And He’s Off!

In my last post I said I didn’t think I would finish. I wasn’t lying when I told you to bet against me, but over the next few posts I’m going to tell you how I hope to finish this thing anyway.

Technique #1: Cheat. Yesterday I took the bus up north, and it reached the Cape Reinga lighthouse much earlier than I expected. So I decided to cheat my original, fantastical itinerary. I started one day early, since I met my mileage goals for yesterday and today, I am still ahead of the game.

Cape Reinga offers a breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean, which makes it an appropriate place for a farewell. It is as close as you can get to the afterlife. So says Māori tradition, anyhow: when they die, no matter where they are in the world, they come up Ninety Mile Beach to the northernmost point of the North Island, and thence to the great beyond.

From the Reinga lighthouse I hit 58 kph down the winding hills of Highway 1. Then my speed plunged to about 8 kph riding straight down Te Paki Stream. The stream was high enough to wash out any trace of a bike path, so for three miles or so Booster got to play kayak.

From there I began the ninety-kilometer beach that is Ninety Mile Beach. Don’t ask. If you time it right between high tides, the sand is almost as firm as concrete. If you can find the hardpack. Under normal circumstances it’s not hard to find, because the instant you leave it your tires bog down and your life suddenly sucks. But on the hardpack, your only worries are wind and sunburn.

That’s normal circumstances. This morning wasn’t normal. I camped at the Bluff, a gorgeous dune-bound site with wild horses, roaring surf, and excellent stargazing. Last night the stargazing got cut short by rain, and the rain never stopped. So this morning—uh oh—the whole beach was soft and wet. Without the hardpack, that ride is murder.

But there’s a solution: drop your tire pressure to 10 psi or even less. You’re going to be slow but at least you have enough surface area to float over the sand. So that’s what I did, for a solid 20 km.

Today the mileage goal was 60 km, which is the farthest I’ve ever biked in my life (racking up Worst Bikepacker points for doing virtually no training this summer). My big worry was that I’d have to bike 120. As the sun cooked off the rain, the hardpack came back as a sine wave following the surf. So if this beach is 60 km as the crow flies, the wave following the straight line would be at least double that.

But the guys who wrote my guidebook are damn good. They took the sine wave into account! Their directions were spot on. So thank you, Kennett brothers, for paying attention. About four hours in, the hardpack was fully restored and the merciless crosswind that had been battering me from my ten o’clock shifted to nine and then to eight. Hardpack plus tailwind equals Happy Steve. The last hour was easier than the first hour—exactly the opposite of yesterday.

So I’m a cheater. I’m going to cheat further by canceling every rest day in the original itinerary. Rest days will appear on their own, be it an injury, broken equipment, cave trolls, or whatever else New Zealand throws at me. For now I’m a day ahead of schedule. We’ll see how long I can keep it that way.

One more thing: riding on the beach, I got up close and personal with the most dangerous animal in New Zealand. Predictably, it’s not really from here; it drifts to benevolent NZ from maleficent Australia.

The blue bottle jellyfish is as long as my finger and has enough venom to kill a roomful of people. I’m not making that up. Good thing for me I had to bike in a stream, not the ocean. But these little fellas pepper the beach, along with their bigger, purplier, not-so-deadly-but-still-damn-painful cousins, the Portuguese man-o’-war. I didn’t dare run them over, because I don’t know how long jellyfish venom stays on tires.