It’s A Festivus Miracle!

I am two holidays late on this one, three if you count Boxing Day, four if you count Kwanzaa, but life has been hectic! So happy holidays and let’s rewind the clock….

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It was never going to be a white Christmas here in the height of antipodean summer, but that suits me fine, because my plan was always to spend my happy holidays underwater.

When I first sketched out an itinerary for the TA, I had already bought a plane ticket to come back after the new year. I haven’t spent New Year’s Eve in a foreign country in quite a long time. So when I saw I would have a buffer of almost two weeks at the end of the ride, I realized I could actually plan for some downtime down under. Nothing is better for downtime than scuba diving.

First up was a cage dive with great white sharks in Bluff. I had the opportunity to dive with great whites twelve years ago in Cape Town, but turned it down because if I’d gone, I would probably still be in a South African prison. I had been traveling for three weeks with a group of strangers, most of whom were wonderful and most of whom were going on this shark dive too. But one of these strangers was the most obnoxious person I’ve ever met in my life. I knew if I went on that shark boat, my only legal defense after pushing this person overboard would be, “Your honor, if you met this asshole you’d have done it too.”

So I did the opposite of the advice I generally follow now: I figured I’d do it tomorrow. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, all of them saw surf so choppy that it was too dangerous to take the boats out. So twelve years’ worth of tomorrows later, here I was on my way to the Tītī Islands (hee hee!) hoping to see great whites.

As the skipper introduced us to our dive site, he asked with a perfectly straight face if any of us knew what a tītī was, or if any of us had seen a tītī before. (Hee hee!) Now, say what you will about serious-minded philosophers, but nothing in our education removes our sense of humor, still less our enjoyment of juvenalia. It just teaches us to use serious words like juvenalia. (In my experience, most philosophers give up their sense of humor voluntarily.) The fact that I didn’t ask how many boobies live in the Tītī Islands really is about the highest you can expect from me.

(A tītī, by the way, is a sooty shearwater, also known as a muttonbird. Māori names for birds are often onomatopoeic; they sound like the bird’s cry. Kākā, kea, ruru, and I’m guessing tītī too, since it’s squeaky and the homophone tītī means squeak.)

Sadly I saw no tītīs that day, and also no sharks. I had a great time anyway, because for once it was a sunny summer day down here and I got to spend it talking with interesting people. I also got to dive in a cage for the first time, which was cool when there were fish swarming it and like being carried by King Kong when the surf was up. Lots of loud banging and swinging about. Plus I got to dress like Stratos from Masters of the Universe. All I was missing was the wings.

Two days later, Christmas eve, I was diving in Milford Sound, a scenic highlight of Fiordland National Park. There I got to dress like Torpedo from GI Joe. All I was missing was the speargun.

The boat really was straight out of G.I. Joe. The hull is inflatable, so you can just fold the whole thing up and strap it to a trailer. Slap a couple of extraneous orange missiles on there and you’ve got yourself an authentic Eighties bathtub warrior. Descend, the dive company, should give all of its staff code names.

According to G.I. Joe, knowing is half the battle, so here’s what to know about diving in Milford Sound. It’s deep, deep in Fiordland National Park, and if you want to get technical it is in fact a fjord, not a sound. (U-shaped, not V-shaped.) It’s saltwater, of course, but Fiordland gets a staggering amount of rainfall—more than the Amazon rainforest—which means there’s a blanket of freshwater over all that salty goodness. Someone please write to me and explain the physics of this, because for the life of me I can’t understand it, but freshwater filters light differently than saltwater. The effect of this is that all the sea life in Milford Sound thinks it’s way down deep when it’s not. Corals you find at 200 feet grow here just 30 feet down. So usually you would have to do some highly advanced technical diving to see the coolest coral I’ve ever seen in my life. These things can be 20 feet wide and 250 to 300 years old.*

There are plenty of cool animals in Milford too. Dolphins, sea lions, penguins, crazy clawless lobsters. I have to find my way into a job as a tank monkey on a dive boat down here, to really spend some quality time with these animals. That, or get to be a rich guy somehow and just fly my helicopter to my big-ass yacht and dive to my heart‘s content. I did see a helipad-equipped yacht in Milford, but then I remembered the sage advice I heard from Dave Chapelle: you don’t want a boat. You want a friend with a boat. That yacht with the helipad made the local news when it went $3 million over budget. I’ll take the cool orange G.I. Joe boat, thank you very much.

If knowing is half the battle, the other half is showing up. That was the really hard part, and that’s where my Festivus miracle kicked in. I signed up for this dive back in July, and a couple of weeks ago Descend emailed me let me know they needed a minimum of three clients to make the dive cost-effective. Uh oh: I was still the only one who had signed up. Apparently everybody else wants to be with their families on Christmas Eve. (Not that I don’t, but my family doesn’t want to go scuba diving in Milford Sound. Sometimes in life you have to make choices.)

Also, even if they found another two divers, there was the question of how to get there. Trying to plan four months’ worth of travel when you are Steve Bein means things will inevitably fall through the cracks. Way too many details to keep track of, not nearly enough attention to go around. It turns out one thing that slipped through the cracks was reserving a rental car to get from Bluff to Fiordland. Oops.

(And before you say it, yes, I could have just biked there—if I had an extra three days on either side. It’s 180 miles one way.)

So December 20, Booster and I roll into in Bluff. There I discover I don’t have a rental car, there isn’t a car available within 100 miles, and even if I can hitchhike my way to Milford, I’m still the only diver they’ve got. December 21, lots of creative thinking about how I will get my ass to Milford, just in case. Still only one diver. December 22, same story. Gulp.

Then, early morning on December 23, a true Festivus miracle! Three of them, in fact: a sudden glut of Covid cancellations frees up a bunch of rental cars; a second client signs up for the Christmas Eve dives; and in an extraordinary act of generosity Descend decides to take the financial hit and send out the G.I. Joe boat with only two paying customers.

So my Christmas scuba vacation started in bad shape (no Milford dive), got worse (no sharks), then got suddenly and dramatically better, all thanks to serendipity and the kindness of strangers.

*A quick disclaimer: I don’t own an underwater camera—I’ve found photography distracts me from the dive—so none of the diving pics here are mine. All those photo credits go to Descend, that most excellent dive company based in Milford Sound.

#TBT: Representation Matters

In the last few years, the word representation has taken a new meaning in the popular parlance. The first clause of that sentence is important. People of historically marginalized groups have talked about not being represented in popular media for a long, long time, but I haven’t really seen that enter into the vocabulary of the mainstream until recently. Here’s a bicyclist’s brief meditation on that.

I’ll be honest: prior to this adventure I could only take people at their word when they say representation matters. It doesn’t matter to me. It doesn’t have to, because people like me are represented in every medium, government office, and social institution I can think of. Even when I’ve lived in places where that’s not true—Japan, for example—it still didn’t matter to me, because it didn’t need to. I could always just go back where I came from. So it’s pretty easy for guys like me to assume it doesn’t matter to anyone—i.e., that other people are making a mountain out of a molehill— which is why my default position has been to just assume people are telling the truth when they say it really does matter, even though I couldn’t see how it matters myself.

But then I was riding along and I saw this sign:

In Australia and New Zealand, legally you’ve got to give me 1.5 meters between my bike and your car. This sign doesn’t show anything like that. It shows a car passing me in a way that threatens my life. And it does that through poor representation. It leaves out something the driver thinks of as pretty lightweight and the bicyclist thinks of as a clear and present danger: the side mirror.

That’s arguably the part that matters most: the one that comes closest to hitting me every day. (And when I’m on the road, it is every day.) The sign shows 1.5 meters between the center of my tire and the center of the car tire, but what I need is 1.5 meters between my handlebar and your mirror. So let’s see what that would look like.

Booster’s handlebars are about a meter wide. That’s the green line. The yellow line, then, is 1.5 meters. (Or as close as I could get, anyway. My photoshopping is one step above fingerpaint.) So as far as representation goes, 1.5 meters is about the distance from my hand to the car stereo. My distance to the deadly side mirror is only a few centimeters. So the representation I get in the sign tells drivers their recklessness is perfectly fine.

I did find one sign where my representation is even worse. This one says bicyclists are actually invisible.

What I really need all these signs to say is, To pass me safely at least half of your car needs to be in the neighboring lane. That’s 1.5 meters, measured in terms you can actually see, not just envision abstractly. The existing Share The Road signs really say this:

To this the non-bicyclist can say just what I’ve been thinking all these years: okay, I’ll take it on faith that this really matters to you, but to me it feels like you’re blowing things out of proportion. After all, the roadsides aren’t littered with bike-entangled corpses. And okay, fine, there’s a kernel of truth to that. However:

• Bicycle touring is awesome, and lots of people won’t do it specifically because of inattentive drivers.

• Mountain biking without knowing what you’re doing is objectively less dangerous than riding where cars are. That is fucking crazy.

And most importantly:

• I had to develop a whole catalogue of defensive riding strategies to prevent you from killing me when you’re behind the wheel.

Now, lest we mistake this post for a straight white able-bodied man complaining about how he’s not represented well, I’ll remind you these road signs were the dope slap I needed to see the true nature of the problem. One of my Top Ten Favorite Comics, Sam Jay, said she didn’t know she was gay because there were no gay Black women for her to see growing up. (Skip ahead to 3:00 for that specific bit.) The road signs were all wrong. LGBTQ teens are at significantly greater risk of suicide because the road signs are all wrong, stigmatizing gay kids and normalizing their maltreatment. And the list goes on.

