http://www.stimmel.net/wordpress Wed, 07 May 2008 04:13:36 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 ... http://www.stimmel.net/wordpress/2005/12/21/napier/ 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 ... http://www.stimmel.net/wordpress/2005/12/20/wellington/ 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 ... http://www.stimmel.net/wordpress/2005/12/09/new-plymouth/ 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 ... http://www.stimmel.net/wordpress/2005/12/02/waitomo-caves/ 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 ... http://www.stimmel.net/wordpress/2005/11/30/bay-of-islands/ 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. ... http://www.stimmel.net/wordpress/2005/11/30/the-flight/ 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 ... http://www.stimmel.net/wordpress/2005/11/25/off-to-new-zealand/ I've posted some of the photos I've taken over the past year to my gallery. Please feel free to comment on them. Now that my server has sufficient memory to handle the load required to process them (I love UnixShell.com!), I should be able to get some more up soon. http://www.stimmel.net/wordpress/2005/11/09/photos-posted/ FedEX dropped off my new 60GB iPod as I was heading out the door for work. Guess I'll be stopping by the Apple store on the way home from work to pick up a couple accessories I'll be needing (camera connector, power adapter, and Firewire cable for my USB 2.0 ... http://www.stimmel.net/wordpress/2005/11/07/my-first-ipod/ So I finally got off my lazy ass and have set up a web site again. I'm not really a big fan of blogging, but I figure this could be a useful forum for documenting my upcoming trip to New Zealand. I'm not sure whether I'll be able to post ... http://www.stimmel.net/wordpress/2005/11/06/hello-world/