“The Adventure of the Bivy Sack” and “My Day in Hell”

After the barbecue fire at the Murchison campground there was a night of extremely heavy rain. When I went to bed water was already condensing under my sleeping pad. Within an hour the edges of the sleeping bag were damp. My solution was to use my bivvy sack to keep myself from getting any more damp. It was a good thought except for its unknown and very large tear and for the fact that it actively worked to hold in my own body moisture.

By morning the rain had soaked through the tent's ground cloth, the tent floor, and flooded over the top of the sleeping pad. Moisture had condensed, seeped through, and was retained in the bivy sack. It drenched my sleeping bag and got the innermost layer of the sleeping bag liner and me completely wet. On top of it all I was woken by water dripping through the seems of the rain flap of the tent directly above my head. I dubbed my tent no longer waterproof and spent several hours the next morning hanging and drying everything. I found my camera in an inch-deep puddle and my clothes were foolishly left in range of the flooding as well. My computer and passport were about the only two things to escape unscathed. The camera miraculously still works and nothing seems to have suffered permanent damage. I have spent the last couple weeks dreading rain.

The next night was not much better. I pulled a muscle in my calf and it rained again. This is an excerpt from my journal.

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November 27, 2014

It's to the point that I don't remember what I have written. Today was hell. It rained at the campground and I got wet again. Sam and Kat (UK bikers) were first to pack up. Allie and Brent (Canadian bikers) followed. I was pretty reluctant, but knew I'd be swimming before too long. I had a choice: backpedal half a mile to a motel or continue onward and face the rain. I was on autopilot when I reached the highway and I ended up mechanically continuing on. It was pouring hard and I was riding alone. My calf still pained me. A few miles down the road I was already cold and drenched. I came across Maruia Springs, an oasis of cafe, motel, and thermal pools-and it was closed for maintenance. It was still early in the day and I figured there must be something in the next 85 km. There was nothing. I climbed slowly and painfully over the Lewis Pass. The rain came down in sheets and whenever a truck passed its wake knocked even bigger droplets off the trees and onto my head.

Climbing higher brought colder rain. If I stopped my leg would seize and I would shiver so I rode on. Descending the pass was not the relief it should have been. I was cold while pedaling so creating my own wind while sitting idle in the driving rain made my feet numb. I was glad there was no snow at the top of the pass. I was cursing the weather and my decision to continue on for hours. My shoes were soaked through and I could feel water sloshing between my toes. I'd lost sense of distance and eventually came across a road sign: Hanmer springs 52km. That was an eternity away. I still didn't stop. I know enough about hypothermia to not get chilled. Eventually, after I would guess 35 miles from the start of the day the rain began to let up. Finally the sun showed through the rain. It was still cold, but at least it had stopped raining. After a while I caught up with Sam and Kat. We passed each other a few times then they finally pulled ahead. Once I had descended far enough into the valley I warmed up and dried out. When I felt warm enough I eventually stopped to rest. I ate an entire can of fruit and stood on a cliffs edge overlooking the entire valley. It looked like home.

Finally at Hanmer hot springs I checked into Rosie's B&B, dried out all my equipment, ate, showered, and watched Shrek III.

At night I slept warm and realized I left my toothbrush bag sitting on a toilet paper dispenser in a bathroom at the RV park in Murchison. Fuck today.

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After my day in hell everything has been relatively easy. Come wind, rain, or dive-bombing birds, after a day of such misery nothing is quite as bad. I made it to the coast and spent a few days in Kaikoura. I saw seals and seabirds and spent quite a bit of time wandering the beaches looking at shells and dead jelly fish. From there it was just a few days to Christchurch. Once I got to Amberley, a town an easy day's ride from Christchurch, I decided to take the Scenic Highway south. About eight hours later I knocked on the front door of the first house I had seen in six hours and asked for directions. I found that I took one wrong turn off the Scenic Highway and ended up on a remote gravel road heading back north into the mountains. (Kari stop laughing.) Fortunately the road connected back to the highway system and I spent the night in a B&B 20 kilometers north of where I had started. The next day I rode through Amberley again and hoped that no one recognized me from the day before. I stuck to the main highway and made it all the way to Christchurch.

