In this sleepy town of less than 200 people, the midnight peace and quiet was bludgeoned away by the thumping roar of a helicopter, circling closer until it had to be low and directly overhead, before shooting off again to wherever it came from. I groggily recalled that yesterday as we were exiting the high… Read more…

All of the thru-hikers who ordered dinner last night were like us, counting on the Lodge to provide breakfast. Somehow we were lucky enough to be the first who Jack asked for an order from, though ordering the “big breakfast” made our wait longer than others. This morning “the chef” (presumably the guy who designed… Read more…

Today, we ride. Ride for ruin and the world’s ending! Oh wait, no, hopefully not all that, but we ride into the heart of the horse-nation of Rohan, to find Theoden, son of Thengel, within his Golden Hall at Edoras. Except, Theoden died a hero at the end of “The Return of the King”, and… Read more…

For much of our southward journey on the South Island we were on the same roads as the Tour Aotearoa, the 3000km bikepacking route defined by the Kennett Brothers. It’s similar to an Adventure Cycling route in the United States: a well-mapped and well-described route that anyone can ride at any time. But it also… Read more…

We had two ways to get to Geraldine. The “short” route would be on the direct Christchurch-to-Queenstown highway (SH79) the entire time (with no bike paths alongside it like our last ride), and hillier, but 13 miles shorter. The longer route would loop us south through Cave and Pleasant Point, on potentially-quieter SH8 (since it’s… Read more…

“Neil. Wake up. I think I’m going to puke.” Not words either of us ever hope to be uttering or hearing at 12:30am inside our tent, but here we were. And unfortunately, she wasn’t wrong. I immediately unzipped her tent door as a precaution, but before I could get my wits together to find a… Read more…