Day One, Stage Two

Great send off from the kids of Sts Peter and Paul School in Lower Hutt this morning - thanks little guys!

We owe a big thank you to the teams (yep, teams) of Halberg staff around the country who have made arrangements for us. In this part of the woods Marguerite Christophers and Chris Gunn have generated interest in our project and ensured there was a good crowd supporting us.

Thanks also to the guys from SPARC and Peter Glensor, counsillor from the Greater Wellington Council.

You guys who rode with us this morning...very cool. It was fun to have company for a change, even if you turned it into a game of the hare and the tortoise (except the damn hare won this race).

For all sorts of reasons we elected to give the Rimutakas a miss and jumped into the trailer until Featherston. We're pretty sure we passed the scene where a car had driven off the road in the hills - good luck folks. For great pies check out Gusto Cafe and Bakery along the main street...mmmmmm.

The boys notched up another 68 kms but with Rob complaining the entire way about their speed. Eventually his obsession got the better of him and the tandem was checked into Lambert Cycles in Masterton where the thorn proof tubes were all replaced with lighter regular tubes(That's right Ryan, rest assured you have rights to the loudest laugh as the punctures come rolling in). The guys at Lambert were very cool and gave us a freebie - love and kisses fellas (check out their site in the links).

Sean, the film maker, cooked up a great steak meal tonight. He could do this as we're staying in a unit with full kitchen facilities at the Acorn Estate Motel. This place gets extra brownie points for being fully accessible - nice job Bruce and Joan. The multi-talented Sean also assures us that the cutest checkout girls are to be found in New Plymouth - nice one Sean, we're not going to New Plymouth.

Calculated the total distance of the ride to Rotorua at a little under 300 kms - a little underwhelming we feel. Have to pick up the pace a bit to get to Napier, hence the change of tubes.

We're all starting to miss family and friends.