So here I am, ending another bicycle adventure. I have had a lot of time to think about where I want to bike next. I have a few ideas, but none of them concrete. I will pack up the “Hulk” and bring him home with me and there we will plot our next trip. From here I am headed to Australia for about a month. The weather will keep me from doing too much on the wheels, but there are plenty of other things to do in the land Down Under!

Blog Supplementary

I wrote my last blog from a communal kitchen area of an RV park in Murchison, NZ. Within minutes of posting there was a bit of excitement.

It was dinnertime and several people were wandering in and out of the kitchen, doing whatever it is that people do in such a facility. One fellow camper decided to use the propane grill sitting outside beside the door to cook his meal. He lit the stove and left to go back to his campsite. In a few minutes I noticed quite a bit of smoke drifting by the window. As I was standing up to check out where it was coming from I saw that a man who was holding a baby was single-handedly pulling on a handle on one side of the grill. Once he pulled it away from the building I could see the flames pouring out the back and I ran to help. I turned the gas off and took over dragging the grill out into the street while the man passed the baby off to his wife and grabbed the fire extinguisher. Once the grill was in the road the flames shot up in all directions, but the man now sans baby blasted it with the extinguisher he found in the kitchen.

Once the fire was out the man who had lit the grill returned and the owner of the campground came running over panicked and screaming. She was overly concerned with who lit it and who was going to pay for it and did not give much thought as to the safety of her tenants. There are two kinds of people.

The next day I met up with two more bikers and rode with them into Springs Junction. I pulled a muscle in my calf half way and they graciously chose to keep to my gimping pace and let me draft the rest of the way.

Draft: v. Riding behind another bicycler who is muscling through the headwind.

After another night of camping I rode alone and very slowly over the Lewis Pass. In the pouring rain. I have never before had numb feet while biking and it was strange to not be able to use my fingers to change gears. It was a very cold, very wet, and very long day. In the end it was worth it because I arrived in Hanmer Hot Springs and spent most of the next day sitting in sulfur-scented hot water. I stayed at Rosie's B&B and let my leg recover.

As of today I am in Waiau, which I have dubbed the creepiest town in New Zealand. Not creepy in a bad way, but strange because despite being a gorgeous day I have not seen a single person outside. The only four humans I have seen in the entire town have been the women at the convenience store and the pub and the proprietors of the campground where I am staying at tonight. The post office has 24 boxes so I conclude there are at least 24 people who live here. I have walked all over town-four blocks by four blocks- and there is no traffic, no kids playing outside, no one working in their gardens, and no laundry hanging on any of the lines. Stephen King would be inspired.

Eels, the Irish, and Maria Von Trapp

I have had the overture to the Sound of Music stuck in my head for about five days. Every time I see a well maintained knoll dotted with fluffy white sheep I have the image of Julie Andrews spinning around and singing about the hills. Seeing that that is the beginning of the movie, the rest of the dialogue and musical numbers usually follow suit and about two hours later I am still humming along to Edelweiss.

The ferry from Wellington to Picton went well. Once I reached land I immediately got bad directions and ended up going nearly two days out of my way to get to Havelock and Nelson. The extra pedaling was not for naught. The first campground I came across had an interesting attraction. “Eddie the Eel” and his friends lived in a small creek that flowed around the perimeter of the campground. There were really four eels, several ducks, drakes, and a trout who were well adapted to being fed by people. I have never before had a trout beg for food. Eddie and the other eels were not interested in my offering of bite-sized tortilla shreds, but the ducks and the trout were. One duck followed me all the way back to my tent and decided to help herself to the tortilla sandwich I had made for myself. My lesson of the day was that ducks do not like peanut butter. I thought I would have to do a ducky Heimlich, but she managed to cough up the bite she stole from me. Even after nearly suffocating, she still took a few more snaps at my sandwich. I had to close the door to my tent to keep her from hopping in and helping herself to the rest of my food cache. I imagine the sour gummy worms would have been even less popular than the peanut butter.

