Posted by OK, so I don’t want you to think I’m having the holiday from hell over here, but after going to bed with what felt like constipation (you may want to stop reading here) I woke up this morning with some form of explosive dia…. actually let’s leave it at that and move on.
Whitianga is a small town, but it’s a small town with a proper bike shop, and I think I made the owners morning when I walked in and asked if he had a new rear tyre to sell me.
This moment of joy was however ruined when he realised that in fact he didn’t have one that would fit my bike (darn those old bikes), and so we had to settle for some serious spoke replacement and truing on what I already had.
However, to the owners credit for $NZ50 he had me back on the road 40 minutes after I walked into his shop … and I had three spare spokes and a spoke tool in hand. Whilst $50 might sound a lot for this, given that yesterday I seemed to recall offering my entire kingdom (which must be worth at least $NZ75) for just a spoke tool, it seemed a veritable bargain to me and so we both left the transaction happy little cyclists.
Given my delicate condition, Kim agreed to an easy day to Hahei (about a 15km ride) which started with a passenger ferry crossing at Whitianga … I love bike ferry crossings … They’re right behind train trips in my books when it comes to the best way to travel with bikes. Then there’s a huge drop down to buses and planes at the other end of the spectrum.
As expected it was only a short, flattish, ride to Hahei, but my seat post was now slipping down every 2kms or so making cycling a pain in the ass … All of which was forgotten when we pulled up at th beech at Hahei under a clear blue sky and though “Yep, this will do just nicely. Just nicely indeed.”
Unfortunately I then forgot to take any photos of the beautiful beach until we were returning to the campsite after dinner and took these evening shots …
It truly is a gorgeous little town (just bring your own food because there isn’t much here out of season and what is here is expensive) and we spent a wonderful afternoon just lying on the beach, reading, swimming and enjoying the sun.
Yep, this is getting to be more like a holiday.