On Top

Sumit of the Crown Range north-east of Queenstown.

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Lower switchbacks on the way up.

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New Zealand Adventures

I’ve been very quite lately as I had been terribly busy in Sydney for my last couple of weeks. Between trying to hammer out as much code as I could, still working full time on the road, moving out of my house, sending things back to California and trying to get some practice in before Nationals writing was the last thing I was about to do. Sorry! Anyhow I’ve been in New Zealand 2 weeks now. Timaru Polo Nationals was amazing! In the 5 years I’ve been traveling to play polo I’ve yet to attend a tournament this well organized. Courts were top notch by any standard and really set the bar for the Australasian region. Read about that somewhere else if interested, I’m retired from polo now.

Been in Queenstown since Monday and this place is beautiful. Surrounded by mountains on all sides, amazing lake and the weather has been fairly nice, although a bit cold. I was meant to start riding this morning but with it raining I decided to put it off a day. Rain is part of bike touring but I’d rather not start the trip in it. 3 days of great weather ahead. Enough to get onto the west coast before the rain starts up again.

My plan is to do a little over 2 weeks on the south island. Headed north-west through Wanaka then to Haast Highway to see the glaciers! I’ll be riding the north island at a bit of a faster pace and spending a bit of time visiting friends in Wellington, Taupo, and Auckland before flying to Los Angeles a month from now. From there I’m going to ride the west coast back to San Francisco, visiting friends in LA, Santa Barbara, visiting friends back home in Santa Maria and seeing my family before continuing on to Big Sur, Santa Cruz then SF! So yup, that’s it. Pictures going up on Flickr at some point.