Sam Jay

Don’t listen to me on this stuff. Listen to Sam. I’m only writing this because sometimes in life you need to own your shit. I think a lot of guys like me understand that gay people know how to “act straight” and people of color know how to “talk white” because those defensive strategies can be life-savers. But the connection between bad signage (poor representation) and road accidents (serious harm) isn’t necessarily as clear. Not to me, anyway, not until now.

Mise En Place

A reader wrote to ask me what I’ve been eating and how I cook it. I’m a pretty decent camp cook—thank you, Outward Bound, for setting me on that path—but for bikepacking I throw all that to the wind. My day is too packed to do fancy things like bake bread, plus I don’t have the space to stock my kitchen for it. On the bike it’s all about Keep It Simple, Stupid.

I accidentally struck upon my current system somewhere in the middle of Tasmania, and I don’t mind patting myself on the back for it. I’m quite pleased with how it’s worked out. The most important principle is this: tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast are the same thing.

That means whatever I cook has to be tasty both hot and cold. Obviously the first thought there is macaroni and cheese. I love cold mac and cheese. I was stunned the first time I heard somebody say they didn’t like it. I just thought everybody loved it, the same way everybody thinks Han Solo is cooler than Luke Skywalker. I still remember the first Luke Skywalker fan I ever met, too. I still don’t get it.

Eating the same thing for dinner and breakfast cuts cooking time in half and also doubles the lifespan of a fuel canister. That was a lot more important in Tasmania, where fuel was hard to come by and I spent so much of it boiling water to make my Peruvian babies. That’s a Nalgene full of piping hot water, which you keep in your jacket (looking rather pregnant) to stay warm. In Tasmanian high country in late winter, or Peruvian way-up-high country (which is where I conceived this trick) I recommend two bottles, the second down by your feet in your sleeping bag. In Tassie there were plenty of nights I had wake up and reboil the water (which wasn’t true even at 15,000’ in Peru). That’s a lot of fuel, which inspired the system of repeat meals.

My other favorite dinner/breakfast is Moroccan couscous. It comes in a box mix at the better grocery stores down here, an envelope of couscous and a packet of spices. It’s an idiot-proof dish, and for variety you can stir in all kinds of different goodies. Just be careful to pick additions you’d also enjoy for breakfast. My top two faves are dried cranberries and fresh cucumbers and tomatoes.

I do variations on the mac and cheese too, but these are limited to:

1. Add chili flakes

2. Add garlic powder

Any kind of potato is good for dinner-breakfast too, and all of them improve with chili flakes or garlic powder. Cheddar cheese is good for every meal and doesn’t need refrigeration. Just wrap it in something and don’t pack it in the hottest, most sun-exposed part of your bag. Ditto cream cheese bagels. If I have an AirBnB with a toaster I’ll make a whole sleeve of them the night before and that’ll be breakfast and lunch.

The other staples of my diet are mandarin oranges, bananas, hard-boiled eggs, a large variety of chocolate, and when I’m lucky, some tasty selections from the bulk food section of New World. That’s a grocery chain I had never seen before arriving in Wellington, and it is the bee’s knees. It is to grocery stores what the Alamo Drafthouse is to movie theatres: more fun, more creative, more better. I ride through some pretty small towns, so I’m not always lucky enough to find one, but I think they should be everywhere. In the bulk section, I highly recommend the maple coconut almonds, BBQ cashews, and chocolate-covered salted caramels. Mmmmmm, caramels.

As for how I cook, my entire kitchen is one pot, a spatula that doubles as a spoon, and the kind of camp stove you screw onto a standard fuel canister. I’ve pared my spice cabinet down to salt, chili flakes, cinnamon, and garlic powder, plus the occasional sugar packet swiped from a cafe. Anything cinnamon, chili, or garlic can’t fix isn’t worth fixing.

I get most of my water from the largesse of strangers—farmhouses and cafe staff are my most frequent donors—and also a fair amount from streams and the occasional lake. Flowing water is better. Deep, fast flowing water is best.

Maybe you’ll think this is gross, but when I cook for myself I don’t use soap. I clean my dishes, of course, but humanity has yet to invent a true Leave No Trace dish soap. Instead, I use a variant of the Outward Bound method. I eat straight from the pot, and I eat all of it. Every grain of couscous, every last drop of sauce. For this a spoon isn’t good enough; you need a rubber spatula. Then I boil water to make tea. If you finish your breakfast thoroughly—every last smear of it—then the only thing left in the pot will be trace amounts of oil or fat. These vanish in a liter of tea. Stir that boiling water with your spatula and voilà, you’ve sterilized your whole kitchen sans soap.

Usually I boil another liter of tea before dinner, not to double-sterilize but because I only carry one pot. If I need a Peruvian baby, I’ll make the tea even before I unpack. Much easier to stay warm than to get warm.

So that’s it: the simplest system I can devise that doesn’t rely on those gourmet boil-in bags. Or soap.

How Do You Feel?

That’s the question I’ve been getting the most from the friends and family I’ve been in touch with the last two days. I’m having trouble answering it.

The immediate answer is tired. This may sound like a stupid thing to say, but I really had no inkling of how hard I’ve been pushing myself. I’ve had some restful days over the last two months. but no true day of rest—like, no to-do list, no prep for tomorrow, nothing but relaxation. Today I had that, and I became a zombie. Naps every few hours, fogginess the rest of the time. Somehow I managed to bake myself a congratulatory chocolate cake, but to be honest I only barely remember where I got the groceries.

(A quick aside about AUS/NZ food: these people do not understand salt and sugar. The Oreos here are only okay. Crisps are not potato chips and chips are not french fries, because potato chips and french fries are supposed to be salty enough to hospitalize you. When I bought my box mix of chocolate cake, I thought it was neat that it comes with a packet of frosting. No need to buy a second item, less plastic packaging, good idea all around, right? Wrong. I had to go back to the store to get ingredients for a proper buttercream because the included packet was enough for a paper-thin crumb coat scraped over 3/4 of the surface of the cake. (See before and after pics below.) I know, I know: the average American diet ranks among the worst ever devised in human history. But when it comes to dessert, USA! USA! USA!)

So to review, answer number one to the question was tired. Answer number two is sore. Old. Spaghetti legs. Waking from a nap feels less like getting up and more like breaking loose, as if someone encased me in mud while I was asleep and allowed the mud to dry.

Which means answer number three is nostalgic. When I was still actively training as a martial artist, that mud-entombed feeling is how I felt every morning. I’d say it’s a miracle I never felt this arthritic during the ride, but the fact is it’s because I was riding that I didn’t feel this bad. Until now my legs always had at least a warm-up activity.

But none of these answers really gets at what people are asking. How do I feel emotionally?

That’s the one it’s so hard to answer. I don’t know that I have a name for it, and when you don’t have a name for a feeling it’s awfully hard to talk about it. (How did the English language persist so long without the word hangry? And now that we have it, isn’t it so much easier to diagnose and treat?) After the summit of the Crown Range, my guidebooks made it look like the last three days of the ride were going to be easy. Here’s what I said about them at the time:

There’s no such thing as “all downhill from here” in New Zealand—they just don’t do flat land around here—but of all the hills between me and Bluff, there’s only one you could really call a giant. From here to Bluff, the general trend is I’ll go to sleep at a lower elevation than where I woke up that morning.

Ha! If you believe in jinxes, maybe it’s because I wrote that that the wind shifted south. It howled right in my face for the next three days. On day two, the wind was so strong that I was pedaling downhill just to make eight miles an hour. Merciless wind can grind you down as surely as any mountain, and when you add cold and rain to the mix… well, Yours Truly gets Tasmanian flashbacks again.

So here’s the feeling that’s hard to name. For the last week or two I was feeling bummed that the ride would soon be over. I found myself planning what to ride next. Maybe catch a bus to Milford Sound and ride back. Maybe take a run at that Top of the South Track I read about. I didn’t want to be done. But now? I am happy to be done. The TA’s last three days were murder, and I’m glad they were, because they left no room for any sense of anticlimax. It’s all catharsis. It’s all I can’t believe I did it.

What’s the word for that? Not relief. Not pride. Not even catharsis. The Greeks had this lovely word, agonia, which meant the struggle of fighting a worthy opponent. Not pain, not pleasure, a painfully pleasurable category of its own. That comes pretty close to how I’m feeling.

There’s no doubt the TA was a worthy opponent. It began as it started: three days of strong wind out of the southeast.  Nothing erodes morale more than an unrelenting wind, and this one seemed to have a personal grudge against me. Those first two days on Ninety Mile Beach, I rode 80 kilometers into that wind. Yesterday, I rode 75 kilometers into the same wind. So after two months of struggle with my worthy opponent, I’m twice as strong as I was. I did in one day what used to take two. It feels pretty damn good to be able to say that, but you have to survive a pretty damn agonizing day to say it.

Here’s the last thing I’m feeling, and it may be the most important: I feel like a door has opened. I’ve definitely got the bikepacking bug. This needs to be a part of my life long term. I’ve got a couple of my travel buddies dreaming and scheming, and I’m dreaming and scheming too. (Sam, I know you hate bicycling, but you probably run faster than I ride. You can just run a marathon every day and the rest of us will carry your gear.) This wasn’t a vacation, it was an adventure, and you don’t come back from an adventure unchanged. I look forward to discovering what exactly has changed.

