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. )

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!

Tomorrow is the day! I can hardly believe it.
Bye all, I'll do my best to be in touch.
See some of you soon!

This is a test entry, made using a puny little old subnotebook called a Libretto 100 ct, which I intend to take to NZ. It seems to be working well but the keyboard is so small that I'll need to clip my nails really short.
I had my mind set on using a HP Jornada which is even smaller, but it runs on Windows CE, and not much else does.

The Libretto is running Win'98 and feels quite solid and stable. It has my own favourite browser and all my e-mail. It has its quirks though... see that button right of the screen?
That's the mouse and the mouse buttons are on the back of the screen. Yeah, takes some getting used to. Quite cleverly done, though, back in 1998.

...but I've just ordered a SheWee.
It's a plastic device that allows women to pee standing up, while keeping their pants mostly on. Yes, I guess you could call it a substitute penis. Only for one of its functions, though, obviously  :-)
I thought it would come in handy while travelling. Especially when out on a bike ride: there's always so much clothing you need to take off before you can get to the bare essence, so to speak.


Being Dutch, frugal and not inclined to buy the first thing that comes along, I did a little research and found several similar products, all with really silly names:
the P-Mate is not reuseable, the Whiz Freedom (also known as Whizaway) and the Freshette were fairly expensive especially with postage, and the GoGirl, while cheap at a modest 5 dollars, isn't even available outside the North-American continent. [insert really smart pun on 'continent' and 'incontinent' here]
The SheWee, however, could be mine for a mere £11  (about  €12  or $16) which seemed fair.
So that's the one I ordered.
I can't wait for my newly bought freedom to arrive so I can, pardon the pun, give it a go.

...for it to be buried in the comments of a posting.
So here it is.I enjoy working on the bike and I enjoy smelling of oil afterwards. I'd put the bike back together today except there's a pesky oil leak somewhere that deserves a bit of extra attention, and now that the engine is out of the frame it's all a bit easier to get to. So stoneshop  and I will look at it tonight. And if I get a strong urge to ride today I guess I can borrow his bike.

We also spent some time looking at a map of New Zealand. The trip is starting to feel a bit more like something that's actually going to happen. It's very exciting.
We now know that we'll have nine days to ride around the Southern island, and that sounds entirely possible and very, very tempting.

Oh, and this is the type of bike gummihuhn  and I want to rent. Nice, huh. Feel and handling should be rather similar to mine. And it's BookCrossing-yellow!

Okay, I thought we were all settled with regards to the tickets for New-Zealand, even though buying the tickets was an experience that left me underwhelmed.
Now it seems Air New Zealand have cancelled the flight we were booked on, and I have been informed that if we accept this we'll be flying out one day later.
With the trip being as short as it is (for such a long distance), I'm even more underwhelmed than I was before. I can has moar whelm plz?
So I called De Vliegwinkel (the travel agency) and they'll try to get the money back (the e-mail I got states that this should be possible) and book us on a flight with a different airline instead.
I do hope they'll be able to come up with a reasonable solution. They'll call me this afternoon. Fingers crossed...

Okay, I thought we were all settled with regards to the tickets for New-Zealand, even though buying the tickets was an experience that left me underwhelmed.
Now it seems Air New Zealand have cancelled the flight we were booked on, and I have been informed that if we accept this we'll be flying out one day later.
With the trip being as short as it is (for such a long distance), I'm even more underwhelmed than I was before. I can has moar whelm plz?
So I called De Vliegwinkel (the travel agency) and they'll try to get the money back (the e-mail I got states that this should be posible) and book us on a flight with a different airline instead.
I do hope they'll be able to come up with a reasonable solution. They'll call me this afternoon. Fingers crossed...

A list of 100 things meme works as follows:

Original Directions:
bold = I've done it
italicized = not done it but want to
underline = not done it and DO NOT WANT TO EVER
( Under the cut. )

This was a comment but I actually think it merits an entry of its own. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: my experiences with De Vliegwinkel.

futurecatnz  wrote in a comment: I always think buying the tickets is one of the most exciting bits of any trip - suddenly it's not just a vague dream, it's actually going to happen.

She's right.
Unfortunately the experience was spoiled a bit for me because the travel agency was bumbling...