About two weeks into any sort of bicycle trip or physical training I get hungry. It is around that time that my body realizes that it has been exercising and needs to refuel. Fortunately, I was in the city of Nelson when hunger hit. Around 5pm I took myself to dinner and beer. By 9pm I had eaten two full dinners, had three drinks, and a very tasty slice of chocolate cake for dessert. Within half and hour I was hungry again. I raided the rest of the snacks in my panniers and drank over a liter of water. By 10pm I was full and finally able to sleep. I will never completely understand metabolism, but I do my best to listen to what mine wants. On the road I crave foods that I would almost never otherwise eat. Gummy worms and peanut butter-cheese tortilla sandwiches being on the ever-growing list. As is my snack stash contains, in addition to the above mentioned, salted peanuts, crumpets, and half a jar of sun-dried tomatoes.

Once on the road again few miles outside of Nelson I met Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a fellow traveling who left her home in Ireland 20 months ago and began an adventure with no goal and no time frame. (See Granny, there are other women who bike solo!) She has since biked through parts of Europe, the Middle Ease, southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. All with an extremely patient boyfriend waiting back home in a stone cottage on the outskirts of Galway, Ireland. We talked quite a bit about the possibility of her cycling the Pacific Coast trail on the west coast of the United States. She is very keen to try and I am sure she will find her way to the States in the near future. We cycled together for two days and came across Andrew, another biker from the UK who has been on the road for two years. I have seen several bikers during my short time in New Zealand, but rarely have the chance to sit down and compare notes with them. Nearly all bikers are going different directions at different speeds and have various schedules to keep. It was relieving to be able to compare notes with a couple of fellow travelers and especially superb to travel with someone even if it was only for a short time.

I am heading for the famous Hanmer Hot Springs over the next few days. I preemptively sat out biking today assuming that it would rain and raining it is. I will hit the road again tomorrow with the prediction of sun and warmth.

Me, Andrew, Elizabeth

South of Taupo

The road to Taupo was slow and wet. The sun was shining when I left Rotorua, but within 20 minutes, it was pouring rain. I followed a bicycle signs for the whole day. The trail weaved on and off the highway and at times even having a paralleling bike route all to myself. It was nice to get out of the flow of traffic even if I spent all day in the rain. There wasn't much other than trees and sheep south of Rotorua for the first half of the day, but at one point I came around a corner on a deserted, hilly road and came across a massive tourist compound. It was the Waimangu volcanic valley, an active volcano lying in a valley floor. I went for a walk down the valley and saw all sorts of mineral deposits, geysers, and bubbling lakes. The rain let up for a few minutes, but I ran along for a majority of the way with a couple of German tourists, trying to get to the end of the valley trail and back before getting completely drenched.

I only made it a few more miles down the road before ducking into a motel sitting along the side of the road. The rain wouldn't let up and even though there were several hours of light left, I was too wet and miserable to keep going. It turned out that two other bikers, one from Switzerland and one from Germany had the same idea. It was nice to meet some fellow travelers.

Rain has been a prominent theme thus far in New Zealand. I ride when I can and set up shelter when it's too wet. I'm slowly making my way through the country, enjoying myself as much as I can in all weather. Taupo was a neat town. I took a boat tour out on the water and hiked out to the Huka waterfall. South of Lake Taupo I did my best to get to Mount Ngauruhoe, aka “Mount Doom” from Lord of the Rings, but alas, snow prevailed in the hills and I wasn't even able to take pictures. I was still able to get a few pictures of Mordor and a couple other film sites.

I arrived in Wellington last night and passed right by the German and Swiss bikers in the street down town and almost didn't recognize them. Wellington lives up to its reputation as the “Windy City.” I went to the zoo today and I'm taking the ferry to Picton on the South Island tomorrow. I'm all ready for the second half of the trip!

First half of the North Island

I flew into Auckland on November 4^th on Qantas airlines via Brisbane, Los Angeles, Portland, and Anchorage. I completely lost Monday the 3^rd over the international date line, my bag missed the flight out of Brisbane, and I had a middle seat on a 14-hour flight. When I got to the hostel was told I made reservations for the wrong days and there would not be space until the next day. It was getting late in the evening and had nowhere to go. But that is no way to start. In reality, the flights were smooth, I was able to take a 12-hour layover in Portland and visit family, my middle seat was big enough to curl up sideways and sleep in like a bed, I met several very nice local Kiwis while waiting for my bag to catch up in Auckland, which only took about an hour (incredible considering it flew in from another country and on another airlines), I was the only person on the bus to the city center so the driver dropped me off right in front of the hostel, and the hostess at the hostel found a bed for me at another hostel about a block away. So much can go wrong while traveling, not just in flying, but in driving, boating, or biking and it is easy to lose perspective. My perspective is that everything that goes wrong in transport is self-inflicted. Life could be fairly consistent and predictable if I stayed home. That's not much fun for me, so I bike. I don't mind the sunburn, hours alone, or unpredictable sleeping accommodations. It's the unpredictability of traveling that makes life interesting.