Maybe that sounds like closure, but I’m still not done with this blog. Stay tuned and I will fill you in on all the as-yet unposted stories from the ride.

Scavenger Hunt: South Island Edition

This is the second go-around on this theme. My TA guidebooks give me 30 photo checkpoints, 15 per island. Here’s batch two:

16. Maungatapu Saddle. The two kilometers before the saddle are the nastiest climb on the South Island. They also look like the greenest, sunniest part of Mordor.

17. Lake Rotoroa. Sandfly hell. The five seconds it took to take this photo were the only five seconds I wasn’t wearing a mosquito head-net.

18. Maruia Saddle Road. Those six river crossings were what soaked my shoes so thoroughly that I felt the need to bake them.

19. Waiuta Track boardwalk. The beginning of my favorite leg of the ride, but not my favorite photo ever. Mist, rain, and soaked gloves made it tough to clear the lenses.

20. Greymouth Bar lookout. Also the site of my favorite sign in the southern hemisphere.

21. Hokitika Clock Tower. Like Flavor Flav, it knows what time it is.

22. Lake Ianthe. Nothing to write home about, unless you count this sentence.

23. Fox Glacier. Even in retreat it makes for cool photography.

24. Knights Point lookout. Yet another scenic vista washed out by fog and rain. Meh.

25. Haast Pass. This was a really cool riding day. I will post about it later.

26. Hawea River Bridge. Kiwis love their swing bridges and I love riding across them. So bouncy!

27. The Cardrona Hotel. Established in 1863, it’s one of the oldest hotels in New Zealand. It’s like the TARDIS, bigger inside than out. It’s also just up the road from this crazy wall of bras.

28. Anything in Queenstown. This is a view of the Eyre Mountains through a porthole of the historic steamship Earnslaw. The Earnslaw has been ferrying people (and bicycles) across Lake Wakatipu since 1912, and miraculously the original engine is still running. They really knew how to build ‘em back then.

29. A Southland local. We’re in love and we’re gonna get married.

29 again. A Southland local. We’re in love and we’re gonna get married.

30. Stirling Point, Bluff signpost. I made it!

I Did It!

I made it to Bluff! 60 days, 3,000 kilometers, one tired boy. Later I’ll have more to say about how I feel about this, and there will be out-of-order posts to come after that because I’m about two weeks behind. For now I just wanted to get it on the record: I made it!

Signs and Portents, North Island Edition

No lame poor tents pun this time because Old Nylonsides is holding up well. Here’s your second installment from my collection of sign photos.

Let’s start with Te Reo Māori, the Māori language. I’ll have to comment on this more in a later post, but of all the places I’ve been in my various travels, I’ve never seen an indigenous culture fare so well against its colonizer as the Māori people. Bilingual representation in a simple caution sign is just one case in point.

Next up: you can tell a lot about a culture by its signage.

And its geography too….

Finally, wildlife. Kiwi protection I understand. Frankenstein’s monster protection, not so much.

That Bikepacker Look

So I’m sitting in the dining room of the Formerly Blackball Hilton, a formerly classy hotel in the formerly mining town of Blackball, seated before an empty plate of formerly ginger pudding, when out of the blue a woman asks me if I’m a bikepacker. An oddly specific question, no? But it takes one to know one, I guess. I say yes and she high-fives her partner and says, “I knew it!”

Apparently we have a look, we bikepackers. Definitely not the look of locals from Blackball, anyway. For one thing, apart from me these two are the only ones wearing Patagucci. For another, my first thought when I walked into the Formerly’s bar earlier that afternoon was the distinct impression that all three of the old-timers in there could have died 100 years ago, perhaps when some mining accident sent a cloud of noxious gas through the town, and their ghosts just kept the tab running. All three looked at me without speaking, while the bartender gave me this baleful look that said don’t ask, just walk away.

Our bikes have a look too, even when  most of the bags are in our hotel rooms. “We spotted your Bedrock,” the woman tells me. She and her sweetie-pie recognized my handlebar roll from Bedrock Bags because they also ride with Bedrock bags, which for them is shopping local. They live in Durango, the lucky ducks. Just being there levels you up in mountain biking. I’m not even sure you need a bike; I think you just absorb skills and quad strength from the air.

Her name is Nichole and his name is Payson. She’s got an easy Liv Tyler charm and he has a mustache worthy of Nietzsche. They’re young and fit and yes I think I would look just like them if I lived in Durango. They’re at the Formerly on their way to ride the epic Old Ghost Road, a nearby MTB track. This is their idea of an easy little ride to do for fun after work, the work being the documentary they just finished shooting in Tasmania. It turns out both of them are a Very Big Deal in the world of mountain biking. They both have corporate sponsorships, they both ride seriously kick-ass bikes, and they both go on epic quests with writers and camera crews in tow. The most recent of these was Payson‘s ride across Tasmania in 32 hours. Yes, that’s 360 kilometers in 32 hours. All in one push. He is a reigning world champion bike marathoner, and Tassie is the latest of many feathers in his cap.

I pull my chair over to their table and we get to chatting, and somehow this turns into an invitation to be interviewed for their podcast. At this point I have no idea who these people are. I wouldn’t find out they are a Very Big Deal until later. (I will say going into an interview blindly is certainly better than going in starstruck.) They’re just really nice and we have some strange commonalities of recent experience, including Nichole’s nonprofit work in Uganda and Payson’s recent ride in Tasmania—though it goes without saying that my ride doesn’t resemble Payson’s in the slightest. All the venomous snakes were still hibernating when I was down there, and I had already left before a biblical flood hit. The Mersey River was my deepest crossing at about chest-high. It’s twenty feet deeper now. Booster would be ten feet underwater in this photo.

Anyhow, the upshot is they have a pretty cool podcast called The Adventure Stache, and Yours Truly is in what would have been the most recent episode if I were up to date on this blog. Here’s a link. Or you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

As the Worst Bikepacker in New Zealand, I now have two claims to fame. One: thank you, Nichole and Payson, for making me episode 200 of your show. Two: you’re welcome, Payson, for me loaning you my bike pump. Get it together, man. A pump is literally the first piece of equipment you need after the bicycle. Seriously, I’m happy to bail your ass out but you need to up your game if you’re going to make it in this sport.

Final Update From The Oddsmaker

I’m running about two weeks behind on this blog, but yesterday was a big day so it’s worth jumping ahead at least for one post. I am feeling pretty damn good about yesterday.

Last night I camped atop the Crown Range Summit, which at 1,076 meters (3,530’) is the highest point of the Tour Aotearoa. It’s also the tour’s last serious climb. There’s no such thing as “all downhill from here” in New Zealand—they just don’t do flat land around here—but of all the hills between me and Bluff, there’s only one you could really call a giant. From here to Bluff, the general trend is I’ll go to sleep at a lower elevation than where I woke up that morning.

Booster and I followed a hiking trail a little higher up the mountain to reach an even 1,100 meters (3,600’) and to slip out of view of the road. This was mostly because headlights spoil night vision, but I won’t lie to you, it’s also because where we camped wasn’t exactly what you’d call legal. I wouldn’t call it illegal either, but I’d need a lawyer to parse the finer points of my argument. We camped there for two reasons: to watch the stars and to savor the moment.

I now put my chances of finishing the TA “on schedule“ at 90%. I cannot rule out mechanical failures or car accidents, but finally I can say with confidence that my body can do this. Yesterday was the last major physical challenge*, and like I said, I’m feeling pretty damn good about it. Forty kilometers, all uphill, and I did it without any hike-a-biking. That’s a big deal for me. It means my knees and back felt good and my mind’s little games didn’t talk them out of it. Also, I reached the summit knowing I could have ridden a lot further. Another big deal. Queenstown was still another forty-five kilometers away and I could have reached it easily.

Biggest deal of them all: yesterday’s average speed doubled my hill-climbing speed in Tasmania. Double an ain’t-shit number still ain’t shit, but that’s the logic of the critic, not the man in the arena.

Simply put, I didn’t think I could do it. Even that morning I didn’t think I could do it. A month ago I couldn’t have done it, twenty-four hours ago I didn’t think I could, and twelve hours ago I did it.

I cannot believe how much stronger I am. I can’t believe how much my technique has improved. I never imagined how strategic I’ve become even when it comes to things like grocery shopping, to say nothing of packing, pacing, and taming what Zen practitioners call the monkey mind.

So I foresee finishing the TA in the next few days, but honestly it doesn’t matter what happens after this. I did what I came down here to do. Plus I got to spend a cold night under the stars celebrating it. More on that later—so, just to be clear, me saying mission accomplished doesn’t spell the end of the blog. I’m two weeks behind with another two weeks of travel ahead. I’ll catch you up eventually, I promise. For now just know Yours Truly is feeling good.

*ETA: Not! Holy shit, was I wrong about that. See “How Do You Feel” for just how wrong.

I Was Attacked By New Zealand’s Most Aggressive Predator

I have looked into the eye of evil and it is avian.

It is the New Zealand magpie, and it is more aggressive to bicyclists than any other animal in the country. (If I’m honest, the only aggressive one, unless you count douchebag drivers.)

