Author: neil

A combination of luck, 21st-century weather forecasting, and our ability to go slow, means we haven’t ridden through rain in an unbelievably long time. So long that I can’t even remember the last time. We certainly haven’t gotten wet in New Zealand (despite the frequent rain!), and I don’t think it happened last summer in…

Yesterday while eating dinner outside the campground kitchen, it was difficult to not notice the attractive woman striding past, a woman with blonde hair as short as her tanned legs were long. After breakfast this morning while I was crouched down packing up my bike in front of the same kitchen, those same legs crossed…

The cold clear night led to the soaking-wet-est tent we’ve had in some time. But since we had a shorter day of mostly-trail riding today, we just woke up naturally, and eventually the sun rose over the mountains and the rays baked it mostly-dry before I even took it down (that’s never happened, usually it’s…

At their 7am opening we entered McDonald’s for breakfast (er, I mean, “Macca’s for some brekkie”), since it was steps away from the Backpackers and the last chain eatery we’re likely to see for some time (Greymouth is by far the largest town on the lightly-populated West Coast). There is apparently no Macca’s early-morning old-folks…

We finally had a day where we didn’t need to balance timing! All factors were in favor of an early start, so we set the alarm for 5am. By the time we were ready to roll at 7:15, a few other souls had roused, but we had the facilities to ourselves through breakfast. The early…