Why don't you ride on the footpath.

Hello!
Before I get into updating this here page on the past 7 weeks of adventure/travel, I'm going to document this weekend. Why? Well, I have too many photos and videos to sift through and uploading them takes way too long at my flat. I like to do this work at work, which conveniently starts back up again tomorrow (yippee...but no complaints, because yes, I know how good I have it).

This past weekend I was looking for something to do, as is usual for me on weekends. I realized that a band I saw playing (The Dodos) on Letterman while I was back on Canadian soil was touring NZ. Sure enough, this weekend they were playing in Leigh at The Sawmill Cafe, NZ's equivalent to Phog, the greatest place for live shows in the country. I purchased my ticket.

Then the wheels starting turning, as they do every once in a while, and I decided to see how many kms it was to Leigh from my flat. And I found this map...

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...which isn't working how I want it to, but if it was it would indicate, with a highlighted route, that it's about 70km each way (from where it says North Shore to Leigh [top right hand corner]). So I decided to ride there on my Mountain Bike. Why? Well, as Sir Edmund Hillary once said, because it was there. Not that I'm comparing what I did to what he did, mind you, but I gather that the reasons were similar. Next I ran through my list of items to bring with me.
-Messenger bag with CamelBak strapped to it...check.
-Water in CamelBak, but not nearly enough...check.
-No sunscreen in a country that doesn't have an Ozone layer over it...check.
-Novel...check.
-Bike...check.
-Everything required to change a flat, except tubes...check.
-Rock concert type apparel...check.

Obviously I was ready, so I left Saturday morning. Thankfully, no flats either way, but I did experience a classic NZ ride...extreme sun (and sunburn) and heat, rain, wind, and many many hills. I'll spare you the details and give you the good bits. The Dodos were exceptional, as were the opening act, Ruby Suns (a NZ band). Goat Island was also amazing, although for some reason I couldn't be bothered to take any pics during the entire trip. Whatever. Next time.

Two things I learned...
1 - there's a reason people travelling by bike over long(ish) distances don't carry their gear on their backs...extreme lower back pain. Wow. Never again. I am now looking into panniers.
2 - DB's exist all over the world. Sue mentioned in her blog, On The Dirt Side, about a certain DB that buzzed her while riding. Well, I observed many of those over the weekend, and on 80 and 100 km/h roads with sometimes little to no shoulder on top of that. But one in particular stands out. At this point I was travelling through a lovely little beachside town, Orewa, and there was construction so the road was posted at 30km/h. I was probably doing close to that. A white car rolled by me, passenger window rolls down slowly, and a DB says, "Why don't you ride on the footpath." As Sue did, I answered with a few choice words while also trying to explain the idiocy of his statement, which I'm sure you can all see. If not, well we're not friends anymore.

Well that's just about enough of that. Hope your weekend was as good as, but less painful than, mine.
Cheers,
Dante