New Zealand

30/12/07
Hi friends and well-wishers. ActiveSteve here, ready to fill you in on another exciting day in paradise. As I write this to you, there is a cool breeze blowing through my tent, and I’m writing by the light of my headlamp and screen. Yup, I’m camping once again, as there were no places to check into with a bed. Aw crap! I just lost an entire friggin blog post that I had written, and I really don’t feel like rewriting it from scratch. It’s late and I’m now tired. As a result, I now present you an abridged version of my previous post. My apologies, but that’s what happens when technology screws with you. As usual, check out the map tab for the route of the latest day, and read on for a few more “nuggets” about the day. Enjoy.

29/12/07
Hi gang. Here I am, back to report on another lovely day in the lands down under. Due to a good bit of luck and some advice, I was able to shorten my biking day by about 24km, and still make it to the same destination. However, in order to do this, I had to take the fabled 309 road. Intrigued? Well so was I, which is why I decided to give it a whirl. Let me describe it in this way. It was basically my own personal Bolivian Death Highway! Okay, certainly not quite as extreme as that famous road, but it was something else, let me tell you that. Of course, I didn’t have the luxury of only going downhill, so I had to climb a nice long ascent up a twisty dirt road with dropoffs beside me, before descending it on the other side. I was quite glad that I’d brought the full suspension bike today. Read on for a bit more about this day.

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!

27/12/07
Hi all. I hope everyone had a good Christmas and Boxing Day. I don’t know about anyone else, but as for me, the day after Boxing day it was basically back to work. I left the comfort of Auckland and hit the high road. My goal was to get up and basically leave as soon as I could, since I had mapped out a fairly long day of biking, clocking in at around 90km including some rather large hills along the way. However, as with the best laid plans, things don’t always go as planned. I was fairly effective the night before in sorting my gear out, but I hadn’t fully packed it, leading to a bit of a delay in getting out the door. Read on for the rest of the day, and check out the map.

26/12/07
Howdy sports fans! Notice how I’ve finally added a date to the first part of my post? A few people have mentioned that they’d like to know when I write each of my blog posts, so I am now complying. Basically, I’ve written a post every single day, but I realize that you’d probably still like to know the exact dates, so there you go. This post will be relatively brief, as there was basically only one thing that I did all day long on Boxing Day. I went to a 1 day Cricket match! That’s right, I got to spectate an International cricket match between Bangladesh and New Zealand,. I’ll be the first to admit that I know pretty much nothing about Cricket, but I was very willing to learn, so I was quite excited to be able to do this on my day off of biking.