Philosophically speaking, I think Thanksgiving is my country‘s best holiday. Historically speaking we all know there are problems, but the idea of celebrating gratitude—and taking time to be mindful of what to be grateful for—is lovely.

I had a lot to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. The day started as one of those it’s hard to appreciate: cold, rainy, strong westerly winds when I had to ride west. Destination: Lake Rotoroa, which is famous for being infested by sandflies. I looked them up, wondering if that’s what kiwis call sand fleas. Nope. Worse. It’s the kiwi name for blackflies. If you aren’t familiar with blackflies, they are reason enough to believe in Satan and Hell. Worse than mosquitoes. And I’m supposed to spend my Thanksgiving biking down the barrel of a strong, rainy westerly, straight to Sandfly Mecca.

But there’s no day so bad that a compooter can’t make it worse. My GPS has been behaving like a reliable ally for a while now, lulling me into a false sense of security. Thursday morning I made the mistake of trusting it. 16 kilometers later, I had ridden 15 kilometers up the wrong valley.

On any other day, this would have been annoying. Riding into a cold rainy headwind, it was a kick in the nuts. But what could I do other than ride back where I started from?

Where I started from was the little town of Tapawera, aka “Tap.” I was told not to camp in Tap because meth heads have a habit of stealing locked bikes from the campgrounds. So Wednesday night I’d booked a room in kind of a dump, with neighbors so obnoxious I had to switch to a room at the opposite end of the parking lot car park. Now, back in Tap after 32 pointless kilometers through the hills, I had to choose: push on or quit.

Quitting had a certain appeal. I’d done it a few days before, when I took the train to Wellington. My saddle had failed mightily: in just five months, less than 1,500 miles, I wore out not just the cushioning but also the steel itself. See that gel padding? It’s not supposed to have thumb-sized depressions in it. See those steel rails? They’re supposed to be straight.

So my ass has been putting up with one uncomfortable seat for who knows how long. I quit outside Wellington because I could feel my femur rolling over my sciatic nerve. I found a seat cushion in Wellie, but no new saddle until 60 miles later in Richmond. My sciatic nerve is glowing red at this point; a rest day will do it some good. Even a rest day in Tap.

So that’s option one: quit. Take the same ride tomorrow, extra vigilant this time. Option two: retry today’s ride right now. Oh hell no. Not even gonna think about it. Only the Worst Bikepacker in New Zealand can fret about tacking a mere 32 km onto a day’s ride, especially if the goal that day is a modest 66 km. But I’m slow. My all-time record is 83. I sure as hell don’t want to shoot for 98 on a day like this.

Option three: go to the campground and see about this crystal meth situation. I’ve never tried it. Maybe it’s good for sciatic pain.

Option four: go to the grocery store to buy some ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner. There, discover it is oddly full of young, smiling Dutch women. Ask them what they’re doing here and watch them point to the giant green hop-on/hop-off intercity tour bus. Then meet Fraser, driver of said bus, which can seat 55 and Fraser has 54 passengers. Is he going anywhere near Lake Rotoroa? Kinda sorta. He can get me within 30 km. Does he have room for a bicycle too? Barely, if we pull the wheels off and carefully lay it and them atop a bunch of Dutch luggage. Or, far easier, just park it in the stairwell.

So there I am in a front row seat on a bus headed south, Booster tucked away as securely as if the stairwell was built for her, with a horde of happy Dutch women admiring her and asking me all about my ride. It warms a middle-aged heart to get such attention.

Better still, I got no attention at all from the sandflies. There was a time when I’d have said this is blasphemy, claiming indifferent insects are better than affectionate women with foreign accents, but I stand by it. Fawning women are a young man’s game. I’ll take a zipped tent with a cooked dinner inside and all the bitey bugs outside.

I don’t know how to account for my apparent truce with the sandflies. Wild Man Chizo recommended vitamin B1 against mosquitoes, and I’ve been taking that ever since. Maybe it works. Or maybe it was the head net, winter gloves, pant legs tucked into the socks, bug spray, and seething waves of hatred for mozzies and all their kin. I don’t know. I just know to be thankful.

The rest of the ride wasn’t too bad. I was slated for 66 km on the day and I rode 66. Not the right 66, but I started and ended just where I intended to. And I got out of the rain for about a mile, in NZ’s longest bikeable railway tunnel. (Fifth longest in the world!)

As for dinner, I did pretty well for a guy who subsists mostly on peanut M&Ms. Kumara isn’t exactly a Thanksgiving staple but it’s close: a sweet potato brought to NZ by the Māori 800 years ago. (Did you know they sailed all the way to South America? Wild.) Sweet potato plus some cranberries and a couple of churkey legs* sounds pretty Thanksgivingy to me.

*Cheddar carved up to look like turkey.

THANKSGIVING DINNER MENU

Pan-seared chili cinnamon kumara
Garlic smashed other half of kumara
Dried cranberries
Pumpkin soup
Churkey legs
Deconstructed French silk pie (i.e. candy bar with no silk, pie crust, or Frenchmen added)

Philosofiction

Happy Thanksgiving!