Mexico! Part 1

And we're racing! After 10 days in Southern California, I headed south to Mexico City for the 6 stage Vuelta Mexico. This was not without its difficulties. For example:

Our flight leaving LAX at 6am. Also the fact that we had a bit of luggage.

Which all arrived safely in Mexico. However with 8 riders and all the trimmings checking bags and going through customs was a bit of a lengthy process.

But we felt instantly at home.

We did have an off day before the first stage so there was time for bike riding.

Despite the protest that happened to go by the front of the hotel.

 

And an off day is fundamentally different from a day off.

I got some tires ready.

Washed some bikes.

We sadly didn't get to use this hose. (Foot included for scale)

But the bikes still turned out well.

Backdrop for the start of stage one in the center of Mexico City.

Featuring the church and this enormous Mexican flag.

And the pelaton rolls out.

 

More from south of the border soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm back!

I'm back in the US after a great send off from New Zealand.

Thanks to the iRide crew and the country of New Zealand for playing host to me for several months. It was grand.

And I'm back on the road.

Currently in beautiful Costa Mesa California, home of Jamis bikes west coast offices. Also home to the La Qunita inn which, has been my home for the last 10 days, and hooters. Which is hooters.

When I arrived there was a fair amount of work to be done. You could almost make out the Jamis logo behind this part of our parts order.

Lots of work means occasionally taking your work home with you. The maids were not quite sure what to make of this when they came by to clean my room.

I also managed to make a huge mess all over the place. In addition to the Jamis show room and my hotel room I also took over the loading dock for an afternoon to glue some tires.

And among all the new stuff there were even some goodies for the mechanics. A big thank you to Feedback Sports for hooking us up with new stands for the season. If you're in the market: these are the stands to have.

A bit of the finished product.

And the riders who are coming in tonight should have no question about who's bed is who's.

 

Off to Mexico City for Vuelta Mexico in a couple of days. More blogging to follow.

 

 

 

 

Two things you should know about the Wellington zoo.

I finally made it to the zoo yesterday. It was a great deal of fun, but there are two things you should know.

1) they don't mess around with their signs.

At all.

2) I saw a Kiwi (the bird, not the person or fruit).

 

I've now accomplished everything I needed to while in New Zealand.

 

It's a small world after all

Despite being the title of the worst ride at Disneyland it is sometimes a fact that the world isn't that big. Today's example:

Karen, who's apartment in San Francisco was featured on the blog last year (the nice one next to the giant hole), has since passed through Wellington on her travels. Always nice to see a familiar face on the other side of the planet.

 

South Island party!

Fair warning: this post is long. It covers Boxing Day through the 10th of January. Good luck.

The hostel I stayed at in Picton on Christmas night was big on towel sculptures.

Boxing Day started with this sign. The plan was to hitchhike to Nelson. So I started walking with my thumb out.

After an early success in getting to Blenheim I found myself in the middle of wine country.

A few kilometers later I was picked up by a very nice family who said they could take my to Nelson, we would just have to stop for lunch first.

After a nice lunch we made it to Nelson. My friend Jay came and gave me a lift out to Motueka, which is a little way outside of Nelson. It looks about like this.

Jay showing off his impressive selfie taking ability.

Big beach outside of Motuika.

After about a day of relaxing on the beach it was time to proceed south again. Since the fortunes were ever in my favor I was able to catch a ride with Kirk (from iRide) and his friend Dylan south to Hokitika and then on to Wanaka. This would be a good chance to cover some distance and see the west coast of the South Island.

There are lots of mountains, rivers, glaciers, and other stuff like that.

Some grass.

More beach.

And lots of sun.

And since I couldn't resist: tourists taking pictures with their iPads.

Saw this a little outside of Wanaka. Not sure who Eric Corff is, but I'm still partial to the sticker.

On the shore of Lake Wanaka.

 

This area of the South Island is know for excellent hiking, so we had to get outside at least a little. New Year's Eve Gavin and I hiked up a hill a bit outside of town to get a better look at things.

A higher view of the lake.

The view from the top. More of the valley, with more lakes in the background.

Despite what it looks like Gavin is not taking sneaky pictures of lions. There are relatively few lions here it seems.

After a pretty long hike, we celebrated New Years right. Full meal including several veggies.

 

At the start of 2014 I wasn't exactly sure how to spend my last week of vacation. One of the people I met along the way mentioned heading out to Milford Sound, part of the fiordland of southwest New Zealand. So after a quick night in Queenstown I made my way to Milford. Which turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip.

It more or less looks like this. There are 4 permanent waterfalls along the sound.

They are quite large.

However on rainy days, including when I was there, about 1000 more spring up.

They are everywhere.

Everywhere!

At the end of the sound you get to the Tasman Sea (aka the ocean) and I was assured that Australia was only about 1800km out there. I've approximated it's location above.

Despite the cold and wet it was still all smiles amongst the tourists on the boat.

Afterwards I returned to Queenstown for a day of hiking another big hill. Rain would not stop me.

I had always thought the movie " a river runs through it" was about fishing. Apparently it was about this trail I was walking up.

Real wet.

 

And then it started snowing towards the top.

This hike was billed as "difficult but worth it for the views at the top". This was totally accurate. The view I got if the inside of that cloud was priceless.

Fortunatley the view a little farther down also included some more lake.

 

As I write this I'm in Christchurch the day before my flight back to Wellington.

The earthquake damage from 2010 and 2011 is still very much visible, but it seems like things are improving. Even if the construction is far from complete.

All of which can be viewed comfortably from atop your Segway.

Congrats if you've made it this far. I guess almost three weeks of vacation leads to a rather long post.