For a few weeks a year—basically all the weeks I’m riding here—it has eggs or fledglings in the nest, and that makes it defensive as hell. These little bastards hang out in groups in the fields, watching for trouble, and when you see a squadron of them take to the air you could swear you hear them squawking “lock S-foils in attack positions.”

I have learned to scan pine trees in particular for these nasty little dive-bombers. That’s what they do: they follow you down the road, hovering menacingly, then stoop into a bombing run and peck you in the head. I have taken three shots to the helmet. Fortunately none to the ear—yet—though I’m told that happens.

There are two other birds for bikepackers (and campers in general) have to worry about here, but I like these ones. First is the kea. Isn’t it adorable?

The kea is a rarity: an endangered species that’s cute and charismatic, yet one the locals don’t really want to come back. They’re about the size of a macaw and just as loud. A kea’s beak is hooked and sharp, and I found this one standing on someone’s van trying to peel all the rubber bits off. They’re clever but quite destructive.

The danger to campers is they’re cheeky enough to steal your stuff. Same goes for the bigger, more prevalent, equally kleptomaniacal wēkā.

Wēkā are about the size of a small chicken. They’re flightless, and once you get to the South Island you learn they are anything but endangered. They’re also stealthy, unlike the noisy and clumsy kea, but like kea they’re interested in more than food. I met a three-year-old who lost her favorite stuffed animal to a wēkā.

I like kea, despite the fact that one of them kept waking me up one night messing around with Booster. I could hear it clumping around like a drunk trying to unlock the door to the wrong apartment. That bellowing squawk shouldn’t be endearing, but somehow it is. I like to they’re introducing themselves but they haven’t mastered English grammar: “I KEA!”

I like wēkā too. They’re thieves, but thieves with character. But magpies? Hell no. They’re hellspawn.

My Favorite Bit, Pt. II: Ikamathreea

Okay, so last time I said my favorite part of the TA so far is the ride to Ikamatua. Maybe it doesn’t sound like it should be, since apart from the navigation problems and running out of water, the mountain just straight up kicked my ass. But it is, and I’ll show you why.

(Words can’t do it justice, so get ready for lots of pictures. I’ll apologize in advance for the photo quality in some of these. The only camera I have with me is Advanced Alien Technology, aka my iPhone, and phone photography gets tricky when you’re so rain-soaked that you have no way to dry your hands, your lenses, or the touchscreen.)

We left off last time with my first attempt at an ascent, ending with me running short on water. This was a Monday. I rolled back into Reefton with my tail between my legs. Out of self-pity and a need for nurturing I splurged on dinner at Dawson‘s, a hotel and restaurant in operation since 1874. The veggie Madras curry is killer, the kumara chips really come to life when you dip them in plum sauce, and they have a nice crisp cider on tap. Comfort food for the win

As I was stuffing my face with fried kumara, I saw three women walk in dressed for serious athletic activity, and on my way out I saw them again, checking out Booster. Turns out they’re part of the Reefton running club, but one of them is into cycle touring and another is thinking about getting into it. They were admiring Booster’s setup when I came outside.

It turns out the founder of the club, Emma, is a world record holder for running the entire length of New Zealand in 21 days. (Yes, that makes her three times faster on her feet than I am on wheels. And unlike me, she runs for charity. Worst Bikepacker in New Zealand at your service.) Emma also happens to be temporarily in charge of the best campsite in Reefton. The runners asked me where I’m staying tonight, I said I wasn’t sure, and one of them gave Emma the nod. Soon enough I was following her back to a quiet little glade where she hooked me up with a nice campsite.

So Tuesday morning, another run at Ikamatua, right? Wrong. I wake up to a very sore knee. Oh yeah, I think, the first thing I did yesterday morning was slam it into a rock at high speed. Suddenly today feels like a rest day.

On the one hand, that’s good. I could use the time to get some writing done. Booster’s shifter cable has been giving me some trouble too, and that could use some attention. Plus, as I’d learn later, there’s one pair of men’s size 11 shoes for sale in Reefton, and my current shoes are about as sturdy as the inside of a s’more.

On the other hand, there’s this amazing thing happening in the sky. I forget the word for it. It’s what happens when rain isn’t falling. Whatever it is, it means I could be riding and not wet at the same time. I barely remember what that even feels like. But no, my knee says today is a rest day.

In the knees lies wisdom. Listen to the knees. Not only did I get my work done, but the mountain got a lot of work done. This is yet another example of being careful of what you wish for. I thought I wanted to bike on a rain-free day, but no. Far better to bike the morning after a rain-free day.

Those meter-deep pools? Mere centimeters now. The mountain spent all of Tuesday draining, so Wednesday morning instead of pushing or dragging Booster through one swamp after another, I just rode the whole way up.

Navigation problems? Solved in advance. I’ve already been where I need to go. Steep as hell hike-a-bike? All right, I there was still some of that, but a much lower grade than Monday’s route, never so dire that I had to take the bags off the bike. Compared to last time, I felt like I was sprinting up the trail.

So on my third day I finally made it all 25 kilometers to Big River Hut. This by itself already nominates the path to Ikamatua for my favorite part of the TA, because I got my ass kicked so hard on Monday and came back in such fine form on Wednesday. The Rocky to Rocky II story arc is just so gratifying. But the ride is about to get better.

Just below the hut, after a couple of river crossings, you ride past relics of the gold rush era. That’s where you discover why they tell you not to drink the water or touch the soil: a byproduct of gold mining is cyanide.

But once you’re above the mines, you’re in the clear. Runoff doesn’t run uphill. So on I go, and this is where things get magical: the Waiuta Track.

The Waitua Track starts with a lookalike of the Dead Marshes, yes, that is their name. I did not follow the lights.

Then comes the emerald forest. Not its name but I don’t know what else to call it. Stones, branches, tree trunks, all of them draped in green.

Then comes the Girdle of Melian. Again, not its name. It’s an obnoxiously obscure Tolkien reference, but basically this is the part of the trail where I become convinced elvish sorcery is trying to get me lost. No doubt the same elf-witch is the one who clouded my mind and flummoxed my GPS two days earlier, sending me up the wrong mountain.

Having made that mistake, I was especially on guard for wrong turns and imprecise instructions. So it didn’t sit easily with me when it looked like I was supposed to ride off the trail and into the river. But I double-checked my guidebook, studied the (possibly bewitched) land, and decided leaving the track for the river was in fact correct.

And it was! Riding down the river, ducking under fallen trees, I’m smiling bigger than I’ve smiled this whole ride. This is officially the coolest bike trail ever.

How badass is that? This is where Galadriel and Yoda go mountain biking together. It can’t possibly get better than this.

But the Waitua Track isn’t done. Not by a long shot. Next you get to the winding track hugging the serpentine curves of the mountain. On your right you’ve got a sheer wall, on your left a precipitous drop into the cloud forest.

As you can see, the trail is about double Booster’s width. She’s got some junk in the trunk, so double her big ol’ badonkadonk is plenty of room. It’s not a tightrope, you’re not going to fall. But don’t fall.

By this point I’ve made too much progress and the elf sorceress is displeased. The rain turns to sleet. Honestly, sleet! On a 60° day. The trail gets mushy. Those outside curves get scarier. I keep riding, and then she gives up all her elvish subtlety.

A sign and a fence: you shall go no further. Someone has taken down the fence, though, so Booster and I venture on to see what the fuss is about. 2D photography can’t really convey steepness at all, but I’ll give it a shot:

The trail has completely washed away. Those red lines trace where it’s supposed to be, and the red shaded area is now just empty space. Even a tightrope walker couldn’t inch along the inside edge, because there isn’t an edge. It’s just a sheer drop.

(Just parenthetically, if you think my photoshopping looks janky, I agree. But I’ll have you know, friends and family have commented on how dramatically my technological skills have improved. These shaky red lines aren’t just the best I can do, they far exceed all expectations anyone ever had of me. Worst Bikepacker, meet Worst Compooterer.)

The proper elvish way around this washout is to ride into this cave…

…then pedal exactly 13 times, which sends you 13 miles through impenetrable darkness. Then you reveal the magic password you have tattooed on your body in elvish, and this opens an exit for you through a magic tree:

But I can’t do that. I am untattooed and these photos ate faked. Instead, I got to follow the brand new route laid down by the good people of the New Zealand Department of Conservation. The rangers sent some schmuck up here to find a way over the mountain and put up orange triangles along the way. I’ll tell you, these were a lot easier to spot than they were to get to.

So for the second time I had to strip Booster of all the gear I could, push her a ways up, then go back for her bags. Waiuta Track, you’re now officially steeper than anything I’ve ridden in the last three months. Which, come to think of it, is steeper than anything in the preceding 49 years. Well done, you.

So here’s the last reason the ride to Ikamatua is my favorite leg of the TA. It’s entirely possible that no human being has ever camped where I camped Wednesday night. The schmuck who put up the orange triangles wouldn’t have needed to. He’d have just hiked back down to his DOC-issue pickup truck and driven home. It’s possible some intrepid Māori kid camped up here once, though it’s hard imagine why anyone would. It’s a pain in the ass to get to and the only thing up here is moss. The only reason I can think of for anyone to camp here is if the trail you were supposed to follow washed out, the brand new alternative route pushed you over the mountain, and you were too tired to ride down to a campsite that has, you know, flat ground and running water. Toilets. Maybe even a shower.

