New Zealand

21/01/08
Hi folks. Greetings from windy Wellington! I know I’m a day or two behind in posts, and I’ll try to rectify that for you now. The posts won’t really be super-long, so hopefully they’ll be in bite-size format for all my ADD friends 😉 After Otaki Beach, my next main stop was Wellington, which is of course the capital of New Zealand, so in that regard, not unlike my own current hometown of Ottawa, Canada. As such, I figured there would be a number of different things that I’d likely do there that I wouldn’t be doing anywhere else. I was also looking forward to a couple days with less biking, as my knee is starting to bother me more again. It’s really annoying, as it seems that no amount of ibuprofen does anything for it, neither does my gel that I bought, or massaging it. Oh well, as long as I can keep pedaling, it’ll just have to wait until my return, right? Ha ha. Anyway, I put a little map together of the trip into Wellington, including the time on the train. Yup, my first NZ train. Read on for more.

20/01/08
Greetings webospherians! So, what to tantalize you with today? Kinda hard to make a really good story out of todays activities. Basically, I got up, got ready, and pedaled my little heart out to get to the coast while the wind was more or less in my favour 🙂 Yup, that’s right, upon waking up, the wind had essentially done a 180 while I slept, and I awoke to another brilliant day with the winds either at my back or from the side for most of the ride. This was most welcome, as you may imagine, especially after yesterday’s debacle. As a result I’m in a better mood, and invite you to check out the map and my pictures. I even came across my namesake as you’ll see from checking out the shots! My ride was about 77km, and took me from Palmerston North to a place called Otaki Beach, which is along the Kapiti Coast. Tomorrow, I’ll be in Wellington, with only a short bit of biking (about 30km) followed by a recommended commuter train for about 50km. Read on for a little more about my day.

19/01/08
Howdy everyone out there in ActiveSteve Land! Let me just start off by saying that this blog post will be short. Possibly really short. I’m just too burnt out right now to write any great stories. Yes, you’ll still get a map, and you can read the statistics, but they, along with the pictures, only tell a bit of the tale of the day that I had today. My journey took me from Wanganui, meandering south through farmland to end up in Palmerston North, a University town. Massey University to be precise. It’s the biggest University in New Zealand, so I thought I’d check it out. High-level impressions, not all that much to see, and surprisingly dead for a Saturday. Maybe it picks up later in the night. I probably won’t be awake to find out. For the brief history of my ride and reason I’m tired, feel free to read the next couple paragraphs 🙂

18/01/08
Hello again folks! Well, as I mentioned in the last post, today I spent the day in New Plymouth, as my bus wasn’t leaving for Wanganui until 5pm tonight. As a result, I predicted a fairly boring, lazy day. Well, I wouldn’t say that my day was boring at all. I ended up taking a bit of a road trip with a German couple to see a neat natural feature known as the 3 Sisters. Those of you looking at the picture and subsequent ones that will eventually get posted will note that they are not unlike Hopewell Rocks. You would be correct. They are indeed sandstone formations which arose over a long period of time as a result of erosion and big tides. This is a spot you can only visit during low tide, so we had to time our arrival correctly, which we did. I didn’t bother bringing along the GPS, although I wish I did. I’ll try to put some sort of map together, but no guarantees. Either way, read on for a bit more about my past 24 hours in New Plymouth.

17/01/08
Hello hello hello. What have we here? Some curious readers? Well, I guess the post and picture really don’t leave all that much to the imagination, do they? You already knew that I was planning on summiting Taranaki today, and, well, I did. And rather quickly at that. I had all sorts of concerns vis a vis weather, time to climb, clouds rolling in, finding a way there, and so on and so forth, but yet again, things worked out splendidly for the little cyclist that could. I’m super-glad that I tacked on this side trip on my North Island touring schedule. As it turns out, the weather was brilliant for my climb, and everything was great. I’ve put a map up on the ole blogosphere for you to check out. Yep, there’s a lot of pictures to go through, but hey, they’re worth it. The stats are for just the climb and descent part, not including the drive up to the mountain, in case you are wondering. For more details, read on.