Day 3 Nelson to Murchison

Distance traveled: 163 km, mostly gravel

Time: 9 hours, 50 minutes

Travel modalities: Mostly bicycling, maybe a little walking

A crack of dawn start meant nothing was open in Nelson. Nothing was open in Richmond except McDonald's, so I pressed on. Everything in Wakefield was closed, save the bakery. So I had pie for breakfast. (That's a vegetable pie with a potato top.)

One of the highligh's of this ride is a really long railway tunnel. Headlight required. I can't think of too many things creepier than riding alone in the dark for a mile.

There are too many impossibly beautiful photos to sort through right now. This one has my first glimpse of snow.

Here's my bike resting in front of Lake Rotoroa. The black flies were all over me in seconds, so the break was short.

Some impossible greenness. My phone died somewhere around here, so I was unable to look up the word "ford", which kept appearing on signs with exclamation points.Don't worry, I figured out after the third or forth stream crossing. 

Relive video 

Day 2: Havelock to Nelson the hard way

Distance Travelled: 53 km

Time: 4 hours, 40 minutes

Travel modalities included bicycling and more walking than I'm willing to admit.

The day began with the realization that I'd lost my sunglasses. Fortunately, it wasn't very sunny so I didn't need them.

 

My first time riding any appreciable distance on gravel. I thought it would all be like this: smooth, well maintained, flat. I guess I wasn't expecting flat.

I don't want to say I decided to start walking here, because it was the road that decided for me.The photo does not adequately demonstrate how steep it is. 

Some incredible beauty along the way.

Riding along what I think is the Pelorus river was stunning, but it doesn't look as pretty in the photo.

Relive video.

Really Day One, Picton to a lodging inconveniently past Havelock

Distance covered 144 km

Time: 9 hours

Transport Modalities: Bicycle, Bluebridge Ferry, automobiles x2

Up at the crack of dawn to a view of my next door neighbor. Navigated the streets of Wellington mostly from memory and arrived on time to a delayed ferry. 

I survived about a minute and a half at the front of the boat. I am seriously questioning my warm clothes packing list.

I stop to eat in Picton and make some last minute bike repairs. I am melancholy as the last photograph my mother took was from a park bench in Picton. Sometimes I try to find the bench she took it from, but I do not today.

After about 10 miles I realize I'm enjoying vacation for the first time. Except for everytime a car comes from the opposite direction and I flinch towards it as I think I'm on the wrong side of the street. I notice about here that I've attached my handlebar bag wrong in 3 places.

I've booked a B&B about 7 km past Havelock, which is a pretty small town and the only sign of civilization for a long, long time. The B&B is also at the top of a very long, very steep gravel driveway. Riding back to Havelock for dinner is sounding less than pleasant. My host drives me to the slightly closer Trout Hotel in Canvastown and asks the bartender to drive me home.

Overheard at the community table:

We've got an Uber driver now.

Who?

Phil.

Oh, Phil.

I guess I should count distance cycled: 32 miles total (I missed a couple after getting off the ferry). 

1966 feet climbed.

Thinking of switching to metric so the numbers look more impressive

Relive Video

Day 1 and 2

Distance covered 4650 miles

Time: 18 hours (rounded down)

Transport modalities included: 2 automobiles, 3 planes, and a whole lot of walking (mostly pacing around airports).

The Maui airport is unique in that TSA makes you stand around while they inspect your oversized luggage for anything illegal.

I think this is the device that tortured me for nearly nine hours. They all kind of look alike, so I'm not 100% sure.

Had to remember to walk on the left while transitioning from the international to domestic terminal in Auckland.

Long delay for the last leg put me in the right place for this sunset.

Debated between immediately going to sleep and putting the bike together upon reaching Wellington.

One night in Chicago

Actually, 4 nights in Chicago. 

Let's start with food. Pizza #1 was from Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Company. Pretty much as I remember it, including the 90 minute wait. They take reservations now, but I had not expected everyone to be hungry after 12 hours of flying...

Donuts from Stan's Donuts and Coffee. Note to future self: In the future, just buy six of the same donut to avoid the high likelihood of fights over donuts.

Hot dog and Italian beef from Al's Italian Beef. Sorry, no link. Either their website is dead or American Airline's satellite link has failed. Seeing as my father never took me here, it's probably not very good, but this non-Chicagoan was fooled.

Pizza #2 was a tough decision. Giordano's has always been my preferred traditional Chicago pizza, but the Internet says it's for tourists. My family says go to Lou Malnati's, but the beer list tops out at Stella Artois. Beer is very important when travelling with my children. Pequod's seemed to care at least a little about my happiness and had a reasonable selection. We were starving by the time the pan finally made it out of the oven which may explain why it was the best pizza ever. 

Our hotel claims to have invented the brownie. That's a photo of a regular old fashioned. They also make a brownie old fashioned (not pictured). 

New Phone Day

Nothing fancy, but I've switched to Android, which means there's a blogger app, which means I can write short stupid posts like this one.

