I suddenly realised that I've never posted anything about the trip to NZ I took with gummihuhn in April. I simply never felt like it. I loved New Zealand, but I don't like writing all that much!
Still, here's a short episode I thought about today... so why not write it down. The pictures are Gummihuhn's.

( Click to read it... )

For a different perspective: compare gummihuhn's story... it has more pictures. And if you ever find yourself wanting to rent a motorbike in Christchurch or Auckland, head to the good folks at City Motorcycle Rentals and tell them I said hello.

Real postings, I mean. For now, here's a tiny little NZ anecdote I just posted to Chit-chat on BookCrossing.com:

I read that Dunzy (a fellow BC member) was not well, and wanted to send him a card... so I picked a nice one, and had Stoneshop and Rubberchicken sign it too.

I meant to post it at the airport before going to New Zealand, but forgot... and found it in my bike jacket pocket, after riding through half of the South Island. So I decided to stick an NZ stamp on it in addition to the Dutch ones, and mail it from there.
A hundred kilometres later, it was still in my pocket!
Eventually, I left it on a table in the communal kitchen of a motorlodge in Haast, with a note that said 'Please mail this, thanks'!
I thought, since things like the honesty box system seem to work here, I may as well give this a go. Someone may well mail it.

Looks like someone did. Because yes, my friends, that card got to Dunzy in Canada.

And so does having to say goodbye to friends and to an awesome Convention.

Getting back home, on the other hand, is likely to be very nice indeed.

Another nice thing: free WiFi.

Moem, hailing from gate 4 at HongKong International Airport, thanks to the small but mighty Eee-quivalent

We arrived in Christchurch safely. I'm a bit sad that our bike trip is over; on the other hand, the Convention is going to be great. In fact it already is (we just had a lovely pre-Convention dinner).
It's all a bit confusing. I'll sort it out later and go to bed now.

The yellowing grass, side lit by the afternoon sun, made the hills look like they were clothed in rich folds of golden-coloured velvet.
The road, meanwhile, twisted and turned, dipped and swerved. And we were having a grand time.

We managed to leave Queenstown at half past four with new rear tyres on both bikes, and we are now in Omarama. After a meal of couscous with green beans and a nice big salad, we're feeling rather pleased.

We left Alexandra in high spirits this morning, having been fed and given a bed and lots of good advice by futurecatnz's folks. We were planning to head up north, first making a detour almost back to Queenstown, and then taking the 'old road' back to Wanaka, not because we were especially eager to see Wanaka again but because that mountain road is supposed to be spectacular, and the weather is great so the views should be breathtaking.
Passing the exit to the road, I headed on towards Queenstown first, because we'd need to drench our horses before making them climb up the mountain. And when we were at the petrol station, we saw that my rear tyre was not looking good. It was developing holes or cuts in the sidewall, that you can see the canvas through.
*sigh*
So we called the good people at City Motorcycle Rentals in Christchurch again, and agreed that we would head into Queenstown and see what we could find there, and talk to them again before having anything done (like, replacing a tyre).
When we arrived at Offroad Adventures, a rental shop which has several Suzukis of the same type as 'ours', we were informed that they'd already been contacted by City Motorcycle Rentals.
We were advised to come back in half an hour or so and they'd be able to tell us more. So of course we headed for the nearest internet cafe. What else is there to do?

( Large pics of tyres behind the cut. Not for the faint of heart. )

We're not in Invercargill; we're actually in Alexandra, visiting Futurecat's parents. We now know why Futurecat is such a lovely person. It's all in the genes.

More soon.