They have those at Big River Hut, which is why normal people camp there. But no one who camped there would make camp again just nine kilometers later, on this random pain-in-the-ass hill where camping is quasi-legal at best. No, a reasonable person just pushes on down to the trail and rides out.

But not the Worst Bikepacker in New Zealand. It took him three days to reach Big River Hut, and he thought I’ll be damned if I’m only going to ride 25 kilometers today. So big manly man that he is, he rode all of 34 kilometers, until he found himself where in all likelihood no one has ever camped in that exact spot. As of this writing, probably only a few dozen in human history have ever set foot up there. I just think that’s cool. Plus I was bloody tired.

So this was the view from my tent that night, and I’m willing to bet I’m the first person ever who could have taken this picture.

My Favorite Bit, Pt. I: Tasmanian Flashbacks

I think I’ve found my favorite leg of the TA: the ride to Ikamatua. I can’t speak for what’s coming down the road, of course, but I’ve only got five hundred kilometers to go (only!) so if the TA is going to top Ikamatua, it’ll have to pull out all the stops.

Because I’m the Worst Bikepacker in New Zealand, this is a three-parter. Part one starts in Reefton, a quaint, funky little town that played an important role in New Zealand’s nineteenth century gold rush. It’s half Deadwood, half Yellow Springs. Great food, too. For my money the Broadway Bakery is second only to the Wakey Bakey in Wakefield.

One of the great things about little towns like this is the weird places you can stay. I chose The Nurses’ Home, a seventy-year-old dormitory built for all the nurses of Reefton’s (then newly founded) medical center. A charming building, loads of character, but the best feature for me was the really hot bath. Nothing better for the post-ride legs.

I set out from Reefton early because I knew it would be a big climbing day.  Yet another gray, rainy day on the South Island, but it makes for cooler riding with less risk of sunburn, so I’ll take it. Farm roads gave way to gravel, then 4WD trail as the ride ascended into gold mining country. You’re warned not to drink the water here or even touch the soil. That’s how nasty the environmental footprint of mining can be.

But this is mountain biking, so it’s not always up to me whether I touch the soil. Sometimes the soil reaches up to touch me. My first hard fall was a river crossing, when Booster’s front tire found a pit and slammed sideways into the rock shelf on the far side. I did a fair impression of Javy Báez stealing home, but somehow came away with only a few cuts and no serious injuries. And hey, the soil didn’t melt my skin.

But as I climbed on, the mountain reminded me more and more of the Wellington Range on Tassie—specifically, the notorious Jeffries Track where I had my fateful night that ended with police helicopters. The terrain was steep and sharp like the TT, the rock as loose and given to slipping, the drizzle as persistent, and the trail as flooded in so many places. Even the water was the same color I saw on the Jeffries Track, like Thai iced tea.

In some places the water was over a meter deep. I went into my hips; Booster went into her handlebars. She’d have gone deeper if I’d let go; I had visions of Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing sinking into the swamp. To complete that dismal picture, my GPS compooter was beeping and whistling at me like a peevish R2 unit.

But my droid’s brain is scrambled. Yet another flashback to Tassie: navigational errors. I would later learn my mistake, one I humbly suggest would not have happened if my guidebook were to swap the order of two sentences. After the giant gold fields sign, it says to ignore all the offshoots and just skip to the main track. It needs to say that after you take one very important offshoot. Otherwise you follow—or at least Booster and I followed—the main track as it goes up the wrong mountain.

What followed was the steepest climbing I’ve seen yet. Even Tasmania never forced me to strip all the bags off of Booster, push her up the hill, then double back for the baggage. Triple the walking distance with half the weight. In hindsight, maybe I should have guessed that this was too hard a climb for the TA. The Kennett brothers, bless their hearts, would never sign me up for this misery when they put the tour together. Right?

Wrong. They sent me down the Kaiwhakauka-Mangapurura Track. They sent me over the Maungatapu Saddle. I can’t imagine anyone being able to pedal up the trail I followed from Reefton, but in all outdoor endeavors it behooves one to keep an important principle in mind: none of this was designed for you. You’re the one who came out here to give it a go. Success—or even fair odds of success—was never guaranteed.

Well, no one can say I didn’t give it a go. I followed that unbikeable track all the way to the top. That’s where I ran into a T intersection that’s not in the guidebook. That was my first indicator that I had done something wrong. The problem wasn’t only the one sentence I misinterpreted, but also that my compooter affirmed the guidebook’s ambiguous instruction. As I’ve mentioned before, my pooter is wrong more often than it’s right. What makes this one better than the last one is that its mistakes are predictable. I learned this right from the first day, on Ninety Mile Beach: it kept telling me I was going the wrong way, then self-correcting. That has been its pattern ever since.

Which is fine, considering I’m asking it to do something it’s not programmed to do. Any route over 200 kilometer is beyond its ability. I keep it around because in seven weeks of riding, there have been two or three times when it did alert me to a wrong turn. The day it does that, it justifies its continued existence. It did that on the Ikamatua ride too, but then incorrectly self-corrected. That’s why I didn’t catch the error.

Cut to the next Tassie flashback: the personal locator beacon. I didn’t hit the SOS button this time. I just remembered the beacon knows my exact latitude and longitude. Like, to five decimal points. And because navigation was such a struggle on the TT, I downloaded two nifty apps: incredibly fine-grained topographical maps, one of the North Island, one of the South. They’re accurate to five decimal points. So between the PLB and the map, I could work out exactly where I was and how to get back down to where I needed to be.

Not bad for a technophobe with no direction sense, eh? I was pretty proud of myself. But pride goeth before the fall. A precise map is an invaluable tool, but even the best maps only approximate the world. Roads change. Backwoods 4WD trails change faster. I followed my most promising path as far as it would go, and when it tapered to a dead end, my only recourse was to go all the way back down where I came from.

Which brings me to my final Tasmanian flashback: water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. I had planned to refill at Big River Hut, which my guidebook says is the lone source of uncontaminated water on that mountain. After my detour, I got back to the (correct) path to Big River Hut with one empty bottle and 200 mL left in the other. If the (correct) trail was anything like the first one, that just ain’t enough water.

From here it’s a fast twelve-kilometer downhill cruise back to Reefton. More like six to the nearest farmhouse, where I’m sure I can refill. That would have me start my ride to Ikamatua at about 4:00 PM, after 30 kilometers of the steepest riding and hike-a-biking I’ve done yet. Or I can retreat to that nice hot bathtub.

I chose neither, but this post is already overlong, so I’ll tell you about what happened next in the next post. There’s a world record runner involved, and Dr. Kate, plus an elf-witch of terrible power.

Not A Freudian Slip

An actual conversation I had:

Kiwi dude: “After dinner, if you want to come out you can sit on my dick.“

Me: “Uh… what?“

“If you feel like coming out, I have a nice big dick. My wife hates me going on and on about it, but I’m pretty proud of it.”

“Your…”

“My dick. Come on, I’ll show you.” [motions toward the dining room, where his wife isn’t]

“Oh, no, that’s OK. I’m not really into—“

“What, dicks? I thought you Americans liked ‘em.”

“I… I don’t think it works that way.”

“Sure. You lot are famous for all your big houses with the big lawns. I just assumed you’d all have big dicks.“

“Oh, your deck.”

“Yis.”

“Sure. I’d be happy to come out with you and sit on your big deck.”

#TBT: People Who Were Nice To Me, North Island Edition

Apologies in advance for not having photos of most of these wonderful people. Somehow it feels rude to ask.

Jermo and Eline: A couple of Dutch climbers I met on the road to Arohena Landing. There was supposed to be a campsite right on Lake Arohena—indeed there is; see picture above—but the road to it terminated in a locked gate with a giant herd of cattle on the other side. You may remember this entire saga started with a detour circumventing the Tasmanian Trail’s official trailhead because an angry bull lives up there. Getting gored was a bad idea then and a bad idea now.

Plus, that time there was just the one bull, as compared to a mob of them here. I didn’t see what else to do other than ride back up the hill and find somewhere else to camp. Then I crossed paths with Jermo and Eline, whose GPS showed the Arohena Landing campsite was exactly where I thought it was. Unlike Booster and me, these two were bull-proof in their rental car. So they provided me with Secret Service protection and we all had a nice time eating dinner and enjoying a clear night of absolutely stunning stars.

I still had to ride past all the bulls the next morning, by the way. In my nervousness I forgot the words to the Litany Against Fear, but pleasedon’tgoremepleasedon’tgoremepleasedon’tgoreme worked well enough in its stead.

Maggie the Dog: Played fetch with me at my Airbnb in Matamata. She is a very good girl.

The University of Wellington Philosophy Department: They hosted me for a talk, fed me all too well, and served as the perfect anchor point for a highly productive week of research and writing. Special thanks to Sondra Bacharach, who coordinated the event, taught me the correct pronunciation of kumara, and also co-edited the fun, provocative, insightful LEGO and Philosophy, in which Yours Truly has a chapter on the Dao of LEGO.

Kiwi Steve: I met him on the Timber Trail at the same time we both met an Australian dude named Steve. I have to keep us straight somehow. Anyway, Kiwi Steve has a $10,000 e-bike and when he heard I’ve never ridden an e-bike before, he passed his over to me without question. Hot damn! It’s like being fired out of a slingshot. In Boost mode you can climb anything.

