Empire State of Mind

By -


What a busy old day!  You might want to make a cup of coffee before sitting down to this one........

........Ok ready?  First......the 4pm set-off.  I had booked a 10am ferry to North Island and planned the itinerary around that.  It meant a 6:30am departure from our accommodation, no biggie.  Then the bastards changed the sailing time to 7:30!!!

It was actually a pretty nice 24 mile ride in the dark, as we more or less had the roads to ourselves, but it was a rude awakening at 3:45 this morning.  

The crossing was good and my stomach contents remained on the inside.  On arrival into Wellington we had to cycle a couple of miles into the centre of the city where we caught a 2nd ferry, this time across the harbour to Days Bay.  This was a much smaller boat and the stomach was churning nicely when we finally got off.

The ride from there to our accommodation in Featherston was a bit of a curates egg......the first 20 miles were lovely, mostly on a cycle path following the harbour's edge then beside a river.  Unfortunately we then got to the head of the valley where 2 very stiff climbs awaited us.  The only compensation was the final 7 mile scream down the other side on some of the creamiest tarmac imaginable.

We are staying in the Empire Hotel which is....err....um....'interesting'.  The first alarm bell was when we pulled up outside and were immediately accosted by the pub drunk who wanted to be our best mate.  When we entered the pub we realised he was just 'A' pub drunk and had friends.  A motly collection of wrong-uns looked up blearily from their beer glasses to watch us check in.  By the looks of things they had been drinking steadily since about Wednesday.  The landlady, a formidable South African who looks like she had trained by dealing with rogue lions, sent our new best friend back to his table and showed us to our room.  

"Make sure you put your bikes in your room, on now account leave them out" she said.  This is in stark contrast to everywhere else we go where they say "just leave them over there by that bush....they'll be good as gold".

We said we would be seeing her for dinner and she replied "you'll probably be better walking into town.....its only a 10 minute walk".  If the owner thinks the food is crap..   .

So, North Island is now our lobster.  Tomorrow we are promised another stonking great headwind.  You've guessed it.......bugger.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Now That's What I Call Music Volme 4

By -
Image
Won't Stop Running/Golden Brown The 24-hour dysentery that has been working through the group has now reached me.  Bugger. Invisible  When making any on-line transaction in Merica is necessary to provide a telephone number and a valid zip code.  If paying by credit card this must match the zip code the card is registered to.  There is absolutely no provision for anyone without a US phone number and a card registered to a US address.  It's like non-Mericans don't exist or, maybe, just aren't worth bothering about. Some hotels and supermarkets have devices to scan photo-id. You've guessed it....these only recognise US driving licences.  For hotels you have to piss off and find your passport and in stores you have to wait while the manager is called to authorise the purchase.   We should retaliate and only serve Mericans in the UK if they can correctly pronounce Leicester Square. Wonderful Copenhagen Today we have ridden
Read more

Rage Hard

By -
Image
Leading a tour down the US West Coast isn't the worst way to spend 4 weeks and it has many compensations.  The weather is lovely, the scenery is off the scale and you get to drink magnificent craft beers and eat well.  Putting out the odd fire and springing pillocks from jail is all part of the sport. BUT, and it is a big but (you get a lot of big butts in Merica), the daily hotel check-in is absolutely the worst thing.  Regardless of how carefully you have checked the reservations there is a clenching of the buttocks as you approach reception.  Today the first contact was good....they had all 15 rooms and cats were allowed.....but they weren't ready.  No problem, I was 30 minutes early.  30 minutes later.....still no rooms.  Cyclists were arriving; hot, tired grumpy cyclists.  The receptionist had run out of fucks to give several years ago.  I asked to see the manager.  Out walked a thing that was once the manger but was now a barrel of lard with a head.  We exchan
Read more

Drinking in L.A

By -
Image
We are starting to entertain the very remote possibility that we will make it to the Mexican border! It continues to be an uphill struggle with mechanical and logistical challenges but we battle on. On Tuesday night our hotel was several miles from restaurants so we cleared a few seats in the van and sent out the simplest of instructions......form yourselves into a group of 6 and another of 7, decide whether you want to go to the harbour or downtown and pick a time.  What could possibly go wrong?  We had groups of 4, groups where most wanted the harbour but others wanted downtown, both groups wanting the same time...........I finally got off duty at 9pm, another 14 hour day! Yesterday we rode down through Malibu, Santa Monica and Venice Beach, the latter portion on a superb bike path through the beach.  Despite some heavy traffic in Malibu everyone enjoyed the day and we all arrived in Redondo Beach in high spirits.  Despite an already very high bar in terms of hotel in
Read more