I spent three nights in Auckland. I met Craig, Nikki, Liberty, and Andrew, friends Alex, a good friend of mine from Australia. It was nice to find a connection in a land so far from home. I bought a bright green bicycle from a shop not too far from the city center. Before I even left the shop his name was “Hulk.” Once Hulk was loaded and ready to go we took the train from down town Auckland to Pukekohe, a town to the south. I've learned that the suburbs are the worst places to bike. On my last trip Molly and I took the tram out of town and met up with a couple of bikers who started a whole day before us and took the entire day just to get out of Portland, Oregon. It took me two days to navigate Los Angeles and another two days to get through Atlanta, Georgia. In short, the open road begins out of town.

On the first day out Hulk held up, but the bike rack less so. In half a day of riding, two screws stripped out and my whole load fell off the back of Hulk. Luckily, I was planning on meeting up with an old friend of the family in Hamilton and seeing as that I was almost there, Steve and Ben came to the rescue and drove out to pick me up from the side of the road. Ben found new screws for the rack, but that's when I found where the real damage was. The screws were fine, but the rack lasted one more day before rattling loose again. It is now held together by zip ties. Which brings up another old lesson: equipment with many parts has the potential for many problems. I've counted eight separate parts on the new bike rack. My old one was one solid piece and I never had to touch it.

After Hamilton, I stopped at the Waitomo glow worm caves for a night and two days. I went on a walking/boating tour through a gentle part of the river that carved out the caves, then I took an inner-tubing tour through a rougher part of the upper river. I wore a wet suit, jumped off waterfalls, and drifted down the river with thousands of glow worms lighting up the cave and reflecting off the water.

It took another two days to bike to Rotorua. Half way there I camped on a quite, overgrown frontage road next to a pen of cows. I always try to camp discreetly, but with 30 cows gathered on the other side of the fence watching me set up my tent, I thought I might have to find another spot away from my new friends. They eventually dispersed and did not give me away.

In Rotorua I checked in to a hotel for two nights and went Zorbing! It is the greatest game in the world. Craig from Auckland gave me passes to give it a try. It is basically a person sitting in giant hamster ball being rolled down a hill. I went down twice and kept my breakfast down the whole time.

Tomorrow I'm off to Taupo then taking the desert road towards Wellington.

T Minus Two Weeks

This will be my first bike trip where I don't have a bicycle picked out and ready to go weeks before leaving. I have been scouring the internet for bike shops, second-hand sporting equipment stores, and the classifieds in Auckland looking for my new transportation. I know what I want in a leg-powered vehicle, but finding one in my price range is  challenging. I prefer simple, easy-to-fix, sturdy equipment. I don't mind riding something on the heavier side if the weight is justified by durability. So far, there has only been one internet search that has everything I'm looking for. It's used, durable, and inexpensive. I also think that someone sitting in an Auckland bike shop has a sense of humor.

Up and Running

New Blog! I will continue to post pictures on the Nomadic Gnome facebook page and all blogs from the trip will be posted here.

I leave Anchorage, Alaska on November 2nd and arrive in Auckland, New Zealand on the afternoon of the 4th. I will need to buy a bicycle, sun lotion, and stock up on food, then the adventure begins! I was brain storming last night with friends and added a few things to my New Zealand to-do list. As it stands, the ever-growing list will make for a fun trip.
1) Find glow worms
2) Pet a sheep
3) Take a boat around the fjords in the south west corner of the South Island
4) Find a kiwi and a kakapo bird
5) Visit Hobbiton
6) Climb Mount Doom (Mount Ngauruhoe on the North Island)
7) Drink wine at local vineyards (plural)
8) Swim in Lake Tuapo
9) Visit Maori rock carvings

The list will continue to grow!