Heather and Case: A charming, down to earth couple I almost literally ran into on the Timber Trail. They were coming down the same hill I was coming up. Fortunately for all three of us, they were moving cautiously because the guy ahead of me had swerved right into their path. Case asked, “Are you the American?”

“That’s me.”

“Good on you staying to the left, then. The last idiot veered right.”

How he knew “the American” was riding this trail I didn’t know. Maybe he watches Tasmanian news? Turns out the dude ahead of me was none other than Kiwi Steve, and he warned Heather and Case that the American behind him might also veer the wrong way.

Case and his wife Heather are doing retirement the way it’s meant to be: on the road. They’ve been cycle touring together for close to fifty years, and now they’re slowing their pace just a bit. They put a bike rack on their kickass blue and white campervan, the only one of its kind because Case built it himself out of a Japanese bus. They insisted I stop by his creeation at the next campsite because they’d have some trail notes and a cup of tea for me.

In addition to tea, trail notes, and excellent conversation, I also got the healthiest camp dinner I’ve had yet, thanks to Heather raiding their camper for fruits, veggies, and protein. I left a few kilos heavier, I’m sure. She invited me for breakfast the next morning too, but we only had tea. Otherwise I’d never have been able to climb the next mountain.

Vicky the Chef: She runs the kitchen at Blue Duck Station, which in my head can only be a Lonesome Dove reference but in NZ apparently it’s a real bird. Blue Duck is the last stop before the feared Kaiwhakauka-Mangapurua Track, and it’s best to be well fortified before taking that on. When I got there, the station restaurant was closed for a private event, but I didn’t pick up on that. I saw one occupied table, figured the place was open, so I just wandered in and sat. The manager said it was up to her chef whether I would get food or not. Vicky not only served me but gave me the Wi-Fi password, told me the best place to camp, and told me what time to show up tomorrow morning if I wanted a bit of (still private function) breakfast before riding out.

It turns out Vicky is a kindred spirit—a runner more than a biker, but she rides too. She gets type-2 fun. Ready to retire but she’s still working because Whanganui National Park is a pretty damn cool commute. Her son challenged her to a marathon and she trounced him, not by finishing before him but by being able to walk for the rest of the weekend. Gotta love it when one of us old-timers puts a young’un in his place.

Gordon the Renegade: He’s the guy who gave me the intel on taking Highway 6 straight to Nelson instead of the obnoxious three-day detour in traffic. Best advice I’ve gotten on this whole ride, and that’s saying something.

Kate the Doc: this is the same Dr. Kate who keeps re-passing me at twice my speed. We first met at the bottom of the Kaiwhakauka Track. I had stopped to inflate my tires back up to gravel pressure and she stopped to see if I was okay. Then she rode with me for a few kilometers, which is an incredibly generous thing to do at the end of a riding day, breaking your natural pace. We were each pleased to hear the other had similar stories about how kind everyone is to bikepackers. The random gifts of food aren’t just for me; one Christmas she was biking in Iceland and someone gave her an entire stollen.

Nellie the Dog: Good girl! One reason the TA is so much easier than the TT is I rarely have to carry more than a liter of water. There’s almost always a farmhouse where someone is happy to top off a bottle. But on one particularly hot afternoon I struck out. Three houses in a row, nobody home. In a country that’s been so generous to me, the last thing I want to do is start climbing over fences to steal water.

At the fourth house I’m greeted by a dog but no person. Nellie barked and barked, ran halfway to the house, barked again, ran three-quarters of the way, barked again, in what was very clearly a Lassie moment. “What’s that, Nellie? Some random tourist is out here like a dumbass riding without water? Where is he, Nellie? You show me! Good girl!” I never did get the name of the woman who came out to give me water, but let’s face it, she and I are only secondary characters in this scene.

Tim the Economist: Met him on warmshowers, a gross name for a cool thing (a couch-surfing network for bikers). We met when I was at the University of Wellington; then, when I had a mechanical failure on the Rimutaka Rail Trail, I texted Tim and he put me up for a couple of days. I love economists. They think like philosophers but they ask very different questions. My reason for being on this earth is good conversation, and Tim provides that in spades. Plus he’s a damn good cook.

Petra and I Am So Sorry Dude But I Forget Your Name: Also good cooks. She’s Petra. I have his name in my journal, but journals are heavy and I mailed that volume home already. It’s a Czech name and I’m pretty sure it starts with V. Sorry, man.

Anyway, Petra and her beau pulled up beside me in their campervan to offer me cookies. Then we crossed paths again in a parking lot near Tane Mahuta and they invited me to join them for lunch. After lunch they actually tracked me down to apologize and because they didn’t give me Czech candies for dessert.

The Gilchrists: Lovely, lovely, lovely people. I met them at Booklovers B&B in Wellington, three generations (mum and dad, their son, his daughter) where at first sight they invited me to play cards. We shared a couple of meals together over the next few days, and some deep philosophical conversations too. Somehow I have the strongest feeling we will cross paths again.

Honorable Mention: The Douchebag Bus Driver Who Shall Remain Nameless: One of those guys who exalts in the petty abuse of power. You know the type. He had no intention of letting Booster on his bus from Auckland to Bay of Islands. (That’s the first half of the way to Cape Reinga, a very important leg of this journey!) He gets to make that decision because the rules say luggage is a matter of the driver’s discretion. I give him an honorable mention not because he was nice to me but because after I reasoned, begged, and pleaded with him, his boss, and anyone in the office who would listen, he relented. Doesn’t count as being nice exactly, but hey, it’s something.

Speed Matters Not

I’ve been at this for six weeks straight and have yet to overtake a single rider. Those who pass me usually blow by as if I’m standing still. But this weird thing keeps happening. I get re-passed by the same riders, which means somehow I’m getting ahead of people who are faster than me. Some of them waaaaay faster.

Kate is a British emergency room doc who’s here for the opposite reason I am. I needed something to push me harder than life has pushed me lately. (Yes, I know that’s an incredibly privileged thing to say.) Dr. Kate has too much work stress and needs to ride it all out. I cannot believe how strong she is. I know I suck at this, but even so, she’s a dynamo. She leaves me in the dust in seconds. Yet the other day she saw Booster outside a restaurant and came in to say hi. Somehow I got ahead of her.

Eva and Henning are the only riders I’ve met who pack heavier than I do. With good reason: they’re going around the world. 18 months so far, 18,000 kilometers, and they’re only halfway through. Even on heavier bikes they’re faster than me, yet lately we pass each other daily, which I’m thoroughly enjoying. I get to knock the rust off my German and also spend time with people who know how to live life so well that death will tremble to take them.

Except they should be miles ahead, right? They’re faster. What gives?

With Dr. Kate I had a one-time advantage: I rode straight over the Maungatapu Saddle while she took the long detour. Yet the other day she passed me a third time. How?

With ze Germans my one advantage should be weight, but it’s no help at all. They’re faster than me with all the extra baggage. So what’s going on?

Well, sometimes Dr. Kate hops off the trail to visit friends and see cool stuff. She can do this for days. Then she jumps back on and overtakes my slow ass. Ze Germans are a different case. The second time I met them, they were stopped at a café where I’d also planned to grab a bite. We got to talking and then we decided to ride together. As the first mile melted away I got to watch them blast ahead of me. Half an hour later they were barely in sight.

So I did the math. (Not my favorite subject but I have a lot of time on my hands.) Turns out they don’t have to be much faster than me to seem uncatchable. Think about it. If you’re one mile per hour faster than I am, then in half an hour I’m looking at your taillight half a mile ahead. Barely in sight. You gain 88 feet on me each minute, or about 18 inches every second. Right from the start I see you surge ahead. In ten minutes you will be 880 feet ahead of me, which means one curve in the road and I’ll never see you again. I feel left in the dust.

But if the next café is ten miles down the road, you can order me a sandwich and I’ll get to your table before it does. At bikepacking speeds, a difference of one mile per hour amounts to five or six minutes. If we were racing, I’d lose every time. It won’t even be close. But this isn’t a race. What Eva and Henning “gain” on the road they “lose” in the grocery store. (I never discuss what I’m in the mood for.)

They’re faster than me, but the fact that I can still see them half an hour later means they’re not much faster. I keep passing and re-passing them because I’m not slower, I’m just a slower rider. Weird, but there’s a difference.

There’s one lesson from this to pass on to anyone who likes trekking or biking with friends who travel at different speeds. If you all start out together and the fast ones take the occasional break for the slower ones to catch up, it creates a vicious cycle. The fastest will always be the most rested, which perpetuates their speed advantage indefinitely. Instead, do it the other way around. When the tortoises feel rested, they get to lead the charge, and all the hares just hang out for ten minutes. Much better for the tortoises’ morale, and it costs the hares nothing in travel time. Everyone’s ending up at the same place anyway.

Acceptance

When you’re on a bike tour, conversations with strangers are a metaphysical certainty, and they always cover familiar territory. First comes “where you headed?” Then, “aw, some big hills that way” or “hope it doesn’t rain on ya.” Usually I’m happy to stop and chat longer, but If I’m in a hurry I have a pat response: if I didn’t like hills and rain, I picked the wrong hobby.

Rain makes life harder, sure. Hills usually make life harder, but you can’t say they make it harder in New Zealand because the alternatives don’t exist here. Today’s ride from Harihari to Franz Josef is a case in point. My host last night described it this way: “After Mount Hercules it’s flat all the way to Franz.”