When I went to their shop in October, a nice lady told me to come back on November the 10th, as by then they'd have the fares from all of the airlines for April, and prices might well be lower then. So I did, but prices weren't really lower; that wasn't her fault , of course. But it all went downhill from there.
First, they quoted me a great price and put it on reserve for me so I could talk to gummihuhn , since I was buying his ticket too.
Then, when I came to actually book, it turned out they could not really book it at that price because they'd made a mistake and applied the wrong airline's taxes.
Then I was handed the receipt and the price on that was a whole lot higher all of a sudden! Turned out they'd made another mistake and given me the 'normal' fare and not the 'low' fare I'd been promised. If I hadn't noticed, I'd have ended up paying hundreds of euros more.
And when they finally got everything right, the pin machine wasn't working and I had to go home and pay by electronic banking.
I'd imagined this part to go smoother... and I'm not going to recommend this company if anyone asks.

But hey, we've got tickets... and we've got a stop over in Osaka on the way back!
Only tricky bit is that we'll have to be at the airport in Christchurch at a ridiculous hour on the way back. It's probably best if we just stay awake.
Oh well... it's all going to work out in the end I'm sure.

As some of you know, I'll be travelling to New-Zealand in April, to be at the BookCrossing Convention 2009. Of course, it's silly and a waste to go to NZ for just a weekend, so I'll be going earlier so I can rent a motorbike there (yay!) and do some exploring. All very nice indeed.

I've been thinking about what to bring. Going without any kind of computer at all doesn't sound nice to me. I'm an internet junkie after all. I might want to e-mail or blog every now and then. But bringing my laptop... well, if it's packed well enough to be shock proof (as it needs to be while on the bike) it takes up a lot of space. Almost an entire pannier. Also, it's another thing to worry about; it could get stolen or damaged. And I wouldn't want to have it for just the Convention weekend, and leave it somewhere during the bike trip.

So I'd need something smaller if I wanted to bring anything at all. Okay, the new Eeepcs look like they could do the job; but I haven't got one and frankly, they're too close to my laptop and there would be functional overlap. They're... too much of a computer I guess.

So I thought about the Africa trip. I had a nice little e-mail device then: a HP 320 LX palmtop. It's still in working order, and it's a neat litle machine. No colour screen, but it's OK for text; runs on two penlight batteries, which is utterly practical.
Only trouble is, it was outdated when I got it almost ten years ago, and it's pretty much obsolete now. It's got a PCMCIA modem that allows it to dial in; but in NZ, where would it dial in to? It might be possible to get a normal network card or a WiFi card for it, but is it really worth the trouble?

However, the 320 has a sibling: the Jornada 720. It was almost available when I made the Africa trip (it came out a few months later), but would have been way too expensive for me to consider. Now I can buy one used, with all the accessories I'll need (and even some that I don't ) for a price below 100 euros.
It's still small: about the size of a book. it's still got that familiair rugged clam shell exterior. And it can still dial in (built-in modem, no less). But it's got a nice colour screen, more storage space (and it still takes CF cards like my old 320 does, which makes it really easy to get software on to it), a faster processor and new connectivity options.
And we're picking it up this evening. I can't wait.( Go on, you know you want to see them. )

We had a wonderful time there but typing it all in feels like homework! So I'll just tell you a tiny bit about it and leave the rest to the imagination. ( Under a cut for your friends page's sake )

Now that I know I'm chosen to be sent to New Zealand for the 2009 BookCrossing Convention, fundraising for that has my renewed interest... after all, there's nothing that motivates quite like self-interest.
So here's what we're going to do.
We're offering people the change of deciding whether or not we (discoverylover and I) shave our heads.
That means, we're accepting donations both 'for' and 'against', and depending on the amounts that have been donated, we will or will not lose our hair!
So much more interesting than your everyday, run of the mill sponsored head shaving, isn't it. We're hoping this way of doing it will add some more excitement and suspense to the whole event, and possibly a spot of competition, allowing us to rake in more dough.

Read all about it here.
And if you feel strongly either way about the two of us keeping or losing our hair, please vote with your wallet!

As a teaser, here are some pics representing us with or without hair. It's really up to you!

OR