Jan 20 – 22 – travel and relaxing days

We left Invercargill behind and headed back north to Kuri Bush to meet up with Olga and John. They had secured a fabulous house on the coast after their Milford Track hike and offered us to share the space. Dinner on the way up was some tasty but greasy fish and chips, had to get that at least once while in sight of the ocean! The next day we assembled our bikes to make sure they survived the flight over and then went for a short bike adventure. This turned out to be some decent race training since the trails we chose were technically bike legal but very bike stupid! We had a big uphill on some chunky dusty double track then it branched off into smaller trails on top. We thought to ride out and down to some actual marked MTB trails but on the way down our trail deteriorated rapidly and I ended up going over the handlebars when I lost my front wheel in a trench! We aborted that plan and hike the bikes back up and the headed off on a trail downhill. We did about 1 mile in around 40 mins and this was downhill! I’d say we rode maybe 10 minutes total of the downhill section, the trail was most definitely not a biking trail! It did make for excellent practice for bike whacking and hike a bike! We all got familiar with the bush lawyer vine, named because when it gets its hooks in you it never lets go! I’d read this name online but we had the pleasure of running into a group of older gents out tramping and they told us the same name and story!

Steve and I headed into town after the ride to grab some lunch and for me to visit a local yarn shop. Both stops worked out great, lunch at an Irish pub on the square and a knitting kit for me since in my chaotic packing I neglected to bring a project! Back at the beach house we had a lovely dinner and chat with Olga and John, enjoying the wine picked solely for the name… Mt Difficulty!

We woke up Wednesday and packed up house to move to Lumsden, our last landing place before the race. Before leaving we took a short walk down the beach and found some really cool sea creatures that turned out to be sea tulips. They looked so similar to the crinoid fossils but are actually tunicates (relatives of the sea squirts). Ocean life is so bizarre to me!

Driving south (again) we stopped for lunch in Belclutha and Raj’s Indian and it was delicious! My only regret is that I left my hoodie behind. Hopefully it will be waiting for me when we drive back up after the race. After dropping the gear and guys in Lumsden, Olga and I headed to Queenstown to drop her rental car and collect Jen. We had a fun afternoon running around Queenstown trying to find a replacement battery for Jen’s bike light after hers was taken at the airport. Travellers beware, if you have a lithium ion battery in your carry on but it is not in the original package or true device, it might not make it through security in Auckland. For dinner, I ended up at the bar on my own since I mistakenly ordered from a restaurant that did not serve the table we had picked. Instead, we toasted from afar and I ended up chatting with a guy from Sidney who was on holiday doing downhill mountain biking.