Author: neil

Today we were continuing south and east to Palmerston North, New Zealand’s 7th-largest metropolitan area. The elderly lady running the Marton Motel warned about all the trucks on the road going that way (“they do it to avoid the weigh station on the highway!”), and I think my routing was already doing its best to…

I told Rett that we can subtract 200 feet from the day’s climbing (as calculated by RideWithGPS), but didn’t tell her why. When I initially looked at the cliff-steep jump in the elevation profile on the way out of Whanganui, I loved the surprise of learning how we would avoid riding it, and I wanted…

A variety of birds were tweeting and hooting and squawking and beeping through what felt like most of the night, but that’s a more-enjoyable source of campground noise than partying humans, so I couldn’t be mad at them. When we woke and got out of the tent, Rett immediately rolled her bike and everything up…

Day 5 We had booked two nights at the Alpine Chalets: 13-mile hike day, and then today’s rest day. When we made the booking, we got an email offering us a “free upgrade” to the second floor for better a better view of the mountains. Well that’s a nice offer, but we have the bikes,…

Day 4 When you Google “Tongariro Alpine Crossing”, you’ll see it variously described as “one of the ten top day hikes in the world”, or “the best day hike in New Zealand”. Is that all just a load of search-optimized bullshit, or is it legit? As someone who just hiked extensively in Glacier, Yellowstone, and…