Off we go: our itinerary for the first week

A brief post to share our itinerary for the first week of our 20 week pedal around Aotearoa. See image below for route.

We leave from the Kerikeri Domain, by the Angel Wings, at 10am and hope to have a few sympathisers present to wave us off. From the Domain, we will then slowly bike 406km via a coastal route down the east of Northland arriving in Orewa on Friday 18th. On Saturday 19th we bike on to Auckland and will have our first rest day.

The plan is to have a few ‘easier’ days to start with, well that is the sales talk that I gave to the Rear Admiral. The idea being that we can start to build our fitness before we hit the longer rides in the second half of the week. She suspects there are some ugly hills and gravel on those shorter stints. I have arranged some scenic overnight destinations as compensation. The week will be a good test for us. Overall, it will be one of the toughest in terms of hills to climb and distance traveled. Fortunately, no camping is involved. That may have been a ‘bridge too far’ at this early stage of the journey.

As the grunt on the front (GOTF) is responsible for everything that goes wrong on the ride, I have started pouring over the weather forecasts. I even contemplated ringing the MetService to plead with them to arrange a sunny day for Saturday in the hope that sunshine on day one would be a very good omen for the rest of the ride. I suspect ordering up sunshine for 122 days may be pushing it and, anyway, we don’t want to get on the wrong side of our rural friends as we are spending most of the ride pedaling through their territory. A sunny day would be great for kick off though. As for the other 121 days, well we will just have to get to used to rain, wind, hail……

The primary objective of week 1 is to still be riding by the Friday. If we can achieve that, the rest of the ride starts to look more achievable.

We did our last long ‘training’ ride on Sunday. A 68km round trip that took us through Waimate North, Kaikohe, Okaihau and back to Kerikeri. There was gravel, bike path and a mix of sealed roads and variable weather conditions. We both felt pretty good after that although we did lose a bit of gear on one of the rough roads and I had to do a frantic search to find a replacement. We have our fingers crossed that it arrives before Saturday.

We are being spurred on by the steady flow of donations (over $1,800 already) to Bald Angels in their battle to give vulnerable kids hope. These give us a real buzz and when we are battling the mud and rain on those not so great days we will just remind each other that tomorrow will hopefully be sunny. It would be great if we can give some children that same outlook. You can donate via give-a-little. All money raised goes direct to The Bald Angels.

On the fundraising front, we had an enjoyable afternoon at Oakridge Retirement Village sharing our ride plans and displaying our laden tandem. We have another talk at Rotary this evening. At the time of writing donations of $1,832 have been made by more that 24 generous donors.

We also wish to make special mention of a couple of acts of kindness. We took the bike into Hunter Cycles here in Kerikeri to get a pre-ride check and service. When it came to paying Tim very generously donated the time, parts and accessories as their contribution to our efforts. Thanks so much Tim.
Ruth’s brother Robert who owns a clothing manufacturing business specialising in Merino has been very generous with donations of clothing, material and blankets to both Red Cross and The Bald Angels. There was some for us that Ruth has been able to sew into some great riding tops. So thanks also to Robert & Omega Apparel.

With both of us focusing on those last minute preparations we haven’t completely forgotten about our important third member of the team, Bob. He was included in Ruth’s expeditionary sewing bee and scored a Hawaiian shirt for chilling out in after a hard day’s riding. He also got an outing to a Bald Angels fundraiser at the Kerikeri Golf Club where he was super excited to meet a bunch of his siblings who were hoping to be adopted as part of their role in comforting traumatised children.