428 hours on a tandem: A few more questions answered + videos of ride

We have been back in Kerikeri for nearly a month, apart from a week long sojourn to Taranaki (not on the bike). Since our return I have attempted to craft the many hours of unedited video footage into the final five episodes of our adventure. There are links to all of these at the base of this post.

We have also fielded many questions regarding the trip. We suspect that some of these are simply probing to determine our sanity while others seem to want to know how you go about planning and executing what seems to some to be a pretty overwhelming endeavour. Then there are those who simply want the entertainment to continue and are looking for a hint as to what our next adventure will be. We will try and answer some of these questions for you.

It was not a spontaneous decision to hop on a tandem and ride around the country. It was an idea that had its genesis back in early 2023 when the soon to be GOTF, contemplating what his next biking endeavour may be, decided to test the water with then retired (from cycling) Ruth. She wasn’t averse to some touring but not like we had done back in 2019. Long story short, she gave me a very weak green light (although I could be colour blind) so we ordered the tandem in May 2023 but at that stage had no formulated plans other than ‘some touring’ and keeping our fingers crossed that the tandem would work for us. There were some unanswered questions related to our heights v the bikes specifications (could our feet touch the ground when stationary). We were both at the lowest end of the ranges in the specification.

It took six months to take delivery of the bike and I had spent a rather long wet winter exploring some ‘touring’ options. Using the logic that we don’t know what tomorrow holds, I decided to go for broke and come up with the outline of a grand adventure that we would only attempt once. After all, time was of the essence given our steadily advancing years. The concept had to be doable, especially for Ruth who I knew would most certainly not see it the same way as I did. Riding right around Aotearoa / New Zealand is a pretty big hairy goal but if you break it down into digestible chunks it starts to appear more achievable. It also had to be doable for an e-bike. With a manual bike and a tent, the ‘world is your oyster’. With an e-bike, you need a standard power socket rather than a tent site at the end of each day’s riding. In camps, powers sockets are usually in very high demand for device charging.

So I looked at the quietest routes that we could take to get us around the country avoiding State Highways as much as possible. I knew from my previous rides that this is mostly achievable but there were a few less cycled parts of the country that a circular ride would encounter and I would be ‘winging it’ on the routes there. Then I looked at accommodation / charging options along a tentative route and started to put together a rough list of potential destinations. In many areas the options were few and in a couple, more than a day’s riding apart.

There were a couple of steps that then needed to be taken. Firstly, sell the idea to Ruth in a way that she did not balk at it immediately. This meant; keeping daily distances in double digits, camping to a minimum and doing a small chunk of the tour as a test ride before committing to the rest. Maybe we could also ride for a charity in order to help the motivation. Importantly, like the United Nations Security Council, she would have veto rights for everything on the tour. In recognition of this powerful tool she would assume the title of The Rear Admiral (RA) rather than the somewhat energetic title of ‘stoker’ generally given to those on the back seat of a tandem. Of course the name of ‘Captain’ for the rider on the front was no longer appropriate so I would be called the Grunt on the Front (GOTF). Despite quite a few reservations, the pitch worked and she agreed to the test ride. That ride would answer any doubts about our and the bike’s abilities and also give us a taste of what we were in for and what we would need to do to promote the charity during the longer ride. In late 2023 we still had not ridden a tandem let alone the one we were getting. The bike finally arrived in late December 2023.

We had decided to raise funds and awareness for a local charity, The Bald Angels. They seconded one of their Angel Bears to the ride who very quickly became the ‘show pony’ that you all know as Bob. During a visit to Kerikeri, Ruth’s daughter Anna had coined the name Bob, short for Bear on Bike. Ruth had crafted a hi-vis vest for him and he quickly became an indispensable part for promoting the ride. After the test ride he also became a little more safety conscious doning sunnies and a helmet. We hope that you enjoyed Bob’s tales and antics, we had a lot of fun doing that and Bob became a great, but time consuming, distraction for us during our ride.

By the time we set out on our 570 kilometre tour around the Far North in mid February 2024, which would also form part of the ultimate ride if we gave it the green light, we had formed a basic route and itinerary for the rest of the Aotearoa ride so that we could compare actual performances against proposed rides later on.

