :-). Of course, the map and pictures are the same as last time, so no need to review those unless you want to. This part of the story now takes you from the summit at Uhuru peak (way up there at 5,896m) down to Horombo Camp, situated faaaarrrr below at 3,700m. Yup, that’s right we’d be descending over 2.1km in one hike! Read on to learn more about that.
Hey folks. Nothing much to report for this blog post. I decided to spend an extra day in Paihia, as I wanted to visit Russell, which has some significant history attached to it. What’s the point of touring and biking all the time if you can’t take a day off for yourself every now and again, right? Well, that was what I did for myself. There was only one hitch with my day off. It rained. Scratch that, it poured! When I awoke, it was actually not too bad out, so I got my things together and headed down to the town. I hit an Internet Cafe for an hour and a half, putting up a couple posts and some maps, but of course you already knew that, didn’t you? So what else is new this day? Tune in.
