Christchurch
Time: All Day
Distance: All Over
Avg Speed: Fast and Furious
Terrain: Urban all the way
Location: 43˚ 29’ 34.1” S, 172˚ 37’ 6.3” E
We were at it early this morning with our errands to get ready for leaving on Thursday. The first order of business was getting some lighter weight sleeping bags for Australia and Asia. The local merchants must get this a lot since we had five shops to get sleeping bags from in a one block area. We looked around and found one we liked at a shop called Snowgum. This itself really isn’t interesting, but what was interesting is the fact that our salesman was a man we call Mr. Tomato. We ran into Mr. Tomato while hiking the Greenstone and Caples track last month. We spent two evening with him at the McKellar Hut and the Caples Hut. We were kind enough to let him use our stove (his was broken) and one of our sporks (he forgot his eating utensils). He was kind enough to make fun of Americans and correct us on our pronunciation of the word Tomato (long vowels, with a nice nasally British drone). Besides our sorted history he is a nice enough guy and quite interesting in the is he on crack sense. His store was the second one we went into so we decided to keep shopping and told him we may be back. As luck would have it we found a great bag on sale at another store. The bummer was there was only one of them. Back to Mr. Tomato for the other bag. We are now a whole lot lighter in the sleeping bag department.
The rest of the day was spent procuring bike boxes ($5 each for a used box…ouch), sending home warm clothes that are hopefully not needed ($100…double ouch) and getting all of our things packaged and prepared for our flight (free…just headaches).
We also ran into a cycle tourist from Malaysia. He was touring the same route we started the south island on. Leslie and I let him in on a couple little things and he let us onto a whole lot of things in Southeast Asia. We had dinner with him tonight and enjoyed talking about cycling, bad roads, bad drivers and big Chinese hills. I guess the world isn’t really flat.
We are off to live in the airport for a day tomorrow. We will let you know how that one goes.
CK
Time: All Day
Distance: All Over
Avg Speed: Fast and Furious
Terrain: Urban all the way
Location: 43˚ 29’ 34.1” S, 172˚ 37’ 6.3” E
We were at it early this morning with our errands to get ready for leaving on Thursday. The first order of business was getting some lighter weight sleeping bags for Australia and Asia. The local merchants must get this a lot since we had five shops to get sleeping bags from in a one block area. We looked around and found one we liked at a shop called Snowgum. This itself really isn’t interesting, but what was interesting is the fact that our salesman was a man we call Mr. Tomato. We ran into Mr. Tomato while hiking the Greenstone and Caples track last month. We spent two evening with him at the McKellar Hut and the Caples Hut. We were kind enough to let him use our stove (his was broken) and one of our sporks (he forgot his eating utensils). He was kind enough to make fun of Americans and correct us on our pronunciation of the word Tomato (long vowels, with a nice nasally British drone). Besides our sorted history he is a nice enough guy and quite interesting in the is he on crack sense. His store was the second one we went into so we decided to keep shopping and told him we may be back. As luck would have it we found a great bag on sale at another store. The bummer was there was only one of them. Back to Mr. Tomato for the other bag. We are now a whole lot lighter in the sleeping bag department.
The rest of the day was spent procuring bike boxes ($5 each for a used box…ouch), sending home warm clothes that are hopefully not needed ($100…double ouch) and getting all of our things packaged and prepared for our flight (free…just headaches).
We also ran into a cycle tourist from Malaysia. He was touring the same route we started the south island on. Leslie and I let him in on a couple little things and he let us onto a whole lot of things in Southeast Asia. We had dinner with him tonight and enjoyed talking about cycling, bad roads, bad drivers and big Chinese hills. I guess the world isn’t really flat.
We are off to live in the airport for a day tomorrow. We will let you know how that one goes.
CK
1 comment:
Becareful of those Aussies...I hear they can be a dangerous lot.
-JH
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