Things to do While You're Still Young

 

Something like 113 miles and 10,000 feet of climbing. I don't even want to talk about how long this ride took. I wish I had a GoPro, as most of the best views were during white knuckle descents so I couldn't easily pull out the cell phone and shoot pictures. 

 

I had considered the Auwahi Wind Turbines my final turnaround spot in case I wasn't feeling up for the whole loop. I had figured most of the climbing was out of the way and it would be easier to press onwards rather than turning back. As it turns out, google maps grossly miscalculated the elevation changes and I had underestimated how bad the terrain would get. Also, the locals seem to get more and more angry with cyclists the further away you get from Kula. 

Auwahi Wind Turbines

I decided to stop a couple of miles before Kaupo to eat all my remaining food and drink all my remaining water. This plan turned out to be a poor one as the Kaupo Store was closed. 

A well maintained section of unpaved road.

I had scheduled a stop for the purpose of spitting on Charles Lindbergh's grave, but was so thirsty, I rode by without seeing it. Instead, I begged my way into the National Park for a water bottle refill. I'm pretty sure I have a pass at home and didn't feel spending $55 for another one.

Finally back in civilization, I had lunch at Hana's finest Mexican restaurant. I wondered how long I could sleep on their picnic table bench before it got too late to pedal home. 

I opted for Mexican Squirt. It was terrible. 

The rain began around Keanae and did not stop. All my planned water stops were closed. Fortunately, Jaws Country Store was open for a few more minutes and didn't mind me eating pistachios on their lanai. 

Jet lag usually prompts me to blog and a 12 hour time change is about as bad as it gets. I'll start with something easy: favorite bars. [Combining a bicycle tour with children who do not often want to bicycle made this a necessary category.] Note: these are just bars. If I get around to it, I'll write about restaurants that might also have bars later.

1) In de Karkol We had a couple of hours in Maastricht before dinner and the children did not want to leave the boat. This was the day Jancie did not want to leave the boat at all, so we bicycled as a triplet. Deciding we had spent enough time in the ship's lounge, we stepped into town looking for somewhere with a quiet bar where we could sit without children. The door was so well hidden, we walked around the corner looking for another entrance.

Once inside, we were greeted by loud music, old ladies dancing, and almost no room. This place was coronavirus heaven. A large bald man who might have been a bouncer yelled something at me in Dutch. I started wondering if we had wandered into a private club. "Beer?" I replied. "Bier!" he yelled. And the other bartender started pouring tiny glasses of beer. We drank like six of them and ended up with a €16,40 bar tab. 

 

Nico with a 0.18 L of Brand Beer

Did they have a different glass for every bottled beer?

2) Het Elfde Gebod This bar was near our Amsterdam hotel and the "16 beers on tap/100 bottled beers" painted on the window caught my interest. It was about 9 PM on a Tuesday and there were a couple of falling down drunk people standing (sort of) at the bar. The large bartender had politely cut them off and they were half-heartedly arguing while half-heartedly leaving. The bartender had what sounded a lot like a fake American accent. When I asked about it, he said he was from New York, but had lived in Amsterdam 25 years. 

3) Brouwerij 'T IJ Though actually next to a windmill and not inside a windmill, this seemed like an acceptable way to get the kids to sit in a brewery with me. It's a couple of km from where we were staying, but we were already at NEMO, which was about halfway there.

The food menu is limited. €10 gets you a platter with cheese, eggs, bread, sweet pickles, and peanuts. The walls are adorned with old Dutch beer bottles. 

All the beer names are in Dutch

4) I don't know if Brouwerij de Prael is worth mentioning. It was mostly interesting because the two or three servers that came near our table seemed a little off. I thought it was a language thing, which in itself was strange because up until that point everyone in Amsterdam had spoken flawless English. 

One of the employees kept directing us to the beer menu. I was going to order one of the one or two beer names that looked familiar, then I noticed the translation board. (It was Dutch to German, which is not entirely helpful to me, but still much easier to understand than Dutch.) The same employee did not want me looking at the translation board and kept pointing me back to the Dutch menu. 

Dutch to German translation

Fries, cheese, pickles...maybe 10 Euro?

I can't remember what these were

Hidden under the clamp on the clipboard
on the English side of the menu

Eventually we spotted the above disclaimer on the menu. The uncomfortableness of interacting with the staff was sort of transformed into a feel good story, I guess. 

5) Brouwerij Bosch (Maastricht) came up in my google search looking for breweries while we had time to kill waiting for the boat to catch us. I was surprised when we walked into the tasting room and the old man told us they made two beers, light and dark and we should drink the dark first. This was the only English I heard him speak. Both beers were in bottles. All the literature was in Dutch. Later, upon reviewing their website, I ascertained that they no longer make beer at this facility, but are transitioning it into a craft beer brewery. I see no timeline for when this is happening. Anyway, it's a 350 year old brewery and they give tours.