I doubt there’s a flat half-mile anywhere in there. Apparently “flat” is kiwi for “not the steepest part.” But hills are just a thing you have to accept if you want to do this. Same goes for rain, snow, mud, flooding, scary rides, boring rides (which do exist elsewhere, though not on the TA), reckless drivers, mechanical failures, muscle strains, bug bites, and shops that sell everything kind of M&M except peanut.

The one thing it’s really hard to accept is wind. After the third day riding west into a westerly, I do start taking personally.

There are some things I’ve had to learn to accept about myself too, things I would have found surprising before the ride. On day one I discovered the limit of my environmentalism. In the past, whenever I’ve been out hiking, when I see a discarded wrapper or something I pick it up and put it in my pocket. My favorite backpack has a hip pocket just for this. But on Ninety Mile Beach, my first thought about seeing plastic trash was “nope.”

I’m running too heavy already. I just got started. I can’t stop every hundred meters to pick up every single piece. I have nowhere to put them all. I have nowhere to put thatone. All perfectly legitimate excuses, all trampling each other in their haste to get out of my subconscious and into the mainstream of conscious thought. Their ultimate expression was a heartfelt FUCK THAT so I could keep riding. I’ve never felt so actively anti-environmental.

Worse was the first time my own plastic wrapper blew away. I never let that happen. Unless I’m tired and biking into a headwind on a beach littered with plastic. Maybe it matters that in that wind I’d never have recaptured it. It definitely matters that I gave only a moment’s thought to turning around.

This latent sentiment popped up again a month later on the South Island. Day three of my westward slog into those ceaseless westerly winds, something had to go. I needed to get more aerodynamic. I pulled my old man chair and my ukulele off the side bags and into my draft. But the ukulele is a wriggly piece of equipment. Anything other than vertical with a horizontal strap around its waist and it does a contortionist act. So I did what I could never have predicted: I gave it away. A cleaner in my hotel told me her grandson wants to learn the ukulele too. I said “that’s a great idea” and left, feeling very much like I had abandoned a puppy.

I fully intend to buy the same model when I get back home— fully intend, that is, to put another unnecessary piece of plastic into the ground someday. I like that one because unlike my wooden one I can play it in the pool. Next summer there will come a day when I’ve been sitting in the pool too long and I feel bored. That’s the day I’m going to buy the exact same ukulele I just abandoned. It’s a waste of fifty bucks, but after three days of the wind blowing right down my throat, it was worth fifty bucks for me to get even a little bit trimmer.

The scheming mind comes back and says “yes, but you could have been driving this whole thing instead of biking it. That’s green enough.” The environmentalist mind retorts, “the flight down here had the same carbon footprint as the rest of your year combined. Green would have been bikepacking at home.” These two can argue ad nauseam, like the two wolves in that proverb, but the fact is I’m not as green as I hoped. I can accept that or I can feed the other wolf.

Perhaps the hardest thing to accept about myself, the one I dread most, is that I really like being out on the bike every day. That stands in sharp contrast to my deep-seated ice cold hatred of cardio. Biking to get somewhere is great. Biking just to bike? Ehhhhhh.

It doesn’t make sense. I spend as much time as possible here trying to live in the present. Forget the speedometer, forget the odometer. I’m so committed to this that I’ve given up planning where I’m going to sleep. I sort that out at the end of the day, sometimes only a minute or two before unpacking the tent. If I can do that here, why not on a loop near my house?

Because cardio sucks, that’s why. But I might have to accept that I like it. If I do, it will throw my life into chaos. At least I assume it will. Surely that’s the reason I’ve so assiduously avoided exercise until now. Surely there are good reasons beyond sleeping in or playing boardgames. There have to be.

This Is What You Get When You Go Soft

After eight or nine days of rainy weather on the South Island, I was sick and tired of being cold and wet, so this one night I decided not to camp. I’d wimp out and get a hotel room. But since I’m on an adventure, not a vacation, I don’t have a reservation anywhere. On any given morning, I have no idea where I’m going to sleep that night. Which, by the way, is a wonderfully freeing way to live. This vagabond existence is so simple: ride, cook, write, sleep. Same order every day. It’s a hard life but a simple life.

But some days you don’t want life to be any harder, and on this particular day I decided being dry and warm would be a nice change of pace. So I stopped in a tiny town and looked for a room. I won’t say which town, because there are only so many places to stay there, and I think running a small business is hard enough without some tourist douchebag giving you bad press.

Not one room is available in the whole town, but bicycle karma was with me: a hotel owner said she’d open a disused room for me. They call it the backpackers room and they used to use it for overflow. It’s in the back of a defunct café. A small room with a toilet but no shower, with one of these weird New Zealand bunkbeds with a queen mattress on the bottom and twin on top. Most importantly for my purposes, it had a ceiling, so for once I wouldn’t be rained on all night. I said perfect. The owner offered me a discount because she didn’t have time to get the room cleaned up. I had rolled into town too late and she was already getting dinner together for her kids. I said no problem, do your thing. So long as there’s no risk of bedbugs, I’ll just lay out my sleeping bag on the mattress.

Oh no, she says, we don’t rent to the kind of people who bring bed bugs. Oh yes you do, I thought. I’m renting an uncleaned room for the US equivalent of $15. Because she’s a nice person, she hooks me up with a fresh, clean pillowcase. Because this place is worth exactly $15, the fresh, clean pillowcase has blood stains on it.

But it ain’t cold and ain’t wet. Winner winner vegetarian dinner. And, as this is the back room of what used to be a café, I can even cook on a proper stove. I whip up my pot of mac & cheese and then I start eyeing the oven.

I have two pairs of socks, the wet pair and the dry pair. The wet pair hasn’t been dry in a week because my shoes haven’t been dry in a week. Too much rain, too many river crossings, never a sunny evening to lay everything out. So now the wrong thought comes bubbling up from my subconscious: what temperature would you bake shoes at to dry them?

This raises a host of other pressing questions. Is there a fire extinguisher handy? Is it ethical to use somebody’s oven to bake your shoes? Will the oven still be food-safe if someone were to use it to roast shoes and socks? Does it matter that nobody cooks food in there anymore?*

The oven‘s lowest setting is 100°. That’s Celsius, of course, so 212° Fahrenheit. Is 212° the melting point of a Hoka One One sneaker? No. My shoes are made of sterner stuff. But it is hot enough to cause all the water in the shoe to boil, which swells up the cushiony bit like a marshmallow. And it is above the melting point of the glue that holds those rubber grippy things on the bottom of the cushiony bit.

See, this is what happens. This is what you deserve when you get soft and you don’t want to camp in the rain anymore. This is your just desserts if you manage to make it to the age of 49 with so little knowledge of footwear and bakery. The glue of your shoes becomes gooey, and when the cushiony part rises like a beautiful soufflé, the rubber grippy bits peel off.

There is a silver lining: my socks dried nice and crisp without catching fire. And there were no bed bugs, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice. As for my footwear, it was dry for all of ten or twelve hours before the rain came down the next day.

*Answer Key:

Yes

Depends on the answer to the next question

Yes if you crank the heat up afterward

No

I’m In The Fives!

I loaded a new map on my GPS compooter: “5.1 Greymouth to Queenstown.” Six weeks ago in Cape Reinga I started on map 1.1, “Cape Reinga to Rangiora Ferry Terminal,” and a couple weeks from now I hope to finish map 6.2, “Walter Peak to Bluff.”

There’s no rhyme or reason (or at least none I can see) as to why the Ones go from 1.1 to 1.7 while the Twos go up to 2.3 and the Threes go up to 3.5. The maps are not all the same file size, not all the same mileage, not all the same elevation gain, nothing like that. So I guess it would make more sense to say I’m in the Twenty-Ones (somewhere between 2,100-2,199 kilometers from Reinga) or the Fifteens (1,500-1,599 miles from Reinga).

Better yet, I could say I’m in the Dead Marshes. That’s where Frodo and Sam are when they’re in the Fifteens: following Gollum through the muck, mostly heeding his advice about not following the lights. By that measurement I can have elevensies here in the Fifteens and also stay on brand.

However you measure it, I’m pretty far. About a third of the way down the South Island, with about 800 kilometers to go. That’s 300 kilometers longer than the Tasmanian Trail, which, lest we forget, kicked my ass just three months ago. The fact that Bluff seems reachable is just mind-boggling.

So count me happily boggled. The weather on the South Island has been a real challenge, but this is still beautiful country. If you love the rainforest, you better love the rain. Overall I’m feeling good and Booster is taking all of this in stride. We lost a taillight (rain killed it) and maybe a dumbphone (ditto; it’s in the RICU* right now), but those have been the only mechanical failures. Her new brakes totally kick ass. So mind boggled, body fueled, blog posted.

*RICU: Rice ICU

#TBT: When Do Right, No Can Defend

Booster’s jiujitsu is better than mine. She’s had several opportunities to demonstrate this, and I’m happy to say I’ve countered her countless attempts she’s made to trip me with her pedals while hike-a-biking. But I also have to give credit where credit is due: she’s scored three takedowns fair and square.

It’s the sweep of her handlebars that makes her such a cunning opponent. I replaced the factory-issue straight bar with a Jones H-Bar, which is shaped like a short bow, the kind orcs use around here to stick you full of poisoned arrows. It gives me multiple hand positions and doubles my real estate when it comes to mounting stuff. I love love love my H-Bar, but Booster can be pretty tricksy with it.