Due to unforeseen circumstances the team had not had as much time as hoped on the bike before pedalling out of Kerikeri but the ride went remarkably well despite our worst tumble of the entire journey. It was our first lesson on that ride, get the best tyres to handle all kiwi terrains. By the time we finished what was a hot 10 days of riding, Ruth had plenty of pre-conditions to be met before giving the green light to the rest of the journey but none which could not be accommodated. She also had more than a few concerns about my propensity to lose gear – another lesson for the journey – take a few critical spares such as sunglasses.

We had plenty of time to fine tune the rest of the ride as the earliest we could contemplate starting our longer ride (again due to circumstances) was October 2024. There was a lot of work to do. I needed to reconfigure the daily rides to meet the RAs more restrictive distance limits. Despite my best endeavours there would still still be a couple of gnarly rides that had the potential for ‘RA trouble’ but hey, looking at these statistically, they were well below the ‘margin of error’. We had to book accommodation (and transit travel such as ferries) to ensure that we could charge the bike, especially in areas prone to a lot of tourists. While we still needed to carry a tent where camping was the only option, it was generally off the menu otherwise the RA was not going. Experience would prove that this was the right decision.

We tried to ensure that accommodation bookings were flexible enough to allow for last minute changes. Some were, many were not and, wildcard events have the potential to derail itineraries. Weather, illness, injury, family crisis, pandemics, war, liberation days, the list goes on. We hoped that by adding a rest day into each week, any disruption could be met by reconfiguring a few days rather than the entire itinerary. Our first week delivered the first of these. Food ‘poisoning’ laid the RA low for 24 hours in our first week!. We would have one other on our trip south and on both occasions the reconfiguring of a few days worked ok, mostly because the incidents occurred off the beaten tourist path. The big one though was Ruth being unable to return south in January. I had already ridden the fully laden tandem solo before we did our test run in February so knew that riding it solo was possible. It just ended up being a further than hoped for but I managed ok.

There was our fitness. We decided that the main thing was having reasonable overall fitness coupled with the knowledge that we could manage longer rides. We had not been particularly bike-fit for the test ride and had managed daily rides of up to 82km. Getting out on the bike every day and going over repetitive routes is boring so we didn’t overdo the bike time before departure. It was going to be a very long ride and we could build our bike fitness by easing ourselves in over the first week. That approach worked fine. From my perspective, having completed several multi-week rides on a manual mountain bike, the effort required on the e-bike, especially on hills, was nowhere as strenuous. The difference this time was the overall amount of time spent in the saddle. Fortunately, saddle related injury was spared until the last few hilly days in Northland on the way home. Hence the current break from the bike.

Mental attitude is a huge part of being able to contemplate a ride like this. You have the doubters who will tell you that you are mad and if we were not ‘road-kill’ by the end of Kerikeri Road, your chances of survival beyond that were slim, at best. You have to filter these comments out which is easy as most of those offering this advice have never been near a bicycle. The real mental challenges are the proposed total distance and the total elevation gain. For our trip, these were around 7,300km with 72,000 metres of elevation. Big numbers for a couple in their advancing years but helped a lot by pedal assist. Rather than focus on those big numbers we broke the journey down into ‘weekly tours’. The data looks far less daunting. The first day we were aiming to get to Russell, the second to Oakura, the end of the week Auckland. We had ridden further in a day than each of the planned daily distances. Without thinking about it, after a week we were in Auckland and feeling good. By third week, more than 1,000km into the ride and still feeling fine. The kilometres rolled by without thinking too much about distances. Each new day is a new adventure.

One thing that we have learned from this long ride is that there are plenty of septuagenarians and even a few octogenarians out their riding the length of the country self supported. We were contacted by another couple who also own a moustache tandem. They are 79 and have ridden their tandem 25,000km around NZ in the last three years. Makes our efforts sound pretty paltry. We had also talked to a couple in their eighties as we were returned from Cape Reinga – they were just starting out on their way to Bluff. I was having a coffee at the only backpackers at Lake Rotoroa in Nelson Lakes and chatting to the host. She told me about a couple in the eighties who had passed through in 2024. It was the same couple, she said that they “were having a ball”. Even though most people comment that “I could never do that”, they probably could if in good health and reasonably fit. Aim for the length of the country rather than the round trip that we did. There is a well defined route that is travelled by a lot of riders of all ages. It is an amazing ride and no, there are quite a few sections that you cannot drive in a car.

