Lovely Day on the Coast.

Day 2.

Once again I couldn’t get myself organised and left camp at 9am. It didn’t matter much this time because conditions were in my favour with a light tail wind and reasonable temperatures. I also knew that the shops down the coast would all be open so I shouldn’t be going hungry.

Adi met me at the 50km mark and we decided to make for a town called Ross. This would be a day’s total of 170kms. Achievable I thought because of the tail wind and legs that seemed to have recovered from yesterday’s punishment. The west coast scenery was as lovely as always and the motorists seemed pretty well behaved. A lot of the traffic this time of the year is tourist traffic. These out of town people generally know how to drive safely. But during the off season the local hillbillies can really amaze you with their antics. The West Coasters of the South Island are definately a breed apart. Enough said.

Sea Spray Filled the Air.

Adi and I sat and had lunch while I once again watched bored tourists try to entertain themselves on the walk between their cars and the café. I finally got sick of watching tractor seat bottoms and jumped on my bike to do another 50km stint. The coast is further beautified at the moment by the many Southern Ratas in flower.

There were quite a few cycle tourists on the road today but being on a mission I didn’t stop to talk much to any of them and nobody caught me up to chat except a local West Coast road racy that recognised me.

Watch out for Unicyclists.

At the 100km mark while I was busy working my way through two caffeinated energy drinks (probably the whole days recommended limit) Adi text me to say that we were staying at Hokitika instead of Ross and that I know only had 40kms to cover. I certainly didn’t argue. But what I should have done was have an ice-cream. Instead I got my netbook out and started blogging. And I blogged and I blogged. I blogged until I was all blogged out. Then I jumped on my bike to ride the last 40kms.

You’d think that I would have learnt from yesterday. After 30kms I’d hit the wall and the last 10kms was once again a bit of a grovel (nothing like yesterday though). I just got cocky because it was just a 140km day.

Lesson that I must learn- Eat my ice-creams!