Her first takedown caught me unawares. The second time I should have known better, because it was the same technique. In both cases I stopped to take a photo and didn’t dismount the bike. She leans over a little, her front wheel turns, and she catches me behind the knee with the end of her handlebar. Her falling weight collapses my knee, and from there she does a thing—twice now—a thing I never imagined a bicycle could do: she rolls me up into an X-guard takedown.

I wish I could show you a photo of exactly how a bicycle does this, because she’s hit me with this twice and hell, I want to see how she does it. But in both cases she planted my weight so far forward that even if I could have reached my camera I wouldn’t have been able to capture the shot. She keeps her handlebar so close to her frame that I can’t bend my leg to slide it out, and since she’s a good BJJ player she knows how to stay heavy. She hangs on me like dead weight, which means I can’t straighten my leg either.

The first time she nailed me with this, I had a nearby tree to push off against to get back to standing. The second time we were on a dirt road, with no mechanical advantage to avail myself of. With her guard locked in I cannot stand, cannot sit back, cannot pull forward. I’m sure I’d have found an escape eventually, but as it happened, two newfound friends drove by and found me helplessly entangled. Embarrassing, yes, but not so embarrassing that I won’t tell you about it.

Booster’s third takedown was very nearly a moment of glory for me. It was one of my crashes on the Timber Trail. We took a curve too fast, hit loose gravel, and as we were going down I remembered the legendary story of my good friend Misty. She used to race mountain bikes and once crossed the finish line in mid-crash. (Misty, let me know if if I’m getting the details wrong.) As I remember it, she pushed the handlebars straight down and just walked off over the front of the crashing bike.

So I thought I would attempt a Magnificent Misty Mountain Maneuver. Booster is crashing. Hard. I shift forward and start my pass over the handlebars. I’d have made it too, if they were the original straight bar. But no, I had to upgrade to the one handlebar Booster could use to hook the top of my foot.

So down I went. Point, Booster. I bet I could take her if we were wearing gis, though. I was never worth a damn as a no-gi fighter.

ETA: I landed the Magnificent Misty Mountain Maneuver! Today Booster slid out from under me on the muddy Waiuta Track (of which more later; it’s now my favorite part of the TA, and not just because of my MMMM). Bike goes down, I control both ends of the handlebar this time, and I walk right out of the crash. Score one for Steve!

The Road Less Traveled

This is already almost two weeks overdue, but better late than never. In the actual order of my travels, it comes a couple of days before Thanksgiving. Right in the middle of this particular story is the motorcyclist who said, “I admire your lack of judgment.”

I like to think my lack of judgment started with good judgment: I don’t really do the Facebook. Ten years ago my publisher told me I need a social media presence, so I made an account. I imagine I must have posted 100 times by now. To me Facebook is like synchronized swimming: I’m happy for people who get something out of it, and for short periods I can pretend to be interested. That’s the best I can do.

Every once in a while this has negative consequences for me. In this case, I’m not on the Facebook TA page, so I didn’t get the memo: Highway 6 is closed. That’s the main artery connecting Picton (deep in Marlborough Sound, where the ferry from Wellington lands) to Nelson (the next major city on the TA). Damaged from torrential rains and flooding earlier in the year, it’s closed to all but local traffic at first, then to all traffic. As the ferry was pulling in to Picton, the other TAers on board asked me, “How are you going to get to Nelson?”

“I’m gonna bike there.”

“The roads are all closed.”

“Oh,” said the Worst Bikepacker in New Zealand.

They share their plans with me, clearly hoping I’ll pick one. The Sounds To Sounds Track sounds soundest. It connects Marlborough Sound in the northeast with Milford Sound in the southwest. A beautiful ride, if only I knew how to find the route. But I don’t own that guidebook, and despite the efforts of kindly strangers, we cannot get it loaded onto my phone. So that’s a resounding no to knowing Sounds To Sounds.

If we can’t load that route, obviously we won’t be able to load anyone else’s, because why would we be able to do that? I only have one biking-specific nav compooter, three biking-specific navigation apps, and the combined expertise of two other riders who report no trouble with their route-finding. Clearly insufficient resources to get this done.

I do have one resource in reserve, though, one these other riders don’t have: my man Gordon. I met Gordon a few weeks earlier in Taumarunui, in a motel close enough to the tracks that trains rattle the walls Elwood Blues-style. Until a nasty injury knocked Gordon off the track and into the hospital, he had been riding the Renegade Muster, an 840-kilometer deathball that makes the TA look like a kiddie rollercoaster. Seriously. Every Renegade I met thinks the TA is cute. But Gordon rode the first-ever TA in 2016, he has a near-photographic memory when it comes to biking, and he lives one kilometer off the TA in Nelson. He knows this ride. We stop to chat and he gives me the most important piece of intel I’ll need in Picton: ignore all the road closures.

If you obey the closures, he tells me, you’ll add a three-day detour on the one highway that is open, which is now the catch basin for all the traffic in the North End. Three days of heavy traffic, or one roll of the dice. I’ve never met Gordon before, but he seems pretty badass. Then again, I’m easily impressed. Worst Bikepacker and all that.

So I roll the dice. (Choose luck, remember?) I follow the Queen Charlotte Scenic Trail along the coast as far as it will take me. Then it’s onto Highway 6. At the first road closure, I keep riding. At the second, a construction worker stops me. “You’re not riding to Nelson, are you,” she asks. Her tone is exactly the same a kindergarten teacher uses when asking, “We don’t play with matches, do we.” I say I’m riding to Pelorus Bridge, which is absolutely true. It just so happens to be the next town before Nelson, but let no one say Steve Bein, ethics professor, is a liar. (You can also omit calling me a liar by omission.)

It turns out these road closures are no joke. On the mauka (inland) side of the road they’re rockfalls and landslides big enough to fill the lane. On the makai (seaward) side they’re, what, roadslides? In some places the entire lane has fallen off the cliff. They reduce car traffic to a long, single-lane, 20 mph speed zone, but guess what? That makes them biking heaven. No one to pass me for miles at a time. No one to pass me at high speed ever.

The Pelorus River is gorgeous, by the way. Crystal clear water, no sign of civilization except the bridge. If you jump in for a swim, you turn into 8mm black-and-white film footage. No reason for her to believe I was lying to her, which I totally was not.

From Pelorus Bridge I left Highway 6—see? not lying!—for the Maungatapu Saddle trail. According to Gordon’s intel, this too is not closed, all DOT reports to the contrary. And he’s right! Laughing at the odds worked. The DOT’s website is wrong, therefore Facebook is wrong. But if you leave the interwebs and actually ride to the trail, you see the signs barring everyone except trampers, motorcycles, and mountain bikes.

It’s open, but it ain’t easy. My guidebook says the Maungatapu Saddle is 12.5 kilometers ahead and the last two are unrideable. You’ll have to get off and push. Which is true, but Yours Truly pushed the seven or eight kilometers before that too. Booster always seems to enjoy these stretches, like a dog sticking her face out the car window, but I was sweating up a storm.

The last two kilometers really were the equal of anything I saw on Tassie. The TT was harder only because I’d face ten Ks of that calamitous climbing, sometimes more. The Kaiwhakauka was harder because of the terrain, but even that didn’t have the rain ruts I saw on Maungatapu. This one isn’t the deepest one I saw, just the deepest I was willing to drag Booster back out of. The biggest ruts were eight feet deep and five feet wide.

Toward the summit I met two guys on muddy motorcycles. We got to talking, as cyclists do. One of them is riding a Suzuki V-Strom, which is what I ride back home (though I think I would’ve had a hell of a time getting up this mountain even on that). We compare notes: what we’ve got in our packs (mostly the same stuff), how far we’ve ridden (38 kilometers for me, 380 for them), that kind of thing. I’m the first bicyclist they’ve seen in these hills, and the fellow Stromtrooper says, “I admire your lack of judgment.”

So there you have it. Hardest climbing award on the South Island goes to my first climb. Best conversation on the North Island goes retroactively to Gordon Sloane, Renegade, genuine badass, and really nice guy. On the far side of the Maungatapu Saddle, he rode up to meet me and escorted me home, where his wife Sharon (also a hardcore biker) made us a delightful vegetarian dinner and they put me up for the night.

Oh, and I did get on Facebook after all. Gordon took me through Nelson on a little tour of the town. I was exhausted but it’s a cool city, named for Lord Nelson, with all kinds of street names and buildings referring to naval history. (Halifax, Trafalgar, etc. No Nemo or Namor, though. I checked.) I’ve been re-reading my beloved Aubrey-Maturin novels on this ride, so a historical tour of Nelson was apropos even if I was too tired to stand.

As we rode through the central mall, a couple of guys— obviously bicyclists— waved us over. They asked if Gordon was riding the TA. Hmpf! My bike had all the bags on it. But he’s the one who looks like a badass. So Gordon says, “No, but this guy is, and they ask me how I got to Nelson.

“I just rode here.”

“On Highway 6?”

“And the Maungatapu, yeah.”

“No troubles?”

“No,” said the Lucky Bastard/Worst Bikepacker.

And so I ended up on Facebook after all. One of the first to cross, true to the true route, opening the floodgates to all those FBing TAers behind me. Thank you, Gordon! And thanks to Facebook for giving me too little interest to buy what it was selling.