In my teens and twenties New Zealand was not a place or subject that
occupied my mind in the least. I would not have been able to tell you where it was located. I knew in a general way where Australia was positioned on the globe, but I seldom heard the words “New Zealand”.
It was not until I had spent a few sessions with a friend born in Scotland, Jim McLean that I found him making occasional references to NZ. These “sessions” invariably occurred on adjoining bar stools at Johnny’s Corner Bar at the intersection of East Fourth and Pierce Sts. in Bethlehem. Jim was a New York transplant, having been transferred to Bethlehem Steel when the export sales function was brought to the home office for closer oversight. Many a day we would head to Johnny’s after work for a couple beers. Jim was a wealth of information about a lot of things.
With two successful bike trips behind me and every intention to plan another trip, it was not long before “the gears in my head were turning” and I was questioning Jim about all he could tell me about NZ. Except for Canada, I had never been out of the country. When I learned New Zealand was almost 100% English ancestry, like Canada, I started to seriously think about the possibility of a foreign bike trip.
In the days before the Internet, gathering basic information was a project. I had to be content with a limited number of books at the library, most of which were many years old. I wrote to the New Zealand consulate in New York and several other sources. The best source at the time was Frommer’s travel guide, one of the few on the market. The more I learned, the more my plans solidified. I spent the remainder of 1981 and most of 1982 gathering all the information I could obtain.
I soon decided the usual four-week vacation for 1982 would not do justice to a trip like this, so I made an early, albeit unorthodox, request to take all of my 1982 and 1983 vacations at one time. This was approved, allowing me to proceed making final preparations. I maximized the time even more by leaving on Thanksgiving Day and returning on Sunday, the 30th of January; I returned to work the very next day!
The weather was often overcast with drizzle, particularly in the southern part of the south island. But, I had no hard rain to deal with, or cold. I took a bus tour near the top of the north island to Cape Reinga. I did pick up a bug in Wanganui in the southern part of the north island and spent Christmas at a B&B. Then, rented a car for a day to loop around Mt. Egmont and still not feeling well continued down to Wellington to another B&B.
In the south island, I biked as far as Queenstown. I camped for two nights in the pouring rain. They had the heaviest floods since 1878 forcing me to take a bus over to Dunedin on the east side of the island. There, I proceeded to get sick again and two days later had to take the bus to Christchurch. I recovered but could only do day trips and around town riding because my plans, in a few days, were to fly out of Christchurch to head home.
My Fuji bike came equipped with 18-speed gearing. This seemed to be somewhat novel to quite a few kiwis. Often, I was asked how many gears I had. When told, the usual response best characterized the unique down-under accent: “Aight tine spyeds mite?”
