Day 1

I spent quite a lot of last night trying not to think about my tyre and the damage inflicted by the bike trailer yesterday. Of course in my mind during the course of the night, this damage grew substantially in size and scope. These thoughts were interspersed with the realisation I had no idea where the bag with my lights was. Not in the tent with my other stuff…

Finally morning came and I could get ready for the final stretch of our bus journey, 30 minutes more to the Cape. Just before I finished packing up, I found my lights, in the special pocket where I had put them for safe keeping the previous day… A happy moment.

Finally we were there and everything now needed to be on the bike and ready! Just when I was nearly sorted, I noticed a guy standing near me, and following my resolution on this trip to be more open to talking to strangers, had a chat. The talk turned to my tyre concerns. I said, maybe I’ll get the mechanic in Dargaville to have a look at it. He said, I’m a mechanic. So it was awesome to have some reassurance that it’s just rubber rubbed off the sidewall and the casing doesn’t seem to be damaged, which is the key component. Visions of exploding rear tyre receded.

So we went, it was fast down sealed hills to start with, then very crunchy sandy stream bed. Crunchy in that that was the noise from the bike! Thankfully Ian had warned me not to ruin my brake pads by braking too much.

Then 80 km of long flat sandy beach. Luckily conditions were good and you could average 20kph. A bit of the time I rode alone, sometime had chats with others, then for the afternoon rode with Nigel (who I had met at the Gravel Grind) and Catherine, who we had both just met, and chatting definitely helped the time pass by.

The last hour was a headwind and tougher! But we got here to Ahipara pretty early, time enough to give the bike a good clean, swap in a new chain, wash clothes, have takeaways and do stretches.

I feel so much better now than last night, when my mind was filled with what could go wrong and why was I doing this actually. Turns out most other people slept badly too.