January 2005

The last couple of weeks in New Zealand marked the start of our one-year adventure. Since we were going to spend most of the next 300 and so days on a pushbike, we decided that to go and bid farewell to our friends and family around the country, we were not going to cycle.

So it is on a Ducati supersport 600 (for those of you who know something about MOTORbikes, for those who don't, it is an Italian bike, therefore apparently built for performance and esthetics, but not practicality...) that we started our journey.

We were reminded once again of the beauty and magic of New Zealand - the west coast of the south island getting the first prize (and the bonus of having only 2 or 3 cops scattered along the coast, so once you've seen one, that's it... which gave Mike full licence to test the performance of the Ducati at speed and I even surprised myself in enjoying the sound of the engine, which sounds terrible I know).

These last 2 weeks have been about meeting and sharing good times, a bit of hiking, a bit of swimming, a lot of eating and drinking - and above all, coming to grips with our departure. As I write these words on 17th January, we are Departure Day minus 2 and are getting itchy feet: we want to get going!

Our bodies, souls, hearts and bums are ready to get into cycling mode...

 

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