We have the blue bike back!
Today, it was drizzling, but we got fed up with being inside and immobile, so we decided to walk to the garage where the AA man brought the bike with the flat tyre, and ask about it. It was a 3 km walk along the main road.
When we got there we were told that the bike was ready, it had actually been ready since yesterday evening, but they couldn't get hold of us. And the AA guy could not simply bring it back to us because it needed to be paid for.
It started to rain instead of drizzle by then, so we went for a cuppa in the cafe at the other side of the road, and it was obviously weekend = bike riding time, a group of bikers stopped there to eat a bit and get out of the rain.
By the time our tea was finished, it was practically dry so we headed back to the camp site to get our bike gear.
We returned together on the yellow Suzuki (me riding in front, Gummihuhn riding pillion since it wasn't my bike that had a problem!) and paid 230 $ NZ by credit card. Since the hire comes with roadside assistance insurance, I'm assuming I'll be reimbursed for that later by the good folks at City Motorcycle Rentals in Christchurch.

We are now celebrating with a beer (me), a bottle of Phoenix organic apple-feijoa juice (Gummihuhn), and a bag of lime-black pepper flavoured Kettle chips. Tomorrow, we'll be back on the road again!

Time for a slightly longer update as we may be stuck here for a while, and having the Leeebretto allows me to type while offline and then copy-paste into LJ.

So gummihuhn has a flat tire. In fact it was more than just flat: there is a series of short cuts or tears in the side of his rear tire, looking by their angle as if they occurred while riding, but how... we don't know. Frankly I've never seen anything like it. The AA has picked up the bike but the hard part may be finding a replacement tire, especially as this is Easter. Looks like our route plans may have just gone down the drain.
We're in a nice spot (Haast, on the west coast) and right now the weather is lovely so I'm not complaining too much (it's not like it's going to help anyway) but it would be a shame having to wait here while our scarce days here glide past and there are so many gorgeous roads out there left to be discovered.
( A lot more words, behind the cut... )

This one will be really short because I'm typing on the Libretto today and the keyboard is seriously small. But I want to tell you very quickly what we're up to, and make some notes that I can use for a decent write-up later.

Arthur's Pass was excellent, even though the weather was not. After leaving the mountains behind us, we got some fairer weather, and we reached the west coast without much of a ceremony, the road just sort of bumped into the shoreline.
We went to a town (will fill in name later, map is in tent) to shop for rum, plastic bags to keep luggage dry, and a cup of tea. We found all of that and Internet, the rain radar told us the north was worse than the south. So we skipped the pancake rocks and went south.
The 6 is a wonderful road, lots of rainforest. Some rain, too (only logical). We finally decided to camp out at Okarito beach, after a serious hailstorm.
Lovely spot to camp and nice travellers to talk to.
In the morning blue skioes and the sun creeping down the palm trees. Time for tea. We went to the beach to greet the ocean and look for nice pebbles. I brushed my teeth in the ocean and they got seriously clean.
Today was spent riding the twisties down the coast, and getting my luggage rack welded (it broke). Brilliant weather. Stopped at Bruce Bay for a while, the striped stones stacked up in piles were very special. The rocks had silvery spots where they contained mica.
Eventually we reached Haast, found a camping site, and found that Gummihuhn's bike has a flat tire. We'll take care of that tomorrow. Rather tired now.

• The first flight was OK even though we couldn't really sleep.
• The short visit to HongKong was amazing and utterly worth it, and so were the noodles we had there.
• The second flight was delayed because the plane was broken and they had to put us into a different one and it took them several hours.
• The other plane was a similarly old clunker (while the first one was fine!) as the one that we would have been on if it hadn't been broken. However, we did manage to get moved to a seat with leg room for Gummihuhn.
• We did, of course, miss our connection in Auckland and no one told us what to do so we ran around the airport like headless chickens but ended up on an Air NZ flight which was amazingly comfortable. The purser took one look at us and put us next to the emergency exit. Leg room!
• We had breathtaking views on NZ during the flight.
• It was great to be greeted by familiar faces and picked up from the airport.
• We hardly fell asleep on the scenic drive Lytteltonwitch and Futurecat took us on.
• We loved the tacos but were quite happy to go to bed right after dinner (=tea).
• We slept well and felt a whole lot better in the morning.
• Today we went to pick up the bikes and they're sweet. Handling is great. They feel light as a feather and the bike shop folks were really friendly.
• We're going to bake a nice big stack of Dutch pancakes for tea (=dinner) now.

More later!