During the ride, it was a case of getting as much rest as you could post each ride and making the most of our rest days. The support that we received via our social media posts and the donations to The Bald Angels also helped with our motivation, especially when things were not going so well.

And the road kill issue? We ensured that we were highly visible with hi vis clothing and bright flashing lights on the rear (of the bike). We also use small rear vision mirrors (both GOTF and RA) so that we can see the traffic (and dimensions) approaching from the rear. The RA would alert me to trucks or cars where she felt there was a risk. We found the vast majority of motorists to be pretty good and respectful. Couldn’t always say the same about some cyclists that we encountered who deserved any abuse hurled at them – invisible and/or happy to hold up the traffic. We had a strategy to deal with trucks (especially) that reduced the chances of a messy demise (for us) and generally got an appreciative toot & wave from them. We stopped as soon as we saw one approaching us from behind and where the road ahead was either narrow, obscured or there was approaching traffic. We applied this tactic to cars as well when we felt the situation warranted it. We only had one unplanned detour where we felt especially unsafe but for the most of the ride traffic was light and often non existent. Riding on busier roads is just not a pleasant experience not just because of the need to be vigilant all the time but the road noise and fumes just make it a very unpleasant experience. A good shoulder does not remove these latter factors.

As I mentioned earlier, the wildcards that you cannot plan for will inevitably eventuate in one shape or another. Ruth was keen on having having a Plan B each day. This was possible and prudent in some cases where you knew what the biggest risk factor was, such as river fords where you needed an alternative (or be prepared to sit it out) if you were faced with heavy rain that would make these routes unrideable. But for others, apart from very generic solutions, until you know what the actual problem you face is, you don’t really know what the potential alternatives may be. Those depended on what and where of the calamity. The key was to have an array of tools and spares that you could call on when needed, ranging from a satellite communicator / EPIRB to spare chain links. When we hit a road closure it was a case of trying to work out an alternative route, if available. By downloading our daily map before we left each morning we did not have to rely on cellular reception once underway. That came unstuck for me in remote Ohura . The worst cases of these predicaments were; on our way to Molesworth Station (road closure) and the day we struck gales near Wedderburn. There was of course the inconvenience of George the fox terrier on the Molesworth Station ride and my battery charging forgetfulness on the Forgotten World Highway and wind fall and unforeseen obstacles on single tracks. In the case of the latter, we started seeking out bike hire operators on tracks that we were unfamiliar with to glean local knowledge. Of course, after a gale, you had to be prepared for wind fall.

We often get asked if we visited this or that attraction during a particular ride. Our stock answer to that question is that we spend all day experiencing the great outdoors, interacting with nature, taking in the grandeur of our surroundings at a very slow pace or simply stopping to take it in when we felt like it, not when there was a vehicle friendly ‘rest area’. When you are travelling by car your objective is a destination and the bits in between tend to flash by in a blur as you speed along at between 80 to 100kph, concentrating (hopefully the driver is) chatting, being distracted by music or laughing at the morons on the tandem. When you arrive, you go about visiting this or that ‘attraction’ that is on your todo/bucket list for that day.

By the time we get to our overnight parking spot we have had a full day of experiences. For example: We saw the Church of the Good Shepherd and the huddle of tourists around it as we trundled into Tekapo but were not motivated to stop, that was not our objective, our accommodation was. We had allready come over a remote mountain pass, admired the Alps, but not so much the brisk Norwester, that had been in our faces for about four hours. The pretty Lupins along the way were by now old hat, we had taken in the expanse of the native grasses of the MacKenzie country with their magnificent backdrop and tomorrow we would be pedalling alongside deserted canals and lakes again with magnificent vistas of the Southern Alps. We were experiencing these for 4-6 hours a day sans tourists.

What’s next? We are having a good break from the bike for at least another month to give our bike weary bits time to fully recover from the ride – well the GOTF is – so that means the RA has to as well. I have not heard any complaints from her about that. After that we might start to look at what our next adventure may be but sadly, it will not be of the same epic proportions as the last one.

To everyone who has followed our ride and offered your support along the way – thank you. Hope you enjoy the videos.