July 11th Total Ride 210 miles Today was a true test of our determination & grit. It sucked. Waking up early-ish, rain kicked in as we packed up. We ate a breakfast of cocoa krispies that a former hostel guest had left behind and got absolutely smashed by rain as we headed out. 7 minutes in, we were sopping wet, head to toe & our makeshift plastic baggy booties had already been rendered useless. Desperate for gas on the BMW, we made a brief detour to Westport. Making wet footprints throughout the station, we got our meat pies & headed back out. Five minutes out from the station, Josh thought it was a good time to be a baller & decided to make it rain. On the highway. At 70mph. Fortunately I was bringing up the rear so I saw his wallet go sailing off his bike and the contents get scattered across the road. It looked like the world bank exploded as credit cards, passport, ID, and currency from Canada, US, Taiwan, New Zealand, & Japan wafted thru the air. After collecting Joshs possessions, we were back on it again being wet, cold, and having a lot of distance to cover. It rained off & on for the next 3-4 hours of our ride to Picton. We regrettably skipped the northern route from Nelson to Picton along the fjords as it added a bit of time & all we wanted was to be out of the rain & done. It was the wettest & most miserable ride of our lives by FAR. We were going over 100mph on the straightaways just trying to get this ride done with. The only thing that would have made this ride tolerable would have been us having to heed the penguin crossing signs. We finally, mercifully arrived in Picton & bought our tickets for the Wellington ferry. We arrived a few hours early & changed out of our 9 or so wet layers of clothes (best part is how much water we wrung out of our socks) & grabbed dinner on the bay under a heater. The ferry was an interesting experience as we loaded our bikes onto the massive boat along with dozens of cars & semi trucks. We met another fellow biker who was local & super nice. We shared a ferry table with him and chatted with him inside & on the top deck of the 8 story ferry for an hour or so as the boat cruised thru the cook strait. Beautiful night thru a beautiful location, it was a good time. With 1.5 hours down, we still had 2 hours to go so we retreated to any comfortable corner we could find and napped for the remainder of the trip. Waking from a nap to immediately unpack the bikes out in the cold was jarring. We got all packed back up & onto the streets of Wellington to head to Joshs cousin Jims place. Shivering & damp, we rode twenty minutes to Jims beautiful home right on the coast in Island Bay. Upon arriving, we were treated to hot tea, pretzels, and a ton of hospitality. After a couple hours of good conversation we ended the longest, roughest day of our trip.
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 23:52:58 +0000
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