Dec 8 - 9
I got underway by 11:00 the next morning, with 4-5 hours of riding ahead of me - back up (literally) the motorway, then heading northeast on SH2 up into the Rimutaka Mountain Range. The road sign indicating that the route I was taking was “open” foretold what would be the most difficult […]
Dec 4 - 8
Heading south from New Plymouth along Highway 1, I began to think I had left sheep behind in favor of herd after herd of cattle (which should have come as no surprise, given what I’d learned in Puke Ariki. I travelled for quite a while without seeing a single sheep, but they […]
Dec 2 - 4
To get to New Plymouth, Janet (my other host at Waitomo Caves Guest Lodge) suggested I take the “coastal” route, rather than heading immediately back on the highway. After estimating the distance I’d be travelling before finding a petrol station (maybe 100km) and how far I thought I could go before I’d […]
Nov 30 - Dec 2
So the ride South to Waitomo Caves village was relatively uneventful. Boring really, though I did get to see the machine that moves a portable barrier between lanes of traffic on the Auckland Harbour Bridge (creating more lanes in one direction or the other, as needed).
Waitomo Caves Village is tiny. According […]
Nov 27 - 30
So my first day didn’t go quite as planned… Breakfast was fantastic, but I forgot the bike needed petrol, so I missed the cruise I had planned on taking for the day. Instead, I bought a ticket for the next day and wandered up to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds. The Waitangi […]
Well, aside from some issues in Chicago, I made it to New Zealand ok. It was snowing when we left Chicago, so the flight was delayed for an hour and a half. The 12 hour, 25 minute flight from Los Angeles to Auckland was not as bad as I’d anticipated. I watched the first movie […]
Well, it’s finally time for me to leave for New Zealand. I fly out of Albany at 2:17PM, and arrive in Auckland at 7:30 AM Sunday Morning (that’s 1:30PM Saturday here in New York - New Zealand is 18 hours ahead of the East Coast). Hopefully this flu I’ve been fighting has run its course […]